Dilli ki Naan-Sense

While walking on the concrete path surrounded by a sea of green formed by leaves and the red and blue and green of the sweets-selling shops and the gol gappa vendor, the curious aroma of Central Delhi - incense mixed with tobacco and wet grass - awoke my senses. A story rose from each variation, from each pedestrian passing by, from the people selling paan to the ones saturating the air with their prayers to Allah. Homesickness took birth inside me before I had left.

Dilli ki Naan-Sense is a fitting term for the magic that courses through the veins of this city - a city that demands a love you can explain only once you are going to leave. I originally used this term as the name for a food blog I initiated with three of my friends, one which never took off. Even though this post isn't about food (as pointed to by "naan"), I found the term befitting since you'll hear many people in Delhi pronouncing "non" as "naan".

Why am I writing about this city just weeks before I am about to leave? I never appreciated before the collective story its sounds speak, nor did I acknowledge how much I had gotten used to the noise of the traffic, to the vendors announcing their wares, to the many people filled in a few square metres. Not until I moved to Gurgaon, another city bordering Delhi, which is bustling but not so much as West Delhi where I resided before. The relative quiet calls me to revisit Delhi, or Dilli as I prefer to call it, to board the Metro once again and see for myself the magnitude of human life.

The smog obscures what is beautiful. While the intense competition that exists due to the high population might be too stressful sometimes, deep beneath everyone supports each other, intentionally or unintentionally, and life moves forward. Behind a regular schedule, a regular job, is the feeling that Dilli is our home. That feeling of constancy that bores us one day fights for survival the next when it is being defeated by change.

Before I leave, I might write a lot about what fascinates me about my home, owing to the increased observation of my surroundings triggered by the knowledge that my time here is limited. Everything seems beautiful before the end, before change grasps you and all you have left are memories.

Of Memories and Goodbyes

As I finished writing the last word on my Board Exam answer sheet, the bell echoed through the room and my mind alike. I knew what was to come. With each changing tone of the bell, memories switched through my mind - of all I had achieved in a span of 14 years, how I would never have imagined being in the place I am when I first walked down the corridors of my school. I thought of how some of my best friends in school were made in the last six months of my time spent with them. Friendship, though something strong and valuable to me, is something I find hard to admit.

When all of us exited the gates of the Exam Centre, somehow the notion of separation found its place among the relieved emotions of the culmination of exams and of school. Goodbyes echoing all around, I bid farewell to those I knew, hoping childishly that one goodbye would fix them in my memory forever. Everyone hoped, in one way or another, that the hasty scribbles on their shirts, the many photos clicked together, would somehow neutralize the emptiness we all felt inside.

Perhaps what irked me the most was how I could not meet everyone that afternoon, could not express to those I knew how important they had become to me. Being the shy person I am, I never could say to these people I love how I really felt. To some of them, I didn't even find the chance of saying goodbye.

Why did I relate the memory of my friends with how I parted with all of them? Closure is something all of us crave. The disturbing part is how, when something ends or someone goes away, the regret of never getting to say goodbye is a thought saturating the crevices of all our minds.

The best way to say goodbye, to embrace the threshold of parting, is to never think too much about it. Associate people with memories, not goodbyes. In these short-lived moments of goodbyes, we experience little experiences of unexpected death. Death is a fact, life is what we're here for.

Home

What holds me back from the boundless sky?
The ground chained to my feet.
With dreams of change,
That penchant for the unpredictable,
Why does this smoke suffocate me?

A few years into my thoughts
Following the clouds, I start to fly
Yet the smoke bars my way
Holds me back up
When falling to the ground, I crave home.

Returning to the present, eyes blinded
By the black smoke of fear -
Fear that if everything changes
And life couldn't be more exhilarating
Would I ever return?