Why do I say things I don’t always mean? There is this constant struggle inside me with me, between who I am and who I wanna be. I don’t mean that I don’t like myself, on the contrary I love myself, in fact I adore myself. But the real question is do I adore myself with all my weaknesses and flaws or am I in love with the version of me that I think I am, flawless, superior, perfect? Being honest to myself, brings clarity about who I am, but why I am that I am, that question remains unanswered. Chennai is a big city, and by the looks of it, it looks inviting and beautiful too, not in the conventional way, like New York, or Singapore, or Tokyo, but in its own twisted ways. I would like to spend some more time in this city. May be some of my questions will be answered, who knows. Or maybe they won’t. But it won’t matter. Because places are meant to be experienced. And experiences make one grow. And city by city, town by town, lanes by roads, airports by stations, I would be growing, as I am now, as I finish my short date with Chennai and prepare to fly back to Dubai, my home for now.
So, I came back to this mega city, to find answers to the same old question. I went out for long walks into the city. There was so much dust, pot holes, lack of footpaths, sweat, traffic, crowd, high risers, constructions, and a thousand things more, but my answers seemed to be nowhere. Before making it back to my comfortable layover room in a 4star hotel, I treated myself with a filter coffee (indigenous to this part of the country). Because why not? Small pleasures like this one often makes up for the lack of answers in life. The cool breeze felt good in the aftermath of sweat and heat. Back in my room, I changed into my fav outfit, my pajamas and I settled down in my favourite part of the hotel room, the oh so comfy bed! Scrolling between my personal photography and the ones in the social media, I came across this small bit of snippet from an Indian movie. The movie was almost a decade old, and I remembered watching it with a long-lost friend in my initial days in Dubai. The short was about the relationship that an adult has with her parents. The question was “why are you being a mother to your 70-year-old father?” To which the female replies, “after an age, it’s the responsibility of the daughter or son, to keep their older parents alive, because after an age, their will to live kind of stops (for Indian parents at least who sacrifice every fiber of their being to raise their kids)!” And that hit home! Even though I was far from finding the answer to the question that was softly haunting me for weeks now, I did stumble upon another answer of a question I often asked myself. Why did it feel like that I was baby-sitting my ageing parents all the time? And there was the answer! That was why! The saying, that travel answers many of life questions, is not false after all! They may be not the answers you might be looking for right now, but nevertheless they are the answers! Answers that might bring one, a step closer to knowing and understanding themselves a bit more! That, for me is fascinating!
And to clarify here a bit more, travel doesn’t have to be expensive, or heavy, or far away. It could just might be as simple as taking a different route to home from college, or from work, or trying out a new place to eat, or pursuing that hobby more that requires your visit to the outsides more! Renouncing comfort zones do open up new possibilities, and these possibilities are often hideouts of those small little nudging answers whose absence don’t make the world stop, but whose presence makes the mind a bit more reassured of who it actually is!
Until another answer!