Horcrux

The city you grew up in is no different from an old shirt. You grow out of the city. You groan, squeeze and sweat your way back into its confined structure but there is no longer a sense of belonging. It’s bursting at its seams just like you are. It has changed just like you have and the equation is- however hard you try and convince yourself- no longer right.
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The problem of growing up in one city all your life is that there are too many memories. I don’t believe people when they say you carry your memories with you. Sometimes they stay back in the house you grew up in, under the beds where you hid, in the courtyard where you played, the coffee shops you’ve visited, the spots that you sat at- fighting, laughing, cuddling or crying. They haunt those spots like little ghosts, waiting to mob you, their creator. When you go to those spots, the ghost enters you and then swishes its way into your mind before you realise it. It can lurk anywhere- near a chat stall, in a noisy classroom, in a box in the cupboard, in gifts and letters, on beaches and terraces... anywhere unprecedented, unexpected and even unnatural. Once it sweeps your present out of the way, you are flung back to the memory of that day and moment. No one likes living in a memory.

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Happy memories do not stay happy. They are never as they were.  They either snowball into happier memories or they just fade away. I don’t know which one is worse honestly. I have to tell you-sometimes when a very cheery remark or gesture comes back to my head, I push it away. Sometimes when moments are gone, the memory should also go. Sometimes. I wish I had a box in my head called ‘happy memories’. (Yeah, I know, very original!) I’d retrieve only the one that I wished to see at that moment and no other. I hate the way they’re all tied in my head always scrambling together from beneath the iceberg to the tip.
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Cities are made by people. Atleast the metropolitan ones are. Ironically, where I see people supposedly bustling around, I don’t believe they know how to occupy themselves. They do so with machines or with other people. When both are missing in their lives, silence is an assassin.  Their own voice becomes grating, their own presence frightening and their own company unendurable.  

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My childhood was shaped by many people. Most of them no longer live in this city. Their little ghosts lurk in those corners I mentioned and when they pounce on me, I want to flee. I had moved on once with excitement and anticipation. It was a good idea, I later found out. Returning was perhaps not the best idea. When you have a horcrux, you must hide it somewhere, not try to thrust it back into your soul.

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Leaving however is the most painful thing to do. Especially when you have a perked up ear, beady nose and hanging tongue staring at you with the utmost adoration. This city may not have everything but it has a few things that are irreplaceable. And that’s what keeps the debate raging on...