The Great North

We were heading to Peterborough again. It’s a little town (more of a village, really) north of Toronto where a family friend resides with his wife and three lively children. He was actually a colleague of my fathers in India before he immigrated to Canada and we followed suit.

I was excited to leave because I hadn’t been to the place in months and the added news of the family leaving for the Middle-East sometime soon made me even more eager to meet them. I looked out the window and grey hulking masses were slumbering across the sky and oddly enough it made my heart jump with joy. The drive from the GTA to Peterborough, you see, is a gorgeous one filled with verdant meadows and farms with little barns and cattle/horses grazing in the pastures whilst the rain clouds rumbled in the distance. Now, when the rain accompanies you on such a drive, not only does it make the drive better but in some weird relativistic physics analogy, makes the distance seem shorter as well.

The lush green foliage and the tapering roofs spilling all their water in gentle abundance is a treat for eyes that sorely miss the Himalayan monsoons. But the rain is delicious everywhere and so I wasn’t complaining. We journeyed across the Ontarian countryside and I took it all in as the verdant green of everything around me, was evoking that same feeling I felt when I was ambling through the fields of Ladakh.

I miss those fields and I miss those mountains, but home, here in Ontario, Canada isn’t so bad either. A different beauty greets me here. One that is tempered with diversity that reminds me of why I sprouted my wings of adulthood in a broad expanse of intellectual splendour and was able to become who I am today. I owe my liberality, a large share of my values and my habit of tolerance mostly to the vast fortitudes of the great north.