And I say goodbye

Dear Madurai (aka all the wonderful people in it ),

For 22 long years you have been the place I called home.

I’ve walked among the dust-filled roads, braved the sweltering heat, found joy in roaming the crowded city, fell in love with our own brand of tamil. You have equally frustrated me, embraced me and nourished me. And sometime later today, I’l be moving away from you.

I’ll terribly miss

• those roads which taught me driving and caring for people’s life
• The fact that there are no traffic rules
• The buffaloes that could cross, the donkeys which would walk and the elephants which always choose to take a casual stroll whenever I want to get to someplace in a hurry.
• The Parotta-kadais, the juice kadais, kumar mess, the konar kadai, the manga-kadais, our meenakshi bazaar, the karumbu juice kadai
• the sheer number of temples that you seem to surprise me with yet somehow grant secret knowledge to my mother alone
• My teacher’s at school, at college - for teaching me stuff, for making me learn and sometimes for simple making me laugh.
• the libraries - the only place where it was impossible to find a crowd
• My school, the wonderful people in it.
• My college and the people it’s made up of.
  Feels strange calling both of them my alma mater
• the vanthaapula and vanthaainga
• the sheer beauty of twinkling lights in the Vaigai AV bridge
• the fact that our famous river is never a river of water. Heck, I still loved watching our own purebred horses race in it’s green grass.
• the Race course, the numerous football grounds where we fought to not loose and heck, even score a goal on debut.
• the theatres - which had the most insane crowds, the first days
• the thiruparankundram kamma, the anna poonga, the tvs ground
• the sheer cooling effect of a jil-jil-jigarthanda
• The music - the loud music. the madurai kuthu paatu and how you developed my taste in music from Mozart to Metallica.
• the wonderful people who will not hesitate to give a opinion on anything under the sun even if they don’t know a thing about it
• the no-word-would-suffice-as-an-adjective group of friends you gave me - I could almost call anywhere in madurai “enga area “
• the chance to meet so much people who have shaped me up into what I am today

So, thank you Madurai. Thank you for everything
You may have had flaws, you were not clean, you were too hot, you were too crowded - but you were my home. And I’ll love you and miss you.
You will always be my first home.
Take care of the people I love.

And remember, I’ll still have your face painted on my heart.
Wish me luck

And, Take care

Love
Gautham