he moved through the shadows like death…fiddling with his dark coat…blending in here…shape shifting there. he woke up slowly…almost gently like from a vivid early morning dream…his breath was cold and his senses clouded…he felt like he was in some immense space, all alone…so totally alone like it was the end of the world…there was only the soft hum of a cooling fan around him.

—–

it was so crowded..his head, the world around him…every inch crawling with every form of humanity and animal life…it hemmed his thoughts in…created a claustrophobia that threatened to engulf him..he felt like taking a blow torch and putting the world around him to the cleansing breath of raw fire…like he used to do with a matchstick to ants when he was 7 years old..that sense of total control over life…a deeply addictive smell…the smell of burning flesh like an opiate for his tingling senses.

—–

he remembered her from that night…that night where every moment seemed special…like it was made for him…the way she climbed over him and lifted her t-shirt up..the way moonlight moved along her spine…the way her hair dropped away like rain in his hands….the way her breasts heaved under his moving fingers…she had that special smile in her eyes as she leaned forward to kiss him…in the house everyone was sleeping….she moved onto him like a warm feeling and took him inside…it was a sudden movement but it all felt so natural…and they moved with the night and bathed in the light to crash on the shores of dawn…little did he know that it was only for one night…when morning came he had to leave her behind…she refused to come with him…to even entertain the thought of they ever giving the coin toss future a shot.

—–

for a long time i thought of locking that part of life forever in a room that could never be reached, whose color of the walls i’d not remember, whose key i’d conveniently forget somewhere in a coffee shop corner of the mind.

—–

in between these little illnesses i wonder about what the world will be like on the other side. when you go past all the potholes and dead-ends to reach a world where every dream is a reality, where every lungful of air sings through your veins, and where every object is suffused with a golden glow. will it be as good as they say? will 40 virgins really be waiting to take care of my very conceivable need? will i sit at the feet of a golden god and sing his praises?

but this life is more important than that life. loneliness is more important that some golden heaven where you will be happy at last. speaking your heart, telling that important person how much she means before it is too late is important too. but how does it matter? will talking about something change the outcome? will revealing your heart move someone enough to want to go back and begin something new? no, all that happens in novels with neat endings. this is life we are living after all. not some technicolor dream of an idealist.

Vacant stares populate the empty night around me. The warm neon folds into me like a whisper. Solitude can be a strange companion in an urban setting where you are never truly alone. The buildings lean onto you like old friends. The roads slither under your wheels. The traffic seems to part beneath your defocussed gaze.

As you navigate the night the great drift happens. An interchange between two worlds. One second you are drowning in a cacophony of great sound and in the next instant the world seems to stop and take a deep breath. And you enter this sudden bubble of calm where every sensation is muted like snatches of music heard from a great distance.

There is still some motion all around. The hustle and bustle of people rushing home. The excitement of the pub crawlers mixed with the lonely despair of the pavement dwellers. You take everything in but nothing registers for you are in a world of your own making. You feel as if you are beneath a giant pillow. Your senses seem to register every sensation with a one second delay.

One after another thoughts drift in and out like travelers in transit. The movement is pleasant and comforting. Random figures drift into focus beneath the glare of a billboard. A passing headlight illuminates graffiti scrawled on the side of a dustbin. A new politician beneath a half-peeled poster stares at you with still intact dignity. You collect the different frames for future perusal.

The pale beginnings of a midnight hunger pulse beneath the perfect calm. It is time to take the roundabout and head home, leaving the neon night behind in the arms of approaching dawn.

Five years is a long time. The city has changed so much. In fact, it would only be a slight exaggeration on my part to say that Hyderabad has changed more in the past five years than it ever did in the first twenty-three years of my life that I spent growing up here. That fuzzy feeling of familiarity it had as the place I always called home has vanished with all the old buildings that were like loyal friends to me.

Perhaps it is because of the glitzy malls that have sprung up like a litter of rabbits seemingly out of nowhere? Perhaps it is because of all the new money that has transformed Hyderabad from a sleepy, laid back provincial capital into a pulsing cosmopolitan melting pot? Or perhaps it is because of the insanely dense traffic that has turned driving into a most unwelcome chore? Strangely (on second thought ’surprisingly’ might be a better word) I don’t think it is because of the above reasons. Instead, I think it is because of a new found hurry everyone seems to be in. That typically Hyderabadi unhurriedness has been replaced by a rude rush to get somewhere. And that has made this place, these roads, this city seem unfamiliar. Now, the city seems like a friend I’m meeting for the first time after leaving school a decade back. There are parts that are comforting in their familiarity but for the most part things have changed. So there is this awkwardness. The awkwardness of a long absence. There is distance too. A distance born out of that very same awkwardness.

In the first month, after I came back, I roamed around some places that I used to frequent in the hopes of finding that old familiarity again. That long stretch of twisting and turning road between Taj Banjara and Nagarjuna Circle over which I raced on empty nights against the adrenaline churning through my veins. That beautifully scenic but lonely road that starts after Tolichowki and continues till the second gate of HCU.  That upstart addition to the spine of Hussain Sagar, which dared to call herself a Necklace. That hole in the wall bar beyond Bahar restaurant where you get the best Chicken 81 in the world. Finally, HCU campus itself, which was so wonderfully wild, more jungle and shrub than university. Beyond subtle traces of the old they all seemed to have turned into pale shadows of their former dusky glory. Perhaps their souls are spent under the weight of all the hurry that seems to have invaded Hyderabad. Why the sudden rush? Or is everyone actually running away from something? The old genteel culture, the nawabi laziness, the slow passing of the day over multiple cups of Irani chai; all replaced now by the gloomy glamor of globalization.

I know change is inevitable. In this world nothing stays the same for long. Heartbreaks get transformed by nostalgia into experience. Experience gently develops into wisdom. So a city is no different. It is only a sentimental fool who looks at the past through blinkered glasses colored by false nostalgia. The heart yearns for the familiar but the mind knows better. This duality of reason and emotion drives me into this curious state of lethargy where I seem to be waiting for something to give. Five years can wreak havoc on expectations built across the divide of continents.

However, five years is also a weird length of time. It is not as significant as a decade nor is it as quick as a couple of years. It is somewhat like that indeterminate time between dusk and night when familiar things take on a melancholic aspect that cloaks their true character. So I may be jumping the gun as usual. After all, it has only been a couple of months. Time can heal the awkwardness. Renewed friendship can bridge the distance. Is it possible? Only the city can tell.

Their fingers touched briefly like two flowers brought together by the wind. The distance was bridged if only for a few seconds. She held her head against the window and slowly broke contact. He watched as she closed her eyes. He wanted to say many things but it was not the moment for dredging up the past. The lights from beyond shone through her hair like little diamonds. In a few hours the bus would stop and the present would catch up with them again. Words would slip out of their grasp and leave a heavy but familiar silence behind. A silence whose heat had already evaporated all the warmth between them. The roar of the engine mixed with the turmoil in his heart. He leaned against the head rest and closed his eyes.

—–

Beneath me the earth moves in waves. The ground beneath seems to dissolve into layers and each such layer flows inwards to a point in front of me. The wind rushes through the leaves far above me.

In the distance peacocks cry out for the clouds to stop and rain.

I pass through the trees and shrubs, unseen and silent. Around me things slither and slide away into the undergrowth.

The world is in motion.

—–

There are people whispering around me. Music wafts over their heads, forming an interesting counterpoint to their sonic uniformity. I wonder. I wonder.

Thoughts from the past flit through my head, shapeless drifters caught under the magnifying glass of nostalgia. A face there, a curve of a smile here, a random word there, a touch of warm skin on a cold night here-a mental slideshow of fleeting moments.

—–

The alcohol took complete control of him. He talked non-stop to fill the gaps between us. He forgot details but he remembered the roads. Every turn evoked a different memory. Under the uniform glow of neon he relived all the little adventures that made up his life.

We wanted food and he claimed to know all the spots that would still be open at 4 am. We rushed through deserted roads that increased our hunger and loneliness. The promise of early morning idlies and thoughts of the best bread-omlet in town vanished along with his hopeful words. All the roads led nowhere and everywhere at once into worlds we would never see or cross again.

—–

I came too close to the coldness around. A new hole was punched through soft flesh and everything bled out. The will to love and live. The random laughter that erases lines. No one can understand the loneliness of unfulfilled desire.

We needed alcohol. Due to the lack of time and poor planning we had not picked up any before we started traveling. So we hit the streets of sleepy Trier in search of a shop that sold alcohol. But try as we might we could not find one. We drove through deserted neighborhoods and leafy suburbs but there no sign of alcohol on the horizon. We crossed the Mösel many times in our quest. It was as if we were living in a time of prohibition. All our impromptu plans of playing poker with a cold beer in hand at the camping ground were at risk of going waste. So we wandered some more. There were comparisons between the ease of finding alcohol after midnight in India and in the beer capital of the world, Germany. I found it strange that it was taking us so much time to find an open kiosk. Back in Cologne I only had to walk a few hundred yards from my house to find two. It seemed as if the people of Trier had no craving for alcohol after midnight. And so we found ourselves across the Mösel yet again. Cars passed us and their inhabitants seemed strangely content. Had they been more successful than us? Would we ever find what we were searching for? Or would we have to return empty handed and crawl into a tent without the cool balm of alcohol in our stomachs to ease the cold passage of night?

After crossing the Mösel another time we took a random turn to the left and found ourselves at an intersection. And standing right there to the right of the intersection like a lighthouse for floundering ships was an open döner shop. My friend ventured out full of desperate hope. I joined him. But our hopes did not last long. The shop did not sell any alcohol. Perhaps he saw our faces droop or felt our hopes slipping away, whatever the reason, as we were leaving the shop owner threw us a bone in the form of a suggestion. He pointed to a bar opposite his shop, tucked away on the corner and suggested to us to try our luck there. Hopes renewed we thanked him, crossed the road and approached the bar. From the outside it was unremarkable. I forgot its name as soon as I saw it. We passed through the open doors and strangely it felt like as if I had crossed some kind of special portal into another world. We walked into a land not often encountered.

The bar was a large room interspersed with wooden benches and tables. Along the walls at regular intervals were garishly bright game machines with blinking lights. At the far end, opposite the door was the bar counter. On the right side of the room were two doors. One presumably led to the toilets while the other opened into a room filled with a pale yellow light. I could not see clearly what the room contained or ascertain its function. It seemed rather odd and out of place as if it was added as an afterthought by a bored builder.

There was an air of impending decay about the place. The bar was not in disrepair but perhaps due to the sickly yellow light or the garish lights of the game machines the bar had an air of approaching apocalypse.

There were six people in the bar. Two young men were sitting in an alcove right next to the door. They were talking among themselves in the harsh guttural German that is characteristic of first generation Turkish immigrants. I was struck by their presence in that bar. It did not seem like a place for young people. What were they doing there? Had they also set out on a similar quest as us, wandered into that place and could not go back across the portal into the normal world outside? What was the strange attraction that the place held for them? I suddenly realized that sometimes when you spend too much time amidst mediocrity and routine and encounter anything out of the ordinary it exerts a force on you that is not easy to shake off. I could almost believe that the young men there were caught in the same force.

The remaining people in the place consisted of two women and a man with a white beard sitting at the bar and drinking. The fourth person was the bartender. He seemed ancient and had the same air of slow decay about him as the bar. His cheeks were sunken in gloom and he spoke in deep ponderous tones with long pauses between his words. It was as if he was measuring the passage of time in the spaces between his words. In this he reminded me strongly of Vajpayee, the former prime minister of India, whose speeches were also filled with such thoughtful pauses between words.

For some reason I remembered that morning without a name again today. A morning that was a template for other such similar mornings. I woke up first like I always did but with one of those involuntary dawn erections. We were naked under the blanket as the night had been warm. I lay awake and watched her sleep. She slept peacefully like a child with the hint of a smile curving the ends of her thin lips. I moved closer and embraced her for the gentle warmth of her body. She shifted in her sleep, put her hand around me in a reflexive embrace and made a sound at the back of her throat that was halfway between a purr and a mumble. Slowly, I slid my right leg upwards between her legs until I could feel the shaved roughness of her lips on my thigh. It was a wonderful moment in that indeterminate land between lust, love and longing. I wished that the moment would last forever. But the balance always tilted ever so slightly in one direction or the other.

On certain mornings I’d be overcome by a wave of longing. I’d snuggle closer and hug her until in her sleep she would protest weakly as she struggled to breathe in the confines of my tightly locked arms. Initially, I wouldn’t care as I was in the thrall of a force greater than me. It was a force that impelled you to crush her with the immense strength of your feeling. A feeling that often did not listen to reason. Eventually though I’d come to my senses. I always did for the comfort of longing is only a temporary visitor, taken too far it soon turns into the suffocation of confinement.

There were other times when I’d be overcome by love. I’d kiss her narrow forehead, closed eyes and the tiny protuberance that was her nose. I’d feel her warm breath on my lips as I gently brushed her lips with mine. Afterwards, I’d bury my face into the crook of her neck and lie there for a minute or two. Then, I’d slowly slide lower until I felt the rich and delicate softness of her breasts on my cheek. There I’d rest until she woke up slowly like a dream diver swimming up through the various layers of sleep.

But that morning I was overcome by lust. The wave started deep within my loins and like a hot flush traveled along my back into my head so fast that I felt like I was on fire from a fever. It was a peculiar mixture of pleasure and pain. It was the pleasure of a basic instinct as old as mankind. It was the pain of carrying a rigid erection.

Lost in the lust of that morning I kissed her mouth hungrily and opened it up as if it were a sealed envelope. I searched for her tongue with a desperation that only unfulfilled desire can generate. I found it sleeping peacefully but the insistence of my tongue woke her’s up. It initially tangled with mine uncertainly as if it were in a daze but as soon as awareness broke across her brow she responded immediately. She embraced me tightly and reached into my mouth with her tongue. She tasted my lips and sucked on them as if she was slaking a great thirst. Her left hand reached between my legs in a familiar motion, took hold of me and gently started stroking. The fever in me rose and I kissed her deeper and stronger. I broke the kiss in one sudden movement and moved to her neck and inhaled her morning scent. Aroused further by her insistent stroking I moved to her breasts. It was my favorite part. The feel and taste of her nipples going rigid in my mouth felt like a thousand bubbles bursting on my tongue. She moaned then and her hand gripped me tighter and moved faster.

Slowly, with my right hand I parted her legs wider and with my fingers found her trembling lips. I dipped my middle finger in as if I was testing the temperature of water in a vessel. She was wet and the heat within warmed my finger. I slowly slid my finger in and out until I built up a steady rhythm. At the same time I slipped in another finger and rubbed her swollen clitoris with my thumb until her back arched and eyes opened wide (all vestiges of sleep erased). She clung to me like a drowning sailor desperately clinging to a piece of driftwood. With a wild and bright hunger shining in her wide open eyes she attacked my mouth and pushed her tongue in forcefully as if she was wrestling for control. And just like that we were caught in a moment that flowed through our hands into our bodies.

Suddenly, she broke her embrace, pushed my moving fingers away and climbed on top of me. She took hold of me again and in one smooth movement moved me into her. She rode me like a jockey completely in control of her steed. I could feel her wet muscles squeeze and release in a repeating sequence of unbelievable pleasure. Her breasts heaved and swayed. Her speed increased as the wetness inside swelled like a river in flood. In that inexorable journey we did not last long. I crashed first and exploded deep within her, losing myself in one spine cracking spasm after another until I could almost believe that I had embraced the beautiful blankness of death. As I twisted uncontrollably she dug her fingers into my chest as if to find some purchase and screamed in a low voice as she breached the banks of her being and overflowed in one great gush. I felt her soft muscles first tighten, throb and then relax as she fell onto me like a great black waterfall. Her wet skin beneath my finger tips seemed to ripple like the surface of a serene lake from a stone thrown across it. We almost forgot to breathe as we lost ourselves to a plethora of sensations that annihilated our senses. Spent and exhausted we lay still like that until I drooped and dropped out of her like a small water snake.

It is a quiet night. The humid darkness has settled down into an inky blackness. Strange thoughts flit and race each other across eyebrows and through temples. Glorious music rises in volume to fill the room with hope and a sliver of despair.

The night recalls other nights from the past. Nights when alcohol flowed like your smile down my spine. The singer asks my question. Where were you? I remember that night when we succumbed to the emptiness of lust. A night when our future got divided by the distance between our heartbeats. A night where the sweat on our eyebrows separated our hearts. So many nights between our words. So much darkness inside our pupils.

That road walks into my memory. A long, meandering and lonely road that seemed to run parallel to the road through the stars above. The concert was long over and the music had dripped from our veins to unite with our memories. We walked without a word to the lake. The moon was behind us trying to interrogate our silence with his dim light. But we weren’t to be bothered. The lake shone weakly as a lone peacock settled in for the night. On a rough stone we sat and kissed. Do you remember?

The tingle and burn of alcohol is a random constant, loosening tongues and cobwebs. The art of good drinking is to stretch the moment until it breaks behind our minds and forms new connections.

On this night we were the survivors of a huge drunken party. The New Year had come and gone, taking with it innocence and a love for the unknown. The unknown was the now. You sat behind me and whispered into my ear names of people from your past. I closed my eyes and floated on your words as your roving fingers caressed my neck and ears. Bliss hovered around my lips and turned their corners into a small smile. Then we did not need much to be happy. A night full of magic was enough to satisfy our hunger.

Should we keep talking as he suggests? Will that help? I do not know but memories do not help either. Music collects them and unleashes them at the most inopportune of times. And I drown. I drown in an ocean of images. Images made during nights that held so much promise. Nights whose dawns were light rays striking the soft down on your shoulders. Nights whose signatures we collected on our closed eyelids.

When the weather is pleasant and balmy, like today, I make it a habit to go sit on a bench in the park next to the Uni Mensa and read a book. It is quite a nice place to sit and read. There is the vague murmur of people talking as they walk on the avenue behind me. There are the dappled shadows that the sunlight makes as the clouds rush to cover him in their wispy embrace. But, most importantly, there is the sound that the wind makes as it wanders through the trees and leaves above and all around me. More than anything it has the power to transport me to another time and another place.

A time when I’d climb up to the very top of my grandparents’ house after breakfast or in the evening to catch the horizon. Their house, being the tallest in the village, offered an unrivaled view of the village and the surrounding countryside, the distant green fields interrupted here and there by haystacks and huts of farmhands, the gopuram of the temple and the pond beside it stretching away to the horizon, its waters forming a huge silver mirror under the summer sunlight. And there was the same sound of the wind there too. The tall coconut trees swaying as the wind interrogated their many fronds. The rustling of the leaves of the pomegranate trees formed an interesting counterpoint to the quiet whispers of the banana fronds. The wind would sweep through the huge banyan tree two houses down and make a sound so smooth that it would instantly soothe my soul.

I’d usually be alone there, either reading a book about freedom fighters-the only English books the village library stocked were thin biographies of various freedom fighters-or one of the assorted Telugu books my grandfather had accumulated. They ranged from a biography of Adolf Hitler to old farmer almanacs.

At particular times of the day the bus from Nellore would wind its way through the village raising clouds of dust when the road was unpaved or bouncing on the potholes once the road had been paved and subsequently transformed into a minefield of shallow holes. I could track its progress from the point when it turned onto the temple road for its first stop and then continued down the road past the society house and stopped beside the long stone bench and then continued on its way until it exited the village beyond the Shiva temple to continue onto the next village.

It was peaceful to stand alone at the top. People would shrink in size and perspective took on a different meaning as I surveyed all that my eyes could see.

To the side of the house, in the courtyard of a neighbor’s were trees that were the home of a pandemonium of parrots. Every morning I’d awaken to the cackling of those parrots as they seemingly argued among themselves about who had the greenest feathers.

Memories like these have a clinging quality that cloaks you in a chiaroscuro of sound, sight and smell.

Aqua – Turn Back Time

There is a certain desperate beauty in not sleeping. To lay awake the whole night and do all kinds of vague unimportant things. To stretch time that keeps pushing down on our eyes in the form of sleep. To overcome the sleepy tiredness that grips your body at around the time the clock inches past 3 am. It is an exercise in patience. It is also, for want of a better term, an art form. Something that can only be achieved after endless nights of determination and perseverance.

What is the purpose behind this you might ask? What great scientific truth lies behind this seemingly pointless pursuit? Is it for an apprenticeship in the Dark Arts? Is it to appease the goddess of night and secure great boons from her thin dark bosom? Is it to pledge your soul to the virile pleasures of a sinful midnight?

At the risk of causing great disappointment to my comrades dabbling in the occult it is for none of the above reasons. The answer is much simpler and perhaps, depending on your perspective, mundane.

It is to celebrate dawn.

A perfect blue slowly brushing the blanket of night off her beautiful brow and opening her eyes of azure. It is a unique joy to stand at an open window and peer in to a world so still that your heart aches to echo it. The quiet bliss of inhaling clear crisp air, rising off the awakening trees, to purge the darkness of the night from your lungs. To stand still and listen to the birds sing with the happiness of first light tickling their feathers.

In spite of the insistent hands of sleep clawing at your eye lids, in spite of the weary creak of your tired bones it is worth it.

It is worth it just to stand there as if you are the last person left on earth and welcome dawn into your open arms.

The Cranberries – Linger

I walked. Across the road. Past the Campina factory. Past the spaces in my head. The wind screamed at the clouds hunkered down, sullen and stubborn. It was a road going nowhere, endless red brick walls leading to steel towers and a monotonous block of white washed houses. The long leaves of an unknown shrub by the factory walls swayed and shuddered as the wind rushed past me. There was a little girl on the other side of the road shouting with joy and gesticulating at her mother. She had so much to share. Every step was a wonder waiting to be explored. Every second was a siren call of the unknown. Ah the innocence!

There was rain in the sky. There was water in my heart. There was an empty warehouse slowly receding on my right. Frames froze for a moment in my eyes but by the time my fingers reached for the camera they would vanish with the wind. Green railings ran together in slow motion under my sliding gaze. A balance of lines and a harmony of hope.

You tumbled through my thoughts and fell on the pavement. You looked back at me across the doorstep through the drizzle. Did I turn back to look at you one last time? I do not remember anymore. Memory can be so ironic. The very little details stay the longest but the essence and the meaning of moments you want to hold on to forever get lost the quickest in the hidden pathways of the mind. I no longer remember the color of the shirt you wore on that ill remembered day from the mists of our collective memory. Was it brown like your eyes? Or was it black? Or was it white like the light that shines in my dreams at dawn? But I remember one thing. I still remember the way your fingers crossed across each other like a priest praying for hope. In a sense it was about hope after all even if you or I were not aware of it.

I turned around. I had walked enough. There was nothing for me on that road. The rain laden clouds were still playing a guessing game with the wind. The green leaves still swayed. The little girl had vanished. Her cries, which had punctuated my thoughts were behind the four walls of one of those white houses. Had her mother finally understood what she wanted to say? Was she still smiling at the seconds ticking past her age?

In a sense it is about choice. The choice to do things differently. The choice to think differently. The choice to make a difference or be part of the crowd. But making that choice itself can be the most difficult decision. To take the pill or not. To press the trigger or not. To not say yes when you really want to say no. Is it that difficult? Is it a question of confidence or a desire to please? To conform is very easy especially when there is pressure from everyone you know. For, after all, trudging the same old beaten path is the safest thing to do in this world. There are signposts at every corner, there are lights on the darkest stretches, and there are frequent rest stops. However, to go where only a few have ventured before, either you have to be supremely confident or completely crazy to go against established ‘wisdom’ and chart your own path.

What do you do when everything you have learnt does not help you when you come to the crossroads? When there is nothing or no one to fall back on? When you do not know if there is enough strength in your belief to last the distance or if it’s just a passing whim? There are obviously no easy answers or solutions. You either shrug and continue on a path you once believed in but no longer love or you dive into the whirlpool of new ideas and new journeys.

Accept the difference and make peace with it. Shed the unrealistic dreams and wild ambitions and one will be safe from harm and frustration. Should one believe such bland crap? Or should one instead say, “I give a flying fuck” and jump from the bridge into the mist covered valley below? For sometimes, those few seconds of wild exhilaration while free falling can be worth all the frustration and pain leading up to it, even if, in the end, you plunge to your death.

Say you have got time on your hands, what do you do? Do you go to the museum you have been meaning to properly visit for the past three years and take in Dali’s genius one more time? Or do you sling a couple of cameras over your shoulder and go shooting people shoveling ice cream down their throats, yellow leaves drifting here and there according to the whims of metallic monsters and woods echoing to the incoming silence of winter? Or do you sit, or rather lie down, on your ass and try to hear the subsonic swoosh that the slow passage of a day makes? I have become a master at attempting the last one.

There is so much to do but then again there is a certain beauty in doing nothing. Post-processing old photos, watching those favorite films yet again, checking mail and rss feeds a billion times per day, going over your (unchanging) site stats with a fine comb, reading e newspapers and missing lazy Sundays back home when everything smelt different. Back then, a Sunday had this special smell. The smell of laziness. The smell of newsprint and fresh coffee. The smell of delicious breakfast being prepared in the kitchen. Where have those times gone?

I walk half naked through my house, somehow reminded of Chuck Barris as portrayed by Sam Rockwell in the opening scene of ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’. I wish I could use a typewriter. The fulfilled feeling of punching keys and watching words take on physical shape on a paper you can touch, feel, smell and even taste. Not this cold and sterile method of pressing keys to generate black letters on electronic white.

I’m thinking of peak oil, of American addiction to oil, and China’s and India’s growing appetite for the same. I try to imagine the state of this world once the supplies of all fossil fuels have run out. I think of all these issues as dealt in the chilling film ‘Syriana’.

Where are we going with this indifference? This thick skin of ours that neatly covers any little empathy we may have had seems to define the way countries behave. The first world. The lands of plenty and prosperity. The lands of blandness and boredom. The lands of perfect hypocrisy and polite cruelty.

Random films play in the background as thoughts unspool in my head: ‘Barton Fink’, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ ‘Syriana’ and ‘Barton Fink’ again. A loop? Or, a full circle of motion pictures?

Connections, I sense them. Today, for one sublime second, I caught a glimpse of the infinite web that holds this world together. The seemingly random events that appear so predetermined in hindsight. Would we have met if I had crossed the road? Would she have talked if I hadn’t missed the bus? Would they have invited us if we had not fought? Would we have kissed if I had not whispered the correct words?

There are seedless grapes sitting in the water, delicious and succulent grapes. They can serve as an (imperfect) analogy for this hypertextual world, each connection branching off into a million mysterious eddies. The thoughts of oil leading to ruminations on the economics behind the rise of oral sex among American teenagers. A journey without logic. A passage without borders or limitations of space and time. One true gift of globalization.

The passage through immigration feels like as if I’ve crawled through dirt. The tone of the questions asked, the officer putting you under pressure so that you might either lose your temper or make a mistake. It takes away the fun from traveling, this trial of words. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth and your skin begins to feel dirty. You feel as if you have done some wrong by coming to this country. The chance of birth determines the ease of arrival in the developed world.

In the dim neon light everyone seems sulky. Grim looks as people hurry with little molehills of suitcases; black, brown, red and green. A limo turns up suddenly. It feels as out of place as an elephant would on the streets of New York. White coaches turn into the bays and people scurry like disturbed ants. The wind carries with it the smell of rain, a cold and unhappy rain.

The bus arrives. It’s arrival is greeted by a bugle of horns from the other vehicles hunkered down in their respective bays. I wonder at all the journeys these buses might have undertaken. How many stories can they tell for every kilometer they have traveled? What horrible accidents have they witnessed? How many roads have their tires tasted? Does the petrol they drink ever leave behind a memory? A memory of ignition and constant burn?

The world is dark around me with only a small light overhead to guide my fingers. The road stretches on to the blind horizon like a coiled snake waiting to strike at those who threaten it.

A year passes and I do not even blink or rather blink too late. I did finally take notice though. So here I’m, still trying to row the boat to nowhere. The stream seems to be drying up and the flow of water is slowing to a trickle but the place is the same. Who knows what lies at the end of the fabled rainbow? Perhaps inner peace, perhaps a sense of arrival or perhaps a persistance of memory?

Memories are very dangerous things. They suck you in, twist space and time, and distort reality until you find it difficult to see or breathe. But here I’m celebrating them in all their mottled glory. Have I succeeded in decoding the many messages they hide?

Before I end here is something I tried on someone I know. I never did get an answer from her but perhaps you can do better!

I’ve a bad habit of reading several books at once. One in the morning, one on the way to work, one at lunch, one before dinner and one just before I sleep. So my mind is a delicious pot pourri of scenes and conversations from wildy different settings! A little snippet from the stream of my conciousness follows:

“I roam through the streets of Danzig, beating on my laquered drum, in time to the rhythmic pounding of shells from German howitzers exploding in the old district. She said she would love me forever and then left the Carribean to the civilized pleasures of Paris with that dashing doctor with a long name, full of an illustrious past. I tried to drown my only love in the arms of a million whores and in the sweet sweat rolling off the bodies of women married to the wrong men. But time did not stop. Instead, the sun raced across the hub, and then hit the dank darkness rising from Ankh Morpork, the city that seems to sleep but in reality is only lying on her stomach trying to scratch a particularly unreachable position on her back. The wizards had still not left the great hall. Dinner had gently segued into breakfast and it looked like lunch would not be far behind the kitchen door. So he somehow liked the work I did in Nuremburg and started giving me other assignments. He asked me to make a blueprint for the Third Reich, filled with monuments that would rival Rome. I was too caught up in the grandness of my work to think deeply about the sheer madness unfolding around me. They gave me a name that meant ‘The Peaceful One’ but my violent past and present seemed to make a mockery of their kind idea. I tried to live up to that adopted name. I became a part time doctor, relieving the poorest of poor of some pain. But my past kept pace with my present and finally caught up with my future. The Bombay underworld needed my expertise.”

Can you guess the names of the books and their authors I’m reading now from the above literary stream I conjured? If you get all of them right you will win the grand prize of spending a special evening with yours truly in a universe where all plans fall perfectly into place!

This post is doubly significant. Apparently, according to my blog software, it marks a century of posts. So here it is to all of you, all the people who visit here so regularly and help keep the flame burning. I hope we will keep building bridges over rivers of thought and emotion. A heartfelt thank you to all you known and unknown visitors here. Without you there would be no light at the end of the tunnel.

A tropical sun, but without the burning heat, has come calling. I’m taken back in time to hot afternoons; of sweat drenched foreheads, of delicious mangoes, of the sudden stillness after regular electricity cuts, and the beautiful feeling of cool air on hot skin. I breathe in the thick memories of summers bygone, intoxicating in their all-enveloping glory.

Ah, I remember that strand; a sultry Sunday when I roamed through the book market in Abids and found, to my utter delight, that my doors of perception had been cleansed. Here is another memory, of sitting for an entrance exam on a ferocious afternoon in May, half suffering from sunstroke, the questions looming up from the paper and forming surreal shapes. Streaking through my senses, a cool summer morning, the way she felt in my arms among the rocks, the dream like union of hesitant lips, the heavenly vision of half-naked flesh below me and then walking back hand in hand, hesitating to open my mouth and shatter the unbelievable dream. Here is another fragment; a day spent tramping through the hot roads of Pune but with the welcome relief of frequent Neera drinking stops. Suddenly, I taste that chilled beer again traveling down my throat, cold and exciting in a sleepy Delhi fast food joint. And how can I forget the gentle lapping of the waves as I sat on the beach and consumed a book on a lazy Goan afternoon.

I remember escaping in to the icy relief of air-conditioned libraries, of the air hanging still like a guillotine at 1 pm, of mid day roads swept clean of people, of juicy watermelons melting in my mouth, of sweaty bed sheets and howling Westerly winds. An endless succession of summers unfolding behind my eyes.

And there are words as well, from half-forgotten conversations, unwaveringly similar, time after time.

“Hey, who is getting the snacks?”

“Don’t you dare forget the green peas, fucker!”

“Oh boy this is life! Chilled beer hitting the spot, tasty snacks and the whole evening stretching away before you like an empty runway.”

“…Julio and Romiet…shit…damn…I mean Romeo and Juliet of course…cut it out you dickheads, I’m not drunk!”

Yes, I think silence is better than talk sometimes…there is a beauty to silence…especially the silence between two people who have known each other for a long time…the kind where you don’t have to say anything and the other person understands…the kind where thoughts transcend sound.

I’d love to have a conversation filled with these long silences…like a night where most of the people at a party have left and it is only a small intimate group left, sitting around a fire…staring at the sparks fly…golden light shining off the eyes…and once in a while words floating over the gentle warmth of the fire…as a fierce liquid warms its way down your throat, settling with a silent sigh at the base of your stomach and you cannot help but grin insanely inside yourself for the beautiful time you are having…a time you know you will cherish in years to come.

—–

These days I seem to be living in my memories more than I live in the world around me…there are whole days when I do not open my mouth at all…and I can almost hear my thoughts walk inside my head…sometimes you know how it is…you have gone so much into yourself that every opportunity given to you to come out and interact with real people seems like an irritating intrusion on your privacy…so I wander on roads I’ve created…on paths only I know….in a valley only I’m privileged to enter…I becomes the overarching theme of one’s life in such circumstances.

—–

But let us leave such depressing and gloomy topics aside and instead take a walk along the shores of a beautiful ocean and search for sepia toned sea shells with me…are you ready my dear?

Have you ever wondered how many photos there are worth taking every minute of the day? Today was such a day…a day when as I was walking to the lab in the morning; a sudden snow shower…beautiful little flakes falling like angels from heaven…then it rained for a minute…in the next instant ice came down from the cold sky…later in the day, the sun came out in all his glory…bright and glowing…and then in the very next instant dark and ponderous clouds raced to cover him in their hard embrace…and I kept looking in awe as nature went through these fantastic changes and wished I had brought my camera along to at least capture a bit of the magical show she was putting up for all to see…but I guess sometimes there are moments that shoudn’t be captured for posterity…they are only meant to be lived in that instant and forgotten later…little wisps of memory that exist for a very short time and vanish with the rain of time.

Now let me take you to the other side of the beach…where children are building sand castles…you walk along the shore…the water lapping at your feet, trying to touch your toes and tickle your soles….you raise your head to the sky and smile radiantly…a smile filled with all the pleasure simple things can give…the feel of the cool breeze on bare skin…the lukewarm water under your feet…the sun in the sky and the laughter of the children around us as they play mysterious games with each other.

Do you hear the waves calling out for you? They are silently whispering your name, rolling it out softly in time to the rhythm of their never ending rush to embrace the shore….they want to you to hear the stories they carry from the deeps…of creatures that cannot see…of pink jelly fish that talk through light…of gigantic whales that sail the oceans…of dark and mysterious things…of melancholic mermaids and legends of lost continents.

—–

For it is dreams that we have that make life worth living…without dreams we are empty husks going through life like the tiny cogwheels inside a watch…unerring and regular.

—–

Will you keep up with me as I run out and open my face up to the snow flakes? Will you lose your breath as I try to race with the wind and float over all the lands that I wish to see? Will you have it in you to walk with me through whispering woods as the light recedes?

Fragments of time pass before my eyes. Their facets reflecting memories of a quarter century. Times of laughter, times of experience, times of deep friendship and times of loss.

Scene I

That hopelessly innocent time. Copying in math exams. Excursion to Vizag. Standing in awe in the Borra caves. Frolicking on the beach. Sitting in the last bench day-dreaming through boring classes. Fantasizing beautiful teachers. Going on stage in front of the whole school to receive quizzing prizes. Representing city in Calcutta. The big disappointment there. Afternoon breaks. Smell of freshly starched uniform. The opposite sex. Last day in school.

Scene II
Reality shock. Breakdown. Medical cows and engineering sheep. New look. Changed outlook. Forgotten sanity. Coming up for air. Brilliant decision.

Scene III

Wild days. Nizam’s. High hopes. Whiling away time under the shed. Endless discussions. Quizzing. Bunking classes. Classic Rock. Basketball. Mind-bending. Psychedelia. Setting records on the rock. Parties at parent-less homes. New friends. Discos. Getting pissed 20 times a month. Abandonded farmhouses and the police. Mood indigo and rock concerts. Romance and traveling. Drowning in music. Forgotten academics. World Cinema. Camping and trekking. Frying papads over campfires. French classes at the Alliance. Culture vulturing. Down and out in Coorg.

Scene IV

Bitter-sweet times. HCU. Alien classmates. Brief affair. Broadening horizons. Caste politics. Chinky love. Beautiful campus. Mushroom rocks and Peacock lakes. Asian Social Forum. Globalisation. No Logo. Academic pressure. Loneliness. Career doubts. DJ nights.

Scene V
A flight to a new world. Great expectations. Spectacular disillusionment. Solitary traveller. International junkie. Virtual love. Science and Art. The word. The image. A bitter relationship. Solitude. Superficiality. Selective conscience. Material desire. Money and pleasure. Fears and tears. Make or break. The big Doubt. The great Decision. The big Hope.

…and the scenes just go on. Nostalgia colors equally bitter and sweet memories in sepia tones.

Whenever I went shopping she would come with me. She was a comforting presence and also eased the tedium of endless choice. I’m the type who is very very picky when buying so there were times when we would go back empty-handed even after going through some ten shops. But she would not mind really. She would just make fun of my finicky habits and smile that radiant smile of hers. A smile that would shoot through my soul and come out around my lips as a mirror image.

But the one enduring image I’ve of those endless expeditions is those silly and childish games we used to play. She would be exploring some clothes and I would be following her around. Suddenly, she would take these random turns. But I would not stop. I would follow her and we would end up going around in weird circles through the shop. Anybody looking would have seen two crazy people weaving in and out of the aisles between the clothes, creating weird walking patterns with mad smiles pasted on their faces.

Another frequent occurrence was the ‘race’. We would be climbing stairs or going up on an elevator when, suddenly she would say race and dash up. Half the time she would win of course, because of the surprise element. But I soon cottoned on to her tactics and started winning these love-laced races and so she started to cheat and take short cuts. She always loved to win, gain the upper hand over me. But I did not mind, did I?

I would love to race again…and lose.