It has almost been three months since I left my beloved city, but as I came here yesterday, again, nostalgia has not left me since I put my feet down here. I have always been in love with Chennai. I came here, with hope, with dreams, and with a new life. But, as it is with life, it takes from you, the thing that you want it not to take from you! It took me my city, I had to leave for my home Delhi. I always missed the city- its culture; the Tamil language; mid day tomato rice/ lemon rice, tomato soup in the evenings; dosai in the dinner, idli in the morning; beaches where looking at the sea instills peace and faith in me; Lord Ganesha who always blessed me, and who was always there at the way I turned for my p.g , and who is not there in Delhi, the same Ganesha, yet so different feelings for the same deity; the temples, Nav-Grah idols; the Ramkrishna Math, Mylapore; the Theosophical Society of India, Adyar; in short, a whole complete world, life. I always wanted to stay here, but life had some other plans for me. I may go on and on in life, but the city always remains here, for me and people like me, who are hers, and yet not hers, at the same time. When I got an opportunity to visit the city again, I didn't even think once, not to go there. It was similar to a painting who calls its painter again; like a writer who writes, and rewrites, and edits, and rewrites even though he knows he has written his heart out; I can't get over the city.
Here, I have a small little family, of friends, and they remain as complete a part in the portrait, as the complete picture itself.
I travelled more than two thousand kilometres, of two days journey just to be in the arms of someone whom I love, my city Chennai. I don't know, why is it so; and I don't even try to know it, to find the logic. It simply is, and I hope it to remain..
Tomorrow morning, I leave the city again, for an another city- Kolkatta, in the great land of Bengal. For a traveller, there is no home, he is to move, just like for a writer, every written word is a part of his written world.
Leaving the city again, grieves my heart, and makes me come here again, again just to see the sea, just to see the temples, just to see the family.
I wish my charm for the city never drowns, even though any Tsunami may struck it time and again..
Thinking again, and thinking aloud, repeating time and again, the fact that, for a traveller, there is no home, the whole world is a home, and he has to leave a culture, just only to get into an another one, though not leaving the former complete, and yet being complete in the latter. Thinking this, I pack my bags and move away, into a new city, a new world.
