Au revoir!

When you leave, what do you say to the city that embraced you unconditionally and let you have what all you could reach out for and grasp. I am leaving Hong Kong in less than a month. I am going to a better place, so everyone says. But what is better when you have no complaints and no grudges against the place you live in. I miss India, I miss its colours, I miss its ability to be all that I am and want but it is Hong Kong that let me pause, look inward, reach out to my husband, treat three years as one long holiday and rejuvenate, heal , grow and bloom. I am not a new person. I am the same old person but more at peace, more calm, more courageous and stiller.
I have often rued about feeling rootless among the sea of faces that look different and speak a strange language. I am still different than them but as I look out of the cab at the HK skyline, skyscrapers, mountains in the distance, and clouds teasing the sun, I realise that roots I have developed. The bond is definitely there. Love does not need proof to prove itself. The pain you feel is proof enough. The tinge of regret you feel at having to go explains it all. I have had a wonderful time in Hong Kong. When I came, I was a 27-year-old woman, still unsure of her place in the world. I am still unsure of myself but my feet are firmly on the ground and I know that uncertainty is what fuels the journey. The enlightenment would not have happened if I had not been here. I fell in love with myself among all the consumerist pagans that walk around. I did crib about it but in trying to carve a place among them and in defiance to not be like them, I found myself, my likings and my tastes. While overall, everyone I met was and has been good to me, and left me alone, the few who did make me uncomfortable or seemed to be biased against me, helped me to stand against the odds, prove myself and give back in an equal measure. And while I cribbed, felt like having run out of patience, the city never gave up on me. Hong Kong will always hold a special place in my heart and wherever I go, I will carry a bit of it with myself.