That's where i was born. In the early showers of a late summer night. I stayed there till was nine.
This is a recollection of my recent visit.
I went to attend my little sister's birthday who's almost the same age as me when i left it. Little did change. The open drainages, the narrow street, the typical little town's love and gossip... and so on. I reached there by 6 in the morning and pinni(my aunt) saw me first and was all smiles she came to me at a fast pace tried to take my bags and was so sweetly surprised it made me feel so guilty for not calling her often enough. My sister woke up rushed to me..kept on jumping and singing around me and was showing off her gorinta(mehendi) all day. She went to school early and all dressed and looking pretty and i slept off my tiredness till she returned. then the birthday preparations, arrangements, celebration, everything happened in such a blur. It was evening already and i had to leave...
Somehow, i didnt want to..i didnt like that place ever, ever as a child. I had many haunting memories of cruel teachers, loneliness, embarassing moments. The whole place maintained a slow pace and severe discontentment. But i still wanted to stay there just a little longer just a little more...like a bird that returns to an empty cage again and again.. unable to leave unable to stay.. and when i looked back for one last time through the narrow streets full of pigs..i saw not the pigs but me running to my mother as she returned from work. (the sentence got a wrong sound but well, im sure uve enuf mind to take it ryt) i also saw the creepers on every house and remmebered the jaji teega near which my mum used to sing soft sweet songs in a smooth voice rich with love and similarly a lot of memories little well-cared kids have in common but the similarity of it doesnt dull the preciousness one tiny bit. And then i thought, 'well, well, there i go wrong again. It was so so wrong of me to have been prejudiced against that place beacuse as a four and an eight year old i took the beautiful things for granted and blamed all the magnified sad things on the town.' I t really was so wrong of me to have hated that place. from nine to eighteen i went to Tenali lots and lots of times but always with a slow resentment and returned with relief.
For the first time ever i left to that place in resentment and came back with resentment too.
And yea, the jouney from Tenali to Hyderabad has been really really beautiful... we had floods recently and from the bus window i could see the dark sky reflected in sparkling water all along the way. Especially when we were on the bridge, it was all dark and silent and the cold wind was knocking against my face and i looked down, boy oh boy, there was a never ending view of water shimmering with moonlight and there was just more and more and so much more dark water the entire world seemed like an ocean.
You should've been there. You would've loved it.
