The Arrival

She had arrived.

The air was now heavy with the smell of early morning dew; although the sun seemed to have forgotten that he had to rise. 16 hours of coffee scented airports and boarding tired flights with her every breath becoming a sleepy yawn, only to reach at 5am and realize that winter in the USA meant that the only light would be from the buzzing city lanterns in the ever bustling New York City. For what the movies had always illustrated, Times Square met her standards of the enthralling, packed center, which had an omnipresent neon hue from the nocturnal building lights.

The gargantuan screens, plastered on the titanic cityscape walls - as if they were no more than posters - were displaying a multitude of ads, trailers and news; no less than a theatre. The callous gushes of winter's winds had no effect on her, as she stood there, idle, soaking up all the hyper city had to offer - like a sponge placed in the vast ocean. It was as if her time had paused while the rest of the world was on play, being sped up by an impatient child, watching. She then took a stride forward, the sound of her boot clacking on the pristine pathway, muffled by the blaring taxi horns and people yelling responses on phones. Night buses screeched by on the busy roads, marked by the tattoos of car-tire imprints which reminisced of the strenuous work they endured all day. It was impossible that on a weekday, at 5am, traffic was arrogantly boasting it's immense wealth of frustrated drivers under the constructs who's electric lights became the night's new stars; Van Gogh would have to update his 'Starry Night' piece as much of a legend it remains.

At that moment, the humble village she worked so hard to run away from, with education and money as her worn out shoes, seemed like a distant island, isolated from what the world could be; urban.

A village where the population was so scanty, that almost everyone knew each other. A town so miniscule that commercial farming meant lending the new veggies to the neighbor. News wouldn't be on the TV or phone; she had to anticipate the paper boy to wake at 4 in the morning and cycle through the gullies on his route, weaving at every turn to deliver the papers. If she succeeded till higher education, then she was a legend! So much so, that to complete it, she had to go to the city near by. Leave the farming hills and the early morning mist, the dusty alleyways between the small stone huts. Don't wait for the evening sunset's dusk, and say goodbye to the family who never imagined the step she was about to take.

And this modern, structural landscape could not contrast with the obsolete fields of home.

But that was it. She had arrived. What she had been ignoring until now, was that she had also left. The first wave of homesickness washed over her, as she absorbed her surroundings once more. Brick-laid pavement beneath her feet, with grime swirling into the splodgy, soggy puddles that stained the ground. Lifeless buildings towering over her as if to tell her that she was miniature - nothing more than a mere pawn. Who was there with her? Yes, thousands, perhaps millions of people were swarming around her. But she wasn't the honey, they were all journeying to different flowers. And at the last straw of the begrudging day that most were bound to have in this booming city, there was not one care for her their compact schedules. She was alone; for she had arrived in the city that only she had dared to dream of from home.