What will happen to Guwahati?

Although its more of a diary entry than a blogpost, but i believe most of you would be able to connect with my tribulations with something that, when you look back, appears as if wasnt meant to happen in your life. And yet it did, leaving you with memories that don't make much sense.

It was probably the sixth morning of my stay there when I opened my eyes to see him all dressed up and anxiously waiting for his cab to the airport. Even my vision blurred after an 8 hour long sleep could see how excited he was to leave. My roommate for six days was on his way back and the flight in next few hours would ensure his escape from this place he found like hell. Guwahati.

As he placed his luggage in the cab and turned to me and the other hostel mates to say a final goodbye. I, by virtue of being his roommate and a confidante for six tough days of his life, hugged him and told him something I felt was important for him to understand. "Now that you’re leaving this place, just erase it out of your memory. Don’t look back. Guwahati never happened." An obligatory yes was followed by the cab horn and few minutes later, I was pulling myself back to the room that I had come to abhor, and which now was bereft of the only reason that made it likeable. 

Three weeks later, in a curious turn of events, I was in the same place as him. I too had found my escape route from the apology of a city that Guwahati was, and was heading back home after a month long rendezvous with the place. But somewhere, what I forgot was to give myself the piece of advice I gave to my roommate. And as things stand today, I still haven’t forgotten the city. It has only transformed into a question for me now. What will happen to Guwahati?

I experienced a new life in a month that I lived there. Met some amazing people, developed friendships that eventually fizzled out, walked streets that looked like a different world, sang for hours at the top of my voice, lapped up love of my hostel caretaker, helped a junior hook up, sat by the dirty yet magnanimous Brahmaputra, treated people to sweets on my friend’s first date in a sweet shop stupidly named Mirch Masala. And still, I hated the city. Hated the pork shops everywhere, the dirt on the roads, the searing heat, the traffic that crawled, the buses where always I seemed to lose something or the other. But the truth is, maybe I was getting accustomed to it.

The realization first pinched me the day I was going back to the city after spending two days at home. It felt so strange the day I went back to the city to cancel my admission. I felt such a joy in my heart when I boarded the bus back to my hostel from the railway station. I didn’t have to do the auto like the first time I landed in the city. I knew my way around the city. Some feeling isn’t it? But wait I just had two more days there. What worse! This coming back felt so much like coming back to home. But I told my heart ‘’no dumbo this feeling is because you’re getting out of here’’. But now when I look back, I feel I fooled my heart a bit there, which actually knew the truth. I think this was the first of the many times that I would have this neither here, nor there sort of feeling. And boy! It is an ugly feeling, for you know you’ve set in motion the two most ebullient voices in a heated debate – the voice of your heart and that of your brain.

Yet, I don’t regret coming back. All that I grapple with is what will happen to the memories of the place? The memory of that city is lodged in my head as firmly as a bullet. Everything is still there, so pristine in my memories. And yet, at the end of it, it all seems so futile. What do I do with this bunch of memories? Something bothers you every time you read a story with no proper ending. This looks like one to me. There definitely remain a few ‘What-ifs’ but I don’t want to pursue them for I know they would lead nowhere but to an abyss. Memories often act as those dots connecting which help explaining to you your own story. However, this set of memories that I have seem to mess it up completely. In the longer run, I wouldn’t have even liked it all to happen and yet there is a romantic charm to it all now.

We all have something hidden in our pasts which, when we look back at it, appear as if it wasn’t meant to happen, but the undeniable truth is that it happened. Maybe not looking for meaning in some events of your life is the way to go. Maybe, in times like these, you got to whisper to your heart those three simple and yet invaluable words which Camus summed up life with – Life is absurd.