Showing posts with label Delhi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Delhi. Show all posts
15 October 2013
18 September 2010
The Alleys Without Djinns
The earth has been wet, drenched. The sky - forlorn, grey, heavy with clouds. The raindrops are still fresh on the wires from last night’s rain. But these are all invisible from the box of the room I live in. But when you come out and stare at the remnants of the destruction left by the previous night’s rain I’m transported for a few moments, if not longer, to that window facing the lotus spread pond of mine on a rainy afternoon.
It is hard to think that more than a year have passed since I landed on the heartland, the capital, The City. This is definitely not the first rain I have witnessed here of course. I have braved its infamous winter, the unbearable summer and the mad monsoons. Time is an amalgamation of all the seasons as we see. The essence of the city (as one of my friends had remarked) - the spirit takes time to unfold. Likewise, for me the core of what Delhi is, is merely not the swanky malls, the concrete roads, the troublesome traffic, the famous somany sites (sounds), its high quotient life. Delhi for me, at this stage, is a collage of images, everyday images - an early morning glimpse of the India Gate in fog; the pigeons, the omnipresent pigeons, behaving like your guides throughout the city; the labourers with their shiny black backs labouring on the sweltering streets in midday, the view from the terrace of unending blocks of tall buildings, the laughter shared by a bunch of friends in an obscure small Chinese restaurant (whose waitresses have also traversed a long way from home), the momo corners around the market place, the gypsies habiting in the middle of the city. The subtlety has been minimal, almost unseen. The prejudices I had against the city (not that I was loaded with them) kind of got lost by the time I was actually seeped in by a part of it, as a curious observer. The music of the place have not formed a symphony nor do I expect it to be build up into one so fast but the amaltas of the last season, the unexpected quite moments shared in the heartland makes for some unforgettable starts to probing of the city with alleys without Djinns, real, throbbing with life, with variety and variants. Simple activities become enlarged. Introspection gets time even in this otherwise fast life.
That is the most amazing thing about the city, its full of strangers, full of outsiders, most of the people you see do not actually belong to the city - The students, the labourers, the gypsies, the job seekers, the transferred ones, the drifters, everyone. But how we become a part, an unmissable part, to create the whole the city is. I have been lonely but at times only when I chosen to be. Finding myself in the newest surrounding, which will slowly cease to be new, I wonder, I don’t reminisce. The time spent has been fast, keeping up to the fast paced life. Delhi is not a mirage and it’s a relief or perhaps. The discovery reaches the next phase and I can’t be more prepared to take on the role of the explorer.
P.S: Was written a month back, during the Mad monsoons
23 March 2010
Method Madness
(Or Why I Return?)
Another Day Arrives,
I know I'm late,
No, I'm not that late
A night
With all its ramifications
Wide never-ending
Opening all its doors.
Remembering Alice, down the hole;
The doors and the constant confusion surrounding it.
The ultra moments stumbled at unexpected quarters,
Though temporal
Temporal, only,
And
incomplete.
I believe a lot real life is imitator of the best fiction or may be the best fiction is based on someone’s real episodes.
Life is unreal.
The eternal question of existence, to be left altogether to a different shore.
So, for the few who wonder what happened to the stories here (fact, fiction, every genre), no, no one gets a review of the past three months.
What you’ll have is: An obituary. A letter. A reunion. A discovery (ies). A de ja vu of-sorts.
Numerous scattered uncategorised episodes.
An Obit
I went home. Four months later, to find things not too different from the way I left them. The table was untouched, so was the book shelf. After a really tiring journey, I finally reach home, I find my ailing Grandpapa (Pupu), being spoon-fed by my mother. Frail, so unlike the way I left him. As if an entire century had slipped in between. But I knew he was glad to see me. A nod.
Pupu loved cigarettes, women, music, his wife and gardening. Simple man he was. Blessed with more than a whiff of craziness. So full of exciting tales. A Mahabharata reader who could quote the Gita like a poem.
I never remembered him like the regular nonagenarian. He was so utterly independent that we were scared, at times. A strong tall man of 93 who, this time, was completely bed-ridden, awaiting me. I had only a quiet hello to convey.
One morning, during my stay, we discover that he was no longer breathing, silent forever. He died a simple death, a quiet one, without a hush. I still do not have much to say.
I remember his concern, his overly repeated tales and of numerous summer nights spent under the mango tree in my front yard, listening to them; I also remember the days he made me feel embarrassed with his random eccentricities in public. I remember the jokes he used to crack. The samosas he used to bring every afternoon, the songs he used to sing, and make me singalong The talks, he so much wanted to talk. His desire for constant company. It was because of him that I did not miss my Grandma (Bobok), it’s from him that I learned about her. She had left us 14 years back. I still miss her.
It is so easy just to be quiet. The cinematic moments in life.
Just when Papa was about to burn the pyre, birds (of a kind I don’t know), thronged all across the skies as if to pay their last respect. The Grand old man finally left for the other shore, or some place else.
A LETTER (to no one)
Life is going on.
Not that bad at all. So, goes the day, the everyday imperfect ways. There is a new job, new people and working environment. The only thing common is the terrace. How I miss the terrace triad. A pet also accompanies this time. Her name is very unimaginatively called Billi. I am kept very busy and tied-up.
I’m not yet homesick. Everything is fine.
Films are keeping me busy. I’m reading books on war these days. Like Asne Seierstad's With Their Backs to the World.
I really enjoyed Nolan’s Memento. Rene Touzet was quite a discovery. I’ve learnt no new Spanish phrases, but.
Take care till I’m back,.
There is always a next time.
A Discovery
One always updates a playlist.
Though, sometimes, it is just too hard to delete some of the old songs.
Some moments, some moments get completely imprinted in the memory. You remember everything; you let it play so much in your head that you are scared that the memory reel might just devolve. Well, there was no such reel in the first place, anyways. Thus the fear of the memory never being able to be repeated follows. It might simply never repeat. Never occur, becoming one of the many minions of such moments that keeps on growing in and out. I find Chopin haunting.
Memories & Melodies
Am all over in love again with Travis
Paperclips brings forth a new connection of melodies and memories.
They have the same functions: persistent memories are benignly hurtful.
It happens, at certain moments, rare ones, when you know you are the happiest being on the planet, no matter how short-lived the period is, it seems like we can spend the rest of our life living on the borrowed happiness of these memories, repeated over and over and over again.
An uncharted understanding, an unavoidable intimacy, a sense of unreachability, a feel of the emptiness, a sudden revelation that you exactly know why you are here, a displaced moment.
A temporary feeling of having all that you want in one point of time.
The brutal blow arrives when you realise this is not happening for real, even the reality is dubious of its own existence. It’s just there because it is also whiling away the time. Only a second look at it with the perspective it was not supposed to see. You see because you want to see it that way, you don’t want to understand it the other way, a mirage of the fatal sort. Then the things take slowly their real shape. You fail to understand why you keep on imagining things. Demented?As if the imaginary notions take on an active stance.
every day dreams
My eternal wish has been to travel all the obscure corners. May be because that's the least I’ve done. So, it’s not sudden and surprising when suddenly, walking as in a day dream, I am amazed stranded in some foreign quarter of the ordinary places, the meandering lanes.
I enjoy long strolls.
Just looking at the same buildings more closely which otherwise ones swiftly pass by. Observation makes anything interesting.
I discovered many a things about me. Like I hate when all those coffee shops fills you with indiscernible sounds, a bedlam born out of multilogues.
I like to observe people waiting on someone in a restaurant and particularly, the way they while away their time.
Scattered Episodes
Meeting with an old friend after 8 years,
Attending a wedding
A hyperlink cinema co-incidence
Discovering newer music and newer films
Dancing to Zulma Yugar's haunting voice at 1 am (It is absolute fun, I'm telling you)
and more fun when you discover that your room mates have finally decided to no longer be civil to you or your taste for ‘brutal’ music (that's what they think).
I don’t know why I intended to keep the name of the post adhered to madness. I only know that the mind plays trick, and intuition does not exist. Alchemy eavesdrops. One sees things not as they are meant to be seen or felt but rather in a way they want to see it.
I can never seem to get enough of missed moments.
Everyone is settled
All my friends have graduated to the next level,
settled
. the. next. Phase.
I don’t like the things we talk about these days.
Work
The tediousness
Missing life
Routine (and how it needs a major dressing-up)
De ja vu
I’ve to let you all know about a particular day...
Late evening, lying on the bed, with some obscure (read: I don’t know which random music) playing in the background, helping my friend with some petty word doc work. All attention, to the screen in front. Suddenly a strong whiff, stronger even, of wet earth made it way to the hallow nostrils hitting the memories immediately drawing pictures in head, stolen ones, of course, my backyard, reminding me of a rain drenched day, the images immediately took a concrete form. The relentless rain hitting the mehendi leaves, the noise like music blaring. The green, low light day. Just a wisp of wet earth and pouring rain dribbled such powerful images. We ran through our box of a room to see if the smell was for real or just another part of our fragrant imagination, to see only a drizzle blessing the incoming summer in Delhi.
We look up, the yellow street-light shines.
We return.
I love life, because it’s ultimately ordinary.
By the way, has anyone of you read the "Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo"?
I love the title.
P.S: This shelved post, thankfully, finally saw the light of the day.
Another Day Arrives,
I know I'm late,
No, I'm not that late
A night
With all its ramifications
Wide never-ending
Opening all its doors.
Remembering Alice, down the hole;
The doors and the constant confusion surrounding it.
The ultra moments stumbled at unexpected quarters,
Though temporal
Temporal, only,
And
incomplete.
I believe a lot real life is imitator of the best fiction or may be the best fiction is based on someone’s real episodes.
Life is unreal.
The eternal question of existence, to be left altogether to a different shore.
So, for the few who wonder what happened to the stories here (fact, fiction, every genre), no, no one gets a review of the past three months.
What you’ll have is: An obituary. A letter. A reunion. A discovery (ies). A de ja vu of-sorts.
Numerous scattered uncategorised episodes.
An Obit
I went home. Four months later, to find things not too different from the way I left them. The table was untouched, so was the book shelf. After a really tiring journey, I finally reach home, I find my ailing Grandpapa (Pupu), being spoon-fed by my mother. Frail, so unlike the way I left him. As if an entire century had slipped in between. But I knew he was glad to see me. A nod.
Pupu loved cigarettes, women, music, his wife and gardening. Simple man he was. Blessed with more than a whiff of craziness. So full of exciting tales. A Mahabharata reader who could quote the Gita like a poem.
I never remembered him like the regular nonagenarian. He was so utterly independent that we were scared, at times. A strong tall man of 93 who, this time, was completely bed-ridden, awaiting me. I had only a quiet hello to convey.
One morning, during my stay, we discover that he was no longer breathing, silent forever. He died a simple death, a quiet one, without a hush. I still do not have much to say.
I remember his concern, his overly repeated tales and of numerous summer nights spent under the mango tree in my front yard, listening to them; I also remember the days he made me feel embarrassed with his random eccentricities in public. I remember the jokes he used to crack. The samosas he used to bring every afternoon, the songs he used to sing, and make me singalong The talks, he so much wanted to talk. His desire for constant company. It was because of him that I did not miss my Grandma (Bobok), it’s from him that I learned about her. She had left us 14 years back. I still miss her.
It is so easy just to be quiet. The cinematic moments in life.
Just when Papa was about to burn the pyre, birds (of a kind I don’t know), thronged all across the skies as if to pay their last respect. The Grand old man finally left for the other shore, or some place else.
A LETTER (to no one)
Life is going on.
Not that bad at all. So, goes the day, the everyday imperfect ways. There is a new job, new people and working environment. The only thing common is the terrace. How I miss the terrace triad. A pet also accompanies this time. Her name is very unimaginatively called Billi. I am kept very busy and tied-up.
I’m not yet homesick. Everything is fine.
Films are keeping me busy. I’m reading books on war these days. Like Asne Seierstad's With Their Backs to the World.
I really enjoyed Nolan’s Memento. Rene Touzet was quite a discovery. I’ve learnt no new Spanish phrases, but.
Take care till I’m back,.
There is always a next time.
A Discovery
One always updates a playlist.
Though, sometimes, it is just too hard to delete some of the old songs.
Some moments, some moments get completely imprinted in the memory. You remember everything; you let it play so much in your head that you are scared that the memory reel might just devolve. Well, there was no such reel in the first place, anyways. Thus the fear of the memory never being able to be repeated follows. It might simply never repeat. Never occur, becoming one of the many minions of such moments that keeps on growing in and out. I find Chopin haunting.
Memories & Melodies
Am all over in love again with Travis
Paperclips brings forth a new connection of melodies and memories.
They have the same functions: persistent memories are benignly hurtful.
It happens, at certain moments, rare ones, when you know you are the happiest being on the planet, no matter how short-lived the period is, it seems like we can spend the rest of our life living on the borrowed happiness of these memories, repeated over and over and over again.
An uncharted understanding, an unavoidable intimacy, a sense of unreachability, a feel of the emptiness, a sudden revelation that you exactly know why you are here, a displaced moment.
A temporary feeling of having all that you want in one point of time.
The brutal blow arrives when you realise this is not happening for real, even the reality is dubious of its own existence. It’s just there because it is also whiling away the time. Only a second look at it with the perspective it was not supposed to see. You see because you want to see it that way, you don’t want to understand it the other way, a mirage of the fatal sort. Then the things take slowly their real shape. You fail to understand why you keep on imagining things. Demented?As if the imaginary notions take on an active stance.
every day dreams
My eternal wish has been to travel all the obscure corners. May be because that's the least I’ve done. So, it’s not sudden and surprising when suddenly, walking as in a day dream, I am amazed stranded in some foreign quarter of the ordinary places, the meandering lanes.
I enjoy long strolls.
Just looking at the same buildings more closely which otherwise ones swiftly pass by. Observation makes anything interesting.
I discovered many a things about me. Like I hate when all those coffee shops fills you with indiscernible sounds, a bedlam born out of multilogues.
I like to observe people waiting on someone in a restaurant and particularly, the way they while away their time.
Scattered Episodes
Meeting with an old friend after 8 years,
Attending a wedding
A hyperlink cinema co-incidence
Discovering newer music and newer films
Dancing to Zulma Yugar's haunting voice at 1 am (It is absolute fun, I'm telling you)
and more fun when you discover that your room mates have finally decided to no longer be civil to you or your taste for ‘brutal’ music (that's what they think).
I don’t know why I intended to keep the name of the post adhered to madness. I only know that the mind plays trick, and intuition does not exist. Alchemy eavesdrops. One sees things not as they are meant to be seen or felt but rather in a way they want to see it.
I can never seem to get enough of missed moments.
Everyone is settled
All my friends have graduated to the next level,
settled
. the. next. Phase.
I don’t like the things we talk about these days.
Work
The tediousness
Missing life
Routine (and how it needs a major dressing-up)
De ja vu
I’ve to let you all know about a particular day...
Late evening, lying on the bed, with some obscure (read: I don’t know which random music) playing in the background, helping my friend with some petty word doc work. All attention, to the screen in front. Suddenly a strong whiff, stronger even, of wet earth made it way to the hallow nostrils hitting the memories immediately drawing pictures in head, stolen ones, of course, my backyard, reminding me of a rain drenched day, the images immediately took a concrete form. The relentless rain hitting the mehendi leaves, the noise like music blaring. The green, low light day. Just a wisp of wet earth and pouring rain dribbled such powerful images. We ran through our box of a room to see if the smell was for real or just another part of our fragrant imagination, to see only a drizzle blessing the incoming summer in Delhi.
We look up, the yellow street-light shines.
We return.
I love life, because it’s ultimately ordinary.
By the way, has anyone of you read the "Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo"?
I love the title.
P.S: This shelved post, thankfully, finally saw the light of the day.
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