Never Let Me Go

( dear city of joy, didn't want to bid goodbye without a smile )


~

The leaves of the plants once put in our flower vase are turning yellow. They are going to fall off anytime now. In their place, new light green baby leaves are emerging ...such is the cycle of life...the new gives way to the old...and the old ? The old vanishes somewhere...into the folds of some memory that we once used to have, which is no longer relevant perhaps.

So, the plant mimics my life. Dear friends, I am leaving this city forever. I am leaving my place which I used to call my dear home in a few days. I am going to a new city. And ironically, this new city will also turn out to be like that plant in the vase...one day, we are going to bid farewell to the new city too and march on to another city...

People who get extremely and intimately too attached to everything that they meet on their way, people who are like me, cannot handle such a transition with ease. I get too attached to objects and people too soon. That is why I crave for some kind of everlastingness.

Something that will stay forever.

But as I am growing up, I am learning that everything including this life that you and I have do not last forever. Everything is transitory.

We love, we get attached and one day it is gone...be it your home, your loved ones or your feelings that  gave you some kind of security...even feelings and thoughts that we lovingly and tightly held since childhood are gone now...

I vividly remember the first day I arrived in Kolkata. After the flight landed in the airport, we took a taxi ...the taxi drove past rows and rows of slums... children bathing in the street with abandon...women drying clothes...the chaos, the noise, the heat and the dust..the big trees..cotton trees with big dark green fruits hanging over the branches...so many of them...people talking in loud voices because the noise coming from the vehicles around them are even louder...the rich and the poor co-existing with not much gap between them either in terms of housing or in their mental make up...I made a few friends among them...and today..

Today, I am leaving. From being a total stranger to an intimate friend, this city changed my life forever. Yes, that is a big statement to make, but it is also the truth of my life. I was never born in this city. None of my relative or family member live in this city. Yet, it took me up in its lap just like a new mother would take care of an adopted child. That an adopted child is capable of receiving so much love, I never had any sense of that before arriving in Kolkata.

I was only a human being before I came here. This city made me spiritual. You name any emotion- love, longing, caring, sorrow, loneliness, patience, sacrifice, happiness,melancholy, absence,  -any emotion worth experiencing was made to be experienced by me ...was forced into me ..by this city..in all its depths.

Only friends and relatives cannot make you human. 
The trees, the strangers, the sky and the air that you breathe in, day in and day out, everything has its role to play in your life....not only they make you and change you but they give you so much when no one else can give you...
I remember many a nights and days when I used to stare out of my window into the vast sky and into the big tree with many branches...I could find something that no human could give...at least in that moment of human absence, or lack- the sky , the tree and nature gave me company..

Now, I am leaving that very tree, that sky...and that home that I so lovingly decorated and caressed with my own hands like a mother would caress her own baby...for some it is just a change of place ...from one to another...but for me, it is like leaving everything that I got so used to, so attached to...

From now on, the mornings won't be the same forever. Neither the nights. And that tree which I used to look at everyday...right outside my window...

One day, I will come back, many years later to this same place and look at that tree once again. And the sky, my old house...Or who knows, I might forget it all...new memories will rise up in the place of old ones, forcing me to adapt and adjust ...like the plant in the vase, shedding its old leaves, giving way to the new ones...

But what about everlastingness then ?

Nostalgia. Looking back. Looking back with fondness or sorrow...

As long as these memories are tightly etched in my mind, even if new memories are forcibly pulling me by my hair and telling me to look elsewhere, they would be everlasting indeed.

Love

Today it is cold outside. A beautiful cold morning.

Today is also Saturday. Most offices and workplaces have a half day of work. Today is also Valentine's day. So, the young office goers will get half of the day to celebrate V day with their family, friends or their beloved.

As for myself, I am fortunate that I have a beloved in the first place. Celebration comes much later or not at all.

Everybody who has a beloved child, sister, relative or a husband will know what I am saying. We have a valuable gift. And those who don't have anyone, we have to give them our love. By our kind words and beautiful gestures, we have to heal the world.

Last night, I was talking with my 65 year aunt over the telephone. She, who never married and has no child of her own, she, who lives alone away from me in a faraway place,  it was her voice, her empathy and the kind words that she spoke to me over the telephone that reminded me of the power of love once again.

The power of love is that, love has the power to heal. No, not to heal that much, but to assure us that we are not alone in this universe. The power of love is that it allows us to belong somewhere...in someone's heart, in someone's home or in someone's thoughts...

The sense of belongingness that love gives, nothing can give. Love gives us the sense that we are not alone. That we are not left out. That we are accepted. And we are allowed into something...into the life of someone else and also allowed to be ourselves, I guess. No, not by someone's permission but by someone's kindness...the look  of love says it all...it says, you are allowed into my life...but more importantly, you are allowed to be yourself.

Times are changing. The world is not what it used to be when I was young. But thank God, Love is. In this foreverchanging world, love is perhaps needed more than ever before.

Whenever you feel sad, down, or betrayed by life remember this :

We have the power of love to change the world. So, go out and reach out, even if it is a single soul, a single person or a single plant...give it a part of your soul ..who knows maybe it is the only thing that it was craving for so long....

~

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.

That myth is more potent than history.

That dreams are more powerful than facts.

That hope always triumphs over experience.

 That laughter is the only cure for grief.

And I believe that love is stronger than death.

~Robert Fulghum