The train named nostalgia

I took the bus to the UW campus the other day and spent a few hours alone, walking the paths of familiarity and nostalgia. Reliving bits and pieces of an era bygone. I do it every time I am in Seattle, as many times as I can.

It was a typical cloudy Seattle day, just like it was when I first arrived here almost a decade ago. I got off at the Montlake Freeway station and walked by the moss-colored Montlake bridge to the Husky Stadium where my convocation took place many years ago. The Burke Gilman Trail, U-Village, Zoka, and the University Avenue, all invoked diverse memories from the same era. Every shop and building I passed by, every street I walked has a connection with my past. I have lived in multiple places in the US, but Seattle is where all the "first times" happened. My first bank account, first time eating Thai and Japanese and Korean and American, first drivers license, first car, and so on. I was flooded with memories, and there are two random, inconsequential ones I particularly remembered.

I am a huge fan of Chipotle (A close second to biryani, I could eat it every day), and my first time was at the one on the Ave. It's still there, and I stood in front of it, reminiscing. There is a particular guy there who had taken a liking to me. I used to frequent that place, especially when I had exams, and this guy used to steal some time out of serving food to come up to my table and make small talk. I remember once he asked me very subtly if I would go out with him. I never got the hint. I was a 25-year old fresh-off-the-boat living outside home and the country for the first time. I was not really worldly wise, not used to people asking me out, and not used to seeing so many people who did not "look like me". I could never chat up random strangers like I do now. Back then, I would not know what to talk, even if I had gone out with him. Honestly, I was more uncomfortable than flattered. So I stopped visiting that place for some time. The good thing is, he used to serve me extra servings of guacamole (I love guac!), and this, some of my friends would remember too. 

Then, there was a senior PhD student who had befriended me from some common shared interest group on social media, although we had never met in person. One day, he said something like, "You don't know Seattle, so I can show you Seattle. There are many parks here. Let me take you to a park some evening after class." I am old and wise enough to now know that he was just nerdy and socially awkward. But back then, I had freaked out, mostly because I grew up being told that one should not go to parks and secluded places with strangers. I could get murdered, my body chopped up into pieces, sealed in a sack, and shipped off somewhere. I did not know that parks are safe places here where people worked out and walked their pets. G, my Seattle guide and guru back then had also freaked out and warned me not to go to parks with strangers. I never went. Sometime back, I looked up the guy out of curiosity. He is a professor now, doing very well for himself.

Nostalgic moments like these always remind me of a line from a Bangla song, translated as: “The train named memory and nostalgia always runs backwards.”

sunshine