As I stare blankly into the computer screen, I know that my time at home is coming to an end, now that the holidays are finally over its time to head back to college. The feelings and emotions that i felt upon my first visit to that place come storming back to me. I first went to Trichy an year back excited at being admitted into one of the finest institutions of the country and life has been an adventure there, there have been both ups and downs and overall it has been a great year.
Having said all that, the initial culture shock was nothing short of astounding. I had been in Delhi for ten years from the beginning of the new millennium to 2010 and while there I settled down, saw a life where every body was in a hurry, life moved fast, malls and multiplexes were the hang out spots of people and selfish people were the norm. I’d say that Delhi is a place that moves at a feverish pace and if you don’t move with it, you’d get left behind. I had my home, all of my friends at this place and was reluctant to move out but then I had to. I had packed the things that I needed, said goodbye to my parents and boarded Tamil Nadu Express to Chennai. The journey was uneventful, I spent most of it listening to music and taking short naps.
When I got down from the train the first thing that i saw was the Chennai Central Station, one can tell that it is one of those stations from the British times, from there I went to the mess where I was to stay until the following day to get my connecting train to Tiruchirappalli. Chennai is like any other metropolitan city with towering buildings, malls and multiplexes, I was pleasantly happy with what I’d seen so far and If more of the same was to come then it wouldn’t be so hard to adjust. Next night I took the rockfort express and in the early hours of the next day i had reached my final destination.
In the months that followed, I didn’t have the best of times for a whole host of reasons the food, the weather and the hostel, but at the beginning of the second semester when I moved out of the hostel( That is some story in itself ) something changed. Things have since started to click, this place doesn’t seem all that hostile anymore on the contrary it is one of the friendliest places that I have lived in. I don’t think that there is one single reason for this drastic change, it would be a combination of a various factors but the one that stands out is that once you stop resisting the change then and only then can you really enjoy life. There is a difference in how people think here, how they dress, the culture is indeed different. It is with an open mind that one should approach any new place for there is a lot to learn and grow at the same time.
This time around when I leave for Trichy, one year of MCA is over and I love this place, the people and I’m looking forward to another year that lies ahead. Whilst I’ll feel sad when I leave home, I know this time I’m not headed for a place that’s all alien to me, I will in fact be going back to a place I can call home.