Ending a love-affair with your Muse - your favourite city

All things move on. But perhaps, not everything moves-on at the same pace. Draping her dupatta in a characteristic manner around her face as a sun-shield, something she was doing after almost six years but had done it a million times before, Megha mounted the two-wheeler she’d borrowed from her friend, feeling nostalgia and excitement all at once. Even though only for a couple of days, she was once again going to relive her favourite city, Pune – her muse, her lover, her friend.

            Moving to London for further studies about six years ago was the reason she’d left Pune. Everything had seemed so exciting and daunting at the time. But the heaviness she felt leaving Pune couldn’t be overwhelmed by all the novel attractions the future promised. Pune was her Muse, her center, her solace; she almost personified Pune as a person.

            Pune, if personified as a woman, according to Megha was - Simple yet elegant, beautiful yet laid-back, affectionate yet subtle, modern yet cultured. Pune was her confidante, her lucky charm - her Cinderella – she made things happen for Megha. She encouraged her. Pune’s pride and simplicity gave Megha courage and made her believe that she can achieve anything she wants. She provided her with learnings, with will, with love. Before Pune – Megha often viewed herself as an ordinary, average girl. It was Pune that made Megha realise her capabilities, her intellect, and her beauty.

            Megha knew Pune at the back of her hand, she was exactly able to map how Pune would be in any season, what was the chirpiest spot in the city, where to go for quietude and where to seek inspiration. Megha knew all the moods of Pune, all her curves, her ways and her very many attitudes and tantrums - Almost like she would know her lover.

            Present Day -  Month of November - Pune seemed hotter than usual, digressing from what Megha remembered about it last. Perhaps ageing does make anything hotter. In the early hours of the evening, Megha starts to drive around, starting at Baner, with the aim to cover the length of the city, reminiscing every nook and corner that had multiple personal tales attached to them. There came a first blow. Megha’s attempts at speeding were unpleasingly thwarted by the traffic caused due to a new half-constructed, ginormous flyover. This wasn’t here the last time she remembered. It was almost like the vibe of Baner road had transformed. No more street vendors or the same road-side humdrum. Hmmm.. this was a bit of shock, and such shocks kept coming in.

            To her dismay, her favourite shopping center, earlier known as ‘Pune Central’ with a red font and logo had been re-designed as ‘Centro’. The landmarks she’d once identified as sure-shot spots of semblance were mostly now replaced by other new shops and entities. Even her hang out spot at Fergusson College Road, Bright and red logoed ‘Good Luck Café’ and its surroundings, with their old-time charm, bookstalls and street-vendors, had been taken over by Venky’s and a bright blue theme. Something known as ‘Artists’ Corner’ had sprung all around the ‘new’ Goodluck Café. To her relief, thankfully they hadn’t changed the name at the least.

Witnessing all this, she laughs. She remembers how she bought editions of ‘Mills and Boon’s’ from those ‘old’ bookstalls, only to be the last one to read them, as her other fellow-hostilities raided her room to read them first. Putting a last nail in the coffin, even the old ‘Jeetu Ki Chai’ tea-stall near her college campus was no longer there. In her time there, it had served the best tea one can experience. She, along with her closest friends in the whole world, spent hours there, discussing mostly non-sense stuff but making the most precious memories.. Memories that have remained as lucid as clear water in Megha’s mind.. even after all this time.

            As she kept moving ahead, her bike’s speed and her spirits now gradually dwindling, she began to realise that Pune had drastically changed in the past six years. Sure enough, progress is the way ahead and she acknowledged it, but to her, Pune no longer carried the same familiarity and warmth for her, that it had carried before. It was Pune after all, the feelings, both tangible and in-tangible forever engraved in her heart, but today’s Pune – seemed different and ‘mature’. It greeted her, but only with tepid affection and a slight, poorly hidden indifference.      

            Moving around the city, she also began to realise how most of her friends had relocated to other places, their lives were now considerably different from what they’d all last experienced as one, together. As places passed by in a panorama, she began to realise that now,  Pune had changed for her, perhaps ‘evolved’. Megha was still stuck in the past but her lover, her Pune, had moved on. She did not make Megha feel the same way anymore… Perhaps it was time for Megha to move on too.

Bearing a heavy heart, Megha realizes that all her attempts at getting a job in Pune were now nonessential. Maybe it is not the person or place – but the memories we’re not able to move on from.