Germany, a Remembrance !!

The kid came to Munich on a rainy day, with a lot of hopes, dreams and palpitations. The first time out of my house, from the shelter of my parents, onto a land 7500kms away from his native place. A warm smiling face greeted me at the station and in that next 45 minutes journey from airport (flughafen) to my apartment in Olympiazentrum gave me my first crash course in Germany. Then, when my pickup left me at my dorm, i looked around at the empty room and my packed suitcase and realized that I had to unpack, cook , clean all for myself. The growing up began in that small 5 minutes.

As the days progressed, Munich became more like my home and less like an alien. Yearned for home, its comforts, the food , the ambience, the general sense of security...but at the same time was relishing this new found source of freedom. Could run down anytime to the market, open a bottle of beer or cook some delicious Currywurst all at the same time.

It was the 17th of July, the night we had an hellacious experience on the cold menacing streets of Paris, and someone said, “man cant wait to get back home !” and I remarked, “Yeah Munich is way better than this....”. That short casual slip of remark, and it dawned on me that instant that somewhere Munich has crept into my veins as my niche, my cubbyhole, no longer a strange white cold city filled with white people but something much more substantial, something which provided solace and comfort at the heart of the bitter unfriendly streets of Paris.

And then slowly, the circle grew. Made friends with my fellow dorm members, cooked Indo-German food, which sometimes tasted weird, but nevertheless everyone gulped down with a lot of gusto. Then gradually, the microcosmic view of the Indian family in Olydorf seemed to be the part of a bigger picture- one where we all functioned as one unit to preserve the dredges of the Indian culture that everyone had left 7500 kms behind but earned to bring back through curries, bollywood stores, pulaos and public screening of Rajneeti on the tiny screen of a laptop.

The process of the so called growing up was not revolutionary but totally evolutionary. Little facts that clothes don’t wash themselves or fridges that don’t refill themselves or food that don’t cook themselves came with some delay – some hesitation when staring at piles of unwashed clothes or looking at the raw rice. But unconsciously they gradually found a way into my persona.

The euro trips were a lotta fun. Saw an amazing amount of diverse beauties – modernized cities, picturesque countryside, houses with picket white fences, architectures of the Bohemian kind, the mysterious smile of Monalisa, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the overwhelming beauty of the Swiss alps, the sinful streets of Amsterdam, the choco-smell of Brussels, the power lined streets of Berlin. My thoughts were matured, the dimensions of my thinking grew new bounds and most importantly the fervour of new discovery acted like the fuel to ease the stress of hectic journeys. Every moment of those trips, right from learning to use the DB Automats correctly to running through the crowded platforms to catch a connecting trains, or long hours of sleeping on night metros just so we can rest our weary feet was a moment of discovery, small steps in the long journey of appreciating the beauty of the world that we live in.

Not all is obviously right with this. Sometimes we are checked unnecessarily by the Polizei and our passports are scanned with forgery detectors just because we are “dark” or the fact that most places, the interaction among dorm mates are very very minimum. But withal, I realized that no where in the world we can reach Utopia. Back in India, even corrupt police officers try to hackle our identities for material gains and even members of the same joint family bitch about the others for petty rivalry. No it’s not about the small cracks, but learning to live with them that makes all the difference.

Tonight as I gradually make my preparations for my departure from this city onto my home in Kolkata, I look out of my window and see the cloudcast skies and the mild drizzle. That part is same. Everything else is not. The two unfamiliar buildings that I had seen on my first day back are now my home; the huge stretch of greenery is the Olympiapark. Nothing about this place is alien but an extension of my home. Home where you ask ? The dusty streets of Howrah, the tranquil lanes of Kasba....I cannot pinpoint to any single place but I would just say this HOME....a place in our lifelong journey where at the end of the day we seek refuge to wash off the tiredness and grime of the bygone day and rest for the next one. The universality of this idea will probably stretch to anywhere and everywhere the next few important years of our life will take us, in a whirlwind of MS, MBA or Jobs. But eve in all this, i will look back upon these 60 days as a time which shaped a very specific but inexplicable part of my persona from a nameless entity to something with a concrete shape structure and behaviour and for that I say, “Danke Deutschland !”

The child is grown. The dream is gone -- Floyd