Come Home - Part 1.

Long time no write! Battling laziness and procrastination takes a while; in my case a little over two years. Be as it may, let's move on because I have something very exciting to write about!

 I visited home during the months of December (2014) and January (2015). Home for me really means Malleswaram, nay Bangalore, nay India. I have been living away from home for a while now, and like most of you reading this post, you know what I'm talking about. When some wise thing said, life begins outside of your comfort zone, it wasn't kidding! I totally recommend it to anyone who wants to try. While its not all fun and games, at the end of it, very simply put, one gets to grow up. You may grow up a little too soon for the comfort of a few. However, its a necessary anti-oxidant in what will otherwise become a very well oxidized life. (What-a-simile da!) 

 

Flying eight thousand odd miles is a big deal. You endure less than acceptable circumstances to get to your destination. But bad experiences make good stories. While my flight back home was exhausting, I do a few good anecdotes. The on-flight entertainment has very little to offer but this time it had something in there that I was interested in - the movie 'Queen'. Call it attraction to the unknown, but I had always wanted to catch this movie that I knew nothing about it. Yes, I am one of those people who does not read the synopsis at the back of a book before reading the book itself. My interest in Queen was mostly through words of status updates on Facebook. I have to tell you though that watching Queen turned out to be so much more than just fun. A movie, with a female protagonist (even if Kanaga were portraying it!), shunning social norms to live life on her terms - now that's what I call a movie. So with all this feel goodness that I had scooped up, I alighted in Mumbai.

 

Mumbai airport is so cool - see (not so cool) pictures below!

 

Airport waits/transit are their own group of stories. There are stories and then there are airport stories. I hold them on a different level in my life. One such story was when I had effortlessly struck up a conversation with a man who was from England. He told me that he was a Project Manager in an (a?) NGO and that he was visiting his sister in Goa, who was a travel agent who designed bespoke holidays for international tourists. We got talking about a lot of things and one of them was how our country handles work visas. He told me that his sister had to pay thousands of rupees to renew her work visa every year - really??? For my part, I was absolutely ignorant about how tedious it could be to get a visa to visit or work in India. I learnt something that day - immigrants' paper work - a necessary burden - just deal with it. We also had conversations about how humanitarian work changed his attitude towards life or how he visited remote corners of Bangladesh to see people living in less than human conditions or how he had partied hard in Lebanon or about how I would like living downstairs in Downton Abbey but enough said. As a parting gift he gave me a 1000 mille livres (Lebanese Currency)  - now that's so cool - oh and very thoughtful :). Another person deserves a mention here; a very kind man who worked in Coffee Day at the Mumbai Airport let me borrow his phone to call my dad. Be mindful of the fact that this was an STD call but he still refused to let me pay him back. Such altruism - he didn't even expect me to buy anything from him. All this because BSNL had stopped functioning in the Airport - BSNL are you listening?  

So, 22 hours of flying / transit time / driving time and six mediocre in-flight meals later I was back home! Most Bangaloreans will agree with me when I say that the first breath of the salubrious Bangalore air is probably one of the best feelings of all times. The drive back home, even better. Bangalore commute is lovely late in the night, as long as you are safely locked away in your car. What was to come was going to be so cool - for finally I had more than two weeks of vacation and ample company. If an Indian vacation is as long as mine was it is but natural to assume its for - you know what! Anyway happy to report that it was just a fun trip to enjoy the little things; vegetable markets, smell of freshly ground coffee with chicory, Masala Puri, Lal Bagh; CTR dosa; bougainvillea, rangoli, jack-fruit; chikoo milkshake blah blah blah.... 

 

Part 2 coming to an electronic device near you - like in your hand probably.