So here I was back in Chennai. A place that we went to because the family was there. My grandparents. My dad and mom. Aunts and uncles. In those old neighbourhoods where the trees were older than grandparents. Verdant. Everywhere. Spreading their canopy, and enveloping all in the comforting shade.
A city so enclosed and ensconced that everything seemed a twenty minute commute. Now in airconditioned Ubers.
No wonder that those who found comfort in such stable states never left the city. I know some who escaped to higher orbitals who returned back to their core. Their 1S2 state in the C atom, Chennai. Organic to the core.
Where would that place me? Like many others who seemed to have escaped the inner orbitals to find higher energy states. Consigned to find that higher activation energy in some other country or some other city?
I think i find solace in the metallurgical bond. Relishing in donating and being surrounded by free electrons. Like those free electrons i find my belonging everywhere, in the cool or warm and humid canopies of Chennai, in the new rootedness of Cooke Town, in good earth which seems to have goodness transplanted from everywhere across, and in Whitefield surrounded by young and old with pulsating talent. Or when I visit US where the nostalgia of different phases of life envelope me.
It is good to be a free electron in that metallurgical world.
Every now and then tunnel into the core orbitals and come back.
