The end of a love affair

Yesterday my love affair with a city ended. I was ready to leave, sitting at the airport, but felt no particular sense of loss.

The rain was pouring down in sheets from a chalk-grey sky…I’ve always loved the monsoon in India. There is something mind-numbingly beautiful about it, especially when there is some greenery around. An urban monsoon is so different from a rural one, but they both touch a chord in me. Riding in that most useful of Indian vehicles, an auto-rickshaw, I silently watched the city speed by noisily on my way to the airport, even as the water on the roads threatened to touch my feet.

But enough digressing. The love that I have for that city has been passive always. How can love be passive, you ask? Well, it can. It can, because I used to love the city not for itself or even the people I met because of it, but because of a few memories I always associated with it. Those memories, I realized, are not particularly precious to me anymore. The memories weren’t always even happy. It only struck me as I sat quietly in that auto.

I wasn’t sad I was leaving anymore. Usually when I leave any city, there is a touch of nostalgia, or sadness. That’s normal, isn’t it, especially if you’ve spent years of your life there? But yesterday I didn’t feel any. The loss I felt was the momentary loss of those memories – but I chose to let them go. Because I figured that if a city’s memories don’t make you happy, if you are never quite comfortable there, as if waiting constantly at the door for someone to pick you up, then you must do the only sensible thing. Let go.