The final goodbye

In our life there comes innumerable such moments when we have to say the final adieu - "sionara", not necessary to any person (close or we met casually) but also place and sometimes even phases of life. And its difficult to say that one - "GOODBYE".

The first time I felt, in a small way, that saying goodbye can be really painful is when my favourite teacher in Standard 1, Sister Marcellina, left St. Joseph's Convent, my school. Then leaving the school in Standard 4 was also heart breaking for me. I realised that I have just concluded one phase of my life. After that I left my secondary and higher secondary schools and then was ultimately relieved to "run away from the clutches of the professors of my engineering college". With every goodbye, to these institutions, there was the eagerness to look forward to the life ahead. After my higher secondary, I was excited to explore college life. After college life, it was the excitement of the professional life - the feeling of being financially independent and less accountable to parents. But the underlying emotion and sadness of leaving the institutions can never be ignored.

When I joined my first company, TATA Consultancy Services or commonly known as TCS, an IT firm in India, we were taken for training in GOD's own country - Trivandrum, Kerala. After three months training and enjoying the newly-found friends and freedom in the picturesque region, we were dispersed to different offices of the organisation in different cities. It was sad to bid adieu to the entire atmosphere. But, at the same time, it was difficult to suppress the sheer joy of joining the TCS office in Bangaore, the Silicon Valley of India.

Thanks to TCS, I have been able to visit quite a few places abroad. The first time I went abroad was in 2002 in Santa Clara, California for a very short stint and then soon to Salt Lake City, Utah, USA and then in South Korea and USA again. Every time my tenure in those places ended and I took the return flight, I was excited to meet my near and dear ones back home with the gifts that I so meticulously shopped for them. At the same time saying the final adieu to the place was difficult. There were friends I made, which were not necessarily the colleagues.
In Santa Clara,for example, I met a Mexican driver, with whom I started interacting and getting some wonderful insights into his life. And so was the receptionist of my hotel who made some hilarious facial expressions and mimicries.
In South Korea , the old maid who cleaned my hotel room was an immigrant from Indonesia. She didnt know English and I didnt know any other language that I could communicate with her. And still we spoke! In sign languages and tit-bit English words. I remember her face when I said to her that I am leaving...it said all.
Long after I again went to Washington DC. I took the tube and then walked for 10 minutes to reach my office. On the way, every morning, I passed by a violin player, playing some melancholy tune. Sometimes when I had a few cents jingling in my pocket, I placed on the mat laid in front of him. The last time I walked past him, I felt sad. I would, in all probability, never see him again.

And then there are friends. In different walks of life, you meet them; your lines cross and you spend some wonderful moments with them. Something happens - you change workplace, you change city and soon you realise that its time to say GOODBYE. (Thanks to Facebook, you can always stay connected, though!)

Quite often, its difficult to say adieu to inanimate objects, as well. I remember, when one of our old ancestral buildings was being demolished, how sad my grand-parents were as they spent their childhood there. Sometimes, we fall in love with some our of wardrobe collection or even our vehicles. The other day my carpenter said how he adores his 15-year-old motorcycle and is not willing to replace it, though he is fully aware of its aging symptoms.
I remember the last time I left Fedden Flats, my flat during my study in Cranfield University. From the car park, with moist eyes, I looked back at the large window in the first floor, the forth from the right - it was the window that brought all the fresh air and sunshine for the last one year for me.

And then there are the final final adieu to the near and dear ones, perhaps the most painful of all the adieus. My grandfather was bed-ridden for 2-3 years. During that time, everytime I came back from home to bangalore, I didnt know whether I will meet him again, until one day, while in Bangalore, I heard he is no more. It was a similiar experience with my grandmother after a few years. My maternal grand-father was so hale and hearty, that I could not still believe that that was the last time I saw him. Then were were not-so-close relatives and neighbours, but nonetheless, its not always easy to say the final goodbye. One day my mother called me to say that the rickshaw puller, who took us to school for 7 years died. I had lost contact with him. But, the news brought with it some sweet memories and a heavy atmosphere.

I have learnt that this is how life goes on. Expect the unexpected. There will be final adieus, and there will also be new beginnings. A phase will end, another phase in life will take on. A mortal relation may end, but the relationship can stay with us forever. All said and done, the heart still aches to say that final adieu.

Life and its moments

Last week, I went to my home town in Chandannagore on the occassion of my brother's marriage. As mentioned in my earlier blogs, this small sleepy town near Calcutta is where I spent the initial days of my life and had been there until I relocated to Bangalore for professional reasons.

On my way home from airport, the driver took a short-cut road through some village-like areas. The roads were narrow, mostly peppered with pot holes. There were bushes and hedges on both sides of the road. There were ponds that nurtured green water, thanks to the water-hyacinth and other phyto-planktons. There were some brick house with stains on the wall. Some huts were of mud. People either walked or were on cycle. When the car passed, they were almost pushed to the edge or out of the road. There were some ladies carrying vegetables in baskets on their head. Some workers who toiled under the scorching sun took some break in between to quench their thirst. The driver honked its way through the village. I watched some children play cricket, with bat made out of wooden planks and the wicket with bricks stacked one on top of the other.There was fresh oxygen in the air.Both sides of the road had abundance of green, be it in the form of the mangrove, the bamboo shoots or some unknown wild plants.

Few years back, I might have cycled though these roads and hardly noticed these activities. Then, I didnt find any reason to stop by the pond just to take glimpse of children swimming and playing in the "green" ponds. It was my daily sight. And I took all of these for granted. But today, I do. Today, things have changed; time has changed. In Bangalore I do not get to see these. I started appreciating the beauty of the raw nature here, the beauty of the green trees and the hedge-surrounded ponds, the unsophisticated life of the people here...

All these taught me a lesson. It is about expectations and taking things for granted or not. I realised that we lose most of the fun in life by taking good things for granted (thinking they are how things should be) and cribbing for the bad ones. As long as I stayed here and took my home-town and all that it had for granted, I failed to appreciate the good things that were lying here for decades. When we start taking things for granted, we fail to realise that every moment of our life is a gift of GOD and consequently stop enjoying life.

When I left India to study in UK, I realised some of the great things that India can offer. Before that I took all the good things of my country for granted and blamed her for all the bad ones.
We take independence and freedom for granted. Ask the Egyptians and the Libyans and people of such countries. Then we will realise how privileged we are.
We take relationships for granted, most of all perhaps our parents. Once they have reared us, we leave them onto themselves and get busy with our lives. Ask those orphans who are deprived of them and their unconditional love.
We ,sometimes, take our partners for granted. Ask the widow and the widower how they miss their good old days, when they were together.
The water that gushes into the commode every time I press the flush button in my toilet may be the water that some families in some parts of the world use for 4-5 days.

Commuting by flight, logging onto my laptop and then hooking onto the wi-fi in my own home in Bangalore and then writing another blog may be something that I would hardly have paid attention to, something for which I would have hardly thought of thanking GOD. But that twenty minutes of short-cut that my driver took made a world of difference to my world.