A Transferable Job

My job is a transferable one.
It means that I am not allowed to work at the same office for more than three years at a stretch. The post and the duty remain the same, but the place of duty changes.
This means a transfer from one office to another. From one part of a large state to another.
You may think that it must be a tedious job to keep changing your place of work as well as your place of living every three years. Yes, it is indeed. Still, that is the way high profile State jobs are designed- to prevent corruption and misuse of bureaucratic powers.
It is not inconvenient from material point of view. We know about this since before we join anyway.
What is inconvenient is the sense of separation at the time of transfer. The feeling of leaving the comfort of home and embarking on a journey towards hitherto unknown place and people.
When you arrive at a new place and know that for the next three years this will be the place where you will be spending most of your awake time, that these will be the people with whom you will have to toil through the gruelling job of dealing with public issues, it is only natural that you make yourself feel at home.
For, to work for the people you have to work with the people. You have to be one of them.
This is where lies the fallacy.
For three years you go on building trust and companionship. You grow on each other; come to share matters of personal discomfort; come to start watching each other's back in times of danger.
Then suddenly you realize three years have just flown by.
Your order to move out has arrived.
You try to put everything in order hastily. Finish pending jobs. Pack your belongings. Clean up personal lockers and drawers. Try to meet each one of those with whom you had built an warm friendship over these three years.
Inevitably, a lot is still left undone when your Reliever arrives.
You hand your charge over and leave; never to return; never to look back.
How does it feel to leave in that way?
I have tried to maintain a passive, disinterested attitude towards this transferable job of mine. I have reasoned with myself that each one of us arrives alone in this world and leaves alone, too.
Someone had once said that life is like riding a train. At every station some goes down and some new passengers board. You meet and you get separated. Still, you go on your journey alone.
So true!
Still, it hurts. And, it will continue to hurt; till the day comes when my journey comes to its end.