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| the disappearing 'ha'...it was soon becoming 'am'...the aham(ego) was lost as we flew away towards different terrain... |
*Ahmedabad through a photo chromatic lens…
82months&13 days halt…
Those many days back… like the millions many rootless wanderers in bigger better cities, we rambled around this vast one too. Tall buildings, broad streets, lights, crowd, eateries, discos, NID, IIM, CEPT, Darpana Academy…what else would a gremlin far from North-eastern part of the country want! The sight was so devouring. What tugged at my heart all the more was the freedom with which we could walk along with the crowd. Anybody from NE would know how it feels when you are categorized as ‘outsiders’. They who were out in the streets didn’t call us that. We were just anybody. There was nothing at all to worry about, time -2a.m.we were in a lane where the fete just seemed to have begun. Those were something new to me & as I drew closer to my little nest, there was a lot of appreciation for this part of the country that didn’t advertise but opened the window of freedom to us.
*Ahmedabad sans make up…
Just after marriage with a tag ‘just married’ we tried hard to knit along with the mass. Little accounts from the man who went out & earned the bread for the two of us repelled both of us. The ‘su bhao che’ nature of the natives just left us pretty dejected. Not that I returned with a different tale from my work place. (My tales are almost case studies.)There wasn’t too many decent places where one could sit, chat, unwind. CCD’s, the malls, the shopping centres didn’t much appeal to our taste. Very soon it sank in us. We were here for work, and a new beginning didn’t much begin here. Wake up, go to work, come back home: fatigued, irritated, choked up, dine& go to bed. That was a routine: we followed the prescribed table. We were travelling almost on that very line when slowly and unhintedly, we started catching up with people…our little network just built. That was towards the last two years of our stay.
We had couple of social visits, went for long drives, called up our friends and planned for late night dinners, gloated ourselves laughing out our brains when on one such late night picking up and going for dinner drove us to Udaipur. We didn’t have to wake up, we woke up Udaipur! And then onwards we have begun to store in the bare minimum essentials for travelling in our vehicle. Lest we end up purchasing things from every part of the country…I still remember ones we reached Udaipur, our friend puts up a proposal of driving up to Delhi, U.P. the list endless. I was so petrified. I swear I had my heart out. Because I know that ones a thing is spelt, somehow my hubby would do anything to meet it. Thankfully we were not carrying our plastic money, it saved me from the horror. Nevertheless, our discomfiture about the natives and also about the place continued along the line. We somehow managed to create a niche for ourselves in few pockets of the city.
*Ahmedabad was just about to make us social…
When one fine day, the transfer letter reaches. Happily we pack and load all that was assimilated in those living years. The same apartment I came in as a bride, the pharmacist who stayed awakened days in and out to check on our health, the rooms where poems took birth, where we debated upon nth no. of political/apolitical issues, ruffled the neighborhood with our anarchic laughter& re-discovered a bond with my colonial cousin& discussing issues related to our north-east corner. It was getting way more difficult to scratch out the images of hundred of students who never left me alone. I remember Principal HK trying to track me down through the cctv& saying"jahan bachche bheer mein honge,wohi madam hogi"(madam would be in a place where a flock of students would be huddled). In just few moments, we set all of them free in the open to let another dream weaver hop in.
The thought of leaving A’bad hit us hardest the day we loaded our household stuff. We were uncaged. And then it was time for both of us to weep in our respective spaces. As we jounced in to a rickshaw I just couldn’t bid farewell to a family friend of ours. I realized I was crippling. Veiling my face with a dupatta off we frizzled out in the heat.
Pain weighed.
Yes, it is difficult to close down A’bad chapter… it just absorbs one, as it finally did to us when we had left behind its terrains…
I gathered that it rained two days later, just the day we reached Kolkata.
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