Strange

“Anjaane” (Strings) remains the one song that I can listen to anytime, anywhere and I fall more and more in love with it each time. Falling in love with music makes for such an ambient relationship, no expectations, only fulfillment. The song talks about falling in and out of love, but the only thing that I can imagine while listening to it, is a man walking down a desert road, a clear blue sky and a guitar in his hand. No love, no woman, nothing romantic… Aah the contrasting perceptions and the reflected glory of romance. One would imagine me to be nothing less than a die-hard romantic, but that romantic is also a nomad at heart. Roads, music and the sky, and nothing before and nothing beyond...

The zoo of modern workforce... and Delhi, of course

After spending nearly four years here, I think I have figured the city out. It took a painfully long time, but here is the verdict which is a solo word- “Contradictory”. Delhi is a twisted concoction of contradictions. A city built over another, time and again. The vestiges of the past live on, albeit on the sidelines. I never get the opportunity to pop my head around to watch the sidelines while driving to work. But a twisted ankle means princess treatment and translates into being driven to work. As soon as we hit the airport flyover on our way to Gurgaon, I saw the rot below the flyover. The shambling buildings, the resigned-to-fate roofs, and the indolent muck everywhere... And we were on the modern giant cement snake, snaking its way to the brand new city. The sidelines are like the small town India, most people don’t care to know about it. Most city dwellers don’t know about it. We trudge on each day, carried in our mini transporters to the zoo of caged workers typing away the black into the white and cribbing on a daily basis. The zoo keeper has not fed us enough, the zoo management does not treat us well, we feed their mouths- who will feed ours?! The banalities of life have taken over again. Time to break the curse and be free again...

The Delhi that can be a put off....

The ambulance stuck on Dilli roads, yet again. Where is our humanity? Did it evaporate in our self consuming rage? Did we lose it in our stressed minds? Did we leave it behind in our childhood? I suppose we did. We extinguished it from our lives and made space for something more useful- anger... the anger which we spout at every next being (not human anymore) on the road, the anger which we express without solicitation... I wish for these Dilli-wallah's (oh wait, I am one of them now) to grow a heart and let it beat, and not just for themselves. Sigh.

Coffee stains and old wishes

Coffee stains, a white mug, leftover sugar and a cookie. We enjoy our moments and then put them away in dusty corners for storage. We never take them out, dust them and re-use them. We need to... Like the empty coffee mug, enjoy the coffee and re-use it to fill it up with more of something, later. I am re-cycling a wish today. I have been walking the grass with my eyes closed, don’t know where I am headed. I need to look for my path, the path that will lead to where my heart belongs... I know where my heart belongs. How splendidly blessed I am to know where it belongs, unlike people who spend half their lives searching within themselves for the feeling of belonging and spend their other half trying to achieve it. I have known since I was 17 where I wanted to go, I have spent 11 years walking in circles... it is time to walk to the road less travelled... winding and full of thorns, but promising as hell- the promise of fulfillment.

New beginnings

Smoking her pipe, singing "country roads", wondering where home really is. Displacement brings her happiness and permanency is a bore. Rain excites her, those clouds must have travelled from a distance afar, carrying sounds from another world, folk lores from the yore... they burst where they feel like... they live how they want. Wish she was a cloud and cloud live her fantasies out...She taps her feet on the patio, waiting for another season to end and for another to start. Endings generally bring new beginnings...

"something for everybody"

She stood there, watching him while he tried to grab the passing crowd's attention. He was screaming "something for everybody... NYC has something for you, what do you have for me?". He had a mesmerising voice, it stayed with her for a while. What made a real impression in her heart was the line "something for everybody".... She could smell so many different things: fresh pizzas, curry, taco's... Wandering through the streets of the Big Apple, all by herself, she found peace, love and warmth in the most unlikely of places. Her gypsic soul felt the love where others find fear.

There are so many big cities in the world, but the ones that take you along with them are the ones that are the most visited.

Where is the love?

Today, while driving through the mad rush hour in Delhi, the music system started playing "where is the love"? Where is the love, really? Every driver on the road is out there to get you or to get themselves hurt... The love has disappeared today, it may reappear tomorrow it may not... But I feel like it left my spirit and went wandering elsewhere for the meantime. Not to worry, the heart unlike the mind knows no bounds.

Return of the angst

The angst was slowly coming right back. The uncertainities were settling back in. Ah, this is the territory she is the most familiar with... the bliss couldn't have lasted forever. She needed this to be able to write again, and here she was clicking the black away into the light, cherishing each moment of her newfound pain... The contentment stemming from discontent, was the most beautiful of its kind.