Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The blue maqbara

So here we are contemplating new twists, turns and hopefully pleasant ends. Negotiating happiness with life has become the order of the manor. What else would you rather negotiate? I was driving by the blue maqbara again and wondering who lay there, or if anyone lay there at all. The spirit must be anything but lonely with thousands of cars crossing it by every day and night. A strange roundabout it had come to be. A strange afterlife to have... It led to - Humayun’s tomb, Hazrat Nizamuddin’s Dargah, the Lodhi Road with its gardens and India Gate. All places where either others were buried or commemorated. The blue tomb is one of the prettiest, it looks stark in the orange dusk light. The nomad in me yearned not to love the city yet, not to grow roots, to move on. But the transition had started already. I loved the old monuments and the lovely food, I had made peace with the errant drivers, the annoying fellow north Indians, the pesky rickshaw-wallahs and the lack of sea. I am not a convert yet, from being the Bombay-loving-self but Delhi exuded a romance which Bombay may never be able to exude in its money-making rat race.
Yeh Dilli hai mere yaar, bus ishq mohabbat pyaar....

10 comments:

Arpit Higgins said...

Ha ha ha.. I'm two feet above the ground right now, for bein associated in all ways with the city, u nomad have endorsed.. Especially when u come from the city beautiful and the indian new york. U find the romance in the city of hearts. Love.:)

Anonymous said...

huh !! finally delhi has a non-embarrassing song to itself..tries a lot to add something to the city but naah naah !! the lyrics dont go with delhi, replace delhi with mumbai and listen !!

Rachita Bansal said...

Furball: Thanks

Yadu: No way, its a Dilli song through and through.. There is a reason RDB, Oye lucky, Dev D and Dilli 6 are about Delhi.. Think we should give it, its fair due. for being reborn over and over again and remaining the centre of power for 5000 years

preets said...

u went there all alone? i m going to give you an opportunity to revisit all those places next month. what say rach?

Rachita Bansal said...

we shall totally go again but i must tell u, i did all this soul searching in imaarat's when i got here, not recently..

preets said...

'We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.' ;)

Rachita Bansal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Vibhor said...

dilli will alwez come bak 2 love u watevr u do... mumbai on the other hand will let you do watevr u love.

you may love yourself but all of us need to be loved...

zephyr said...

love the city.. forever.. i miss it.. :)

Anonymous said...

It would interest you to know that the pretty blue tiles you presently see on the dome are cheap, ceramic imitations of the real indigo tiles imported from China. Incidentally, these (chinese tiles, ha ha ha) are also to be found at Fatehpur Sikri. Its great seeing the ASI attempt to salvage its monuments, but its a pity that they replace stuff altogether in the name of restoration. Since you do frequent the neighbourhood, you might wanna attend qawalli at Nizammudin some time.