taught and learnt

i can’t seem to remember half the thoughts that come to mind these days. they linger on my consciousness for a moment, prodding my contemplations, and disappear while some other half-formed thoughts emerge to take their place. it’s like reading a book with very disjointed and incoherent chapters about the world. it bothers me because it always  seemed like i was on the verge of figuring out an important mystery of life when poof everything is gone and i’m back to square one. right at the beginning. i wonder how it began.

i’m back in chicago where it all began. being with ainie in boston this winter break helped me recover a semblance of my old self, the one who speaks and teases in a malaysian accent, spends all her waking hour reading and worries only about what to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. christmas with adrian and kahmun and her family, with all the laksa, char kuey teow, kacang putih and tvb drama, reminded me so much of home. it was a perfect simple christmas, and words just cannot describe how much i owe this family for bringing home to this, far and sometimes alien, land.

and now i’m back in chicago. time to roll the dice and end this game.

where do you go to escape from life?

i’ve been trying too hard to be an adult for too long. i give up; it’s time to hide in the closet with my hardcovers and paperbacks again.

Three more days till I say goodbye to my home in Bangalore, my awesome housemate, my sweet neighbor and my ever-teasing colleagues.

I can’t believe I have already been here for over a month. I remember saying that I’m unsure if coming to India was a right choice, but just a moment ago, while I was writing some thank-you notes to some people here, I find myself thinking that I don’t want to leave. India has been such an up-and-down journey; there are times when the autorickshaw drivers try to cheat me of my money or when the cars around me honk every 5 minutes or when the immigration officer refuses to give me the proper documents that I curse this place and all its f*****g bureaucracy and inefficiency.

But all of a sudden, I feel like I miss talking to my housemate about anything and everything. I miss listening to her unusually extroverted self that I complain so much to Adrian about; I miss discussing love, arranged marriages, life, children, food, people and politics with her. I miss cooking dinner together and eating it while watching House on my laptop every night. I have never encountered a character such as hers and initially struggled to accommodate her but she made me learn so many difficult truths about myself and was such an eccentric character that it was impossible for me not to love her at the end of my stay here.

I miss going over to my neighbor’s house and spending hours talking to her. It is amazing how someone living in a completely different culture shares my belief and love so closely for the same God. I remember getting a peek into her personal life once when she told me about her relationship with her husband and her children and I stood there wondering what exactly about me that earned such trust from her. A little more than a month ago, I was just another stranger, living a completely different life half a globe away, and now, I’m being treated as a part of her family.

I came to Bangalore not knowing anyone here, but in a month, I grew so close to these individuals that I know, in a way, I will carry traces of them with me wherever I am because their characters and extraordinary trust have somehow rubbed off on me. And this farewell is especially bitter because even though I told them to “come visit me in the US or in Malaysia”, I know that our paths will probably never cross again. This is the end.

I hate goodbyes, but this time is going to be especially tough.

i wonder if my cheese has really been moved, or if it was just a trick on the mind.

wouldn’t it be much easier if we were just little mice?