Carthik Sharma

I am back in Orlando after spending a few days in Atlanta with my cousin and his family.
It was strange, to be without a computer on my lap all the time, with family and I was amazed at how quickly everything from the past comes back, and how seeing old, familiar faces takes me back to places I have spent most of my life in. I met my aunt and uncle after a long time, had food, of the kind made at home, which I can’t recreate well enough when I cook - food I had eaten for the first 16 years of my as yet short life. For some reason I remembered the steps outside our house, and how the water flows down it in a torrent during the rains, and how I used to watch it, entranced, through the window, beside which I had my table. I remembered a lot of things, the details of which I won’t go through, and now I can’t wait to go home, but it looks like going home will have to wait awhile.

I started reading Seth’s “An Equal Music” on the way back to Orlando, and given the long drive and the traffic, I was able to complete about 90 pages. Traffic was slow, but less painful thanks to the book.

On my way back, I was, as usual, listening to one of NPR’s member stations, and somewhere in between the soothing voices that read interesting news and views, and Bach, I heard Pachelbel’s Canon in D major. Everything I had been feeling over the past 4-5 days happened together again, and I felt happy to be alive, and I got the feeling I get once in a year perhaps - one of complete rapture, tinged with an indescribable sadness. My eyes welled with tears, without my permission.

The road back was filled with folks coming back to Florida, like me, and the sky to my left had a rainbow in it. To my right, there were green pastures, and horses, and white fences. The grass was flourescent in the orange glow of dusk. The music was heavenly, and I was happy.

Nothing about Orlando has changed. I have not changed. I have just realised how much of an island I have become, and how the distance between me and my past, and all that I was, and all those I am related to by blood has increased to the point that I feel like a stranger amongst my thoughts, at times.

I think of lives that could have been, and the one that is, and though I never imagined the life-that-is as a possibility when in my past I dreamt up could-be futures, I must say that things have turned out pretty well. Now if only people could see how I have changed, and instantly catch up with who I am, as opposed to what I was.

Filed by Carthik at 2:25 am under Yours Truly

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