Banjara

On growing up in different cities

It was one quiet night, and he told me that I am a traveller—destined to see different places, live for a temporary time to know their stories, hidden legends, and colourful culture—then take those stories to another place and find a new house to store them as I live through my new city.

I have always prided myself over my experience of growing up and living in different cities across India (thanks to my dad’s job) because this experience shapes you in different ways as a person and brings multiple lessons as you grow up.

But, I am not here to tell you the lessons I learnt in those cities.

This is probably a whimsical memoir of the heart of a circumstance forced traveller.

Coming from a middle class household, we really can’t afford the time and money to go on yearly or half-yearly vacations. God knew I would be too powerful if I had the money, time and resources to see different seas, mountains, towns and cities—uncovering their stories and interacting with people, but then this God also loved me a little more, so instead of amazing vacations, I got to live three to four years in various cities and towns.

For my friends, readers, and listeners, they look at me all dreamy-eyed when I talk of my childhood that span across three cities, my teenage phases in three cities, and my young adulthood that has seen two cities already—presently breathing in a nice hostel building and is hopeful of the next land fate sends me over to.

I live, but nothing really feels like home.

It feels like you are always the visitor, the guest, the spectator.

Maybe that’s why I became much of an observer.

I have never known the experience of growing up with your childhood friends. My neighbors kept changing. I could never frame pictures or photos to the same walls.

The walls kept changing, the people in the pictures often slowly were left behind. All I ended up having was old pictures—in my childhood, they were smiling with me in my album, and now I get a Google Photos notification every now and then of the old times.

But memories aren’t only of photos.

There are scents I had grown accustomed to. Some days, I catch a whiff of a familiar scent when I open my cupboard at the newest place I had been, and I remember being fifteen somewhere.

Do you know at one point, all your memories feel like a distant slumber dream.

Was any of that real? Was there ever a golden time as that? Was there ever grief stored in those cold tear-soaked beds that now feel like a dull ache and an old master’s lesson?

Then I get myself a haircut. My eyebrows are polished but the face in the mirror belongs to my younger self.

Is this how we meet our childhood selves? In the mirror?

Sometimes, I find the same roads bearing the same painted walls around. Life is a circle then it seems like. The new roads don’t know me, and the old roads never see me walking again.

All the people I once shared my lunch with don’t know me anymore. Their voices have changed and they have learnt graceful etiquette on phone calls.

I still see you in those thin braids, but you don’t call me anymore.

There are new friends surrounding you and your laugh is the same glorious warmth-filled laugh—like it did when we laughed together.

Where do I take these old scents, the sound of childlike laughter and the hands I touched? Do the old lanes wait for my footsteps so I may march by their dusty roads again? The big old tree has been cut, and now a new shop, bright and sprawling twinkles at me.

One city had the prettiest clouds, another had a wonderful dark night with teeming white stars. I search for the same constellations here, but I find a bleary night sky.

Everything is new in every city, every house, but the tiles remind me of my older shelters, the water quenching my thirst reminds me of the seas and rivers I once used to love sitting by.

I walk on two roads, a new and an old.

Tell me, where do I take these memories to? Where do I find my older companions? Where does this scent come from?

A child in the heart, a teen in the eyes, and an adult in the face. This flesh is made of stories, touch and feelings of all my homes, young friend, loves and roads.