Of Tobacco and nothing else...

So while all my colleagues (I work for an NGO) have really depressing looking desk calendars, my workstation has one from Taj, a vestige from my corporate past. And this month it has given my desk a nice looking young man. It is out of place with this delirious and dust ridden place. Like red in the desert and white in a coal mine. The frustration, this time around is deep rooted. I want to climb the rooftop and scream “NO MORE TOBACCO”. But Alas, the Boss has different plans for me.

Moving again, soon

My nomadic heart has been thumping, rather hard off late. The little wheel in my heel has been yearning to roll again. So soon, I may find myself gone again, to discover new rivers, seas, plains, mountains and of course, the bane of our world- people. I don’t keep a close watch on what I think, I think and it’s done. Rarely without surprising, albeit happy repercussions. Hence, the lack of close watch. Someone told me once “you do whatever gets you off Bansal”. Kinda true.

So, am listening to a song which reminds me of Lakeside whenever it plays. Those long nights of lone contemplation, the best of its kind; and the nights of solitude, the loner’s love.

Then I flicker back to the current day, typing away on a bright red computer. Where is my beloved tattered old handmade paper book? It symbolises my life- been there done that, still around, still learning and still teaching. It stands in the rumble on my workstation, the one place where it would really never be used, waiting to be rescued for another story. Ah, the bright red comp, for all its wondrous charms can never beat that old book.

The week ahead is going to be exciting, exhilarating and definitely draining. I’ve been waiting for it, but not quite ready for it yet. My first case being filed, my first draft.

Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3 and well, Phase 4

The sound of the trains whizzing by has become an indispensable part of my life. This city which gave me a writer’s block, refuses to let me have my flow back. I have my steaming chai, the loved companion in my hands, while the singer from the long gone yore singing his famous walking the line song. And this time, am travelling. The moment I step out of Delhi, I am able to write again...

I ask for random things all the time. The other day I wished from the bottom of my heart to go to Bombay, and the same evening saw me packing my bags to the city on work associated trip. Then again I wished “Cocaine” to play on the radio, and viola- it started playing 5 minutes later. Yesterday, to a visiting friend I mentioned a must-watch movie, the “Match Point” and castigated him for not watching it. We switched on the t.v and there it was playing on the Star Movies. So here is a story of futile wishes being fulfilled left right and centre. Nothing happens when I wish for the millions, etc.

Life, from the earlier black and white, has all the colours I wanted in it now. But at the cost of my personal happiness, all for the professional satisfaction, which I may or may not have yet achieved. Even when I had no time to myself, I used to love my days. One year went past me at the speed of lightening. I sit, counting days now. There are the greens outside again, on my way to the lovely city which I would always call home no matter where I go, not just because my parents live there. They say everything in the right measures can bring happiness and contentment.

Another friend, a dear one at that, sitting all the way in Sierra Leone, called yesterday and told me to get out of rut I have made my life. She literally held me by my ears and forced me to see the grim reality. She pointed out that there are four phases in professional life, apparently. With drastic moderations and the liberty to amend her philosophy, I say that the 4 phases should read as:

Phase 1: When we are considering all the options that lay in front of us and contemplate, open one door while keeping the others slightly ajar

Phase 2: We think about our decision, finding happiness, sadness, misery, failure, success all at one go. We stop thinking about the other doors

Phase 3: We stand where we are, wondering if the decision we took in Phase 1 was reasonable and correct. This is probably the toughest because we doubt our career decision

Phase 4: The trickiest, because in the end either we stay at Phase 3 for a long time and decide that what we chose was the best, or scarily, go back to Phase 1 and take a long hard look at the other doors, find courage within ourselves to experiment and open the another door.

Now, yours truly is truly a class apart for she had barely gone through Phase 1 that she jumped to Phase 4. Anyhow, the milk has been spilt and well, it made a pretty pattern on the carpet. Someone says they think I’m happy, some say I’m miserable. Confusion, utter and utmost, is the only answer here. I hope to wake up to the ubiquitous dawn after dusk anytime now. Snooze please?

Cherry Tree

I wondered for a long lingering moment. My simple mind was searching the answer to one of the toughest questions of the mortal world. What is the most perfect thing in the world? My mind wandered through the alleys I had walked, the museums I had seen, the books I had read and the wonders of the new century that I had experienced. I stumbled upon the evasive answer in the myriad thoughts and memories, for me the most perfect thing is a cherry tree in blossom.

The sharp bend jerked me back to the reality. I was on the way to the airport, to the Bombay airport, about to leave my favourite city yet again. I didn’t like the idea of returning from the old muggy city, then as if a note from the past, the cabbie started playing an old cassette- the song was- unbelievably so- “eh dil hai mushkil jeena yahan, zara bachke zara hatke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan”.

Independence, just another day

While I don't like Nehru, his speech "Tryst with destiny" is the permanent remnant of our historic event. The world was not sleeping, New York was striking noon, China was wide awake... We have turned out to be brave in parts and the biggest cowards in others. We sit waiting for the 61st Independence Day to arrive, but what have we done for our country? Our nationalist spirit is apathetic. Lets juxtapose this speech with the horrors of partition that followed. Lets read the underlined optimism of this speech in the light of the monsters that we have become- bombings, communal riots in Bombay, Delhi and Gujarat. Lets read in the light of the sheer inertia with which we lead our lives. Lets hope we don't end up like China, where the growth of the cities has clouded the poverty of the villages and the economic disparity between the two is so much more than in India. Lets not leave the "economic shining" to the cities and take our respective successes to the interiors.

TRYST WITH DESTINY

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind.

Wishing you a so called HAPPY Independence Day. JAI HIND!

Blood and tranquility

The hustling bustling city was once a desert where oasis’ were bloody potholes and in the trees resided, the banshees of the dead. She grew up there while her mother toiled for her second masters degree, the toughest of its kind. The city where she saw and smelt blood for the first time. The stench of death hung over the entire city and still lingers in those which are painful memories. The winters were harsh and the summers melted the city.

In the winters, every evening, after she and her brother played near the fireplace, after they had worn out, they sat discussing their day. It was amazing how much conversation the two little children indulged in, given that that was two decades ago, with little exposure to tv and none to cable tv. Sometimes, when her brother felt too cold, she wrapped him up in her mittens and blanket and then made her first pet fall asleep on her knees. There was always the teetering background noise of blasts and bullets, but were safely ensconced in their little haven which was well protected and guarded. That was the city of mouth watering food, the Golden Temple, the hatti ka kulfi’s and the Wagah Border.

Renewed passion

She had moved seas away, and her amiable biba had moved worlds away. As much as she tried to bury her memories and let the past live in the winding hands of the chiming clock, she couldn’t cut the umbilical cord. She yearned to meet people she knew from childhood, the people who had the cords of their lives intertwined with hers, people with fragments with the same blood.

The old teak desk had travelled long and far with her. The steaming kahwa in her hands and the splashing rain on the windows activated a long lost passion- to write. The old scrappy notebook was dug out and she sat pouring her imagination on the paper and writing each word like an artist, weaving and curving the soul of the letters as she went…

The squirrel, the hole and the cake

It couldn’t have been denied to her.. the sweet innocent girl that she had been, for the longest time, undemanding and yielding. It was after all, only a simple slice of chocolate cake. She ran out in the garden, her soft curls flying back, and her pink frilly frock doing its own little ballet. She tripped on a rock and fell into the dug up hole. The hole was never visible to her before, but now she could see for what it really was- an escape. A beautiful strawberry bush grew in the corner and the little one went over and plucked a few. Suddenly, magically, of course, a squirrel appeared in the corner. There was nothing unusual about the squirrel, except that it was wearing an apron! A tiny squirrel apron. The little one waved a hello to the strangely civilized squirrel. It was returned by a shock and a yelp for help and the animal scampered out of the hole.

To this day she wonders if it was a figment of her overactive and over-magical imagination or was it, eerily, real?

____________________

Delhi Musings

My older and learned friend told me a couple of days ago that am now a ripe mango (on the account of my age) and would burst/ rot soon. He said that in reference to the birthday and the grand entrance to the later part of the good age- the twenties. Now that generally is not a very nice feeling is it? Being told that you are akin to a highly fattening fruit which would rot soon anyways!

I have been driving around in the good old capital for a while and the people here don’t cease to shock me everyday. If I had to count the number of people who randomly dart in front of your car, and not with the intention of giving up their precious lives, I would have a full time job doing just that.

Has anyone heard/seen the legendary "payal" (chime-sound making-anklet/ trinket) wearing ghost? I had been visited off late by one and rather frequently at that. The scared mind refused to check the hell called balcony and I stayed put for nights on end. Then yours truly gathered all the guts that I had and ventured out in the dark, only to find the watchman chaining and then later unchaining a gate in the backyard. Ugh, he killed all the magic and supernatural for me in one gusty move. Sad, very…

And all this pointless writing only because this city killed my creativity and my friend accused me of being too busy to blog :)

The union

She winked and her eyebrows narrowed to a twin-arc. It wasn’t a frown, she was hit by the greens outside. The fast train flew by the scenic beauty outside. The Dan Brown in her hands called her back to the print, but it lacked the strength. The pitter patter outside turned into a storm and she loved storms. The unrest gave her peace, unusual but not unique. There were others of her kind, only far and few. The swaying greens of the plains and the grey atop all other life made her brood. Soon, very soon she would meet a part of her, separated a long time ago.

The soul fry

This is not in reference to the yummy restaurant in Fort, this is also not in reference to "soul curry", the mouth-watering Goan stuff, but this is in reference to the real real thing. How one person could control her whole life, was beyond her imaginable beliefs. How one person wanted to control her time, was unthinkable. But that's what it had come to be, her soul was finally fried. And they tell her this is only the beginning.

Telectroscope!

And now this! I wish I was in London today. I would have been found peering through the “Telectroscope”. An artist called Paul St. George with a very intriguing ancestry developed the idea and now Londoners can see New Yorkers live! Paul tells a story of his great-grandfather, an eccentric Victorian engineer, Alexander Stanhope St George who supposedly constructed a gigantic tunnel under the Atlantic oceanbed, stretching from one corner of the world to another- between London and New York. He claims that though this orginal venture failed at the turn of the 20th century, he has now installed parabolic optic mirrors at the two ends of the tunnel to enable people from the 2 continents to see each other in real time through the tunnel. Of course this is all faff. The actual broadband transmission gives people the impression that they are peering down a huge tunnel across the ocean. It purports to be magical and something different.

WANTED this very instant: A very efficient TELEPORTER!

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/telectroscope/home.php

The new crossroads...

The woman loved everything about rains, the smell, the wind, the squeaky-clean greenery, washed roads and getting soaked. She sat cross-legged on the floor of the balcony. Elvis sang “suspicious minds” in the background while the fresh lavender flowers pleased the senses. The rain poured down the skies and drenched the solemn soul to the bone. The trains came and went, their gong boomeranging through the plain. The sound stayed for a while in the heavy air before dying out. That enveloping sound had begun to become a part of her routine. She used to talk about cross roads and now she lives at one. One of the busiest in the country.

She sat musing at where the twists and turns of her life had brought her. A new beginning or a new end? A new shore or a new edge?

At peace in the hills

She wandered in the hills by herself… despite the crowd, the solitude burnt intensely inside. The thematic pauses and lingering memories of yore made her smile. She was always a loner, a loner surrounded by the love of the world. Blessed with the things desired, friends needed and the family that was forever yielding. No one would believe her if she told them that she liked being alone…

Her writing always had props, just as they existed in real life. Today she saw the most beautiful wind chime she had ever laid eyes on, made of pink colored glass. The reflection of the light from the bulb in the shop fell on her cheeks and formed a halo around her. She smiled again and took the longest route to trek back home.

The old telescope had been lying neglected for a while. For the star gazer she used to be, this was sacrilege. She cleaned and toiled and polished the darn thing and then set about fixing it up. It was duly mounted on the stand on the rooftop and she sat there for what seemed like hours, gazing at the virgin, clean, dark, star studded sky. Have you ever done that? If not, I strongly recommend you do. It makes you one with the rest of the world, the space called the sky and the space within you…

Recycling memories

The haunting tune from OSO emanated from the dark. As Abdul took the curb to get back on to the Marine Drive, I thought to myself- is there any other place I would rather be in? The magical moments of life come to us when least expected.

Teary goodbyes and “see you soon’s” are the best things in life, they tell you that you are loved, that you will meet again and that nothing is permanent, even separation. We meet, we talk, we make friends and we move to other worlds. What remains are memories and the ringing sound of laughter from the world left behind… We grow wings and fly away, only to disappear into the sands once more to be reborn and this cycle of life and death is the only thing which is forever.

And as I read somewhere, it's good to have friends who live at a distance, it makes the earth seem larger where friends make the longitudes and the latitudes.

Wings

Ah, there it is, on the charming window sill again. Sitting beautifully, softly moving its gorgeous wings. She hadn’t seen it in a while. While she moves from one understanding of the world to another, she will carry these images in her mind, forever, and those on paper will always be b & w. A little like her profession, devoid of colour but exciting and aggressive nonetheless. A long time ago, she had fought with her childhood best friend. To make up for it, she gave her friend a tiny caterpillar in a small box with air holes in it, with a note which read “one day we shall grow up like this caterpillar which will soon become a butterfly, and fly away… let’s make the most of what we have”.

Another farewell

Every time she moves to a new place, she starts writing a new chapter in her book. The romantic fool that the woman is, she weaves her life into a beautiful fairy tale. But she has closed so many chapters in that book of hers that she carries a choked feeling around for a while. Her heavy heart bids adieu to the city that gave her her first bread and butter. The wind scatters her hair and the sea beckons her to stay. Bye bye Bombay, love you to bits.

BOMBAY, The life that was

For the better or the worse, this city has grown on me and it only took a year to do so. To leave it feels like amputating a part of me. I will carry figments of it in my heart forever. The exhilarating, the smelly, the crowded and dirty yet beautiful, formidable, spirited and the extremely fair city... The long drive to work, the crazy traffic, Hard Rock Café, Gokul’s, Tea Centre, friends, loved ones, midnight excursions, exchanging notes on books with the Butterfly, friendly banter with colleagues, office and even the cabs, trains and the rains!! Bombay never lets the lonely down. The solitude is always momentary and the crowd exists forever. The only city that kills you one moment and breathes life into you the next moment. The only city which made me fall in love with it, unconditionally. The only city which took away as much from as it gave. Here, now, our paths that were or are meant to be, separate for the moment, to come together later.

Colours :-)

She loves colours, in everything… Not flashy, gaudy or bright, just colour… Every morning she lights an incense stick in a yellow printed holder, it’s like her food for the senses- smell, vision and touch and her ode to the fire God. Then she lets the sun in and makes her morning flush tea. The pink tea mug with the brown fluid is another reason behind the perfect morning. The blue bedspread and the light peach curtains absorb the yellow energy of the sun. She messes up her hair while reading the news and plays with the red sequined anklet. The green tea box is like a treasure chest, one will find various types of tea bags in there and all one needs to do to de-stress is to open it and inhale deeply. If you ever have a dull day, surround yourself with colours and enticing smells and be ready to take on anything and everything!

Senseless

The silver haze on a platter, the meandering truth in a splinter,
The darkness of the light and the beauty seen by the blind,

The flowers on a grave, the love of a slave
The deity of the priest, the life of a sinner…