I live in Bangalore. Its sort of like the Silicon Valley of India.
I moved here about 6 months ago. But I am originally from Bombay the best damn city in India. (And I say it with complete bias)
I moved because I was feeling kinda down about Bombay. I had just turned 25, was still living with my mother; had a writing gig that did not pay bills and my personal life was like the gunk that gets stuck on the floor of your fridge – after a point you learn to ignore it and accept the muck as part of the beautiful edifice altogether.
Now, my sister used to live in Bangalore and she had moved out to this part of the country pretty early in her life. I had always told myself that by the time I turned 22 I too will move out and start fending for myself – no more relying on mom. It had been 3 years since I turned 22. I was doing exactly the same things I had been doing for 3 years, at precisely the same hours of the day. I knew exactly what things made me happy, sad, excited and bored. It all seemed so predictable and complacent. And I did not like it.
I took it as a sign and started looking for a new challenge or in my case a better job, in a different city. And a few weeks in to the search, I landed a job with Teabox, in Bangalore.
Once I decided to leave Bombay, my perspective on the city changed completely. Now, I am the kind of girl who has the capacity to be excruciatingly sentimental. At the knowledge that I’d be moving away from my city I came dangerously close to becoming an emotional wreck. Even the most mundane of activities like eating the blithely toxic chaat at 11 in the night at the corner store – suddenly became oh-so cherished. Things like catching up with friends over the weekend became a little too precious, to a point that I started locking everything we said/did in my mind as a sepia-tinged memory I could consume every time I’d hit a low. And, just so you know, I’d cry like a baby every time I’d visit Gateway of India the beautiful yellow-stone structure at the jetty which once marked the departure of the last British troops from India. (Talk about irony)
Seeing my disheveled self, my friends decided to throw me a party sort of like a hey, its going to be all right, you’ll survivekind of a soiree. This was just two days before I was to move to Bangalore. That night we reminisced about everything. And the evening ended with an inebriated intervention (of sorts), where the general consensus proclaimed how brave it was of me to take the said leap of faith. I kinda felt proud of myself too for having found the courage to somehow let go of all that was familiar in pursuit of things completely unknown – in a new city, among new people.
As a parting gift, my friends gifted me a tea mug (you know, since I was to start working for tea company and all). They all scribbled fun messages across the curve of that mug and it was just the perfect sendoff.
Things in Bangalore were different simply put. There was nothing familiar about any of the experiences I encountered. I was struck with massive bouts of dissonance at everything I did from eating funky tasting chaat that tasted nothing like the one I had back in Bombay to getting an auto rickshaw to go to the local mall only to get ripped-off for being the conspicuous North-Indian outsider. At one point I did not know whether to cry or laugh at the wilderness that was seemingly unraveling around me in this alien land.
As embarrassingly sentimental as it sounds, the only thing that felt familiar through it all (for the first couple of weeks) was the mug my friends gave me. It lent me its company every morning and evening. I loved sipping tea in that bespoke porcelain beauty. On days that I was too hormonal to function, cupping that mug really did feel like a hug from my friends.
That mug broke.
Just last week.
It was an accident, and my overused tea mug was left in white shatters.
I tried desperately to fix it. I am quite crafty, I thought, and I could easily figure out a way to put that thing back together. But I couldnt.
I am not ashamed to admit that I cried over it. After all, it was really a piece of home away from home, for so many months. I spent so my nights crying and laughing holding on to that mug full of hot ginger chai most of the times. I’ll even shamelessly admit that the length of most of my conversations depended on the measure of tea in that mug. It served the whole kit and caboodle – as a soup bowl, a flower vase and even a bourbon carrier at times. And even after I did manage to put together a decent enough kitchen stocked with quite a few fancy cookware and tea cups – that mug claimed my love above everything else. It always will.
But today, as I write this post, I have let go of my much-loved tea mug. I have cut the cord that once tethered me to my city, my home and my friends and I am fine. Its job I can contentedly proclaim – wasdone.
