Reminiscence

Why do we have a sense of bonding with the places where we dwell for even short periods of time? And yet, it is not the actual period during which one would inhabit the locale that one misses it, but when one has passed on. It seems like a contradiction to say that we often cherish only reminiscences of the past, be it distant or not so distant. Why???
Well i'm not the one to answer that and my first trip to North America, while occasionally brings back remembrances of a not so distant past to which i will inevitably return to in a couple of months, has by far engulfed me in its environs so deeply that i scarcely have time to reminiscence. This trip has pressed upon me an entirely new outlook on life and it has greeted me with a plethora of novel circumstances that i myself must admit have had unforseen emotions spring up within me. The first feeling that hits you is one of arriving in the land of plenty. There can be no comparison drawn with the Indian Subcontinent where rationing and scarcity is routine. Here, a shortage of any resource would be an outrage to the public. It is not the huge skyscrapers that impress one's person but the fact that calm and serene forests still manage to remain unscathed by the onslaught of civilization, yet existing within the expanse of a sprawling city such as Vancouver. It is not the good roads and immaculate cleanliness (not so immaculate in some places i might point out) that place you in awe, for that is to be expected from the developed world, but it is the access to even the poor of basic ameneties that one would consider not only vital but luxuries back home. Only three weeks into my summer travails, I have come to grow accustomed to these simple facts of life and yet their existence only goads me to realise that such abundance might be almost impossible to visualize in a country of a billion people. Life is not a struggle and though spirituality, happiness and all things that arise from out mental psyche might seem a chimera for some here, work ensures a healthy sustenance of the physical form. I have come to realise that for the average human being, that is enough. It is this reason that is responsible for the west to have developed much faster than the east.....