the patriot

As I stepped out into the expanse of concrete in the parking lot, dotted with barely coloured, solid, dull, but tall buildings, blocked from me by lengths of barbed wires, with unknown faces all around me, feeling stupid pushing a trolley of four larger than me bags, in my not at all enough, too big for me, brown jacket with oh my god golden buttons, trying to see through my big black specs which now had water condensing over it from my breath. I anticipated nothing but the cold, and did I get it… walking from the gate to the cab, all I registered in my jetlagged, yet hyperactive brain was that I was cold, alone and depraved. There was no excitement I thought I would feel in finally seeing America from the window of the airline, there was no rush of blood at touching down to a place I had always longed to be in, no sense of exhilarating achievement… there was just a hollow, flashing scenes of the last few moments spend at home, when I last spoke to my best friend over local call rates, when I last saw my mothers face waiting for me at the airport lounge, and determinedly not going back to see her again, the quiet pride and fright intermingled in my fathers face lined with age, trying not to show either of the feelings, the last message received from my brother asking me to be good, and then another one saying he knew I would, the last time I saw the glittering lines of my city, slowly diminishing away, not knowing when I would see them again…

As one step in this strange land is over, I have gotten over those feelings… or so I like to think. Nothing here was supposed to be like home, nothing is. To get to know and love this place was easy when I could get starbucks in the campus and strut to class feeling all cool, when the first snowfall of your life comes down un-notified on your head, when we cut down dead trees on a rainy freezing day, feeling all ecologically important, when the new york city lighted up to welcome my first visit, when I recalled the number of songs sequenced on the Brooklyn bridge, the pink and purple blossoms that drove the snow away, the startingly clean roads, the endearing nature of all service staff wherever, yeah…life was good.

But then there were times when your room became too cold for you to sleep in, the jetlagged nights staring at the falling snow on the street lights, the stranger filled classes and the even stranger way of education, the empty roads with drunk strollers at night, the emptiness of not being able to speak your language, the dependency on facebook to know what your friends are up to, the misunderstandings with close ones who think you have changed, with the continuously wondering what time it was back home, the constant nagging in your heart if you had made the right choice, the haunting groves in the library where grades were hidden if you were clever enough to seek them out, the gloomy cloudy exam days when the weather did nothing to boost your morale,when all you had to calm your raging heart were photographs…

But then there are days like yesterday…a stiflingly hot day, and I woke up finding myself drenched in sweat, and in that untolerable humidity, sounds of a bus and a chirping bird together came floating across my window...closing my eyes, i felt as if i was back home, where i would wake up similarly in the afternoons, next to mom. Then again, just before the final papers, the lack of words that describe the degree of unpreparedness shared by all the students, their fervent exchange of notes, and the wide eyed, head shaking look that says.. ' man, we are doomed'...,reminds me of the uncountable end semesters during engineering days, nights when you look out and see a lone tree lit by the single lamp, you are not able to distinguish if it is indeed here or there...i try to close my eyes and imagine i am back, the face of the random shop boy, the watchman uncle, the numerous dilapidated bus stands, the beaches, the dog walkers, the stiffling sweaty romance of local trains, the wind swept bus rides, the movies and the malls, the man who taught me how to drive, the known feeling of air where i belong...

like all relationships that last, absence has made my heart grow aware, if not fonder. aware of my own country and the lack of identity i face if it is taken away from me, aware of how much pride i feel when i see a tinier Sri Lanka below a tiny India, aware of the fact that we are indeed a very strange nation, and the fact that such extreme diversities of strangeness can belong together for so many years is an achievement in itself, aware that how much ever i wanted to be here, i will ultimately go back there...and and the end of the day, i am but another patriot.

and a very passionate one at that.