We came back to visit Boston some six months after we had left. The reason was to help with and participate in our nephew’s wedding, and also to catch up with our friends and family. We stayed with Meera’s sister whose son was getting married. Our two families are very close and it was as if we were planning for and attending our own son’s wedding.
It was like coming back home.
Everything looked familiar and I felt as if we had never left. It was nice to be back in a beautiful city located amidst a forest instead of a desert. The traffic of Boston, supposed to be notorious, appeared to be sane. No six-lane highways with madcap traffic. No sweaty exits off highways, ordered by an insensitive “Rambha” (what we call the GPS voice) barking insane orders. Beautiful greenery everywhere.
But then this familiarity was also a point of dissatisfaction. We had moved out precisely because we wanted to experience new parts of this world. Explore on a daily basis unfamiliar terrain and meet new people. We were doing it for the past six months and we had become accustom to it. The absence of this daily dose of stimulus was palpable. There was nothing new to see and experience. Catching up is revisiting your past, not creating future.
The train has left the station.
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