Skip to main content

Where is your safe place?

Earlier I wrote about places and feelings and this post is almost like a follow up to that one. Places and feelings do go together. Especially those of safety and security. Whilst one place can seem so unsafe and impossible to live in, just 15 mins away you can feel the most secure you ever have.

And as always, it really is about the people. Cities by themselves are hollow caricatures, not too different from one another. Perhaps geographically and historically distinct, but history and geography don't bring you back to a place too often. What keeps you connected to any place is those that stay there. 

Take for instance Ludhiana, a perfectly non remarkable town from the perspective of travel interest. Yet people like me feel a strange sense of completion and familiarity when they go there. Simply because there are people that matter that still stay there. Or then there are memories with other people that keep pulling us back.

Once again I am amazed at how social man is. How incomplete and desolate without other humans. How pathetic and lonely without those around him.

Comments

  1. wow!!......i can so totally relate to this one!!
    DB

    ReplyDelete
  2. I completely agree with you. There are two exceptions, and they are both very rare.

    1. Some places give you a sense of belonging even when all of "your" people who once used to live there are gone. For me, the town where I lived for five years during my undergraduate work - Banaras - has that effect.

    2. There are some places - very rare - that give you an instant sense of "been there" when you arrive there. Machu Pichu did that to me; I was completely at peace with the place when I got there. No other place in the world did this for me.

    ASnonymous

    ReplyDelete
  3. @ DB, I am glad you can relate.

    @ AS, Possibly the first situation could exist... but it would make you nostalgic in a sad sort of way... it wouldn't be a happy belonging. I still havent encountered the second situation... but I would like to!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Birthing Rumi - Part 1

The next many blog posts will chronicle my most significant journey yet - of becoming and being Rumi's mama. I considered starting a separate blog but then decided against it. While there is a lot to be said, my identity as his mom is not separate from the rest of me. In being his mama, I have become more of me. And in embracing this with the rest of me, and finding and resolving the contradictions, I have felt more myself than ever before. So I chose to put this here. Where the rest of my life and memories live.   “This is pressure, not pain.” A simple mantra I kept repeating as I went through labour. My waters broke at 3.30 am as Loi (the father to be) and I binge watched Bridgerton. I was one week overdue at this point. We had tried nearly every trick in the book to get baby out. The latest was eating a spicy labour inducing burger (yep, there is such a thing), taking a bumpy ride and eating extremely spicy daal. I had been having contractions (false/real who knows?) for weeks. 

Could I have imagined you?

Every year, I think about you. Not too many times, but consistently, a few times. And each time I am not sure how I should feel. There is a vague sense of loss, a subtle tinge of abandonment, a painful realisation of independence. But mostly, there is just a numb nothingness.   Who were you? I am not even sure I remember your face. Your smile, yes. Your eyes, too. But in pieces, in context. I can't imagine your reaction in a new situation. I can't see you as you may have become. I can only see the frozen moments that I have embalmed in my head.   I wonder if you feel the need to see me. If you imagine what it may feel like to talk to me now. If you wish you had known me all this time. If I am even a real person to you. If you have convinced yourself that I don't exist.   Perhaps it isn't as simple as moving on, as erasing, as avoiding. Maybe it's an intense removal, a complete denial. I don't hate you. I don't love you. It's an absence of anything ta

Rollercoaster - Part 5

After what felt like an endless night, we woke up relaxed. And then my brain panicked. They hadn't called from the NICU since 5.45 am. Rumi was waking ever 2-3 hours on an average. So at 9.30 am that could have only meant that they didn't get the memo from the night nurses and demand feeding was again under contention.  Thankfully mom had come back to the hospital and I felt better when Lohit offered to go to the NICU to speak to the nurses and also understand if and when they would shift us to Paediatrics so we could be with Rumi in the same room. Lohit wrote to me that he had met the Paediatrician and they were open to shifting us. However they weren't sure if they would be able to find a room. By now I had begun to question my decision to not buy a breast pump and not read up enough on this topic. So when when hospital offered to get me to meet a lactation consultant, we jumped at the opportunity. She helped me understand how to pump and also got me to do it in front of