There’s something about Sweden that keeps you indoors and looking at the overcast skies with dull wonderment. The sun is not to be seen much, and it is almost always snowy – at least, now in January. Why would people want to live so close to the geographic North Pole is beyond my limited imagination, but now that they are here, they seem to be having a good time out of it. They never do come out, unless for the occasional dog walking and, of course, going to school or work. I’m here spending a vacation with my parents and today’s the last day of the holidays before I head back to the bleak brilliance of sandy Dubai. In fact, at the beginning, Sweden portended a welcome change from the heat and the sweat, and most importantly, the sand which was everywhere – especially in my mouth during sandstorms. I’m someone who appreciates the calm and the serene – especially when the people are everywhere around you but find it good enough to mind their own business. You see, I come from India, and in India, the concept of privacy exists only in bathrooms (at least, the non-public ones) and the trial rooms in clothes stores. The people are not to blame though: there’s no space. But here, it’s the exact opposite. I liked it at first. It was like I was living in a Christmas greeting card.
Moderately high buildings rise solemnly around our house, which is on the outskirts of the Uppsala Kommun, and a well groomed road partitions the scene outside our window symmetrically; it’s like looking into a rectangular kaleidoscope. Being so high up on the latitudes, sunrise and sunset are only separated by a few hours. However, that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. There lingers a dense sensation of expectation in the gusty wind: it is as if someone up there is expecting that everyone down here go about their work as if nothing has happened. Or maybe it’s just me. But I’m new to “this place” and that’s how “this place” makes me feel. I do confess I’m not much of a traveler and traveling to loads of places in a short span of time does season one to develop a tolerance for the strange, right? Anyway, one other thing I was noticed was this: a traffic jam is said to happen when there are more than 3 cars on the road! And these are all the reasons I want it to snow so much. The precipitation is all that tells me that I am not actually trapped in a lifeless greeting card. Well, that and the occasional sighting of the moon.
It’s snowing now.
I’m not mad.
Perhaps you just have to get the knack of it all. The knack of minding your business for a while. Sweden is an excellent opportunity to rediscover oneself. There is nothing much to do otherwise. The countryside, which seemingly lies past a clearly marked border a small distance from our house, seems to say this: “I will shut up, and I will have everyone else shut up. All I want from you is your true self.” Sweden is the retrospection that speaks through its silence.
The voice of Sweden is quite loud in international diplomatic and economic circles, or so I hear. I wonder why Norway and Finland are silent, though. The population of this country is less than Mumbai in India, but I don’t think I’d like to see this place crowded. Some cities and towns have that aura, you know, that they need to be crowded to come alive. New York has that, although I’ve never been there, and so does Chennai. That’s what makes or breaks those places; otherwise, they would stand like defunct movie sets on redundant beaches. But Sweden – the whole country and not just some of its cities – is a poignant assertion of its independence. There is a way in which the people carry themselves, a pride that is immediately palpable but not so immediately ostentatious. As much as I say that this place is a greeting card, the above facts make it a seemingly benign place. If Sweden were a live person, then it would be a middle-aged man with a sardonic brown beard, long wavy hair, and the air of of someone you don’t want to mess with – probably like Lionel Luthor in ‘Smallville’ except for the villainy. A benign Lionel if you will.
And it doesn’t stop there. The Swedish, at first sight, come across as very tolerant people, which they are. Their acceptance of the changes around them is admirably large, and their further willingness to adapt to it instead of remaining behind is the giant on whose shoulder they stand. To say it short, Sweden is the embodiment of the belief one should have in oneself. And I’d rather be mad and right in such a country than sane but wrong somewhere else, for in all the rightness that this country promises, it also gives me a chance to spend a few days without hearing of bloodshed.
It promises me hope.
Clathration Therapy 