The Begotten City

“Here I am watching through the window, from one of the most happening cities of India, all together, and yet alone… A long way from home, but so close, as to heart. A life which has become my very own”.

I’ve come along way. Way’s I never knew I could make, but still all of it has happened and has happened well. Life just like for everybody else has taken me like a flowing river, flowing in different ways and for me this would be the 5^th city I am moving into and life isn't much surprising when you have all the heart and the will to make your way into it, in that ultimate search to find out where you really belong.....

Bangalore is very special to me, special in so many cases where some of the sweetest and the most memorable periods of my life have been shared and cherished. Like they say ‘Every city has a Soul’ Bangalore very much has its own… I hadn’t been much closer to Bangalore if it wasn’t for one soul, but then in the cross roads of life, you have to take a few decisions which sometimes change your life forever. And it just gets too late to get them back before they are gone, I mean gone forever!

The very reason of why I loved Bangalore is now lost and the reason why I back here for a living has reasons of its own…. It’s just irony when I think about all what have happened for a year, things that have changed every loop of my life in the middle. Every journey I now try to make is a changed one. The one much different and much arduous than the other. But still I make it and I know that time is an every flowing river which ultimately leads to your destiny if you wish to be there.

I still remember the day I landed in this city with two bags and a heart to make it… It was a pleasant Saturday afternoon, a noon which I still remember. I stepped out of that train with a heavy heart, emotions which I carried over home, the sights of my dad wishing me good luck, my sister giving me a tight hug, my friends with tears in their eyes, and my mother running down holding my hand from the moving train. All of them just clung to me and I have carried them with me ever since. When you move to a new city, you not only move yourself, your whole life moves along with you. Your emotions, your happiness, your flavors and everything which is so you just move out for you. All what you leave behind are imprints of you which have bonded with your loved ones, which they hold on till the next time they see you. It’s a very special feeling I keep experiencing all the time I move myself to a newer more stranger place. Places which I don’t know much about, people who I don’t know about and most of all, a lonelier place where all my life and all my heart has to start to grow all over again.

I just pushed myself into being here, and that was all I can… I had to no choice in choosing which people I would meet, because we all live in a world so different from each other. I only knew that whatever it may be, I have the smile and the will to live it up to people and earn a name which would last a lifetime.

I kept reflecting on the people I’ve come across after have come here, and its sometimes just brings me down to marvel at God’s will and how people walk into your life when you least expect them to do so. Like I said, Bangalore was one with my heart for a long time, and when things didn’t go well, I started praying very much to God in telling him, that how much I love to be there, and after many weeks of prayers, he gives me the call, the call which now is making me write this very own story. ‘Believe and have faith in God’, my grandmother always said, and she always trusted that all good and all bad happens to people for a reason in life… To earn what you deserve was my statement, but in the end, I never had a reason when things screwed up in my life. But I just understood that whatever bad has happened has just made me stronger and more mature over life and what all life wanted to teach me over time. I had faith and nothing was stronger than the moment, I laid eyes on the very God I asked for my wishes…When on the first week of reaching Bangalore, my friend takes me to church which was just around the corner of the house I was staying, I knew God has made plans for me and that he’s lead me there and I was standing in front of him saying thanks to all the goodness and happiness he has offered. I just left God with one word ‘Bring in good people towards me’ and I left church that day.

It all started well. I enjoyed being myself to everyone around me, just to let them know that I am very much a person who I say I am… Not a word extra! In a few weeks, I had made some nice people as friends, and there were times when I was much cared and taken care off. Times were slowly changing and I loved it to be. After all for me life and the art of living has always been the change which life brings in at every point of a man’s life. To know to let go and to know to hold on are two little things which make up the whole life. But it so happens that most of us hold on or let go of the wrong ones and then we sit and think why it all happened that way! We all make mistakes and we all at some points of our lives sit and think why and how, we never get answers and sitting miles away from home neither did I.

For me the very reason why I came back to Bangalore was to change the inevitable, to push myself into something which I didn’t want to but then, doing so will eventually change the cause. All that love for Bangalore was gone away with a single thing which I had in my life. A reason which I always held strong for, a reason which made many things understandable for me, but yet as a city I so long to go around and feel myself and gather back all the lovely memories have made from its corners and streets. But all that is gone now, all what remains is a new city with more people and more mistakes and nothing much to hold on in my heart but let go.

I don’t know if God watches all what am doing in life, but I have faith that when am in trouble, he looks down and lets me know he’s up there watching it… And so are the people he sends me down.. I call them the ‘Begotten Angels’, people who are so special they precede the essence of their description. In my life every time there was an Angel who walks and leads my way, they come from different forms and different colors and sizes, but they do the same thing. They lead my way and they make my life a better place, a life which then becomes so worth watching. I sit here and smile at God’s works thinking how special I am to have people now, who sit with me, hold my hand, talk and send love. In a city where I thought my soul was lost, I am finally feeling and breathing easy. A sense of happiness flows through me when I think that love and happiness are two different entities which at times are the only 2 subjects which rule the whole world with one language. And until you speak that language, I don’t think any of us can survive. ‘A world well loved, is a world well lived’. And today when I sit in a place and look around me, it gives me so much joy to see the warmth and affections to which am surrounded for, and I always tell myself that nobody is ever alone, unless we restrain ourselves to be so. In a city where I once thought I had nothing, or nobody, here I am, with some of the best of people, pouring their love and happiness over me and my angels who are ready to go to the end of the world to bring me a single smile. I can only just look upto God and say thanks with all my heart. I am happy I finally sense to where I truly belong!

I was always happy, God had blessed me with true people, and true friendship should not be taken for granted, nor should they be lost and irretrievable. Have you ever stopped to think how blessed you are at this moment? Your station in life is because of where God has placed you for a time such as this, despite the things that you may ascertain that are deemed trials or other tribulations. Even so, the journey has not been traversed alone. Your bandwagon had many occupants and with many stops along the way and so have mine. We are here together at this place where fate governed our destiny. On a personal note, I know for a fact that I'm where I'm at now in my life because of those that God has put in my life for influential value. The friends that I've ushered in and cultivated...even those that have drifted away from me -- I know too, that we've had our moments. Think about acquaintances you've come in contact with, people that have been introduced to you, and the friends that have come and gone in your life. I'm reminded more often than not how discernible options can fuel deductive reasoning, logic and common sense in knowing that not all people are my cup of tea -- or coffee, for that matter! But in the end, they all did play a role in your life. And memories that never can erase themselves were indeed made !

In the end, we all live a life, where our ultimate searches often ends in with each other, our lives are all different and yet the same… I now ponder and smile on how my world has changed; it has very much become a two sided coin. When I leave to Chennai, there are souls who await me here, and souls who rejoice on the other side and it so happens that I can only pinch myself on how lucky I could be to be so loved and yearned by people from two different worlds. A world which I thought I would never fit nor understand. I am slowly falling in love with the city, the city which I once wanted to pretermit but then, life like I said is all about the change… The changes which are sometimes so inevitable, and when some of them do happen, your life is never again the same. And my life has changed a lot from what is was to what is now, the people, the cultures, the differences have all played a vital part in making me that person who I now am. May be all that I had to suffer was a learning on its own... The way we learn ways to go around it. In the end, why do we fall ? We fall because we can learn to pick ourselves up from our ruins. Ruins which will shape our will to go beyond and much further ahead. Even if your soul runs down with the ruins, am sure the ones you love, will never give up on you.

I saw this movie recently "Eat Love & Pray" it was an awesome movie. A movie which talks about the ultimate search for herself. And in that movie, embedded are these wonderful lines, when Julia leads herself to Rome and sits inside the Augusteum and recalls what she feels there, and it goes " I am in this place, It’s called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. The great Augustus, Rome’s first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. It’s one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won’t let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we’re afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Then I looked at around to this place, at the chaos it has endured – the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn’t been so chaotic, it’s just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”

And so does transformation happen on every single day of ours lives, even when I keep walking around the city in the evening, I just glance and have a deep breath of what all I can discover and keep myself content about. They say every city has a soul, and so does this one. Its special and its like no other. The memories, the differences and most of all the way your soul changes for where ever you belong is something I leave for you to understand and gaze with amazement. The thoughts I carry and the memories which I have made and for the ones I will, always carry a very special part in my life. A portion of it just gets left behind no matter what. In the end, what you take is not what matters, what you leave behind for others is what matters the most. I know that we as people, are like butterflies, we move from one flower to another, in search of many things, some settle, some just keep discovering newer colors. I am just one of them. I just want to leave behind a pleasant scent when I depart from where ever I am; I just leave a peace of me out there forever.

I read this line from a book long ago and I share it with you all… It reads: "The universe is made of invisible strings that connect to your skin. Sometimes the universe will pull itself away from you, and the strings will tighten and cause your skin to tear away. Your mind will escape, and it will go flying up, out into everything. Your soul stays with you." I love the way this line leads me… Your soul stays with what your heart thinks, and your mind moves with what your eyes look. That’s life !

I wake up every morning, with a smile and a thank you note to God, I know all what has happened, as happened for good, and I know that life what ever it may be, If you just have the will and the heart to make it happen, you will realize that somehow you will belong where your heart eventually leads you to be.

And so in the end I can touch my soul and I know its lead me here, a long way from home, but so close as to heart. A life which has become now; my very own”.