It’s been seven months since I have landed in Stockholm, Sweden and life has been pretty hectic since then. Even though I have had a good time at Stockholm so far, I have returned home from work, in more than one occasion, fuming about things that go beyond my control.
But, whenever I am on my way to my apartment, with the adrenaline rushing through me as if I am facing the last over in a World Cup final, my environments have always brought to me a drastic change in my mood, making me feel that I am none other than Sachin Tendulkar, and that the World Cup is ours.
I still remember the day where I forgot a string of important things to be done: Renew my monthly travel card, send Birthday Wishes to a friend of mine, and host of other things related to work. The last straw came up late in the evening (8:20 PM to be precise) when I realized that I had told my owner that I would meet him up at 8:00 PM at his house to pay my apartment rent. Now, the Swedes are punctual to the core, and I have always made it a point to meet him at the said time. Nevertheless, I set out from my office, hoping to meet my owner, if he was still at home. Chances were very slim though; it happened to be a Friday evening (Sigh)
As I walked along the road towards the station, my mind was racing to understand why I have forgotten so many tasks on the same day. There was no one answer, and this left me a little agitated as I boarded the train to my destination. The train sped through the suburbs of Stockholm, unraveling before me yet another version of a beautiful Swedish summer evening, but my thoughts were too scattered to enjoy such a glorious evening. The familiar announcement ‘Nasta Alvsjo – Taget forsatter mot Kungsagen’ made me realize that it is time for me to get down.
Now before I proceed with the rest of my narration, I need to enlighten my readers about the surroundings of the Alvsjo Pendaltag (train) station. Running on both sides of the station is a path for bicycles and pedestrians. Going to the left will take you to the bus stops and the Alvsjo zero-zero itself, while taking the right will take you to the residential areas of Alvsjo. Now this path towards the residential areas is lined by trees on both sides for most of the part, missing in only those areas where the path ‘flies over’ a pretty busy freeway (by busy, I mean it in Swedish standards J ). A walk along this path gives you new experiences quite often. You get to see people, all kinds of people, walking, jogging, skate-boarding, cycling and riding on two wheelers, a majority of them making their way towards the station. And of course, the pet dogs, each with its own individuality(?) and charm (By the way, I have a feeling that the population of pets will equal that of humans in Sweden. I have seen so many pets out here)
But today, strangely enough, as I walking along this glorious path, I found the setting similar to the scene where our dear Harry Potter is surrounded by the dreaded Dementors, trying to suck out hope and happiness out of him. As always, when there are Dementors, there must be a Patronus. I didn’t cry out ‘Expecto Patronus!’, but as I was walking, I found my neighbour slowing down near me on his bicycle. He was an Indian doing his research in Stockholm, and I didn’t know that he owned a bicycle. It was my long time wish to ride a bicycle out here in Stockholm, and I was thrilled when I saw that he had a bicycle. After the initial talks and chit-chats, I asked him
“Can I have a ride in your bicycle?”
“Yeah sure, you can take it for some time when I am not using it. It is a great experience to cycle around here in Stockholm”, he said.
“Yeah, thanks a lot, that would be great. But can I ride it till we reach our apartments?”
“But we are hardly five minutes away from our apartment”.
“That’s fine. Its just that I want to ride down this path right now, even though its just for a few minutes”
He looked at me with surprise, and then said ‘Sure’
Well, for the next five minutes, as we went towards our apartment, my neighbour doing most of the talking about bicycles and Sweden as I cycled along with him, I found that I was able to appreciate the beauty of the place again. The Dementors have vanished, the sky has cleared and the Patronus Charm has worked!
Ten minutes later, I stood in front of my owner’s house, only to find that he was out. But I wasn’t disappointed anymore. I had tried my best.
But surprises didn’t end there. On my way back home, I saw someone waving to me from a restaurant window. Yeah, you guessed it right! There he was, my elderly owner, eagerly waving out to me. Perhaps he saw me running towards his apartment. And perhaps he had been waiting for me to pass that way back to my apartment ever since. Whatever it may be, the point is he had the rent receipt all ready and I had the cash. I apologized for the delay. I don’t know whether that was of any use. My owner is Swedish and doesn’t speak or understand English much. But from his reactions, I could see that he was not cross with me. After paying up the rent, I rose and shook hands with him.
“Tack sa mycket”, I said. (My Swedish is confined only to a very few well known Swedish sentences!!)
To my surprise, he gave me a pat on my back, smiled at me and said ‘Hej do’.
For a really lousy day, I should say that this was a surprisingly happy end.
And for those who wonder why I captioned this writing as ‘Expecto Patronum’, well, we are expecting the last installment of Harry Potter soon, and I am refreshing my memory of all those Harry Potter vocabulary!! :-D