a stranger in a familiar world

When you first get away from home to come to a 'home away from home' there's only one thing your thinking in your head, while laying in the plane..imagining how this new place is going to blow you away. For me peculiarly enough, i imagined the streets, the people and the lifestyle and thanks to my unquestionable love for the cinema and other media, my thoughts on my way to this new home left only one thought in my mind .. is this it? ? When i first reached Berlin , nothing much appealed to me for the first few days..the streets , the buildings, the landscape, the people..everything was too perfect to question , just the way i thought it would be!

So well i did assume that people would know that this is not my home, but soon enough i realized ..wait a minute i am still on earth, ain't i? this is it, this is my home. It may sound silly to call every place your in that moment your home, but its a strategy , its that sense of acceptance , that you respect and believe in the city your in, and then before you know it , the city has wrapped its arms around you, a warm welcome hug and just stays that way till you leave and take all those memories back with you on the plane to your part of the earth.

Not surprising that in the event of being here to pursue education in architecture , for the first few weeks i did feel like i didn't need to be home, this was my break and this was my chance to explore and do everything i have ever dreamed of doing. You know the only difference in this home and my very home is time. When you are , where you are forever, you tend to take time for granted. You feel like you have all your life in that one place and there's nothing more that you need to pass your time, it just flies. However this was not the way i felt in my new home. I knew it was to be a part of my life for only the time i was granted and that in this time i had to make the best of what i could. So here i was, walking on the streets , day by day they grew familiar to me, day by day i knew my way around the city and stopped feeling lost or scared .

Everyday at the train stations , its a dull moment . So here i was day by day getting 'dulled' with the rest, cause that's what you do..you be a part of the city mood. But later when i started to take my music with me wherever i went, i started to look at things differently. Every one of those dull moments, would not be dull anymore. Every dull face i walked past on the station had a tune to it, and slowly i started to think about their lives, their routines and what could be done beyond a better infrastructure. The travel part is one of the most convenient things you would encounter when your here. There is nothing to be dull about, the trains are yellow, sunny and cheerful, loaded with people with different stories, different moods and not to forget different clothes. Its interesting how when you travel for a while in the train everyday and develop this sort of strange bond with your neighbors in the train, without talking or sometimes even looking, but you acknowledge. And then there are these days when a musician walks into the train and breaks the ice, strumming his instrument, getting people to tap their feet, finally assuring me some sign of life in the yellow carriers.

Everyday on the streets of Europe is a ramp walk to me. People are so attached to their appearance and its wonderful to see how people transform from one outfit to another. As materialistic as this may seem, its quite appealing for me. Even if your in a park just sitting and reading a book , bathing in the sun .. you simply cannot avoid the ramp walk. There is such an exclusive aura in all the stores and supermarkets here that one cannot help but look with awe. Its amazing the energy in these places. There's people being calculative, there's people just looking around for some luck and then there's of course the obsessive compulsive people who need to be there to let go of something else . And then people walk out of these places with immense happiness, something you'd miss sometimes on the streets. Spoilers or not, these places really cheer up people, personally for me..it doesn't matter if your a customer or not, its enough that your the audience. The best way for me is to put on those glamorous shades and stroll around (the shades put you in character ), look around without people knowing where your looking at , but you'll always know whose looking at you.

So at the end of the first month, i started to feel more and more at home. What i now wanted to know was people. Enough of the looky looky i said to myself, i want to be a part of it all. So for the first time in my life and not the last, eric capton has always showed me the way. So here i was eager as i could be to witness his concert in europe, and so then i decide to use mark zuckerberg's networking medium to look for anyone interested in joining. And yes, mark's a genius. Though the concert looks unlikely now, i found company. So now things got a little more normal, i knew immediately that i was not the audience no more. So with company and all... this place became more of a home to me. But one thing always surprises me, all these people from all the world and meeting them and working with them, why is it that its soo amusing to them that they're associated now with an Indian....amuuuuuuuuuuuuuusing! I mean common if i'd never told them my nationality , i wonder how different things would've been. But this just got me thinking, being from India and not just Pakistan or Sri Lanka or China, but INDIA ,makes such a difference to what people want to know, they develop sort of this sudden interest in knowing about snake charmers and poverty. Its exciting to share knowledge and enlighten people, but at the same time a little shaken. At the end of the day its great to know that this planet , the way i look at it is my home, and that's the only thing that makes me feel at home no matter where i travel to, from the plane all you can see is green and blue and as you get closer you see a pattern of your destination. its thrilling the time your just about to land.

Well all said and wrote, i don't think there's anything like sitting in Berlin at a theater and watching the screening of a movie 'seven islands and a metro', yes a documentation on a place back 'home', so familiar to you and you suddenly feel yourself getting lost into the movie and the memories it brings back from a far away land. its magical. a perfect end to a perfect day in berlin for me was listening to a familiar number , seated amidst berliners....and nobody disagrees to the magic...and in the background slowly playing and soon fading away ..a golden voice ....

'mud mud ke na dekh mud mud ke'

its wonderful, its perfect and its reassuring yourself to live every moment and never look back and regret.

life is beautiful :)