How many times have you walked down a street and suddenly stopped to see a house or a tree or a small by-lane....something that you thought was never there, although it always existed but you never saw it! Walking down a street that you've walked a hundred times before and TODAY you see the nice little house, with a balcony and a kid playing in the house. Life that always existed but you didn't take notice of! Happens all the time doesn't it? These little jolts we get that bring us out of our reverie...makes something old, NEW.
I hear voices everyday. There is some construction going on just below my building, the noise and ruckus it creates irritates the hell out of me. I can hear the workers when they take a break, laughing and chatting. Just another day. Today i heard them. Not that i understood what they were saying but their voices were new to me. The rhythm of their laughter, their loud banter. In a totally foreign world, i felt at home. Suddenly, it was Mumbai and i was sitting in my room trying to concentrate on something and couldn't cause of the noise a group of people were making outside. It was the same noise... the same chatter and laughter, the same rhythm. Then again it was Chicago, i leaned out of my window to look at the workers. I couldn't make out the language that they were talking in or the words...just that they reminded me of home.
It rains so often in Chicago that at first it surprised me. Loud thunders and heavy rain. I see it, experience it and am bugged by it. One day, taking in the rains and the pitter patter of the raindrops, I think of Mumbai. How similar the two cities look when its raining. So beautiful, like something slowed it down, the beauty slowed it down. It brought a warmth to my heart that was beyond words. I smiled to myself in a way that only reminiscing can make you smile.
I've built a home here in a foreign land, among foreign people. I've built a home with a man I love and who loves me. Little things, material and otherwise have given shape to our world. But sometimes, just sometimes, one has to escape to the world that they left behind to find a ground, to give your heart that something...something that is "different and yet the same".
