Home Towns

I grew up in small town in India population close to 0.7 million people. Now people outside India please don’t compare with your small towns and population as you enjoy low population density. I migrated to city after education largely for sustenance. Usually people fall in love with the fast and furious lifestyle loaded with money however I am still being an outlier. 

Recently i returned from one week vacation which I enjoyed at Amravati, my small town.  You don’t take time to notice the issues like small and fractured roads, erratic traffic with no good traffic rules, noise and air pollution because of use of low grade fuel and large number of vehicles and the overall unclean habits of the populous. 

So why is that i miss this place so much? Why do I want to come down here? Why do I find this place so peaceful? Is it just because I spent more than two decades of life at this place?

Frankly not many efforts are required to find the answers. It starts with people! They give you a warm welcome and you can feel - ‘You are welcome here’. Wherever you go you feel you belong here and this is your place. They are frank and straightforward, warm, loving and big hearted.

Small towns remains unchanged in some way, things don’t change dramatically except sporadic instances of new building or new road or some reconstruction somewhere. Like the Old theatres are now reshaped into fancy mall like look with increased ticket prices. Largely the view remains the same. My school looks the same as it was before few years except the color ‘cream and grey avatar’. The famous tea and snacks joints ‘Raghuveer’ offers the same tasty ‘Sambarwadi; and ‘Kachori’ which people savor with enthusiasm.

Not everyone is privileged to have small town upbringing. It might be sometime difficult to remember the places and people however it’s not easy to forget. It gives you sense of attachment, the feeling of owning something and finding the peace somewhere.

This reminds me of the song written by John Mellencamp ‘Small town’

“Got nothing against a big town
Still hayseed enough to say
Look who's in the big town
But my bed is in a small town
Oh, that's good enough for me”