Till We Meet Again

 I doubt the title of this post actually has anything to do with the actual post itself. It's the name of a song by Johnny Reid. I had forgotten all about it until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled upon it on Youtube. Since then, I've just kept it in mind. Given what's been going on, that shouldn't be a surprise. Anyways, my exams ended today. So that's a good thing for me. I overestimated my writing capabilities, though. What am I going to do with 6 blank A4 sheets with perfectly spaced double margins now? And by 'perfectly spaced', I mean that they are spaced just enough so that they seem like they don't take up a lot of room, while they take up a fair amount. I know, I know. It's tremendously lazy or a humongous short-cut. I prefer to think of it as a fine art. Not everyone gets it, but once they do, they love it. I'm probably interpreting it wrong, but hey, whatever works. 

Either way, that's 6 blank A4 sheets I'll have to take care of later. By later, I mean, in a month's time or so. I'll be travelling back home tomorrow, so it's been a busy evening. Not stressful, just busy. It's like a seasonal migration, actually. Every winter break, we go back home to the plains (by 'we', I mean my mother, sister and I) and stay there for a couple of months before we decide to freeze ourselves for another ten months. That's when we come back. It's fun out here in summer, dreary in the monsoon and beautiful but hurtfully cold in winter. Home means Calcutta. For the up-to-date people, Kolkata. Hot, humid, sticky, loud, hustling and bustling- Calcutta is all of that and much, much more. I won't start about that right now as I don't have the time, but it's difficult to do justice to Calcutta. Not just Calcutta, in fact; any city. It's very difficult to put the soul of a city on paper using nothing more than ink made from dyes. Forget ink, typing the soul of a city on to an online document which exists in something called the 'Cloud' is an equally ludicrous proposition. Actually, ludicrous isn't the right word. Improbable- that's the word I'm looking for. It's improbable.

I've been rambling about this for a while, but it's fun. Having spent almost an entire year in the hills, going to the plains sounds like torture for a few people. I'm not being presumptuous here; I've heard as much from people. But it isn't torture for me, you see. That's because it's home. Yes, my current abode has given me refuge in a lot of difficult times, but it was what I took away from Calcutta that helped weather the storms. 

It's been fun packing and going through the motions one more time. We've done this every year since 2015- that's 6 years or 7, depending on how you count it. Every time, there's the inevitable decision-making: Which clothes to leave here, which ones to take? Which cardigan, hoodie, or jacket is warm enough for the journey but not so cumbersome that it will be  a Herculean task to get it packed while coming back? Which shoes to take? (This, thankfully, is a dilemma for the fairer sex; boys get by with one pair of all-purpose shoes if they choose to do so. Unless, of course, there's an important event which needs us to dress up. In that case, ladies, move aside!) Where are the keys? Which keys? How many chargers do we take with us? Where do we put the documents we need in case of ID proof? I don't know if I've covered all the questions, but I think these are a few important ones. 

What's interesting, I suppose, is that this just might be the last time we do so. The only reason why I'm not going to college physically yet is because college hasn't opened physically. We had expected it would open this year(2021), but COVID obviously had other plans. So we've been at home the whole year. Hopefully, we'll get to go to college soon enough, my sister and I. But this just might have been the last time we did all the fooling around, joking, confusing simple commands, together for our annual migration. That's a bittersweet thought, but that's life. Having to deal with memories is often better than having to deal with people. That doesn't mean you don't deal with people, though. You deal with both, but make sure you don't link bad memories with good people or bad people to good memories. That's something we end up doing without meaning to, but it's fine.

Enough philosophy and moral advice for now, I suppose. Now all that's left is for me to go to sleep and hope there's enough food left in Calcutta for me. The rate at which Park Street and other places were getting flooded with people, I doubt they left anything even for the rats. I'm getting off-track here, let's just call it a day. Adios.