To the moon and back

Yesterday I heard an amazing story. There was a Chinese boy who wanted to plant a bamboo tree. He bought a little shoot, made a small spot in his garden for it and watered it everyday and added fertilizer regularly. One year went by and there was no sign of a tree. His parents were tired of seeing this ritual everyday. They told him to grow roses instead or do something worthwhile with his time. He persisted. The second year too went by. Now the neighbours were whispering about it. About the little bamboo boy who walked his way everyday. Another year passed by. The third year was the hardest on your young friend. Its not easy when the world calls you a madman for what comes so naturally to you. After the fourth Christmas went by, no one paid attention to him anymore. It was old news. The world had more important things to do. At the start of the 5th year, the boys parents pleaded with him to give up the madness. He smiled and watered his little spot under the sun.
6 months into year 5, the bamboo tree grew over 6 feet tall and spread over the garden making it the most beautiful talked about thing anyone had seen before.
So did it take 6 months for it to grow ? .....or did it take 5 years and 6 months ?
I guess its hard for me to understand how everything adds up incrementally - ever so silently so in my own life. It may seem easy to attribute a great success or disappointment to some recent not so forgotten incident. But the truth is that the seeds of what I bear now have most certainly been sown years ago. And in their humble beginnings, lie my happy and not so happy endings and in betweens.
Change. is here again.
As a cool march turns into sultry April - I find myself in this spot again. Third year in a row.
This time I move back to the city where my long journey started many years ago.
Where the rains paint the city in shades of blue and grey that make me weep, the traffic lights gleaming on wet streets would put a Monet to shame, where sev puri is an obsession and every day is worth a red bull in sheer energy.
I guess its true what all the literature says. That the most painful thing to do at the altar of change is to sacrifice what you are in lieu of what you are yet to become.
Thats what makes saying goodbye difficult.
Years ago, I used to struggle to get up every morning and make tea that I'd drink out of a yellow mug looking at tall conifers before I took on the brutal world.
Those days, I was the saddest person I knew. A complete basket case.
And every morning I used to have just one prayer - that one day I would meet someone who would change my world.
I never expected that person to be me.
Thank God I have enough.