I had a small nap today afternoon- and had that dream again..............the dream I always like to see. The dream I always wish I could see again...and again..............
............Walking thru roads of Kochi......
I really miss those lazy afternoons of Palace road, my school days often makes me remind Shanti La'l's tea shop, the air has a flavour that’s hard to miss. Coming from a nostalgic- familiar faced less crowded small city like Kochi, laid back pace of this place life is addictive to the point of making you want to stay back here forever.....
Just a thought about Kochi is like rewinding to past, my childhood and adolescence, full of nostalgic sweetness that I hold close to my heart. Just a drive past the lanes of ''palace road' and 'jew street' is enough to bring back to life several moments spent in adolescent fervour.
Now gazing out through my window here -at smothering sunlight outside reminds me of the evenings spent there at Kochi.....those days...!!!
The earthy smell of smoke emanating from the neighbourhood marwadi family kitchen at the dusk, the doves flying fearlessly across the clouds, the kites soaring high in the sky;..............memories, which take me back into time, to delicate memories of the decade gone by........in that beautiful place of earth I would say.!
I have moved far away from simplicity to resounding noise, yet even the smallest thought, the simple things I have grown up on............ pull me back to a life of careless whisper..........my home town.!
My dreams still take me to 'fort kochi' , Napier street, parade ground, Vasco-da-gama square, my schools St. John De-Britto, Gujarathy School, Cochin College, .................which made me what I am.
It is magical, I could still recollect many a days from those years I spent there..........…and each step was a discovery of my past.
My College....the joy with which my teachers and other staffs received me in those memories were heartening............…the joy on their faces is something I will cherish for a long time...... The assembly portico where I have presided so many times ....elections.....campaign......fights.....each and every part of it where I have painted some fine canvasses of my life, the library where I spent time editing the college magazine, auditorium............. the corridors where we queued up before entering the classes, the classes and the smell of dust where I had given long speeches , the simple sweet college life still enamours me. it was all still so very same.....
In Kochi, no friend is too far and no relation too old to be revived, you are never too far to be forgotten. All around, I see familiar faces that I have grown up with; I know I belong here, and will never fade into oblivion of anonymity.
Such is the umbilical cord that ties me to the city.
Of all things nice and beautiful, most cherished are my friends-without them, life wouldn’t have been this fervent and eventful if I have to say......though all of us are geographically apart........
Of all things nice and beautiful, most cherished are my friends-without them, life wouldn’t have been this fervent and eventful if I have to say......though all of us are geographically apart........
After that, till today I have missed friendship the most, in all its colours, the quarreling, the loving, the hating, the solitude or the aloofness that came after, the shopping, the eating, the dancing, the drinking, the crushes and the heartbreaks, the caring and the crying, and finally the coming back to each other after all that......!
How much I wish I had stayed there forever, like a star that found its own Universe, gravitating inwards, till its time for it to say good bye, letting its glory submerse in its own sweet sky......!!
