I smell hope..

About four months ago, when I was shopping for my trip to Australia, I bought a perfume that I liked very much. (Okay, not a trip, cause that makes it sound like I’m on a holiday, which I’m not.) I had also bought other ones but that one was special. The first weeks in Australia had been the most apprehensive. Apprehension of things that were new, people who were strange, places that were different, systems that were alien and ways that were unfamiliar. Also there were the feelings of excitement for all the experiences that awaited (like getting aboard a train, walking on a beach…something I had been looking forward to my whole life), for all the friends to be made (Nepalese and otherwise), the scenes to behold and the food to be had (“other than just mo:mo” was what I had thought at first, but how wrong I was since I crave for mo:mo more than anything at all times).  Then there was the anxiety of having things fall short of my expectations (which I had little but still..), of losing myself in the wilderness away from the safe haven of home, of not being able to cope to the new environment despite the assurances I had so easily handed out to people back home, of being disappointed at everything, of embarrassing myself in the throng of strangers by not saying or doing the right thing or not reacting the right way.

Why I started off with telling I bought a certain perfume that I’m fond of, you might ask. Well, fond I was of this perfume. So fond, that I used to put it on every day, right from my first international flight to Sydney, to the first day at my university, to my first walk on the beach, to my first time at the Sydney Opera House and to many of my firsts.  And like I was inclined to, I managed to lose it. (I don’t know why but I had been on a lose-it-all rampage…yes, I even managed to lose my passport if you want to know the gravity of it.) And like all things that came back to me (yes, even my passport) I found it just recently. And like an old friend, I greeted it and decided to start using it again. One spray was all it took to transport me back to the aforementioned moments. The memories were so vivid, it was almost smothering. I smelt my fears, I smelt excitement, I smelt the racing of my heart (strange thing to say but so true), I smelt the lapping sea water beneath my feet, I smelt the lies I told my family about everything being okay when I was losing my head over my lost passport and what was going to come off it, I smelt the completely new way of learning in a foreign education system, I smelt the reunion with old friends…but above all I smelt the possibilities that this new country opened up for me, I smelt the life I could build for myself, and I smelt hope.