It has been roughly four years with few blobs in between of homestay that I have been living away from home in different states. What started as a quest for freedom from the shackles of a typical orthodox Odia family I landed up first in the bright, shiny city of Hyderabad; to coursing my way through a shackling preparation period in Chennai and landing in my current pseudo-home city of Belgaum. Three states, three different feelings yet something essentially remains the same – superficially it seems as if you are being welcomed, yet if you dig down, deep deep down – you understand that the loneliness that comes from people being too rigid to let go of their racial identities, stays.
I come from Rourkela, basically – it is a so-called smart city in the northern part of Odisha which still lives and breathes its old small industrial town charm of 90s. With planned layout of sectors, its hills, its winters, its ring roads, its green lush vibes – you almost wonder what will make you ever leave it – the fact that nothing has changed since the last 27 years perhaps? The fact that the once smart shiny industrial town designed by German architects which surpassed the capital decades ago in development and modernness has now been reduced to a reckless ruckus with potholes and pollution which Bhubaneswar has been pumped with all the exchequer to make it the poster boy of Odisha’s development. That brain drain has happened with such ferocity that every kid I knew from school has either moved abroad or living in metros working in the Big fours or bigger IT firms. That all our preparation for medical and IIT; cracking all the entrances never really showed up on the landscape since no one really returned – so did I.
I remember how I fell in love with Hyderabad – it was my first night in that big, burgeoning new home to the IT wave, when my brother took me on a drive to show me around the place and his IT workplace – there was a long stretch of road which slid down the hill, as we went down the entire IT landscape, the shiny glittering buildings came up with a million lights – and there in a foreign land, I fell in love with a city.
I fell in love with the promises that the city offered, the nooks and cranny of Madhapur and Gachibowli – I studied, I travelled, I roamed across Charminar and Qutb Shahi tombs alone, I rummaged through all the biryani places till I found myself licking my fingers in Bawarchi, attended my first photo festival, had a minor stalking incident following it, felt energised by the IT crowd who seemed in a rush to get somewhere and get ahead in life, lapped up the culture heritage and tried to learn the local tongue too. It was the best three months of my life. My Maa thinks I was crazy the way I woke up everyday and roamed around the city armed with a bag and google map – but people backpack across Europe, I just did the same for a city I fell the first time in love with. I remember the last day in Hyderabad like all last days when you know things will never be the same again even though people promise you that it will – I sat down on the floor, all of my 24-year-old-self and folded my arms across the chest pouting my face at my brother and Maa, tears streaming, I am not going back. I won’t go back. I did anyway.
Move forward to one year later when my sojourn started in Chennai – juggling mental sanity and a new state seems overburdening – yet my resolve made through with filter kaapi and the love of new people and friends I made in the city – with my fondest memory being of my Paati. My beautiful, kind, warm Paati who saved me on the third day of being in Chennai in a horrible Oliver Twist worthy PG crying in the small room I was holed up in till NEET. The kind face overlooking mine from her balcony opposite mine, her kind word, her life and resolve motivated to make it till NEET. It was the hardest goodbye when I left that hellhole after NEET.
OMR is the shiniest part of Chennai according to me. It is what was a vestige of life in Hyderabad to me – the long wide lanes, the IT firms, the IT crowd, the 5 min access to beach yet with all promises of perks of metro life was everything to me. Plus, bagging a job in a top corporate hospital and earning my own money and spending it as I please was sweet life for me.
When COVID struck and so did my NEET results – it was only with a heavy heart that I left my independent life behind to start a new journey to a new degree with a new form of slavery in a new city.
Belgaum at first look reminded me of the bustling college town of Manipal, on a second and wider look after I got my car and could afford to roam again (thanks to the previously exorbitant rates of autowallahs of the city) it struck me like my own city. Rourkela with its roads and hills. Just with addition of metro food chain outlets and a better pub culture. The green campus of the university beckoned with its ever-lasting monsoon and cool climate. Somehow it felt like it could be promising again. But this time I wasn’t in a different state for three or six months, I have been here for two years and there has been a growing discord inside me. The batch is a mixture of people from different states – yet if you ask them what they are they immediately label themselves as south Indians or north Indians. They group themselves likewise. They find comfort in dating likewise. Their lives are so wrapped around their regional identities they never take the pains to know a person beyond their regional labels, not to their fault, since the person on the other end does likewise. Ganging up as Tamils or Telugus or Northies, at the end of the day I wonder if this is the idea of one India that had been fed to me throughout my convent life. Those cultural programs with a mandatory unity dance in the end representing every region of India coexisting harmoniously seems fake when in adulthood no one really practiced it right. But then what is the point of being a bigger person if the person you are dealing with doesn’t do you right?
I wonder how I will remember this place, the way I remember those other two – will I remember the kindness of my friends or let the bitterness of being put back by my lack of Kannada speaking skills in the department or the lack of enough South-Indianness or North-Indianness to fit into someone’s life seep in. Will I remember the memories of beautiful climate and the long drives or the reason went for solo drives in the night to try to dissuade the burnout of residency imprint on it. Will I remember how the girl from a small city who never left the environs of home and was a day scholar throughout MBBS travel 1800 miles to another state and stay in the hostel for the first time for three years of residency with a bludgeoning hope in her heart and spark in her eyes for a new life quenched or give up and live through the rest of my days here as an outsider who miscalculated an in?
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