Letters from Sydney: Episode 9

After countless half hearted attempts to pencil down my thoughts, I think I am finally ready to unveil another letter from Sydney. A big, big thank you to all those who kept on asking me about the blog and asking me to write a new one and all those who’ve loved these letters and have waited patiently for me to move out of my inertia to come up with a new one. Anyways, here’s another letter from Sydney. Hope it lives up to the legacy and expectations it’s managed to raise after all these months. Hoping sincerely that you love reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Be warned, it’s a bit serious in content, and kinda misses the fun quotient of the previous letters. As SRK cheekily says in the oh-so-brilliant Tiger Cat sequence of OSO, Mind it.

Its 2 a.m at night and I am sitting on the Black leather couch in the living room of my new apartment, looking out through the glass covered balcony, at the vast expanse of the Sydney International Airport, as another flight takes off, to go to some destination taking alongwith it some people like me, dying to go back to the place they call, home.

It was quite sad leaving Natalie and Sac, and 66/A, I found myself terribly attached to the place, its wooden floor and the countless, insanely kaleidoscopic memories attached to it. I went through a lot, learn a lot and most importantly, attained that one thing I value the most, in that very house. But all good things end and I had to leave 66/A to move into this swanky, 8th Floor Apartment, a few blocks away from my old house. Kimberly Estates, they call this place which is a collage of similarly dead apartments, reminding me of those late 80’s Bollywood films that tried so desperately to capture the growing skyline of Mumbai, by showing the same shots over and over again, with hardly a change of angle, or lens. The color of Kimberly Estates is decidedly a dull yellow, or some random shade of cream. I don’t care much. The apartment is big, with two bedrooms, a kitchen and an unusually large living room, that’s quite empty except for the couple of leather lounges, one of which I am occupying at this very precise moment. The view outside though is mind-blowing, a zillion little lights amidst a few big ones, draw attention to the Airport, making me miss India and every thing about it every single time I see a plane take flight, into the seamless blue sky. It’s weird how we begin relating one thing to another when we don’t have much to do in life.

Like a steamin’ train, life keeps draggin’ on…
Speeding by alongside are friends, family and so on…
Is there anyone who could figure things out for me?
Is there someone who could feel what its like to be me?

The last few months have been bad. But then there’s been the brighter side to it all, with me being in a space I’ve never been in before, going through acute emotional, financial and professional stress and still feeling extremely vibrant throughout it with the help of people who’ve decided to accept me the way I am and walking with me throughout what can be safely called the most dreadful 3 months of my life so far.

“Everyone keeps misunderstanding me, rather not understanding me at all,” said she, “Just because I don’t say out things, doesn’t mean that I don’t feel them”, her voice going slightly shrill at the end of the reflective sentence, pushing me in the uneasy space where you want to be absolutely assuring and you end up being everything but that. After all, I was experiencing the exact opposite of it, “Just because I say out everything I feel, doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything.” I had this urge to tell her that. I refrained, thinking she might think I was just being the writer I am by saying something obviously well worded than what she had said. We were in two different time zones, but going through a similar phase; of self doubt to an extent you begin hating yourself. Not much was said that night, which was unusual in its own way. And I was pushed into a thought space, in an unusual soliloquy, where I answered all my questions myself; thinking about what all possibly went wrong, when I made perhaps my most right film till date, “Antahasthiti”.


TO BE CONTINUED