A small town boy...

I've enjoyed my time in Mumbai till now, I really have. I might say I haven't at times, but now, looking back at it, yes I have.
It is really the first time I've been on my own. Starting afresh, no ties.

Free.
More than ever.

It has been hard, yes, and it still is, most of the times, remembering the comforts and the pleasures of home, and the people I've always known - my family, and my friends - the people I grew up with, and my hometown.

It's a wonderful place to live in, you know... Patiala. Indisputably magical.

Although I'm sure everyone has that to say for their hometown. But I've had this opinion confirmed by a lot of my friends who came from a whole lot of other places, to study in Thapar.
I have had a ton of batch-mates who miss Patiala more than they miss the places they grew up in.

This may be me being nostalgic, or home-sick...or whatever.
Veterans of living in hostels may scoff here. You're quite right to. But this is not me missing my home. This is me missing a city.
A greater home.
A place that is now a home for every generation of graduate that passes through Thapar every year.
However much they might hate it, or feel frustrated with it during their stay there.

When I was still in class 12, I had convinced myself that whatever happened, I would not attend engineering college at Thapar.
Because my father graduated from there.
How pathetically juvenile was that thought...
I would even go to some place less reputed, but I wouldn't stay for four years in Patiala, I could not!
It was unthinkable.
I needed to go to a fucking 'metro'!
I needed to see the world! There is so much more out there! I would get stuck in Patiala if I stayed there.

How passionately I hate that version of me now.
How pathetically...juvenile.



'A Metro'.
What an illusion.
Sure, I can go to a huge fucking mall whenever I want to, and shop!
When I want to go out with friends and go crazy, sure there are these supposedly 'hot' and amazing places we can go to, splurge on overpriced shit, hang out with a lot of fat-walleted and tiny-brained people. Where the topic of discussion is more often than not the latest iPad, or the new uber-expensive restaurant in *insert posh area reference here*.

But do you remember where we used to hang out?
The canal? That 'Khansama' truck outside of Columbia Asia?
I want a canal, man!
I want that serenity.

Whenever I go home, I make sure I spend at least one evening with friends at that unbelievably sacred place.
Ironically, it is where we once saw a bloated corpse floating along the way, and then panicked.
Ha! Where else?
It's weird I know, reminiscing about something like that, but every memory acquires a romantic feel to it, given time.

It had everything, man, it did, that city. It does.
Short of an airport.
I never had to think to myself, oh hey, I'll have to go to such and such place to buy that. Or to do that.
It has everything. It does.

I go back now, and I never want to leave.

It's been a while since I went into Thapar itself. A small town in its own right.
Remember the lawns?
There was a time, I think in the beginning of my second year, during the monsoon, when the chemistry lab gardens were flooded because of the rain.
Half a foot of water perhaps, engulfing the entire lawn.
A group of friends and I came up with a contest, with each of us putting in twenty rupees in a plastic bag, sealing it and then throwing it way into the lake that had become of the chemistry lab lawns.
Whoever got to the plastic bag first would win the 160 rupees in the plastic bag.
I got to be the guy who threw the plastic bag into the lawn, unwilling to jump into the lake myself.
I did it, and five guys wrestled through the water and mud to get to the plastic bag, shoving themselves into the water along the way, and in the end wrestling for the money. The winner found that I had secretly pocketed the cash before throwing it out, and a memorable controversy ensued.

...What am I even talking about?

Nostalgia is a drug.

“I felt a pang -- a strange and inexplicable pang that I had never felt before.

It was homesickness.

Now, even more than I had earlier when I'd first glimpsed it, I longed to be transported into that quiet little landscape, to walk up the path, to take a key from my pocket and open the cottage door, to sit down by the fireplace, to wrap my arms around myself, and to stay there forever and ever.”

― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag