Guest Post: Good Bye London

Words and photo by Ramble who came from India to enjoy the little things London had to offer for a while. She blogged here about her London experience, but now it’s time for her to move on to the next adventure. She wanted to share her goodbye to London with us.

Your assorted collection of people from all over the world, your cold rainy mornings which give an excuse to crib, the kiss of smooth snow on your grumpy old roads, the haughty rail tracks which boast about being your arteries, your toddlers who have a secret religion of waving and smiling at every passing stranger, your manicured leafy parks who put on unconvincing make up to try a hand at idyllic beauty…what am I going to miss most about you?

They were wrong. You weren’t fake, gloomy, cold or soulless; nor were you overflowing with riches and opportunities. You couldn’t afford to give me even the meanest of wages. You were so poor that you had to sell everything at exorbitant prices.

And, you weren’t a city which will just be a mild drizzle over wax, leaving every thing the same as before. You do know to leave your mark without colouring it with loud melodrama and tantrums. The split seconds which makes one age as old as the chronicled calendar years, leaving behind the vestiges of teenage carefully wrapped and carried into a decade of adult hood…. the moments which remind that being a traveller means having faith in the kindness of strangers….the warm sun of your autumn and the cool breeze of your summer which reassures that home is a place within one’s heart…. Well, there is much that you have given, beyond the limits of shoddy ‘thank you’ notes.

So, good bye from one among the ‘platform’ souls, we who are always waiting for a few wheels to make a journey to somewhere else. Always acquiring only that much which can be left behind.

And, try to be kind to those who come in, saluting yet another flag, mouthing yet another piece of jingoism, swearing allegiance to yet another ‘invincible’ nation, learning yet another ‘great’ language….. so as to call a few feet of land ‘home’.