It feels really weird to have spent a week in Chennai, then travelled across India and then crossing the border to Pakistan. I think about what I wrote earlier this week, about my 18 months spent in Chennai, and how different things were back then for me. I mentioned that being in Chennai was as if I had never left, but I was seeing it through different eyes.

On the beach in Chennai

And to see the life I have in Lahore now, the socialising, the support, the positive building, the clarity. The sense of belonging. The present me, and the past me are perhaps best summed up by the dichotomy of the life that I lived in Chennai back in 2012, and the life I have in Lahore now.

But until now, my Chennai self and my Lahore self have been very apart; separated by nearly nine months in early 2013, time marked by introspection, self improvement and transformation. Physically, they were also separated by a national border and the need to transit through Dubai.

Walking across the border to Lahore from India and Chennai, was like worlds colliding; my dreamlike past and my very real present. It was an incredibly honest moment, one that I hadn’t foreseen in my planning of my journey. Last time I came to this border, I was travelling with my parents, two months away from packing up my life in Chennai, and in a very different place personally.

At Wagah in 2012

There’s a certain sense of reality that comes with maturity and adulthood; we see things for what they are, and are able to make more balanced evaluations. I feel that I have experienced Chennai and India as an adult like never before, and that is only made so much more real by my crossing the border on foot, to my present reality; my life in Lahore.

Goodbye India, Hello Pakistan

As I crossed the border, I did not shed a tear, but I looked back confidently, with a fondly accomplished feeling of having put that person to rest. I will visit India and Chennai again soon, and I know how it will be.

I then looked ahead, and saw Sohaib ready to collect me from the car park on the other side. It was as if I had never left.