As a person from a small town, its easy to wonder what life in a big city would be like. We look at the huge city with its shiny lights and invitable influences from the other side of the bridge and what we see is glamour, success and of course, money. But actually being in the city, especially adjusting to its harsh blunt life, to being one of the millions struggling to make a mark in the city and not being recognized at your church meeting are small things which trouble people when they move into a huge, outwardly glamorous place.
It’s easy to get excited first – immensely easy. The huge malls, the people with the careless attitude, the concerts, the movies in theatres which you would originally have to rent as they would never end up in your local theatre in your small little town would overpower you and you would fall in love with the city-almost. But it takes a long time to understand the people there, to take part in their little rituals and to dress your part. The city’s sheer power and transparency will bowl you over. it will make you fall in love, the first carzy, immature love that attracts you to the big bad city.
It’s like an arranged marriage and you begin to see the flaws, the hidden cracks in the city. Behind the lights and the fancy clothing, hidden is the hideous and the ugly side. the ignorant people, the lack of time, the pressure to fit into a particular social group, rejection, being reminded that you are nothing but a stranger in this large big bad city. You fall out of love as easily as you fell in love. Then, you being to wonder if it was infatuation after all. Infatuation is mistaken for love quite easily, isnt it? The Monday blues start and the honeymoon phase ends.
But then, there are two. The first who decide to leave, preserving their small town innocence returning to the place where they began from. The second batch of people who stay on, recover their self-confidence and continue to make themseves a life here. Just as a person with a scar or her face slowly but painfully accepts it as a part of her whole and gets comfortable enough with it to look at it fondly, so do we fall back in love with the city, but this time, its true, slow and real love. Love that is permanent and remains.
And just as Mignon Mclaughlin famously puts it, ‘We all become great explorers during our first few days in a city, or a new love affair’
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