coming home

Its has taken me nearly five days to recuperate enough to compare the two places I've called home the past four years. Bhopal and Guwahati are as different in climates as they are in the people they house. Where its the bluest of skies from dawn to dusk in Bhopal, it is almost impossible to come across a patch of blue when one looks up in Guwahati. The air is moist and humid and breezy in Guwahati but in Bhopal we had to take care not to expose our skin to the elements to escape the dryness and the searing heat of the hot wind that blows across the land. The sunlight is harsh and unforgiving as the desert in Bhopal but in Guwahati it is a pleasant warmth.

But most of all the people are different. People in Guwahati are soft spoken and helpful whereas in Bhopal they would be raucous and indifferent and too rude to even bother.

However there were some people in Bhopal I call friends, with whom I shared some good times and some of the best moments and without them Bhopal seems as inhospitable as the uninhabited Tundra even with the multitude of people there. Here in Guwahati I have a few friends from the olden times but it doesn't seem so inhospitable.

Under cloudy skies threatening rain every second I take some time to think back to the time when even the worst of weather and environment felt hospitable and in fact welcoming just for the "friends" and on the contrary the best of pleasant weather here feels as alien without the same friends.

I truly salute the good men I stayed with for four years of my life and whom I now wish the best in their lives.