I’m in my home city.
I’m fussy about this place. I like doing very particular things when I come here, and I like traveling the 35kms+ outside the city centre where my home is, because it reminds me of something I regularly did as a kid. Living life on the edge, quite literally. It also takes me back to rows of greenery, and open spaces, with cats and the sounds of children playing cricket, or football, or whatever sport is in season now. It takes me back to the Court I called my home Court and the tournaments I played with a home Court advantage, when I was younger.
I’m in my home city.
There is an Adiga’s around the corner that I have never eaten at, only taken parcels from. Yet I know their prices and their menu hasn’t changed in a few years. There’s a new hospital that’s opened up – except it’s a very old hospital, just one with new management and some new branding.
There is still trash in the corner of the road, something my aunt, uncle, and grandparents have been trying to eliminate for more than 10 years now. But the trash remains, as do the cows that cross our paths when we walk across the main roads.
There are autos which go by the metre, and autos who want wonandhalf, a concept which is known only in this city, and nowhere else in the world.
There is the smell of rain before rain arrives, and the knowledge of beautiful weather persisting all-year round.
There is family – the people I have spent more time with in the last 4 years than I did for the 16 years of my life before I came to college.
There is my mother tongue – the language I don’t think in, and speak with an accent, but the language that everyone in my family knows. And the language my friend has coded an app for.
I am in my home city.
And it has changed,
But it is still home.
Tejas Rao 