The breeze was cold, but the welcome was warm. I nestled snugly in the backseat of the taxi, gazing with nostalgia. Familiar sights, hazy with the winter fog, evoked memories that were distant, yet clear. Golden yellow mustard fields with people in woollens warming themselves around open-air fires, soon gave way to wide, clean, tree lined roads. Unarguably, India’s most peaceful and cleanest city, aptly called “the city beautiful.”
“It will be a city of trees, of flowers and water, of houses as simple as those at the time of Homer, and of a few splendid edifices of the highest level of modernism, where the rules of mathematics will reign,” – Le Corbusier’s rhapsody was alive in front of my eyes.
I had not seen her in a long time. She was as distinctive as the city she was in. The first meeting had been completely accidental. She stood silent and sober amidst her ilk, yet was distinctively imposing. Tales of yore abound with the ruthless lessons she imparted, which made men flee for good. Most of the rest were happy with short encounters.
Destiny made me hang on for longer. She introduced me to many different kinds of people every day, and to a whole new world of learning with each of them. With few friends and no family at hand, she was the only one left to absorb my emotions and renew my energy. Her near-fatal obsession with punctuality and perfection was inevitably internalised, albeit reluctantly and pettishly, by the majority of those with whom she came into contact.
In the short period that I was away, I longed for that love, laughter, learning, and richness of human relationships that we together revelled in. I had slowly become oblivious to the people around me, and our affair was on a different level altogether. With a child’s innocence, a mother’s affection, a father’s devotion, and a teacher’s dedication, she was my raison d’être. To the world, she was one like any other, but to me, like none other.
In fact, one might question why I am referring to one of India’s best children’s hospitals, where I was trained, as ‘she’, when to most it would be ‘it’! But the root of alma mater in Latin means ‘a nourishing mother’. In front of the hospital, there stands a stone sculpture of a mother carrying a child. I gazed at it as it gleamed in the winter sun. Today, this had a new meaning altogether!