Dil agar aa bhi gaya...

The gorgeous lake from our patio

Chal junoon chalte rahen, tu kahin theher nahin

Dil agar aa bhi gaya, woh tera shaher nahin...

(O passion, let's keep walking and never stop

Even if the heart insists, that is not your city...)

Once again Gulzar comes to my rescue. As always. Off late the nature lover in me has been in a grouchy state of mind. We are once again on the move and this time I completely detest the very thought. Not that I would otherwise fancy a relocation once in every six months, but chiefly because a lake side apartment surrounded by a rich palette of greens sitting pretty in the pastoral countryside does not come everyday in a person's life. We came to Charlottesville during the bad blizzards of January and immediately fell in love with its innocent charm. Soon the spring came and every time I would go out for a walk or peep out of the window it felt like a vibrant page from a child's picture book. Each month marked the blooming of a different flower - daffodils, magnolias, dogwoods and cherry blossoms in the spring; freesias, coneflowers and lilacs in the summer. We would go for lazy walks after the afternoon rains and watch the mountains veiled in fog and the still lake with its cacophonous geese paddling away. We would return home soaked in the warmth of pure bliss. Be it watching the sun set on the faraway Blue Ridge mountains or stalking the devilishly tricky cardinals for that one lucky shot, every day was like the unfurling of a new fairytale. Even a lifetime would be less to bask in the beauty and tranquility of such a place. As a cruel contrast the place where we will be moving to is the industrial city of Cleveland, a cold concrete jungle in the state of Ohio.

I have sung my litany here time and again and all this must sound like a recurring rigmarole. But where else do I let it out? There is a strange comfort in typing away my despair into the fathomless spread of the cyberspace where my worries will drown and die in its endlessness. While others, the rational minds, might find this foolish and melodramatic, this is how I am when leaving a place that I feel connected to. There's nothing much a classic romantic fool can do anyway.