Yesterday, I decided to renounce the idea of taking a bus home from a shopping mall I had visited and decided to stroll through the evening instead. Yes, I did say stroll "through" it. Because as I walked, the evening seemed to be a sort of pink pool of thoughts, which I had to swim through, whose waters I had to navigate, whose curtains I had to part, to wind my way back home.
As I walked I gave myself up to intuition, to some inner compass which I trusted would guide me...I used to be and possibly still am rather hopeless with directions, but somehow, something seemed to lead me home, though I had hardly used this particular route before...and this seemed to me to be deeply symbolic of the life we lead...sometimes, we just have to believe in a Being which is Higher than ourselves, which helps us transcend our own little limitations...this Being may also reside within us, representing a certain unleashed potetential, a kind of unexplored possibility, which might be resting, latent, within us all.
And that is when, through the course of this walk, my mind began to wander...the past 2 and a half years seemed to unravel themselves, like an unfurling carpet, in my "mind's eye..." (thanks Shakespeare, for coining such apt terms, which we use at Will...pun intended)...how when I first arrived on these shores, I would take long and solitary walks around the Boon Lay area, and how awfully home and heart sick I felt. How I used never to enjoy those moments alone, and would call home and cling on to the voices of my family and friends. How I would sit for hours on the benches of the HDB parks, well not hours, but the minutes sure seemed to drag, and breathe deeply, trying to be brave and blinking back tears, ashamed at my 23 year old adult self exhibiting juvenile behaviour...how all my philosophy on how to enjoy each moment and take care to avoid homesickness, had flown off to another world.
I remembered how I couldn't sleep some nights on an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, with its cold white floors, bare white walls and dull brown furniture. How I craved the colour and warmth which danced in those homes I had left behind. How I craved to feel the presence of loved ones by my side. And how I sought confort in trying to introduce elements of the familiar within the unfamiliar...old books which I strewed upon the table, with scribbled messages from my lovely friends...how Rabindrashangeet would play on my computer late into the nights, very softly, of course...how I would close my eyes and imagine I had never left...I even remember some funny incidents with the laundry, how I suddenly decided to wash MOST of my wardrobe one day, and how the dryer wasn't working and how I had to desperately fan them into dryness over the next couple of days...
And slowly, suddenly, surely, rapidly, the new became more "un-new" (yes, I just coined that ridiculous term, not even aiming to match up to Shakespeare). When I was doing my ESE I found myself craving the rest and repose offered by the unfamiliar room on long and tiring days, how I suddenly looked forward to conversations with my new friends, how I craved certain suddenly familiar foods at certain frequently visited canteen shops...I began feeling less nervous during lessons and gaining some degree of confidence, how I began, very slowly, to feel less sleepy in the mornings...less tired through the day...time seemed to be a vitamin, pumping energy into my veins...
And how, suddenly, the city I was a foreigner in, began to open its arms to me , in ways both obvious and imperceptible. How Jurong Point, where I had spent so much time just trying to figure myself out in the sea of anonymity surrounding me, suddenly ceased to seem clinical and detached...how the roads suddenly seemd to spell meaning, how certain hours of the day called my name...I may sound very fanciful but this is how it seemed then, and how it still seems now...
Then we moved on to NIE, where we lived on a verdant and lush campus...that too had seemed so lonesome and distant at first...but how I quickly convinced myself that every moment I would enjoy or despair over, would become a memory I might miss the next...so I explored the campus and thrust a few inches of my soul into loving the place...the white flowers which sent out a haunting and too-sweet perfume at night still punctuate my dreams...those meals at the different cnteens, with me falling prey to some not so delicious and some delicous food, the times when my daddy visited me, and I jumped up and down with exquisite joy at the mere thought of meeting him at the guest house, how he would buy me all the groceries which I couldn't possibly store from this shop called Grocer...still makes me smile...and how when I told him ,"Dad, I don't have a fridge," he would insist I eat and finish everything that day itself...how I made so many new friends, the Indian canteen where I still remember mostly eating Western food...
How I used to go for classes using those dear green shuttle buses, how nice the bus uncles were, how I would always walk on the grass and never the concrete path to reach NIE...how after a few days of being dazed, class-rooms, blocks and professors became familiar...all those luches and conversations with friends at the canteen, our British accent games, all those greeeeeat new friends I made...all those evenings of swimming, all those hours I would spend on the sports track, either walking or musing, often both, sometimes neither...how I would leave at 530 am each morning for practicum, sitting at a still very early morning-so dark bus stop, listening to frogs croaking somewhere...and board the 199 bus to the train station...walking through the smells of breakfast at Jurong Point...house hunting and eating at the Japanese rice wrap shop my friend introduced me too...
How I would come back late, on very busy work days and make a dash for the porridge stall at the canteen...how my throat thrilled to the warmth of hot honey and lemon, how I would share a room with my room-mate, and how I wrapped myself and my identity into the half of the room which I occupied...how I wrote so many poems sitting at the desk, when I should have been making lesson plans, how I had to stay awake some nights as a result, to finish off my work...
To now, where I have found myself again as a professional, struggling yet enjoying, often tired, mostly happy and always blessed to be serving people with my own education in some ways...how the meaning of home has changed over these years, in so many ways and everyday...how my new blue room is both mine and not mine, and this is the way of the world...
