I sat in my new desk in my new job in my new city and stared outside my new view. The song “A whole new world” ran through my head. It was a whole new world. But nothing shined nothing shimmered and things were splendorless.
People call Mangalore a sleepy slow town, but in my view you have to move to be slow. The town wakes up at nine and goes to bed by seven. People scuttle around this town in absolutely no hurry. Fast food joints take 25 minutes to serve you French fries burnt to unedible and terrible burgers. Your around the corner coffee day take 20 minutes to get you the bill. There is only one speed here-absolute slow that you are barely moving.
Everything is 10-20 minutes away. One of my closest friends love the pace in this town, even a lot of other people do. But for me it’s a ghost town, like the ghost of the unknown and slow are haunting me. Places, people, routes, food, language and everything in between seems to be from another era, an era I only read about in Malgudi days.
Walking home from my bus stop, I realized that there weren’t any pavements or streetlights at regular intervals and the road looked like it had tar on it sometime ago but just not now. As I walked home in the rain, on a road with no light, and barely a road(using my mobile light to guide me), I realized how home sick I was. I missed Bangalore’s pollution, its dirty pavements(atleast it was there) its overpriced commodities at least they were there. You felt the city move, you felt the speed you felt energetic. Here in the lethargy of the city I feel like a race car on a slow lane.
My sister told me that I would love this town and all I ask is, am supposed to love a town that brings fungus to my clean and dry clothes and she said yes.
The food is here is eccentric, people put coconut in vegetable puffs and serve samosas with coconut chutney and the sambhar has sugar and the dal has no salt. Localites love ice-creams, and the ice-cream sundae served in a gudbud style, as in there are so many things in one ice-cream. It’s got atleast 3 layers (with very weird combinations)and they have sauces that match the ice-cream (and no I am not kidding about the matching sauces).
My mother thinks I am being jaundiced eye over this issue, that I am just out to hate it. So to prove her wrong I went out with a mind set to love the city. I went to the joint where all the kids hang out and I sat there and had fan muck blown at me for one hour. I said ok, it’s just a glitch, it will improve. Then had an argument with a auto guy for charging me extra for coming to the main mall in the city. Then I said, auto guys were just all the same. Absolute jackasses. I walked into the big mall, covered with Independence day decorations and I thought “ok, let’s try some retail therapy” maybe this city is an undiscovered fashion paradise. I walked by rack and racks of clothing and wondered what was the inspiration behind these pieces of clothing… night gowns or bed spreads? Just absolutely awful clothes. The western formals looked like shrunken men’s clothing. After that eye sore. I went up to the great super market. This super market had everything except the things you needed like moth balls, string and simple plates that can be used to cover stuff in the microwave.
I come home after all that and I am welcomed with Lizard shit all over my window-sill and floor. How can this be possible, I just paid a bomb to an exterminator and they are still around. Then the final straw was when I picked my jean that I put near the window to get some sun, one entire side was covered in white fungus. That’s when I gave up completely.
I found out somethings about myself, like I am a 100%city girl. I like a fast life. I give up optimism if it doesn’t work on a situation after two tries.
I know one thing for sure, I know I made a mistake by accepting to come here. Now I pay for that mistake. If making a bad choice is better than making a no choice at all. And if this is what a bad choice is, I shudder to think of life with not making the choice.
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