The Gloomy Intro...

27th March 2003 . This day, will remain unforgotten for the rest of my life. I can’t possibly think of any other day that has changed my life so much. I wake up in the morning, late as usual… get my cup of coffee, entertain some well-wishers at the house… pick up some gifts. Towards the evening it was all about going around town, shopping, having the family pictures taken. I was busy on my phone talking to one of my best friends of the opposite sex (u know, a girl & a friend, but not a girl friend… heavens, no!), fixing a time to meet up.

Later everything’s ready, have a good meal in the house, dress up and leave with my brother in the car, after waving goodbye to my parents. We go to one of our favorite spots in the city, pick up a juicy falafel (one of my favorites…) and drive on. We pull up at KFC to meet my ‘best’ friend and her gang, have a great time and take a few snaps, exchange a few gifts. Then, all of a sudden it’s time to leave, so I get ready and say goodbye to all my friends. I’m back in the car, we drive a short distance… and reach my final destination… get my bags out, check in and pick up my boarding pass to Calicut, India. I snoop around the Duty Free Shop and pick a few final items … and then finally, board my flight. I’m all comfy in my business class seat, and take one last look outside the aircraft window and whisper a soft goodbye to my homeland for 18 years: Doha, Qatar. But that’s all I did then… it never hit me that I’m going away for a long time… that that moment would be the closing of a chapter in my life (one of my best, I guess), that my life would be all downhill from there. After I reach my country of nationality, I cry…. first a bit, and then so much that I’d never ever forget it…

28th March 2003 was the start of this new chapter in my life, a life alone… a life far from my roots (my childhood, and ironically, I came here to study in a place when I can get in touch with my ‘real’ roots!). From then, till now, sitting on a bed with my trusty laptop, little has changed. A flirtatious fling with my homeland, Doha, my country of birth, comes twice a year, once in May, and then again in December. Going back there is an adventure the first day I’m there, a sort of Jet-Lag period to get adjusted and then BANG… I’m right where I left my life behind. It’s a parallel life that I live that’s put on pause when I leave, and then continues right where I left it the moment I land back there.

At my ‘real’ roots here in India however, in the past 3 or so years, I’ve managed to make no real friends, land up in a third-rate college by sheer bad luck, and realize that I’m a 20 year old man who’s living in the present, but whose mind is so badly stuck in the past. Every now and then I have flashbacks about that day that I left, and realize that I should have taken that day more seriously, (like the last day of a man in death row, but who doesn’t realize that he’ll be no more in a few hours).

To make things perfectly clear, I have nothing against my country, India. It’s a great land, I am a keen political observer, keep up-to-date on everything that’s happening around me, patriotic about the way it’s developing and optimistic about its future. I love the freedom, the food, the relaxed way of life; I would quiet frankly say that I have adjusted very well over here. Sadly, I just happen to be in a hellhole part of India… down south in ‘Looney Land’, Kerala; “Gods Own Country” it seems…

The fact is that I really haven’t found the substitute for my ‘best’ friend. She was everything to me back there, a loyal friend, a comfort. The real reason I cried landing her was the fact that I could never ever speak to her like I used to (I’d get charged). I attended my first day at college optimistically, but never really could blend in. It took time, I’ve made a bunch of good friends, but I still haven’t found my substitute, a person who I could talk to when I’m feeling down, which is pretty much why I’m writing this.