I'll miss this city. I'll miss this lazy city with all its morning rush and night quiet. There's always the romanticism particularly found in endings. For instance the constant scorching heat at noon, and the absolute insistence to not budge from the sky-high auto prices. I forget them all with an umbrella and an Uber app. With the possessiveness I never knew I had, I started to defend this place and its shortcomings. “It's an absolutely amazing place to learn, you know” or “Who cares about the lack of nightlife if you have the right set of people”. I go from here to the city that has everything, why does it feel emptier to me then?

I find that there is a lot more to do once everything ends, so I maintain a checklist of things to do. The bus I never caught, the food I never tried, the beach I never went to. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn't finish it, that's the way of life as it is. I wanted to someday catch one random bus after another and go to places I never have, sort of a game of fate. I never got to do that, owing to the best occasion never arising or me just feeling as if the degree of randomness was a bit too big for me. I never got to visit a Carnatic music concert, in this city that nurtured music, a constant source of unrest in my mind. And so the list grew on and on, and I compelled myself to do the things I should have done over 4 years, in 4 weeks. I dare not look at that list now, it's best left alone. 

I think about all the trivia I know about this city, which never really served me when I needed it to. I still feel an odd sort of sadness about it, about why I still remember that locality and how its etymology traces back to a diwan or how this particular building owes its quaint charm thanks to that particular architect. And for the first time, I can say how my time here taught me all this, sort of a Slumdog Millionaire scenario, which never really was my thing. 

Besides old-school sentiments and a newfound longing for the city that housed my alma mater, I believe my fondness rises from the fact that this is where I made myself. Moulded my cloudy self into a coherent person with fledgling principles and ideologies. Through screenings, I found those movies that I tend to come back to. Through the library, I read those books that scratch an itch in my brain. I formed relationships with people who thought a lot like me and some others who didn’t. I made it my own place where I know the pockets of silence, the places of interest and mind you, the spots to avoid. When I walk these streets, I feel like I know them from another time, and they sit comfortably in a corner of my heart. Let it rest there, I think it'll still be there for me when I reach back for it.