where no roads lead home

I left home at twenty four. My memories of the Calcutta evening when I did are now somewhat like what the world appears to be through the window panes washed in quiet rain, the glass is covered in a cold haze beaded with strings of water from the downpour that swept my last August evening at home, and for most of the five years since I’ve replayed that evening in my mind, connecting through the beads and drawing through the haze a path that almost always ended in a faint assurance of leading back to where everything began.

Life has grown to amass a lot of clutter since. After all it is never easy to mend old habits and grow out of the comforts of a sheltered existence to find your foot-hold in the world. And for a long time after, every minute was a struggle, to teach oneself to cope, to hold oneself together, to put the bricks in a wall that you hope would be strong enough to hold the pieces of the everything that changed together, and the tiniest things formerly taken for granted needed to be fought for and just to be alive seemed like a grand thing. You left home starry eyed looking for a perfect beginning, only to realize that nothing is really ever perfect and yet amazingly every imperfection and the jagged ends of broken expectations will somehow come around to fit. The world is not going to be easier, it is going tear you down and almost blind you like does a burst of hard sunlight but if you can pull yourself together, it will be a glorious day, will seem kind, even forgiving, sometimes, and ready to accept your story in its colorful collage of absurdities. And to sustain me through the years I’ve always had home. In my mind. And I think I’ve never been happier than when looking down through a plane once in a year sometimes in two and have the jagged contours of the Calcutta sky line scream at me through the silhouettes of an inky blue sky. The snaking roads seem choc-a-bloc with a hundred million kinds of vehicles, the blustering yellow ambassador stands out, a  tiny speck in the milieu, every inch is taken by buildings of every kind that seem to be clamoring for their bit of the sky, they look like an architect has laid out a very terrible, cluttered plan, everything seems so massive, such a hotchpotch and yet it is the only place that I know in the whole wide world where even the chaos is familiar and disorder seems welcoming. And in the years of building another life, of working incessantly at self in trying to realize a gamut of little dreams lived with such passion, talked of and hoped for with friends on many walks into the brilliant, scarlet horizon of Calcutta evenings, in all the time of fighting everything and holding back the tears, in all the pride with which I held myself, putting everything broken back together again and again and yet again, Calcutta was always there, it was always my shelter, my reprieve.

I am older now. How did I come to be this old? God why have the years gone by?

However, it is not so much a struggle anymore, for one expects nothing. In five years I am schooled in putting out there the strongest there is of me, of relegating the more real into the recesses and camouflaging it with what is needed at the moment, even if it were a pretense. It makes me feel a little small at times for I was once straightforward and all from the heart. For a long time I tried to hold on to it, except vulnerabilities have no place when you are working your way through the world. You don’t make friends anymore, at least I didn’t, you make connections, acquaintances, some who will respect you, understand and sometimes share your passion for things, some who are important to know, resourceful, some that are fun, good to share a drink with or go shopping, and some that you will hate your guts out but never say. I have come to understand that the best way I function is closed. You reveal nothing, not the tiniest insecurity, shirk at nothing, be surprised at nothing and definitely trust no one because that will be taken advantage of and you will in all possibility be ripped apart. But to be able to keep up to it all, always, is tiring, weighs you down. And yet it isn’t all that bleak and terrible. People are nice when you are not expecting them to be. Being emotionally not connected to someone can give you a surprising degree of freedom, a refreshing perspective to your problems, and theirs, a carefree camaraderie, with no strings attached. You learn to judge and criticize less, be more careful in voicing opinions and thoughts, listen more and accept things the way they are instead of clinging on to what you want them to be. It is making the best of what you’ve got with measured sincerity, reserving the truest of you for things that matter to you, like for me my dream, family and some friends that I’ve always had and for everything else going with the flow, with little expectation and a lot of consideration.

Yet I think I am happiest when I remember the emotion and the simplicity it came with.

I guess each one of us is somewhat this way, riding the wave of big dreams, propelled by the unbridled joy of growing up in a time when everything seemed possible and you believed that nothing would really come in the way. And then as you go and live your life, you have to carve yourself, prepare to fight whatever demons there are, while the world seems honky dory, happy and singing, as it always does on the outside. You hear from a friend’s friend that your run into somewhere, you are on facebook and some hundred updates come hurtling at you, of people you once knew, who are going places, you are unaware of the things, the insanity they are hiding, their worms and baggage, you are inadvertently always comparing and weighing yourself, to adjudge where you stand, and at the end of the day you are alone. No one to see your effort, most will not appreciate it, and almost always they will strive to bring you down. I have been there and it is because I have and I know I might again that I have tried to free myself from this burden, tried to live for the little things in the present, for the big and real things I love, experience the hundred things that I never tried, to travel and see the countless places I had always dreamt of, to not take life too seriously, to put out there an armored self ready for the beating and save a little spirit and steam for big and the little dreams that came with that girl from Calcutta.

In being me and everything that I must be I was always sustained by my memory, of home. But sadly in coming so far I think it is just that, a memory. People move on, places do to. In me coming away so far, being molded by life as it happened, in dealing with it, in becoming who I am today, I think I have been swept away from everything that I always knew as home. Inevitably everyone I was deeply connected to, everyone who I identify with my memories of home has also been pushed and steered by their destiny and in brandishing their demons, they stand today very far away. As R would claim we are all in the path of evolution. I am sad. It is sad to know that you can never go back to the life you left back. That everything that you did to survive will come in between. Further, you will not, because you are not the same person any more, you don’t want the same things even if you think you do. And the people you’ve loved, held dear are fading away, they look at you differently, they need different things, they occupy a separate plane, you cannot walk together because there is no common goal.

I’ve always believed people make places. And while it is saddening to realize how everything changed, it is heartening to know that it was once all there. There is perhaps no real road to take me back to that August evening I left Calcutta, nothing to bring back that deep sense of belonging, to a place, to the people who were the nucleus of living and dreaming for a long time. And yet that memory is all there is to rejuvenate me when the chips are down. So to close my eyes and hear the faint tring tring of a rumbling tram ambling through a foggy winter Calcutta morning down an old worldly north Calcutta, walk into boi para teeming with comforting odors of old books, of crinkled, yellow pages that were read and passed on, to lounge in the corridors of Presidency with a gathering or two, to check a familiar text from a familiar number on your phone, to know that there are these people you can call in the dead of the night, these people who loved you for who you were, despite the worst you could be, that you could go farther than you’d imagine for them, and to know that once upon a time it was all there, is heartening. And reliving everything, my ordinary story of growing up seems so extraordinary, fills me with this sense of wonder and feels like I am a part of a special plan and while there maybe no going back, there is a little hope that everything I belonged to will find me once again, that life will surprise me in the end.

‘Twas the best of times

That day

As shards of gold

Pierced the bellowing, dark skies

A dash of red petals

A sprinkle of green

Crinkled under our rain-soaked feet

That walk

The things we said

Like the raindrops

Made a puddle of water

That was forever

To be

Like a river

I ran through the woods

The mountains and wild shadows

There was a dream

I was chasing

There was nothing to remember

No corner of an old road

With a puddle of water

Only a blue haze

The frozen earth

And another night in the woods

To be fought through

My oldest memory of happiness was the week or two I spent during the winters with my grandparents, my Mom’s parents. I was very young, ten maybe younger, so this is from a long time back, and hence a lot of the details have withered in my memory. Nevertheless looking back, it fills me with a lovely warmth, to have known this couple before sickness and old-age left only a husk of them. I was always slightly wary of my grandfather, I think everyone was, he was a man of few words, had served as an engineer in the Air-force for several years before opting out with voluntary retirement, working with Indian Airlines and subsequently several private airlines post-retirement from the latter. His Air-force life had left an indelible mark on his life, he was a stickler for discipline, spent hours in dusting every tiny household article, even switch-boards and had a thing for shining shoes, which again he indulged in a large-scale, gathering every shoe in the house regardless of who it belonged to for cleaning. He also had a thing for routine and reading the dictionary for leisure. Sadly I don’t remember having any fun conversations with him, I don’t even think he ever had had fun, or knew what it meant, his life had been a hard one, and my window to it was through my grand-mother’s stories. My grand-mother was a lovely lady, in those days Calcutta was ravaged by frequent power-cuts, and so in the evenings when I was staying over, we would be huddled together in darkness, she and I around a couple of candles, with her tea and some evening munchies, telling stories. She told me stories of my grand-father as a kid, a dutiful young boy in a large, wealthy household, in Lyallpur (today known as Faislabad) in Pakistan, of old-world India, and lives that would’ve have gone on tranquil and content but for the devastation that was wrecked by the Partition. His family had fled suddenly, one night as flames burst through their town, leaving behind everything, home, their roots, lives and were flung into the dark recesses of uncertainty. I believe there were many things he lived through as a child, the painful process of being uprooted that left my grand-father blighted for life. It was never again going to be the same for him. I was struck with awe as my she described the struggles he went through to re-build his life, not falling in shambles, getting himself an education, working to support his family and siblings. Years later I remember my grand-father staying up the night, something I never otherwise saw him doing, because ‘The Train to Pakistan’ was playing on TV, because some of it had been filmed in Faislabad, and in his eyes I saw the deep longing for the place he belonged to, where he could never go back and for the ties that were severed but had lived on in the scars and ravages of a life that had ensued. There were other things I learnt of through my grand-mother, her child-hood, their wedding, evenings they spent as a young, newly wedded couple in Agra with the beauty of the Taj Mahal soaked in moonlight for company, such and other things which neither me nor any of my generation or the next would ever see. But most importantly somewhere in those evenings with her stories, my stories were born, she started having me write them, stories and poems, she critiqued and improvised, it was a lot of fun. It was a cycle that remained with us for some time , before she was dilapidated, and couldn’t maybe care, but even then I hope remnants of our stories, the warm glow of our time together lived somewhere within her just as it has lived within me.

Stories and me have had a thing forever, that continued in school as well. I told stories as some of us were huddled together in free periods, when a certain Hindi Miss had run out of things to teach or needed to slow down and she asked for volunteers in class, which was always me and again I told stories on the school bus. And the source of this story telling was in everything I was reading as a kid and a little bit in what I was coming up with. I was quite an avid reader, we got an assortment of children’s magazines, Nandan in Hindi, Target, Reader’s Digest, some other children’s stuff I didn’t like very much and fast outgrew. My magazines remained stashed nicely, they were most cherished, often re-read and for a long time after Nandan and Target stopped being published (which was some six to seven years after I had started on them) I just couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. I think I finally did that sometime after I started college, and it wasn’t easy even then.

I think the other happy time in life for me has been in school and of course the school-bus. Our school bus was like a story in many ways, had its own characters. There was the group hanging out, the ever interesting gossip, games, even hide and seek with a certain durwan and the mashis to secure the best seats, complete with the blaring filmi music. Friends were made, and for a very long time everything in the world would be shared on these trips, everyday, to and from school. These were people you would wait to see again the next day, and when you were sad, unsure, afraid, you shared it with them. You sought advice, you trusted, you loved, sometimes you even grew apart for a certain number of days/years, but then you came together like is in a happy ending.

Presidency College, Calcutta. I will say this, I am immeasurably glad destiny got me to Presidency, can’t think of another time in my life that was as exhilarating and action packed as were those days. And if you are a Presidencian you will know what I mean, you will know that no other place in Calcutta has as much character, history and life than does Presidency. Cocooned in the alive and kicking environs of College Street, my college years at Presidency have been unforgettable. From making notes, drawing up unending specimens for our Zoology lab notebooks, to never ending adda, dissecting the dynamics of class politics, falling in love, discussing other people falling in love, their crushes, your crushes, music sessions, finding your very own pet amongst the campus dogs, deliberating, procrastinating, learning, falling, striving and steering through the crisis of growing up you did everything in those corridors, lover’s lane, even the library and canteen. From discovering intelligent Bengali regional cinema, being bitten by the hatibagan bug buying tonnes of junk jewelry as a result, the endless, seemingly meaningless hanging out at Coffee house and several other places around and about College street, the weekly group trips from college to New Market, the study-sessions, hangout sessions in the cool confines of the British Council, re-discovering the magic of pujo, my first ever trip to Kumartuli before pujos, to going on a wildlife safari and spotting tigers, a lot of firsts happened in Presidency. And even today, I can’t imagine going back to Calcutta without making at least one trip to revisit the college and relive the best it had to offer.

Seasons changed

The woods turned green

Gold

And naked

New dreams were woven into my tapestry

Like a river

I had come so far

And yet

Some days when the skies were raging

The earth wet and longing

A drop of gold

Breaks through

And it seems like I’m at the corner

Of an old road

With a puddle of water

That was forever

To be

Who’s that girl?

I’ve always been a crabby Cancerian when it comes to dealing with change, the slightest tumult even something small coming in to make my plans for the day falling apart like a pack of cards are enough to take me down, sometimes angry, mostly morose. Its ironic though, especially when I think of myself ten years back, and recount all that’s changed about me. R and I often talk about life even ten years back, how we met in Presidency, our initial perceptions of each other, of other people, people we knew back then, friends, common acquaintances,  and those very people now, what we believed each one of us would turn out to be ten years down the line and if at all that conforms to reality and to us now. These conversations feel very strange, sometimes almost as if I was different person then, and all that was me was someone else in a different tale. How else does one reconcile the various facets of ones life? A certain someone who was straightforward to the extent of being cut-throat, minced no words, had an opinion about anything and anyone under the sun, had a fiery temper, wouldn’t take the slightest nonsense from anyone, and yes stood tall and proud in her stance in any argument. That was me. And yet here I am today, have learnt how to withhold not only anger, my famed ill-temper but hide even the slightest signs of displeasure, in the face of things that may well be hurting, demeaning, claustrophobic maybe even more, often concealing it with a neutral me, till I can escape that moment and have had the time to think, weigh out the different sides and then give a response. You learn so many things as you go through life, don’t you? You learn what’s the right thing to say and where, that one can never expose ones vulnerabilities, that you can trust pretty much no one or maybe very few and that with everyone else you must keep up the guard. I still have an opinion on everything under the sun, though, its just that I’ve learnt through the years with whom its okay to voice them. And am headstrong and proud. Yes I am, but to me it is self-pride, the kind that Scarlett O’Hara describes very nicely when she says ‘…pride goes before a fall’. And while all this is true, there are moments I know, especially living in alien land, when I have gulped that pride and played along, to avoid unnecessary trouble, or simply looked beyond that moment of personal hurt and injury to avoid a professional hazard, a skirmish at the work place.  Nevertheless its disturbing when a completely random comment comes my way, from someone who knows me very little, only at work, voicing his concern about me, saying he worries because I am so non-confrontational, that I might be compromising on what I need. Its true I like to avoid unnecessary trouble but am not a pushover! If I need something, I will make sure I get it, only I won’t be making as much noise as perhaps some others will. And its just that when every cell in your body is over-worked, over-driven, feeding on grief from everything life is not at the moment, focused on things you want, your plans, your goals, it is very hard to keep fighting petty, meaningless battles. And yes sometimes the issues aren’t small, they shouldn’t really be ignored, yet you know its better to let the troubled waters flow over, even as they keep playing behind the scenes, biting at you as you are going through the motions of the day, but you do nothing overtly aggressive, not wanting to step on the wrong toes at the wrong time, because if there’s something you learn in life it is that you never know who you might end up needing and at which juncture. Yet the very fact that I think this, makes me sad inside. I’m glad I’m no longer that girl who maybe you thought was picking stupid fights, unfortunately, I’m now someone who sometimes will let go of the important ones, because I can’t afford it at the moment in view of the bigger picture.

The only possible brighter side of all this perhaps has been the acquisition of a previously unknown ease in dealing with ruffled feathers in personal relationships. So with people who I care about, its now easier to forgo the pride, somehow even easier to apologize when am not at fault, easier to build bridges and let go of the little things, and maybe that’s a good thing. I guess you mellow down with time, realize that holding grudges does no one any good, you begin to value people more, value memories, you wish you could go back in time to the place where that camaraderie was your anchor not your bane. You want to overlook the slights, the disappointments, differences, and remember the best, the best you can. Except at times you wonder if you’re giving up too much, being pushed too far, with folks who perhaps don’t deserve it, just because you are deeply rooted in the past, in associations and because you care.

When I look back, at me, today I can see why I was child. That when I ventured out to life on a separate continent, several time-zones away from any semblance of comfort or sense of home, I did it flying high on the wings of a dream. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t guarded by parents or in the shrines of matrimony, I did it alone, and so those firsts are very precious. All the nights at the internet trying to figure out what I wanted to research on, what is it that I was looking for in a prospective PhD mentor, what departments, what universities, and then of course all the prep, exams, applications, interviews, sifting through the acceptances, the all important decision making, then living alone, managing everything from school-work, research, to learning how to cook, keeping a house, managing money, accounts, paperwork, everything that seemingly maybe so simple and yet actually isn’t quite. In hindsight I wasn’t even fazed by the enormity of it all, and even when I was lonely and sad I wasn’t desperate and needing. Such that even being alone in a foreign country I wasn’t hankering to fill the rooms, the hours, the silences, the darkness with just about anyone, I picked my friends, just as I always had. And so sometimes when I look back at my sheltered childhood, all headstrong, tempestuous with no sense of diplomacy it brings a smile to my face, fills me with a tiny bit of awe you know, at how naive I was and how fearless. And all because of that first mildly chilly August night in Pittsburgh, when I was sleepless, hit by jet-lag, in a bare, sparingly furnished room that someone else from the University whom I met over the internet had rented for me, at the beginning of a long, hard struggle, unsure of whether and how any of this would ever pan out, or even what tomorrow might be like, when life was nailed right to the basics, I think that was my first taste of what a gut wrenching feeling fear can be, what it feels like when everything is at stake. And when you cannot be afraid, cannot give in because you’ve pretty much made your decision, and no longer have the luxury of a choice but to be brazen and stick your head out in the rain, hail, snow-storm, sun or whatever might come upon you.

And so while now I maybe older, hopefully wiser, mellow, and measured in my ways and my expression of what I think and feel, I am glad I was that girl who knew no bounds, and I hope I still am her somewhere deep within, that we will be reconciled someday, and that life will give in, in the face of our will and our dreams.