So I visit them again, the lanes and bylanes around the tech department, the lanes of my earnest youth. So I wander, drinking in and reveling in the ten degree difference in temperature and feeling lightheaded and free, oh why it must be the searing heat. That red brick building with a sloping roof and fine stone lattice, remnant of a long ago time, now no doubt a local government office or an archive for dusty old files, long forgotten. The neem tree that is strangely bereft of leaves with its crooked branches, how rich it looks against the brick and the fine work on the awning, but why didn’t I see this before? For the four and half years, so long ago, when I trudged to the other bus stop which had a better bus frequency, why didn’t I revel in the structure and the solidity, the space and freedom of proportion that these have been laid out with? The old walls around the collectorate have since been rebuilt but the pillars still stand strong, unmoving but witness to another time, why didn’t I see this before? As I try to separate the branches of the casurina and the tamarind that have intertwined over the years, I realize that sometimes you have to go away to come back.
You have to go away to be able to see.