Monday, June 20, 2011

There and Back Again!

Yesterday I walked for a long time. I had decided to go to some unheard station in the the morning but there's no local train from bangalore city station on Sundays. So, I did a station strolling and while coming out got caught by the RPF and couldn't even show them the platform ticket cause I din't have one. They asked me to pay a fine of Rs300. I had the money with me but I told them I didn't. They tried to make me feel scared for 5 minutes and then gave up hope and just let me go.  I loved walking on the footbridge while I was there in the station. The footbridge on Ramrajatala station was my favourite destination as a kid. Probably it was one of the tallest structures of the town and I often used to nag my dad to take me there. Yesterday was father's day: I am not comfortable talking to my dad over phone. But I wanted to be near him , feel close to him. So, I went to a place where I can see the trains. Not just because he is a railway employee but all my interactions with him were somehow closely related to trains or railway stations. And I've a weird habit of associating  things with people and people with things : somehow the differences get blurred to me.

I was feeling restless again in the evening. I had recently shifted to this PG and had no room-mate until yesterday. She came after I came back from station. She came with a red heart shaped pillow. Well, in true sense it wasn't of the shape of a real 'heart' ; after-all, different creatures have different shaped hearts and none of them are barely similar to the 1st result you get when you do a google image search of the word 'heart'; but this pillow was the shape of a heart designed by greetings card companies. But this fake heart disturbed me a lot. All those things I was determined not to think about started nibbling my brain and I went out and started walking, I knew where I wanted to go and I also knew I was not supposed to go there. But I wanted to make the journey nevertheless. After all, it's often the journey and not the destination that matters. It was a beautiful evening and though there was incessant traffic through the road, the footpath was empty. I knew what my destination was. I just wanted to see the bridge which connects Embassy Golf Links Road with Indiranagar. The bridge to Indiranagar was more than just a bridge, it was a representation of a lot of other things. And then I got a phone call. Iris Murdoch one said (I am not sure about Dame Murdoch , but at least Kate Winslet said that while enacting her) :
'as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It's really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient.'
I always believed in those words even before I heard them. And that's what happened. Language once again let me down : let us down & I started taking the 3.5 km long walk back to my new place of residence.


I walked for a long time today as well. Somehow I've not yet suffered from Monday morning blues in this new job of mine but I sure did suffer from Monday evening blues today. In the evening when the work was over and it was time for me to go back home I suddenly realized I was all alone in a city with no close friend and with no place to call my home (my PG was yet to earn that status). So I walked past my PG and wandered through the lonely lanes and by-lanes of Koramangla 4th block all these while surreptitiously waiting for a phone call which never came and soon realized that I was lost. But then I saw the Natural's Ice Cream shop as I did on 21st December 2010 after losing my way, only then I had this foolish notion that I wasn't alone even though I actually was. I never need any excuse to have ice-cream but today I honestly needed some and I had two scoops of two different flavors : jackfruit and papaya-pinanple. There was a Barista lavaza down the road : again a flash of memories... or the lack of it : even in the memory I was disturbed  and was walking alone. What had changed in 6 months? Nothing and everything. Would I ever want to erase the time in between if I had the scope? No. Because somewhere between these very similar two scenes there were two lifetimes' worth of experiences : good, bad & ugly , though not in the same proportions. And the best part was I learnt a lot of things, most important of them all is that I've learnt nothing at all.


I was exhausted after 2 hours of walking post a (not so) hectic day at office and then I saw the road home: after-all, home is where your heart is and my heart is still with me, no matter how much wounded or bruised it might be!

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