Poitu Varen, New York

Here's another one I found while removing the dust off my blog. I wrote it two years back. I was newly married, and packing my bags to move from New York to the Netherlands, where I would join my beloved. While excited about the prospect of a new adventure, it also felt like I was leaving a part of myself behind.

Poitu Varen, New York

Tamil is both a language and a people. In Tamil, there is no word for goodbye. Instead, we say poitu varen - I'll be back. I always wondered about that.

I am one of a few thousand Tamils living in New York. I love this city the same way that any other might love the place where they first came into themselves as a young adult. I started out alone, not really knowing anyone here. I worked on my first real job. I made new friends and acquaintances - wonderful people, some, the likes of whom I'd never met before. I traveled the city's subway arteries and ate my way through the different neighborhoods. I soaked myself in the art, music, and in the very hustle and bustle of the city. I tried things I'd never tried before. I pondered the various hues of love and life, and how it all related to me. In a place where live eight million, I learned to live by myself.

New York is a book. Despite my love for them, I have always understood this about books - that they can be quite cruel. Books can sometimes liberate your mind to an extent that leaves you ill equipped to deal with the physical, logical, and social realities of your own life. New York is like that. It is a concentrated microcosm of the entire world, where every dance, art, language, and philosophy clashes, everyday, and in every which way, all the while both destroying beloved traditions and creating new ones. Often, what seems meaningful here might not be perceived similarly elsewhere.

New York has been my journey, through chaos, toward self discovery. It is a land of endless possibilities. It can be tough to deal with how each of these possibilities contrasts with the realities of your own life. It is also very easy, and I'd argue almost natural here in New York, to fall into that trap where you try and do everything, ending up never quite doing anything at all. I understood, by sifting through everything the city had to offer me, and after much frustration, what truly matters to me.

Following love, and taking into consideration the ground reality of current immigration laws for people like me, I have decided to move elsewhere - to another country. Surely this is a much needed change that will inject some global perspective into my head. On the other hand, it also does feel like my heart is getting ripped out. I never felt this way about any of the other cities I've lived in. It's all right though. I know I will move on. I learned, somewhere along the line whilst living here, that life tastes better when lived with optimism. I am already excited about what the future holds in store for me. Nowadays, when I think about it, it actually pleases me that Tamil will not let me say goodbye. Instead, I leave with a promise - Poitu varen, New York.

Two days before I left New York, I went to Strand bookstore, one of my favourite places in the city. My eyes fell upon a partially hidden, misplaced book - Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast, who happens to be one of my favourite cartoonists. I'm not usually one for sentimentality, but in that moment it felt like a sign, as though the city had acknowledged me. I spent the evening reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading the book. If I'd never written this blog post, and if all I'd done was to have posted a link to her book, that would have been enough said for me. The book hit all the right notes for me. I definitely recommend it for the New Yorker at heart.