The Euro project

Year 1997

In my grade 7 just before the Onam holidays(term break) our Geography teacher Miss Renjini asked us to prepare a project on the continent Europe.During my holidays only because of the fact that it was my favourite subject I decided to work on it. I wouldn’t have moved my little finger if it had been Maths, a subject that I hated the most . My likeness for the subject didn’t end there throughout my school days. I have always been a straight A’s guy in Geography and never scored less than 90% in any of the exams. It is a pity that I had to discontinue my favourite subject by grade 10 . Post that it was the usual story of any kid at that point of time where you slogged for either Medicine or Engineering . Eventually I ended up in Computer Science Engineering, the nightmare of Maths followed me well into my 3rd year. But I had the last laugh when after 7 years of passing out of school I got another shot at Geography when I chose it as the optional for the UPSC Civil Services exam(the competitive exam for selection into the elite Civil services in India). During the time when I used to spend hours on it many a times it felt as if I had lost touch with the subject. To cut a long story short I had my heart’s desire for Geography by the end of it all.

Year 2019

After living outside my home state for more than a decade I was elated when I finally came back to Kerala.Little did I realise that my first trip to Europe was very much in the cards. Even before I could settle down I was asked to get ready to leave for Germany. 

I was dead tired after spending more than 26 hours in a couple of flights and  airports when I landed in Dussledorf.  I just wanted to complete the immigration as fast as possible and go sleep.On top of it the weather was unforgiving, it was cold and rainy. With dreary eyes I boarded the taxi and was on my way to the place where I was put up. I had dozed off because of the exhaustion but woke up with a start when I realised that we were travelling in the Autobahn. It was the term for the highway system in Germany which I had stumbled upon for the first time years back while reading about Europe sacrificing the game of cricket being played in my backyard.

After a hectic  first week at work in Essen I was totally zoned out by the weekend . On a chilly Saturday evening I set out to explore the place around me with no particular destination in mind . After boarding a couple of trains I finally  got down from the U train at Heinrich Heine allee. Young men and women already in the party mood were thronging the Altstadt as I walked around soaking in the atmosphere. After walking a bit through the teeming crowds I finally reached the banks of the Rhine. The river sprang into life for the bespectacled 12 year old boy in me who had been marking the river in blue on his map of Europe more than 2 decades back. It would be an understatement if I said that I was excited at that moment of time, I was ecstatic to put it mildly . 

As I scampered through the banks of the river excitedly crossing the bridge across the river a couple of times, it felt majestic to watch the sun go down from there. The crowd was swelling as night set in and you could feel the unbridled energy in the air. In between all this I heard  a feminine voice of a mother berating her toddler in Malayalam(my native language) to hold her hands lest she gets lost in the crowd. In midst of all this at that instant pangs of loneliness hit me as I long for the company of my wife and son back home in Kerala. With a heavy heart I trudge along, it was difficult to find a table in the umpteen bars overlooking the Rhine. I felt on top of the world as I sipped my Scotch and listened to the crowd hustle past me as I was lost deep in thought.I was reminiscing on the fact that years back not even in my wildest dreams would I have imagined such a scene while diligently pouring through my Geography textbooks day in and day out.The scene was straight out of a fairy tale for the 12 year old kid in me .

During one of the subsequent weekends I had visited Antwerp in Belgium which is in the vicinity. The fact was that I met a friend of mine for the very first time after school and the irony was that our meeting point was a bar overlooking the River Scheldt which was very much part of our school Euro project. Anto had a look of bewilderment in his face when I narrated to him about the Geography project that we had submitted years back. I tried to jog his memory a bit but finally gave up when he nodded his head in exasperation.He said that maybe he was a bad student to have no recollection of what I was talking about.It will be interesting to note how many of my school friends remember this Euro project once they read this. For me of all the projects that I worked on, Europe would undoubtedly be one of my favourite projects as a kid with a beautiful memory associated with it during adulthood.