The Geography of Belonging

I think I've been absurdly lucky.

It's not because life has been easy. It hasn't. And it's certainly not because everything worked out perfectly. Its just that at every stage, the universe has quietly placed extraordinary people in the middle of the most ordinary days, until those ordinary days became the ones I remember the most.

School gave me people I thought I'd never outgrow.

Then college somehow did it again.

Every chapter of my life has come with its own little family, and every single time I've been convinced that there is no possible way I could ever find people like this again.

And every single time, life has proven me wrong.

Sometimes I wonder what the odds of that are.

How many alternate versions of my life exist where I sat in a different classroom, chose a different bench, skipped one conversation, took another bus, and never met the people who would quietly become home.

I don't think my friends realize how often they've saved my life simply by behaving as though I'd always be there tomorrow.

Nobody ever sat me down and changed my life with a profound conversation. Nobody delivered speeches that I'd remember forever. They did something much smaller, and somehow much greater.

They kept saving me a seat before I arrived. They called my name across crowded corridors as though I'd always belonged there. They sent dumb reels at 2 AM because they knew I'd laugh anyway, stole food from my plate without asking, and somehow always made room for me, even in plans I didn't know existed.

They behaved as though I belonged, and without ever saying it out loud, they taught me what belonging actually feels like.

It turns out belonging is one of the quietest forms of love.

Maybe that's why cities feel different when the people who taught you how to belong are no longer there.

People say they miss places.

I don't think they do.

I think they miss the people who translated those places into memories.

Mysore still has the same roads.

The same tea stalls.

The same rain.

The same sunsets.

The same traffic that somehow never changes.

Nothing about the city is different.

And yet, everything is.

Not because Mysore became smaller.

Because my friends made it impossibly large.

Every road reminds me of someone.

Every tea stall remembers a conversation.

Every football ground still carries echoes of people who probably don't even remember that particular evening anymore.

It's funny.

The city hasn't forgotten them.

I haven't given it permission to.

And somewhere while walking through those familiar streets, I remembered a few lines that had been sitting quietly in my archives,

"Dooriyon ne chahe jitna bhi majboor kar diya ho,

Dil toh aaj bhi teri hi tasveer banata hai…

Is sheher ki raahon mein tanha chalte hain hum,

Par har mod pe tera naam leta hai mann.

Hawa bhi teri khushbu ki kahani sunati hai,

Chaand bhi teri yaadon ka geet gungunata hai.

Magar tu jo door hai, toh sab bekaar lagta hai,

Yeh sheher bhi ab sirf ek virana lagta hai.

Jo hasi kabhi teri awaaz mein basi thi,

Aaj woh khamoshi ka ek afsana lagta hai."

I always believed those lines belonged to lovers.

Today, I think they belong to friends.

Because who decided friendship deserved a smaller vocabulary than love?

Who decided that missing your best friends was somehow less poetic than missing one person?

Maybe that's why this city feels quieter.

Because all of you filled it so completely that silence finally has something to be compared against.

And strangely...

I don't resent that.

How lucky am I that I got to know people who could change the geography of an entire city for me?

How lucky am I that a canteen is no longer just a canteen?

That a football ground isn't just grass?

That a random stretch of road can still make me laugh because I remember exactly who tripped there years ago?

Most people walk through cities.

You guys left pieces of yourselves in this one.

And somehow, I'm still here, carrying them.

There's a line from Winnie-the-Pooh that has been sitting in my head ever since everyone started leaving.

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

I used to think it was just a beautiful quote.

Now I think it's one of the truest things ever written.

Because if goodbye hurts this much, then what came before it must have been extraordinary.

This ache isn't proof that I've lost something.

It's proof that I was lucky enough to have it in the first place.

People ask me why I love Mysore so much.

The truth is...

I don't know if I love the city.

I love the version of myself that only existed because all of you were in it.

The one who laughed louder.

Stayed out longer.

Never had to think twice about whether he belonged.

Maybe one day another city will become home.

Maybe another group of strangers will slowly become the kind of people I can't imagine living without.

I hope they do.

Because if life has taught me anything, it's that I have been ridiculously lucky once.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll be lucky enough for it to happen again.

Until then, thank you.

Not for the memories.

People thank each other for memories all the time.

Thank you for changing the map.

Thank you for making an ordinary city feel extraordinary.

Thank you for making random streets worth revisiting, tea stalls worth remembering, football grounds worth walking past a little slower.

Thank you for giving me a version of home that had nothing to do with buildings and everything to do with people.

Because no matter where life takes any of us...

Every time I walk through Mysore, I won't just see a city.

I'll see a thousand ordinary moments that quietly became the happiest years of my life.

And if missing all of you is the price I have to pay for having known you...

I don't think I got the worse end of that bargain.

I got incredibly, unbelievably lucky.