Vanakkam. En
Peru Mowgli, enakku innoru peru irukku, paradesi
I guess here
after I would not be telling that I would be regular in writing this. I will
write as I feel and might be finish it towards where I want, hopefully!
I started
this episode months ago. But I wrote only the above line. After that I never
came back to write it, never even thought I should be continuing it. I have
started to write many things still now and I guess I have not completed even
one, except for the short ones, which usually I end up throwing away here and
there.
How have you
defined this word paradesi? What comes to hearing this word which means nomad?
Have anyone thought about connection with
this word? Is it only I feel connection
is the meaning that is there and still missing in this word paradesi?
If someone asks
me who is my favorite hero, colour, place, food, I might tell something. After
that when I think on it, which I do most of the time, I know it is not the only
food, place, colour or hero that I like/like/will like. It is just at that
point of time I had liked and experienced something nice so that am able to
relate to them. I guess that is the reason I have nothing that I tell I miss.
Being in a foreign land does not make me feel as if am a foreigner, being in my
own land does not make me feel like an owner.
I had this
long trip once. Every time when we were on road my friend would be missing
something from his home, from his town, and would want to get back there soon.
He has told me how it feels to be in one’s own land and the strength it gives
you. When he asked me why I am there on that trip, I really dint have an answer
that would satisfy him, I just told ‘I was curious about people and other
lands. I just wanted to travel to see and find them all’. Why? ‘I don’t know’.
Another time
I had this conversation with one of my other friend who told how important identity
is for a person and how we should fight for it like tamil people in srilanka did
or kashmiri’s do. I was not able to buy the argument. When you hold your
identity so close and don’t respect other’s back ground, how will that give
peace? This does not mean, don’t fight for your identity, which people can
think easily. Those are the identities that worldly things give you and it is
different and that are given to keep you fighting with each other, this would eventually
benefit. Holding on to something makes you possessive of it and makes you feel
insecure of it, which in turn makes you protect it so much that, you start to
ruin others and they would rebel for it after a certain point. This is the same
thing that has been happening everywhere.
Just because
am born in Australia gives me an identity as an Australian with an Australian
passport. Good. When I go to England, should I boast as Australian and think
those people are not equal?
Today my
post will be having too many questions. That is how I am getting back to the
point where I was travelling to already. Nothing has changed it, just the
approach which alters to give the dimension to explore myself.
I remember
very well, during my sixth semester exam holidays, I was staying inside my
house and didn’t go out for 10 days for anything. My friends used to go out for
essentials, I used to cook, read, watch movie and just have fun. I never missed
the world that was outside those walls. My friends forced me to get out. They
stopped buying the grocery and pushed me out forcefully on the eleventh day.
For them being out with the world would make me normal they told. I dint feel
any difference. Eleventh day dint make me feel the 10 days of gap.
I left this
job and joined back after two years and came to the same office after three
years, standing on the same conference room, I dint feel the 3 years pass, all
was exactly same, every single thing; I dint even feel like I went on a
vacation and came back.
Now I will
go continue tomorrow what I left a year back and even then I will not feel anything,
which is what I can feel with all the experience that I have from my past.
All these
things do not mean am not connected with things I do. I give my best for what I
do. I love people around me. They all love me. My grandfather who tells me to
make sure I work hard for next 20 years so I earn money for my next few hundred
generation, he has done that and is sitting in his big home with his wife all
alone on a Diwali morning without his sons all giving a call to wish him; my
friend who tells me to live every second and be true to myself; my girl who
just wanted me out of her life for a reason that am still waiting to know; my
family who feels that making money is the only way of living life, because we
have never had money or anything else told other than that; my another friend
who hates me for living life on my own terms; my girl who can’t let me go even
if I ogle behind other girls; each and every one of them, including you who are
reading this now. The way they show their love is their own way, the way they
have experienced it. I just receive it in my own that I can. I feel pity and
scold my grandfather; I laugh with my friend; I cry for that girl; I care but
never stay in touch with my family; I miss her; and you all to whom I talk
these things as if these are my last words.
I remember a
cricket match that I played. This one match stood in my heart very strongly and
I remember literally everything that happened. After a usual day of college we
were playing cricket, I was a team’s captain and had a very strong hitter on my
side. We bowled first and gave away too many runs. Required run rate was 12 for
10 overs. When we started chasing we lost initial openers and the top order in
3 overs. I joined to play with that hitter. He is a massive hitter; he can hit
huge shots continuously. I wanted to win the game, at any cost, so I was trying
to give him rotation but at the same time trying to push to get the singles
which would help the score going. By the time we reached 7th over
the hitter was tired of running. He is not a person who can run. Once his
energy went down, his shots were not massive, his confidence also came down. I
was having a good stamina to keep running between wickets. By 8th
over he got out trying to hit a nervous shot. We lost the game. In the end of
the game he told me how I made him run too much and he lost his energy to hit.
That
incident stuck to me. I was not able to pardon myself for not seeing others the
way they were. I dint see the pros and cons. I was seeing the world as I was.
This is just one incident, I have so many that shows were I always thought the
world is like me, but the reality is otherwise. Seeing the world as it is was
one thing that am still trying to master at. We all have a colored glass in
front of our eyes, and we all think the world is in that color.
This all
does not mean am not connected to anything, it is just that nothing bonds me so
much for some reason. I let go things easily and also don’t let go their
memories. I have no options. Any option is fine for me, I will survive. I make
my own dreams of them. Last night I had a dream of my college mates whom I have
not met after my college, and I saw them in my own way. It also does not mean I
do not have an ideology. Now this is where the going gets tougher. You do not
have any preferred option and still you have ideas and ideologies.
That is the
reason I have still not felt a single place that makes me feel as home. I have
felt warmth everywhere and I just keep travelling with it. People scold me that
am living a life of a paradesi. I should get married, I should have children, I
should settle. I don’t know anything about it, life has been wonderful to me,
it has shown me edge of death and edge of life, I am walking, and it doesn’t
make me feel like a stranger anywhere or with anyone.
Like the old
saying goes ‘yaathum oore yaavarum keleer’ (everywhere is my native and
everyone is my relation), the paradesi’s life will be same till the end. Home
is a big nest that is rotating itself around the biggest star in this galaxy,
and it has shown me colors that otherwise I would not have seen.
Paradesi
will be paradesi to write paradesi stories that you might be bound to read or
not in your colored glass that is in front of your eyes.
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