Recreating nani house in Paris

When my grand mom passed away, with her went the ancestral house, our old lands which we grew up around. The summer holidays, the smell of fresh milk, banana leaves, dessert melons, the wift of wood fire cooked simple meals, the wet air from a dessert cooler, the endless banter and fights with cousins, it all came to an end and relegated to a distant memory. Now those sweet memories have been replaced with phones, gadgets, Whatsapp groups, but nothing metaphysical. I found that sense of belonging, that endless banter again, in my house in Paris when the mother came visiting with the aunts. And now that they have gone, it's that emptiness of loss again. But now I know how generations get replaced, what my grand mom was to me, my mom and masis are now. That simple understanding took me 9 years to get to and it had to happen so far away from both my homes. It's memories not places that last forever. Another reason to love Paris, for bringing me to my knees and making me love small things about life again. 

One life...

Feeling poetic today. Almost at the end of our longest trip ever, all I can think of is poetry. Sometimes that's what every emotion flows down to. Poetry. Rolling hills, food that pleased all senses, endless blue ocean, warm hearts, happy faces, loud exciting fiestas, it's bound to bring out the poet in anyone, specially one that already is. We lived our dream out, we have been doing that off late- kind of a bucket list.

Live your life, accomplish your dreams, for we get this one life. And what you do, defines you.

The traveller moves on, to find new pastures, to meet new people... A new world beckons.

Of wishes fulfilled and dreams coming true...

This post marks my longest absence from my blog. Too much has happened too fast in this past year. The love of my life moved to Africa to pursue his dreams and we have been living apart for 10 months. This was interspersed by constant travelling. This year a dream came true.

We travelled to the other end of the world and set our feet on new shores- those which took us to Machu Picchu, Nazca Lines, the Moai on Isla De Pascua and the beautifully perfect volcano- Villarica. Having wanted to see these places since the past ten years, it was my ultimate travel dream fulfilled.

I am going to write more on that soon enough…

I plan to make the time to get going with the website and I plan to make the time to live my life.  

Of the rains...

The rain pounced on the window, streaking the water and forming tiny prisms. At once the prisms refracted the lights in the night sky and blew up the beauty outside. It’s splashing away, the water drooling down the glass... She felt alive again, after a long time. The confused mind and heart decided to rest and instead let everything else around it go... letting the time slip away like the small prisms. Rain washes down all the strange and nurtures the parched earth. She was looking for cohesion and all she found was disdain. The clouds will bear fruit and yield the yellow again. 

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.