Skip to main content

When a place becomes a part of you


It begins unceremoniously, like any other habit that you have allowed to creep into your life and find a safe harbour. It begins like any other day, one that doesn’t work too hard to embed itself in the recesses of your memory. You halt and ask for a cup of coffee.  It tastes like nothing you’ve ever had before (or does it?). It provides you what most of your other trivial pursuits don’t - satisfaction.

The next day, you find yourself in the same place, ostensibly at the same time, ordering your cuppa again. This time, there is a gleam of recognition in the eyes of the one who serves you. Unknown to you, some 100 others feel the same. Again, it provides you what you try so seek untiringly  day after day– recognition.

You can never tell when that day will come, when after much deliberation, you are deemed worthy of a regular. Your face is no longer another one in the crowd. Suddenly, satisfaction and recognition are not strangers anymore. It has crept upon you so unseeingly that you cannot free yourself of its grip. Actually, why should you?

You know you’ve invited trouble when a day that goes by without paying a visit can cause frayed nerves. You know it’s a habit when, for whatever reason, a visit slips through your fingers and restful sleep eludes you. You realise you’ve lost the battle when you make that effort to pay a visit, even if it calls for a complete detour from where you are headed. You know it’s a part of you when you touch ground from an out of town visit and the place you head to first isn’t home -  but the place, which by now has become a second home.

Now, you have progressed far beyond regular and you are part of the furniture. In the workplace, this can result in embarrassing situations. Here, it is welcome. You don’t have to ask for a seat, it’s already waiting. You don’t have to place your order, it’s already assumed. You are met by greetings, the same for so many years. If you are nowhere to be found, the seekers land up, assuming they’ll find you there.

As time assuages your enthusiasm and lust for life, you start to seek familiarity (the kind that doesn’t breed contempt). And you always find it in this place. Travel the world and see what life has to offer, only to realise that there are very few places that you can truly call home. Where you can always come back, take off the masks that you wear and sit down for a cup of coffee.
Only to realise that the place is a part of you.

Comments

  1. Vivek NenminiJune 17, 2011 at 6:08 AM

    Where ra macha, this? Hints of many places I guess-Mecca for starters?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When an Iyer met an Iyengar

If you see my parents, they look like the quintessential arranged marriage couple. After nearly 35 years together, they still take care not to touch each other while posing for a photograph and my mother’s smile dangles precariously between a smile and a grimace. But this image discolours the truth a tad. Some 40 years back, they met at work, fell in love and got married. The talking point of the union being mom’s status as an iyengar and dad’s as an iyer. Simply put, the iyers and the iyengars are two castes of the Brahmin community, each, when given the chance, profess superiority to each other on all counts. If you listen closely, an Iyengar talking about an Iyer will say ‘Iyer a?’ in a condescending tone. And vice versa. Mom tells me that when she told her dad about the marriage, he vowed to stand by her at any cost. Dad never told me what happened, but allow me to hazard a guess. His mother (my grandmother), threatened to go on a fast unto death. My dad threatened to go ...
13 comments
Read more

The sculptor and the stone cutter

  A story is told of two bricklayers laying brick on an afternoon when one wished the sun would scurry back behind the clouds and offer a smattering of respite. This very ordinary scene caused curiosity to get the better of a passerby in search of conversation. As the story goes, a question was posed to each as to what they were building. One replied he was merely laying brick. The other said he was laying the foundation for a cathedral. Ostensibly, the purpose of this story being recounted time and again is to get us to look at dreary tasks with a sense of reverence. And maybe, just maybe, they can turn into a masterpiece. Maybe this zealous approach is the distinction between the humdrum existence of a journeyman and that of an enchanter, who in Jack Kerouac’s words, makes everybody go ‘aaawww’. Which is why there are such few masterpieces, be it a song, a book, a movie, or a sportsperson making the field his stage, keeping an audience of a million glued to...
2 comments
Read more

Meet Ronnie

Doctors are a strange lot. I should know, being a sibling to one. Most of us spend our education and subsequently, our lives, chasing elusive rainbows. Our formative years are spent willing the clock to move faster and for classes to get over. Medical students spend their formative years cutting open human bodies (the dead ones) and one fine day, graduate to cutting open live ones. It was this strange fortune of having my elder sister choose medicine as a career that introduced me to Ronnie.  As a part of their learning, medical students are supposed to go to a designated store near their college and buy a very unique set. This very unique set consists of a skull and a few bones. They then sit in class, hold the skull in their hands, and listen to their lecturer explain to them about the  neurocranium   and the  viscerocranium.   Cutting cadavers, it may be presumed, is slightly more complicated and cannot be delved into with the same  hilarit...
Post a Comment
Read more