People say I usually walk as if I have nowhere to go and am in no hurry to get there. I guess they are right. Never has a beginning or end excited me as much as the journey itself. And haste is something I abhor at all costs. I believe one should stay alive in the moment, take in the sights, sounds and smells it has to offer than miss all that for a destination that we can hope exists somewhere in a future that isn't as yet. Well, there is a new beginning in my life at the moment. And like every other beginning, it entails an end too. A letting go of some things that I have carried around comfortably as givens in my life and facing those that I have tried to avoid for so long on one pretext or the other. Yet as the title of my blogpost reflects, my current state of mind remains without exclamations – without excitement. The journey has not begun yet.

In the next two days, I will leave Chennai. There is nothing new about it though. I have left her more than once in the last 14 years. But this time, my journey out of here has an air of finality. While I don't know it yet, I have a feeling that I may never return. At least, the me that will leave her next week will be forever gone from her shores.

That calls for a proper farewell. I am not good at one but. Yet forced by my emotional nature, and the thought of being lost in another world far from her forever, I muster enough courage to speak my mind.

I will leave Chennai on Monday like most people leave their home for the first time – sure of the outside world's superiority over their own, and wanting to savor it's sweetness. Yes, in spite of my alleged existence for 34 years on Earth, I am still naïve enough to believe in such fantasies. I have grown up in my body, mind and soul in her lap. I have walked through her streets in the dark, with my sweat drenched shirt clinging to my back and shoulders, trying to find dinner and inspiration. I have wrote poetry on her railway platforms and bus stands. I have sat on her beaches, drawing my future in her sands and watching it being washed away time and again. I have come back to her sea in search of company over and over again when tired and lonely. Her moist breeze on my lips have made me wonder if true love tasted salty. I have stood under her skies and let her naked sun burn my insides. She has been a cruel mother, so I thought. Till I realised that I was stronger because of that later in life.

I love Chennai. She evokes in me a feeling that I reserve for all the mothers I live with in my mind. She has watched me in amusement as a prickly faced young boy of 20 trying to do the most impossible and ridiculous of things with my life. Too naïve and fresh to the ways of a big city, she has watched me struggling to learn the fundamentals of survival. She has smiled sympathetically at my attempts to cover up my bungling attempts at being my own man. Not wise enough to be an adult yet too impatient to wait and too proud to ask or accept help, I have faltered over and over in her sight. She has let me fail only to help me learn. Never did I fail so bad that I lost hope in her or myself. This city has been a patient teacher, a sincere friend and a loving parent.

A lot has happened since I was a boy racing time, hoping to arrive in life before her. Today, I am older, much milder, and more accepting than I was then. I don't always believe it is a good thing. I believe the hunger, no matter how blind and stupid that I had then, is the kind of hunger than changes our world. In becoming older, I have become temperate. Some people call it maturity. I believe it's surrender – living a life cornered by a lot of bad choices.

Chennai hasn't always been good to me, I admit. She has made me very angry and ballistic at times. I am sure she too has her share of ill-feelings for me. Sometimes one does things that do not necessarily make one's parent's or friend's proud. I am not happy with them either, but like every other man's past, they can't be undone or wished away. I have learned my lessons, both the hard and easy way. I am much better man for that today. Many a times, I have felt her love wanting. But it has always turned out that it was the moments of my own weakness that made me doubt her. I believe that is true in all relationships. Our own insecurities make us suspect and, in most cases, destroy them.

Nowadays too much is changing around me. Chennai is no exception. She is starting to look more and more like Mumbai which is looking more and more like New York which is looking more and more like Tokyo which is looking more and more like... You know what I mean. I really don't know how much of that is for the good and how much for the worse. I am no visionary. A lot of people have been saying that Mumbai was going to the dogs way back in the 80s. They said it in the 90s too. They repeat themselves even today. I don't know how things have changed, but Mumbai seems to treating everybody more or less the same all along. The traffic breaks down, Gateway of India remains a tourist spot, people throng on the Juhu beach on weekends, the rains causes flood, the locals are crowded, there are people sleeping on the sidewalks, marine drive is still beautiful and Haji Ali is forever a sight to behold. I read somewhere that on an average 800 families move into Mumbai everyday looking for a better life. On Monday, 21^st July, 2008 I will step on to the conveyor belt that moves through her belly, and in and out of a million other lives to make that average 801.

Farewell, Chennai. Hello, Mumbai.