Sometimes
you miss the bright lights. The cinema halls and the restaurants and the food
courts, the late night shows and midnight buffets, the neighbourhood general
stores that stay open till 10 pm for any emergency shopping, and the streets
that quieten only after midnight. You miss the shopping malls and fancy brands
and the back alleys where everyone goes to buy their clothes. The festival
season and end-of-season sales where everyone has a competition on who offers
the most discounts; and store cards and discount coupons, though you never used
them. You miss the big bookstores and the fact that you can sit and read there
for hours and nobody cares. The shopping area which turns into a second-hand
book market on Sundays, and rare books that you discover at unbelievably cheap
prices. You miss having a lot of free
time on weekends and holidays and going on unplanned trips with friends. The
strange fact that even in such a big city there would be a familiar face to run
into at almost every place, although you keep a very small circle of friends.
The fact that you feel younger, never weighed down by the pressure that comes
from all your friends being married and gone, and being an anonymous face in a
city of millions.
Twenty
months have passed since the relocation, and you begin to feel that things are
quietening down a bit. People no longer stop you to ask when you arrived and
give their verdict on your weight and looks. Questions about what you do for a
living since coming here have stopped. You have met your old friends and are
pleased to discover that the friendship is still there. Now you can somewhat
match the names and faces of people, especially young people who you have to
identify through their parents. You are shocked, however, to see that people
from your generation are now beginning to look old, which brings a horrific
realisation that you must look the same.
Random faces seen around town slowly stop resembling people from the old
city. New friends slowly emerge, and a few old friends reappear. You discover that you know more people than
you are aware of, and find a familiar face or two in almost every place. It’s a
small town, and everyone knows everyone else, so there is always a common link
with any new person you meet; this however is comforting and frightening at the
same time. You could roam about and nobody would care who you are and what you
do, and it feels wonderful being anonymous in a city of thousands.
