My FAVOURITE Place in the World: HOMELESSNESS!

Don’t Miss a Place, Carry it With You!

Just a Feel: How it is to be NEAR the CLOUDS....

What is it about a place you miss the most? There are different answers to it for different people. They range from good weather to shopping hubs, and from associations to to its varied variety of attractive flora.  When I am too at the helm of leaving yet another place, I have the similar thoughts. For me, permanently moving since childhood is my home. That’s why I brand name my kind-of-homes as “growing homes”, as they keep growing to accommodate what all I am, and kindle the spirit of exploring and knowing more. So, my-kind-of- people don't miss home, they carry it with them! No building or city could hold my bosom for long, and no particular neighbourhood could call me the “girl who grew up in front of our eyes”. Hence, I had no such sense of being of a place, being brought up in a certain society, and being friends and neighbours with some “always peeking to know more” neighbours.  This was not a chosen path but ordained due to my father’s continuous set of postings, and now my husband’s too (this is my sixteenth station). Still, I remember no day when I sat and thought about it how otherwise my life could have been? I mean if I was a city’s child and a permanent household and neighbourhood was a normal phenomenon of my growing up, how I would grow up differently? This may be because I was raised in an environment that never demanded to sit and think about what if situations, and also because I had the parents who told me to love the place while we were there, as it is not going to be for long. A serious life lesson indeed! We aren’t here on this planet for long, let us just enjoy the morsel in our platters than looking for something else always. This life style taught me that you don’t need as much clothes as you think, and could survive on all kinds of food if need be.

The Winding Ways often Lead to Beautiful Destinations

There are things that you do in a certain place which mark the importance of that place in your lives. May be it is not so much about the beauty or weather of that place than what we did, and the people we met. It is about extremes, the joys and the sorrows! There are places in my memory that are etched so deep that even today they become alive the moment I close my eyes to visualize. This is because I saw it more than the inhabitants of the place did for years. When you know that you are going to stay forever, you have lethargy, but when you know you have a limited time to see things, you have an urgency to inspect every nook and corner. That is what worked for me. You can’t miss the biggest of the things because everybody tells you to go and see them, but you would, for sure, miss the best of the unseen things if you don’t take an unguided tour. That is how my childhood was. No guided tour, just the friendly frenzy in our hide and seek games, and sometimes the mischievous cycling tours revealed to us everything that a city beheld.

The Sudden Streams you Capture While Walking in "Not-So-Known" Terrain

Now, despite being a mother, I am a child in nature, and of nature. I still go to all the places that are trying to hide from me. It is not in effort to seek the hidden truths, it is for simple pleasures. Even God hides there you know! I saw in one of the abandoned places of land, in the roots of a tree, an idol of God smeared with kumkum. I was wondering if somebody left him here purposely, or the civilization moved so fast that it forgot to take Him along. If this can happen to him, we are the lesser mortals you see! These kind of conceited teachings nature resorts to when people like us venture into its hidden realms. Nature knows that we have been corrupted too long with all the wrong kind of education, and no direct lesson we will be able to understand. Every teacher has to come to level of his/her students to make them comprehend the lesson after all! When times change, and generations move by leaps and bounds; it is the time to catch up, and not lament what used to be good in our times. There is no time in history, I believe, where the generations were happy with the developments around. We always think the past was beautiful because we don’t have a very good memory to remember what tough time it gave us to adjust then too. Every time is good, if the thoughts are!

Morning Walks Often to Wellington Lake

I am staying in the Nilgiris, almost a heavenly abode! There is no place or weather I would like to exchange it for, if given a choice. Then, the thought of leaving the place in just a month and a half’s time makes me re-visit my journey of this year here. There were wonderful things that happened, but there were some tough times I witnessed too! Then, I flipped across the pictures of this place, and saw that I couldn’t pick the best from all of them, because all are extraordinarily spectacular. So, I have already decided to have a wonderful memory of this place lifelong, because I have no picture which says that I was severely ill for months at stretch. I smiled at my clever way of keeping the records.

One Can Witness the Mighty Bison on the Way to Kid's School on Just Any Day!

There are many things that I would miss about the place: the long walks, the wanderings and musings into the nature, the closest school my kids had until now which is less than 5 mins walk from my home, my home that boasts of a huge children’s park, the endless friendships I could make with children because of this park and their continuous knocks on my door for water and being a referee in their games, the pleasant weather which gave me an opportunity to walk at any time of the day as it never disappoints the spirits of the adventurer, the endless acquaintances and friends I made, and the profound pleasure of staying amidst the hills for which people take time out in long weekend vacations!

You Get to Pet Hounds if You are Ready to Sacrifice Morning Sleep

I wonder if the place too keeps our records. There must be people who would have walked on the same roads, and laughed and played the same way. There would have been mountains which have a huge data of people hiking around with set of people from different lands. There would have been people who would have issued and read the same books from the library that we are doing. There would be other occupants of my home before me too. Somebody would have exactly sat at my place and typed his/her own set of thoughts. It is like a déjà vu…. Everything keeps repeating itself in cycle… everything gives the feeling that it has happened before. If we as humans had such a large reservoir of memory banks, we would have gone mad keeping records. Although the nature perfects this act! It never offers you anything from its store unless you are a die heart seeker. It tests the merits of its students, and then only lends its secret lessons.