Blah Blah Blah….

This time I really have no idea what I’m going on about. It appears I’ve recently become a lot more talkative than usual. I remember my teachers in kinder garden and during my early years in school saying that I talk too much. In fact, I remember a comment on my report card saying “Has a loud voice and does not hesitate to use it”. But somewhere down the line I guess I just lost all that. Any of my friends today will tell you that I’m a silent kind of person who doesn’t open up too fast. Though that still holds, interaction with certain people over the past few months has slowly made my talkative side resurface (you’ve awoken a monster!!). And now I just can’t seem to stop blabbering half the time. Anyway, that isn’t really relevant, what is relevant is the people who’ve turned me back into the more talkative person.

Whenever I’ve seen those pics on orkut or facebook which have personality tags where you can tag your friends, I’ve always been skeptical that there are actually so many different kinds of people out there. Recent experience has taught me differently. Believe me, it can be a weird feeling when you’re suddenly exposed to people who can start arguments for no reason, who won’t take advice, can stare at themselves in the mirror for hours, eat like hell or answer every sentence with, “You want to die?” But meeting people like this is really something that can’t be compared to any other experience. All of a sudden I’m in the company of people who’ve become like family to me in less than a year. There are those I couldn’t care less about, but then there are those who I would rather trade anything for than see hurt, the kind you think about before you think about yourself. And so I do tend to spend a lot of time socializing than in the pursuit of knowledge, but then I’ll justify that with the same argument I use for watching movies and playing games, that it is informative and helps me grow as a person by exposing me to new ideas!

Even today one of my classmates, who happens to be senior to me by a few years, invited us over to his place and made lunch for us as his birthday treat. Probably some of the most delicious food I’ve ever had. Definitely a more interesting activity than sitting and reading books alone if you ask me.

On an unrelated topic, I miss proper winters all of a sudden. Sure I’m dreading the heat waves that’ll accompany the summer, but we’ve had some wonderful showers and just enough cold in the past month or so to wish for a bit more. Envy all my mates here who went back home to much colder climates. Don’t really know what prompted this sudden wistfulness, but what the hey?

And I’ve gone off on another nonsense blabbering spree, which is what happens when I sit down and try to write something with nothing particular in mind. But since everyone writes about new and interesting things happening to them, writing about nothing in particular is a novel idea if you ask me.
I started off this post saying that I’ve become a lot more talkative than I used to be………see what I mean??

The Concept of Home

It’s funny how, if you Google the word ‘home’ and look for images, it returns thousands of pictures of nice big houses with well manicured lawns and all the stuff that comes up in our mental picture when we think of the word. But then isn’t what you would call a house? Maybe it’s because I attended one class too many on Communication Theory and the way we use words, but this got me thinking.

So after nearly five months of college, I got to spend close to a month back home in Trivandrum. But it was just around the time that I stepped onto the suburban train that was the first step on my journey back, that my overactive brain (which keeps throwing up philosophical ideas of all kinds, though rarely anything of use) started whirring. At the same time I realized that I had strange constricted sensation somewhere in my chest too, but thankfully that went away before I could start suspecting a heart attack.

Over the next twenty plus days in Trivandrum, I visited relatives, met up with my close friends, ate like crazy, slept like a pig and did just about everything college students on a break do. However some part of me always longed to be back in my hostel room. Sure, it isn’t big and I share it with two more people, but there’s something about being there that one starts to miss, and miss it I did. Stuck at home, munching away on Hide N Seek biscuits and watching movies, I started missing the people I’d met less than half a year ago, despite being with the people who’d looked after me my entire life. Then came the visit to my father’s house at Ambalapuzha. Honestly, this was the only time I appreciated being back. Even after all these years, when I took a walk through the neighborhood, I noticed that it was still the same place I used to play in as a kid, even though younger cousins had taken my place.

More people were visited, more views on life were heard, and for the first time I got to analyze a difference in the way people live, work and think depending on the place they live in, the culture they’re exposed to. It was like seeing for the first time all the wondrous things read about in books written by much wiser men and women.
So as my visit draws to a close, I finally realize some things that had always been there in the back of my mind. A better understanding of the way I see the world and the way others see it. How my take on relationships and bonds were different than many others. Though I’m sure many of my family members, and probably my parents would think all this is utter nonsense coming from someone who has a very high opinion of himself, this is the way I see it. And I must say, whoever said ‘Home is where the heart is’, was a very wise person. Because we humans aren’t really just drawn to a building or even just our families. We seek places where we feel at home. Home isn’t something we have to go to; it’s something that comes with us, it’s a place where we feel complete.

So this brings me back to the sudden brain activity and constricted chest that accompanied me onto the train to Trivandrum. And now, upon reflection, I think it’s because, somewhere, deep down, I understood that I wasn’t really going home, I was leaving it.