It took me a good 650 kilometers and what was intended to bea 13 hour journey to piece together some of life’s most important lessons(yet).
As I stood pensively amidst a seven foot Haier refrigeratorcarton and what my father would have termed as ‘armas e bagagem’ trying tofigure how I’d squeeze in my 12th pair of Anna Klein’s, never for the life ofme thinking there would come a time when I would be the woman who lived in hershoe. Emotionally over packed and bursting at the seams, I left, leaving behindthe biggest part of my heart; my mother and my brother.
Growing up I was surrounded by big-fish-in-a-small-pondsyndrome, but for the first time, I set foot off of the bus to feel not justthe onomatopoeic ‘burr’, but what I then perceived as the feeling of a guppysurrounded by pacu’s in a supremely large ocean. When I finally found my way tocompany accommodation, the room per say was a lot more than my brother had mostgraciously prepared me for (then again he expected me to be put up in theconcrete equivalent of a hutment with a bar of medimix). I was terrified ofstepping out for fear of drowning in the oceans of testosterone that surroundedme, as behind me was one of the most rewound Tech Parks, I camped with everyconstruction worker that was still putting it together.
My friend Wayne was to help me look for accommodation, wehunted high and low, with every potential broker till we came to this one chapin particular who raised dust riding in on a purple pep dressed in a saffronskirt and stole, screaming ‘I go temple’. In Wayne’s opinion it was thepriceless look of abject horror at the sight of him that led to that ever soloud declaration. If this was the man who was to help me find a home, werepants too much to ask for? We followed him on what felt like surface of themoon for a kilometer till we came to the conclusion that this was an effort infutility. One would have thought the skirt and scarf would give it away.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, I finallyfound a place at the edge of the universe (an approximately 1 hour drive fromthe city on a good day). A lack of security soon left me in search of betterprospects and in a month I was as I once feared, homeless, penniless and more than other things, clueless. Onceagain chief broker Wayne and my new friend Gitane took me in for what turnedout to be the most fun week I could have imagined. There’s just something aboutcoming home to likeminded Goan’s that takes away the feeling of homesickness.Through the afore mentioned, I got to know not only the place but people.People that went above and beyond to make me feel like this was not a wastedpursuit of happiness.
Every killing-me-softly moment I shared with every godforsaken song about heartbreak, homesickness and the likes soon faded into thinair. I realized that seasons change and so do cities. People come into yourlife and people go. It’s oft comforting in knowing that the ones we love arealways in our hearts and if you are as lucky as I am, at worst a bus ride away.
