A Journey

Where one ends, another begins.

                Thrissur. These will be the last of the days that I call her home. I’m leaving, splitting myself in two and sending each part to a different place. Yes, that does sound confusing. A few weeks from now, for me, one home will be Ottapalam and the other, Trivandrum (which will be a rented one, of course). And there will be nothing left of me here, but a faint streak of meagre exploits, spanning the few years, that I had called her home. It feels right to give this much-loved city, a fitting farewell in the pages of my blog, after all, she has bore me for such a long time that a vast majority of my pleasant and life changing memories are engraved into her history. Her history! As if I’ll ever be remembered as a part of it. There are so many of us who pass through the sieve of life, leaving nothing behind to mark our passage. Just like that, one day we are born and on another, we die. Everyone yearns to be remembered, I guess. But maybe there are some among us, who prefer to be forgotten, to merely survive, blend in, and pass through unnoticed. I’m not one of them, I think. What will become of me, you and everyone else around? Only time will tell.

                Serious things aside, most of my friends have gone away on jobs, so mostly, I keep to myself nowadays. Well I do have this one friend in my house here, a mouse with long, beautiful brown fur. It never occurred to me how such a beautiful creature could appear so quickly into my house. But very soon I realised that most of my near empty bottles of Ayurvedic hair oil were magically disappearing. No wonder she has such long beautiful fur. At least it’s working for one of us. She comes to check on me at night when I’m writing, scurrying around, nibbling at biscuit wrappers and old newspapers. I think she’s making a home somewhere nearby. Enjoy it while you can Mousy, I am leaving soon.

                I do roam around sometimes, enjoying the city. Now you must be wondering, “Doesn’t he have a job yet? Most of us are working and earning a living. How can we call someone like him our friend? He doesn’t make us proud, doesn’t do anything productive, never calls, and rarely picks up.” Well, you know how I am, always late, always holding back, but then one day, out of the blue, comes a flash of brilliance, a dance, a blog, a song or something else, completely unexpected. (Felt great to write that sentence, even better to have made you read it) But till then, grant me a silent nod to adorn the walls of my heart with your name as a friend. By the way, I lost most of the phone numbers last week when my laptop was formatted by the Dell service center guys, thank you very much, which was very shortly after my old phone had gotten damaged. So now, mostly, I push the receive button, say Hi, and wait for the voice recognition system of my outstandingly deteriorated brain to kick in, to find out who speaks from the other end. But voices have changed, and those that haven’t, have faded away from the memory, owing to their prolonged absence. There was an awkward moment today when a familiar voice from the other side declared that he was my father-in-law when I asked him who he was. Please my dear friends, be kind, don’t scare the poor solitary thinker in me, send a message beforehand, revealing your magnificent identity.

                Where was I? Ah yes, roaming around the city. I went through all the book stores in Trichur looking for Samantha Shannon’s ‘The Bone Season’. Quite a futile undertaking, that was. They all gave me this sardonic look, as if I was talking about my imaginary friend Samantha’s book. But I did have a great time browsing through all the new releases out there. ‘The Lowland’, ‘The Luminaries’, ‘The Signature of All Things’, and ‘The Goldfinch’, all seemed so scrumptious. If it was allowed, I would have gobbled them up, then and there. But after nearly an hour of looking at books, I just picked up a short story book of various authors, just to be polite. I had always known where to find what I was looking for, but I did enjoy the search. I found the book at home, staring back at me from the screen of my laptop, in that omnipresent, liberal-pricing shopping complex of ours, Flipkart. I have placed the order and am waiting eagerly for Saturday when the Blue Dart will hopefully, hit my door.

                That’s it for now. I have to finish this other book that I’m reading, ‘Beautiful Creatures’, (yes, on which the movie is based) which is a first person account of a boy who discovers the magical mysteries of the Ravenwood manor. I like the name Ravenwood. It’s very picturesque. The first 171 pages of the book is good (Grammatically very confusing sentence, i agree). About the rest, I can only say after reading. Mousy will be here soon. She wouldn’t approve of me talking to friends so late at night. She gets jealous, I suppose. So goodnight my dear friends. Take care and enjoy your life wherever it may lead you.