An Ode To Dilli

So they say "going away from home is liberating". Of course, it is. And especially when you are trying your best to get away from a part of yourself which you loathe and detest, the reason being someone you loved had told you that you're not likable or good enough. We all live for that validation, don't we? Just one word of comfort from the person who makes us weak in the knee. So I left. Not because I had something important to do, but just to escape and find that one nook in an unknown city that has seen me grow as a person. I never thought I'd be able to go back from where I turned my face once. The known streets, the familiar smell of Vijay Nagar and the bustle of the Delhi University crowd. I tried going away from all of this because once someone told me that I didn't deserve him and the city. I didn't deserve to live a life away from home and that I should go back to my cocoon. He didn't know the struggle I had to put up to achieve this liberation, neither did he know how hard it was for me to leave home behind only to realize that an unknown city can also become home if one has the right person along. So here I was, struggling to fight my tears as he left without looking back. I didn't call out his name again, neither did I try to hold him back. He was leaving because he wanted to, I told myself. The next thing I experienced was a pain. And the pain of a certain kind. Perhaps this is what they mean when they talk about depression. It is the feeling that engulfs you, your thought process, your ability to breathe normally. I know depression is perhaps misunderstood, and often considered as a "high-class disease" which only the rich can afford. But here I was, feeling it seep into me every moment, while I restlessly tried to deny it.

Now you all will be thinking, what's so new about this, isn't it? A girl, in love with a boy, who doesn't love her back, and leaves her while she feels miserable, right?

Wrong. Here's the plot twist. I was angry with the city that had given me so much and taken so much away from me. It was with the bylanes and street-side stalls, the dingy GTB Nagar, the claustrophobic metro rides, that angered me. I could no longer find a home in them. As if they too, had estranged me. So I left. After three long years of self-liberation, it was perhaps time for me to say goodbye to the city that had been a witness to my deepest desires and growing up.

Cut to 2019. It had been 3 years since I left the city and never had the courage to go back to. But this time, I was determined to revisit those memories. Not because I was feeling stronger than ever, but because of the bond that I had shared with the city once. It was for that lost love and mutual bittersweet memories that I wanted to go back for one last time. And I did.

As the flight landed, I realized it was not going to be easy. Each city has a smell, and to smell that air after three long years, wasn't going to be easy as it brought with it memories that were long buried within me. I booked the cab and waited for it when I was asked by a girl with her father, just out of the airport, "Excuse me, yeh GTB Nagar Kaise Jana hai? Humein Delhi University, North campus Pahunchna hai." I smiled and told them the route as my cab arrived. While I hopped in, the cabbie asked, "Madam, drop location Kahan?"

I didn't know what to reply. Should I call it home? Or should I just say the North campus?

I mumbled, GTB Nagar without quite knowing where exactly I am going to put up.

And I reached. Some new restaurants had cropped up but the air smelt the same. The old sugarcane seller had grown a little older, and the shop right beside my hostel had gotten a makeover of its swanky glow signboard.

I walked. I walked for a long time until I reached the familiar parking lot of the arts faculty. Saw a gang of students playing guitar and humming a tune or two. I waited there for a long time and then headed back to the street. As I was about to take a cab to my hotel room, I realized that the city remained the same. With throngs of students coming every year, with the same dream and aspirations, I realized it wasn't the man I loved, it was always the city. All my memories of him are somewhere connected to the soul of the city-- a city that has known my insecurities and desires, in love and longings.

So this time, I decided to go back. Not because I wanted to give my partner another chance, but because the city had prepared me enough to go back to it and the relationship which I shared with the city, was nothing but sheer euphoria that drove me even when I was far.