The First Time I Moved Out to Stay in an Unknown City ALONE
It was my dream to stay out of the city, live on my own, make my own money, surrounded by unknown people, that’s something UNCOMFORTABLE, yet worth living for!
I always saw people even a few of my close friends already have had experienced hostel life unlike me. I belong to a family where I was never allowed to spend a night alone anywhere, not even with friends (though I’ve spent 4 nights, 5 days out of Kolkata for an excursion when I was only 16 lol), but that’s it.
Thanks to my as usual extreme zeal to get everything I dream of — everything that I visualize, everything has to have come true. Thankfully I’ve been following the Law of Attraction unknowingly since childhood (I used to visualize exact exam papers and marks lol, and all of them 100% came true). So, I put my all energies into believing to this limit that I belong to my dream city BANGALORE! I love the name Bangalore — there’s some greatness in it I feel that I can never actually discern. Not that I don’t love my hometown Kolkata, my heart belongs here, but Bangalore is something my soul knew what it might bring forth to me.
I hardly talk about my personal experiences openly to people, but here I am with the minuscule of a small incident of my life that’s never just a small one to me. While scrolling through my gallery, I saw this photo lurking with the shiny shimmery memory “I’ve got this” :)
Before this, I was working in/from my hometown. But when I finally got through this, honestly I had zero courage to convince my parents about it. Thanks to some of my friends, especially Rimi (I called her first to talk about this) who made me talk to my father. Luckily, he finally agreed and made sure I reach there properly.
Probably this is what happens right before the moment we get scared of telling our truth — had not I garnered enough courage to talk to my parents, I would be still in the same place forever — that’s why they say to take a leap of faith! We are SOO bound by fears!
Could I be happier than this? “When we are already floating on the pangs of pandemic, how can I be allowed to go and even stay alone there?” This one thought along with the second one — “…they want me to work here only…” took a hold of my wings so strongly that I would get scared to take a fly.
After my Master's degree got over, I kept on applying for jobs in Bangalore (because that’s the only way to get there). I succeeded finally and on 21st Nov 2020, I finally landed at Bangalore airport — the photo in the preview I took right after I came out of the airport with my luggage on.
Surreal I felt.
I neither felt chill on my nerve, nor did I feel it dreamlike, but as if it is quite a normal thing!
When I was coming out of my home, everyone was crying on my departure except me, I promised to make the most out of it — and so I did. It’s not that I didn’t get the pain, but crying at that moment wouldn’t help as it could have backfired on me. But on 23rd, Monday, when my father dropped me at the PG (girls hostel) and finally left for home (as I came with him to Bangalore), I couldn’t hold onto my tears the moment his cab left me on an empty street near Ramada Encore Hotel (that’s where I was entrusted to stay by the company).
I cried hard under my mask that probably no one could ever imagine.
But the bright side was whoever I met there from day one till date made me see the world from a deeper perspective, they were and have always been way more full of warmth to me than I ever could ask for. Some of them are now one of the closest people in my life, GRATITUDE!
My First Vexation with FOOD came soon after I started living in a PG nearby my office.
How can I forsake my Bengali self? I cannot think of spending a day without potato, a week without fish, and any other Bong food on my plate. My taste-buds are more on the sweeter side, I can nearly put up with the pungent, spicy food, but how can I live with soury Rasam? In Kolkata, Masala Dosas are actual dosas to us, but there I am forced to have Plain Dosas that too with some spicy chutneys, hard papad-like chapatis started making my life awful(P.S. I am not disregarding the food as it helped me survive, but hostel foods are mostly like that, could you ever deny it?. The more I put my complaints, the more I realized the food quality is deteriorating.
Yet anyway, I fell in love with this freedom, despite the continuous haunted feeling of “what to eat next?”, I could find happiness even in the smallest things around me. Perhaps this is how I am or this is how the situation made me — either way, I am filled with deep gratitude and splendor.
It’s just a small life experience I wanted to share; some of you might not get it, but some will. We hardly celebrate our trivial moments, but these are the ones worth living for.
:)
