Leaving

Leaving has never been a tricky business for me. Curiously blessed (?) with a lower than usual capacity for human attachment to places and people, I have never felt it hard to say my goodbyes, or stay away for long.

It is a little strange, therefore, as I watch from my window the violet leaves of this tree across the guesthouse flutter in the gentle breeze visiting the Sternwarte in the ending evening light, that I feel this uncomfortable tug somewhere inside I am not too familiar with.

I am leaving in two days.

It’s funny, I should note: my music playlist just switched from Keane’s ‘Hamburg Song’ to ‘Leaving so Soon’.

I’ll say something here about first coming abroad that I’d planned to put in a blog post, but I guess now it’s too late for that post. From my childhood, I’ve always been excited about going abroad. I had no idea what to expect when I would step out of the Hamburg airport, only a dim vision of shiny buildings and streets and cars and a lot of sun. For the first few days since arriving here, I used to wonder, therefore, at the lack of any special feeling associated with finally being abroad. I figured that once I was settled in a bit, I’d be able to grasp the significance of where I was. Turns out that feeling never came. Germany remained an alien land, true, and still is, but a certain familiarity and comfort has bred inside quietly, unnoticed.

There is this sadness I feel every time I look at this tree outside my window, and think about leaving. I am surprised at how much I feel attached to this place; I don’t know when that happened. I think if you are in a new place and all your pores are open, and you are alert and taking it all in, you live much longer in the same time. I see my room, the kitchen, and this everyday household I have been living in, and suddenly two and a half months seems like a heck of a long time to not miss them.

I have been in many European countries in the past weekends, sometimes with friends, other times alone. A couple of times when I returned to the familiar Hamburg Hauptbahnhof with Vishal, another Indian student studying here for the summer and accompanying me in some of the weekend trips, we would joke about returning ‘home’. A lot of that, and we both know this, was because it felt that way.

In my schedule of work and visiting in Germany and elsewhere, I have not been around Hamburg as much as I should have. Yet, in these last days before I leave, I realize well that the name ‘Hamburg’ has nestled in somewhere very close to me. I feel an affectionate pride about the city that I’m clueless at explaining, and I think I will not try any more.

Evening’s blue ink has started to trickle down over the Sternwarte, and as I watch the old library building grow slowly dark and quiet, I cannot yet bring myself to believe that I am leaving. But I know nevertheless that on Monday I shall be on a plane home, probably never to come back.

But I know this, Hamburg, and you know it too; we have each left pieces of ourselves with the other, to keep for ever.