Good bye 2013

Wondering why I'm talking about 2013 when we are in 2008? Well... it's not the year but my (ex-)apartment number. Has been my first residential accommodation in Tampa or rather US; and it had been so till a couple of days back. Had been a nice year at 2013 and fortunately my roomies were also in perfect sync with my wavelength and I should say I enjoyed staying there except for the fact that the apartment was in a pretty bad shape (courtesy the previous residents). Ideally I should be missing the place but somehow I'm hardly having feelings of any sort about 2013.

Pondering over that justifies my stand without much of an analysis. Life in the US has largely been driven by need and demand rather than emotion and relationships. Strangers become friends because you need a ride and friends become strangers because you don't stay with them anymore. A true friend can be assessed not only at the times of distress but also during stays abroad especially when he happens to be your roomie. Friends thick as thieves part so easily after a couple of months of stay together because the adjustment factor is reduced infinite times once you start working and earn as much as the other person staying with you. More than anything else, everyone is here to save money and that being the primary factor, other factors like affection, relationship, respect to individuals and values are pushed to the backseat. Pretty naturally, one gets tuned to this environment so soon and the way s/he reacts to situations changes dramatically by this artificiality. When artificiality steps in, the sense of belonging and attachment goes for a toss just like a saint who loses interest in world and earthly pleasures.

So it's quite illogical to correlate 2013 to our ancestral house that we vacated a few years back and it is as illogical to wonder why I didn't have that sense of discomfort while vacating the apartment. After all, the ancestral house spoke to me of my heritage and reminded me of people who made and molded me. Over here, I feel that I'm like a traveler walking along the endless shore of a deep blue sea, collecting the pebbles as I go along; finding some of those pebbles worth preserving and some others not worth carrying. But whether it was a good collection or a bad collection, neither the shore nor my travel ends.