Monday, 31 March 2025
Emotions are weird
Saturday, 29 March 2025
Damn dude...it is pretty bad
Another blog about Kol
What makes Kol special to me?
Sidenote: At this point this is a recurring topic everytime I come back home. Most of it might have been said before, but hopefully it captures perspective in different epochs.
I don't know what it is with Ggn, probably the tall buildings, the fancy cars, the expensive taste, but it makes one think in a single dimensional metric of financial return or wealth multiplication.
Kol has always been the studious city. Kol always was poetic. Creative. Artistic. People filled with kindness. People who took care of each other. Yes, we are a loud bunch but by no stretch of imagination do we hit each other or are heartless. Delhi NCR gives off that off-the-cuff brash and uncouth feeling.
As soon as I stepped into my chair back at home, I found the feeling that I have been missing for a while. The feeling of wanting to learn more. To read more. To expand my knowledge. To grow. To do more. To be more. To help out. To spread kindness in the world. I don't know if it is just Kol or the atmosphere of home or the upbringing that my parents gave me. But I was happy to rekindle that part of me that I thought had been trampled over by greed and other vices in Ggn. I don't want to chase money. I want to chase knowledge. I want to do good. But alas, all I have ever done with my life is chase money and have done nothing for anybody other than myself.
It is but action that defines us in the end. All I am is a bag of words. Words, well intentioned but nothing more useful or different from a person chasing self gain.
If I seem anxious, It is because I am, all the time...
These thoughts, the monologue, they never go away. They just grow louder as the day progresses and resets the next morning. There are good days when the rate of increase in frequency of thoughts and negativity spewing from my internal voice is low, thus allowing for some work to get done. Then there are other days that just start like a marriage band constantly playing self-derogatory tunes at the highest decibel. Although, it is still not as bad as the days where it is just a soft constant murmur, a chant that never ends, a drone that is constant in every measure except it creeps up on you and slowly and surely gets inside your head, taking over anything else and soon occupying your entire mental bandwidth, rendering you effectively useless to get anything else done.
I am back in Kol today. It has been a while and also hasn't. I was here two months back but it was a whirlwind trip to attend Aman Chemical's marriage, hence I had little time to ponder and be in the present.
What's funny is that this was the first time I did not feel like I was coming back to my base location. The base location has now blurred, since people keep visiting more often in Ggn than everyone assembling back in Kol. Is it the beginning of the end of my connection with this place? God, I hope not. But even if this is an omen for an epochal transition, I am grateful for the time I had and the values that Kol instilled in me.
I hate the fact that I do not have the same sense of home when I landed today but I also wanted to dive deeper into this new emotion since I don't think I have felt this completely before. Does it mean that I no longer associate myself here? Does it mean that I no longer care about my parents at the same level? Does it mean that I have left it all behind and moved to greener pastures (pretty ironic since Ggn is anything but green)?
The brass tacks of the argument between cities is the values that it instills, not overtly but through body language. Everybody is in a rush (which is anywhere in the world to be fair) but what people are rushing through is different for Ggn vs Kol. Or maybe that I was in with the straggler crowd more often in Kol than in any other city. I got in a bus everyday morning for 4 years with different walks and stages of life but with a common drive, a drive to achieve something meaningful and lead a life with purpose, a purpose that not necessarily begins or ends with material gain.
To be fair, I don't think that is the case. On the flip side, it would also be true that I no longer feel that deeply about it. But does it mean that my allegiance has changed? No. Does it mean that I would be as ready to shift back to Kol as I was a couple of years' back? Not sure Does it mean that I am shunning my responsibilities? I hope not.