Ignited – 1445 kms away

Preoccupied with responsibilities at work place which I had taken up myself few years back, I love staying busy. Friends call me workaholic. I realized my potential working under a lot of pressure with things continuously going wrong, still managing the technical services and leading my team so that the end result is not affected at the 1st international convention of SPICMACAY, which I had been a member of, for 12 years now. Apart from working abilities, the convention taught me another lesson that it’s never too late. I had been in an unstable phase during that time due to various personal and professional factors. Anyway, coming back to the point; in 2013 I visited New Delhi for the first time. A series of events in my life took me there. By end of a day or two, I had memorized the whole of Delhi metro route and I suppose, I was better than any other Delhiite at any instance since then in mapping Delhi metro routes.

I did some research, I faced some troubles. I didn’t find it a ‘Dilwalo Ki Shahar’ at all. Starting from an auto driver to an employer – people were too straight forward than I expected. May be that’s how they are, and my thinking them to be rude was a notion produced in my head due to the way I have been brought up, in a different place and culture. Anyway, not concentrating on this particular never-ending debate, I would certainly move forward in this post as I did in reality too. Amidst all the odds, I met someone. I remember a song which never gets old at least for me – “Tum Hi Ho” by Arijit Singh. This is because, I could then understand the depth of the lyric and its music. A cinematic turn in my life ignited by few opportunist moments in the IIM Campus followed by a crazy move of breaking the rules and moving out in the concrete wilds of another unknown city just to make sure that what I felt back in Kolkata was real!

It was real. I remember, August 11, 2013 when I was returning to Kolkata, someone told me over phone, “I felt love”. Can someone inspire your heart to do something out of the box to such an extent when you are ready to re-explore the truths of your own life that you had known for so long? Well it happened with me. I find this term ‘love’ insufficient or I should say ‘unfulfilled sense of the real feeling’. I worked hard, I’m still doing but for what? For living a life with contentment for having the right job and the right family I always desired. I remember all the tiresome evenings when I used to return from Noida without a seat in the metro and standing throughout the 1 hour long journey and then walking down a kilometer or so to my temporary habitat; yet longing for the next opportunity to live those moments prior to the metro hardship once more. I remember all those nights when I used to plan my actions at workplace so that I am able to establish a secondary base in New Delhi giving me more sustainability in business, thereby creating scope for my personal life. Passing by the Qutab Minar, the haulting of the train momentarily; taking switches at Rajiv Chowk and crossing the Yamuna followed by the slow journey by the cycle-rikshaws with frustrating countdown of seconds to reach the Chilla Sports Complex and finally the blissful shared pieces of breads and pizzas at Dominoz – are few of the several gigabytes of memories stored in my organic hard disk, my brain. I remember slowing down at Rajiv Chowk during my return everyday while the busy crowd seemed to rush, pushing me and at times pulling away the strap of my backpack. But those moments of harsh impact with others didn’t ever bother me because I used to be too busy picturing that I soon have to return back home, Kolkata. At times I felt, this is unnatural to be upset at the thought of returning home, but for me it was equivalent to returning to a monotonous life with zero exploration and a painful distance from my bliss of heart. 1445 kms away from the place that changed me and made me more organized, more determined and more powerful from soul; a song by Shafqat Amanat Ali “kheriyan de naal” takes me back in a single stroke of a second to everything my eyes have seen, my heart has experienced, my soul has imbibed. I sigh, and wish if the country was never separated by geographical boundaries and was like a piece of sponge that would easily fold and connect different parts of it as and when required. Then my logical circuits are alarmed and I am drained out of my virtual world.

Love makes you strong and prosperous. Love gives you the strength to challenge the world. It drains out all the fear which at times are created by your surroundings or traditional family methods. You just need to realize if your feelings are real or ‘blind’. There’s a thin line between the two. Commit mistakes, learn from them and then you know how to identify the real stuff. Consequences of love are mostly – emotional malfunction of your own system and distraction from aims in life. Real and eternal emotions have no ramifications. Because they just teach you the hard reality of life and encourages you to face it and win over it. And eventually you start learning to survive and work hard not only for the relationship but also to make a wonderful living with the ones you love. I am on my way in achieving what I call – a life worth living. And for now, the distress of separation makes me realize the fear within, of losing this wonderful feeling and the wonderful person I met; thereby making me more determined in my way to strengthen the knot.

I conclude – that if it was really possible to define human feelings to the fullest, we wouldn’t have been humans, but machines. I witnessed my 25th year of existence getting ignited with hope, positivism and inner strength and my memories are enough for the time being to fuel my aim.