Delhi

White

There is something about dust that often makes me wonder, when it blows, does it try to conceal certain acts by making us shut our eyes? And when we open them, things become hazy. You simply can’t get past that certain point without shutting your eyes again. I think dust helps to give cover to certain demons that quickly hide in some lonely and silent corners of a city. Delhi has a lot of dust in it. It’s as if Jackson Pollock is standing somewhere making it his canvas, and decides to sand paint rather than sprinkle colours from a can. Hence the demons slip in and often write their horrid stories in the city. If one day the dust decides to settle, it would perhaps keep the demons at bay. And dust makes white look a bit grey. Ask those pillars at Connaught Place, and the structures that are held by them. From afar, the dust makes them grey, but they aren't. They are white. Pristine white. If you happen to be there and look at an Elizabethan structure that feels grey, go closer and check again. See the white, they reflect the sun in a way nothing does. They dazzle your eyes, and then as you get used to them after a point, they scream at you with their whiteness. If you do not like white, look away. Look towards the footpaths or a park in the middle. But then you are better than that. After all, you have gotten out with a backpack and a camera that challenges you with its limited battery life. Stop behaving like a tourist, become a traveller. And then, look again. Look at the black iron grills that protect the windows of those white structures. Look at the pillars that stand like Atlas perhaps sheltering demons as the dust settles down. There is a certain mischief in that white. There is a certain mischief, in any white. That threat to become dirty so easily, that fear of giving away anything secretive, or the joy of getting the license to making it dirty. Also, that desire to paint something else on it. It’s like a blank page, saying come and write what you want to. Those white structures all over Delhi, give a sense of a pleasant incompleteness. “Come back soon, I can be a different colour next time. I can be different, next time.”  Like how the Red Fort was white once. No one imagines it white now. Ask the Brits, they know how to change the colours of history.

  

Red

Red was the colour of tiny lanes that meandered in the laps of fairytales. Each one of those lanes storing a million stories of things that happened. Perhaps two centuries ago, a disgruntled boy lost a bet and gave away his favourite pony and cried at a corner of one of those lanes. At a certain turn, there was a door with a huge lock protecting a red house. There were marble stairs that lead to the door, marble which was fading slowly. They probably stored banters about the craziness of a king who kept changing the kingdom’s capital. Red was also the colour of women’s cholis, or even the shining embroidery on the borders of their burkas, as they made a ringing sound getting out for dinner on a Saturday evening. Red was the colour of freshly served chicken tandoori and the sound of crisp onion rings as you stood in a crowded lane, staring at a sombre man selling attar. The naan khatais served for you to bite on and fall in love with had a burnt red hue on them. Red was what the face of the Pathan at a restaurant became when one asked him what would he have if he had brought his family to that place. Red was also what the sun was when dawn cracked in the autumn mornings. The bells of certain cycle rickshaws were painted red. A Sardarji cleaning the roads in front of his holy place was wearing a smile in his face, and a bright red turban. And if red is the colour of love, then I think I saw a couple stealing away certain moments in the darkness of the India Gate which otherwise disappointed a lot of romantics by failing to light up that evening.  

Black

Coming from Calcutta, I am used to the semi-hard magnetic paper tickets that you insert and take out in the metro gates. The coin shaped tickets that were given at the Delhi metro were new for me. And they were black with the structure of Qutab Minar etched on one side. There were a few of them in other colours as well, but I got all blacks. And I loved them. They reminded me of the Mother Dairy coins that were given to us when we were young, and we were supposed to insert them in the machine for the milk to fall into the container. The coins were black, and so was Gurgaon after evening due to power cuts. A cancelled international concert, and the wrath of the people, a very disgruntled radio jockey and a hurt Delhi-ite complaining about the cliché of misbehaved people being used as an excuse to hide inefficiency of the administration were all black. Black was the colour of the expressway at night as one sped against the early winter winds to reach a certain place on time. Black were the moods of all those people who told me they hated Delhi, and missed their homes. The yellow balloon with Appu Ghar written on it that flew high up had a black layer of dust. Hopefully people still visit it. I did long back, and have cherished it ever since. But that’s nostalgia, that’s blue.   

Blue

Delhi was my gateway to the mountains when I was young. It was where I halted either very happy with the thought of all the places that I will be visiting, or crestfallen at the end of the vacation as we went back. It used to be always about bus stands and train stations, and stealing away a day to do a lot of touristy things. Visit the Lotus Temple, quickly pretend to know and understand things at the Jantar Mantar, or listen to the same story of Nehru at the Red Fort making his ‘at the stroke of midnight’ speech. Delhi was always a place where you did a lot of things that you were supposed to do, before the real fun started. As I grew up, Delhi changed for me, albeit from distance. Through the pages of history books, I discovered a Delhi that I began to love. I remembered the places I had been to as a kid and tried to relive them through the stories of those history books. Delhi was about kings and monarchs, of pigeons and wholesale shops, Delhi was about politics and old lanes and houses, was about delightful chaos and heartbreaking street food. About sounds, sights and whiffs of everything that had a drop of oldness in it. I find blue in nostalgia. And so half of Delhi was blue for me. A very sneak peak of an express train at Old Delhi station was blue, as were the sights and sounds of Kareems. One look at the Qutab Minar reminded of the times when I held dad’s hand and took steps towards it, thinking and believing that it was the tallest structure in the world. Believing that somehow, if I could go on top of it, I could see my house.  Janpath and India Gate were also blue, as was the primary colour of the F1 team that won the first Indian GP. The cleanliness of New Delhi had a bluish hue in them, so did the Red Fort hiding behind buses and SUVs in mad traffic. The wall of one of the ancient houses that hid itself deep inside the inconspicuous praanthewali gali was electric blue. It made a valiant attempt to coat the age of the bricks that formed its foundation. The lungis worn by the rikshawwalas were mostly blue, as were the million chappals that happened to trade Chandni Chawk. I met people who longed for what Delhi used to be, who hated the rapid and scary urbanisation and the heartless acts of hooliganism that have become synonymous to the city, and I see them in blue. Blue was the colour of my mood as I revisited my almost forgotten memories of the city. It was the colour of the horizon that beckoned me as I drove through the roads that connected an India that I have loved.

Blue was the cleric I saw on the steps of the Jama Masjid one evening. The largest mosque of the country was starkly empty, its silhouette bordered with tiny lights. I saw him sit and stare at the sky, quietly smoking a cigarette, bringing in the night. 

Of sad poems

It’s very easy, if you think about it, to sit next to a forlorn window, look around and think about the things that bother you and start writing your feelings in some sort of dark metaphors and call it poetry. Play a sad song with it, a lot of instruments, saxophones and even bagpipes, and looking out, if you see that at the far end of the uncharacteristic azure of sky, there is a hint of grey, you might even wish for a drizzle to come, which would go perfectly with those impassioned and heart wrenching expressions that you write about. Sadness puts you in a kind of a stupor, makes you quiet, and helps you come up with beautiful metaphors and you realise, that putting down your sorrow on paper, might not be the toughest thing under the sun.

Sadness makes you a poet. Sadness also makes you grow up, in a way that you would probably not fathom. You grow up to be someone who you would have never predicted. When you were young, and there was the whole world out there to be explored, an entire path of mistakes to be made, you would have always thought how you would be once you would grow up. Kind probably, or extremely strict, you would be the one to bridge the gap between the revolting teenagers and reticent adults, you would never desert your parents, and would always love with all your heart. You would have probably thought, that you would never make the same mistakes your parents made, that when you would grow up, you would be something that probably would be a little different from what you were then, but in spirit you would be the same, much evolved, but not much removed. And then you actually grow up. You make mistakes, and you go through to all those emotions which you had always thought as things that happened to someone else. You float in the tides of happiness and seldom see that you might be leaving your trusted land. You become a whole new person, and do not even realise it.

All your insecurities would be questioned in that voyage, all your weaknesses, known and unknown would appear from the depths of certain unknown place and laugh at your face. You would find yourself in a very strange place then, a place you never even thought about, your nightmares never seemed to have the imagination to sketch the landscape of this place. And all you would feel then, is as if somehow your heart has become a philanthropic porter at a busy terminus and someone has put a lot of weight on it. Stomach would churn, tear glands would tease shamelessly and you would probably see a very large cloud hovering like a speech bubble showing you nothing. And you would say hello to sorrow, to being truly sad. The sad that grownups talk about, the sad that makes Tagore write Ki Pai Ni, or Emily Dickinson write I Held a Jewel. And you would realise, that writing something sad is not the toughest thing in the world.

I have found out, heard and read at great many places, about people writing about sorrow. Letters, poems, emails, I have even seen a few extremely organised women write something like ‘Sigh’ in cursive on their sticky note and carefully paste it at their work stations. Whatever the mode is, form is, I have noticed that all you have to do to write poetry, even if you aren’t really a very good poet, is describe sadness. I give you my word, that whatever you write, it will end up being if not intense, but at least slightly poetic. Someone once emailed me talking about his frustration in the field of academics. He was ranting mostly, and he said, “it’s like at the end of it all, I can’t help but often wonder, is there a point to all this?” Sorrow is like the capital city of the beautiful country of rhetoric. When your loved one suddenly decides that you aren’t really good enough for him or her, and gives you a very sad but understanding smile, and hugs you tightly and leaves, and you ask yourself “why?” all you have to do is describe the entire thing at a later time (depending up on how much deep in shit you are) like a second rate reporter and read, you shall see, poetry has been created.

But there is nothing poetic about sorrow. Every time I am truly sad, the feeling is not something I can describe as being as beautiful as poetry. Far from it, it has often felt like someone squeezing my intestines till he makes them talk. It’s like all my sense organs are going on a large scale strike, which, with time, would turn into some kind of a masochistic demonstration where all of them would collectively make you cringe in pain. A pain that you will not be able to describe, or pin point. A pain for which medical treatment would either seem ridiculously pointless, or seriously pretentious. Tears would flow sometimes, in secrecy or otherwise, for the frustration and pain to come out into the open; liberation in salty liquid that the poets would later romanticise as something heartbreakingly beautiful. But when we cry, there is nothing poetic about it. There is nothing poetic about drowning head inside the pillow and screaming oneself hoarse, reluctantly conscious about avoiding social embarrassments. There is nothing poetic about missing someone. It is an empty feeling, a hollow feeling where you lie to yourself that your mind is unable to think of anything. For in your head, your mind is playing a 72mm reel of the person or the thing that you are missing, throwing memories at you as if they were some cursed spells. And then you would perhaps know, that there is nothing poetic about sorrow.

Yes, sometimes when we feel such emptiness, the sudden lowering of an overcast sky makes us feel emptier; when we are alone, a certain tune dressed in lonely words often lends its empty hand of silent companionship. A few stanzas touch a few chords, and a few stories tell us that we aren’t the only ones who have gone through this misery. And then when we put those very feelings, those dark, empty, lonely, painful, cringing feelings in a frame, we realise, that writing something sad is not the toughest thing in the world.

But then, there is nothing poetic about sorrow.

To Bandra, with jealousy

If you spend a week in Bombay, anywhere in Bombay that is, it would help you make at least one absolute statement in life. That life is tough. You arrive here with a bag full of memories of tiny roads meandering under the shade of trees drooping from either sides, of cycling to school and running away for a quiet afternoon on the roofs of your pretty houses, often getting disturbed by the noise made by a few rickshaws as you listen to your dad complain about how your town has changed, and then you smile to yourself, thinking that you have to live in Bombay now. Yes you live in Bombay now, you think a 400 square feet flat with a room and a hall with suspicious green flooring is an absolute steal. You think as long as you spend less than five grand a month for your daily transport you are living in a perfect area. You walk by in the morning staring intently at a Gulmohar tree and write poetry about how beautiful mornings are, and then suddenly, like the batmobile tearing through the silence of Gotham city in the middle of the night, comes the pest control, blowing pesticide and smoking the entire place up, and you rejoice. For now you imagine that the morning turned prettier as the Gulmohar is enveloped by a fog. Yes you are in Bombay now, while you are asleep in the middle of the night, desperately trying to push away the approaching dawn when you have to get up and rush through the crowded streets to the crowded platforms so that you are lucky enough to get at least 4 inch space in a crowded train right outside the entrance of the cabin, and suddenly feel a drop of water fall silently on your cheek, rolling down like a tear that lost its way, it’s not a sad dream. You wake up and see that like in the room high above on a pole where Cacophonix used to practice and make it rain indoors, the rain outside has graciously decided to remind you how wet it is through the ceiling of your beloved home. When you wake up and take your mattress and shift to another room and go back to sleep without uttering a single syllable of protest or disgust, you know you are in Bombay now.

And if you happen to stay in this very wonderful and glamorous place in the western suburbs called Bandra, well, you do all that, but just pay double. You see like every beautiful thing in life, Bandra comes at a price. For Bandra is a beautiful place. Hilly roads twisting and turning like a small Sicilian town where you would see Caucasians cycling to market place, delightful little cafeterias and bakeries so that you are never given the impression that you are too far away from Europe. Yes Europe, you seat next to this place called French Loaf and eat pastry and soft bun, and look at a lovely little Volkswagen Beetle go past followed by a teenager on a skate board. That’s Bandra. Delightfully international. Admit that this is India, anything international is supposed to be delightful, but Bandra is like an example to that sentence. You have bakeries called Sante, and a day in the week, where you have a ‘farmers’ market’! Bandra does its bit to make Bombay truly cosmopolitan. There is the annual Bandra Fair, its very own Mardi Gras, and on certain lazy Sundays, there are a few wine tasting events as well, where you can see women in floral one piece dresses (or whatever it’s call, excuse my fashion sense) and men with hats discussing, well, art. So you see, to be a part of this, you need to pay up. Bombay is expensive, but Bandra, is fashionably expensive. If you hear someone say “oh I pay 200 bucks for a veg thali from the local eatery, but then it’s Bandra,” with a very nonchalantly proud shoulder shrug, don’t be surprised. Be jealous, but not surprised. You don’t stay in Bandra, you won’t know what it is to be a part of it. You don’t get to quietly walk down Carter Road and witness a rock show to ‘celebrate Bandra’, you don’t get to intellectualise the abstract art exhibition with a theme to fight pollution opposite Joggers’ Park and witness the crimson dusk in the midst of walkers, joggers and expensive breeds of dogs with their masters wearing gloves and carrying newspapers to diligently clean their poop every time they defecate. So be jealous. If one fine day, you see that there is mushroom growing from your mat under the basin, do not be afraid, it’s but a small price to pay, because once you get out of that, you are probably 10 minutes away from a pretty little cafe, or five away from the beach.

You see in Bandra, houses have character. They are not going to let you take them for granted. I read somewhere that Afghans used to take pride in the fact that even though they were to live in an arid land with absolutely nothing to take pleasure from, harsh winters, burning summers, no water and only stones for miles, they loved their motherland enough to not desert it. They could have easily moved to the prosperous lands of Iran or even crossed the Indus to come to India, but they didn’t, for their love for their own land was strong enough for them to withstand the difficulties. You see Bandra houses give you the mettle, the character of an Afghan. You might forget that at some place, somewhere not that far away, there is a phenomenon where sunlight may enter your house, that it is not a miracle of some sorts. You might forget, that there are neighbours, when they open their doors, their homes won’t stink of something that can be anything from a rat to a titanium; and you most definitely might forget that end of a rainy season doesn’t necessary mean that your house would become a botanical garden of some sorts, but even if you do remember, like the Afghans, you would continue to live. Not necessarily, unlike the Afghans, because you actually love it, but because you won’t have a choice. Moving away from Bandra has its advantages, and a lot actually do, but then, if you don’t stay in Bandra, you don’t stay in Bandra. Somewhere, somehow, some way, something will certainly itch. So next time you see your friend who is living in Bandra, observe him closely. You will see intensity, there will be pride, trying to blanket a not so thin layer of strife and pain, giving his face a very deep and complex countenance. I call it the Bandra look, try it, it’s very sexy.

In my short stint with the queen of suburbs (seven months to be precise), I have grown a lot. Well, may be not a lot, but grown all the same. Next time I rant about discomfort, I would think twice. Next time I look at the sky as it bursts open and think that rains are romantic, I would think more than twice. And the next time I visit a pretty little bakery or a cafe or even a culturally active promenade, I would always think of her.

For now, it’s so long Bandra. Thank you for the memories, good and bad. If I had a god, I would have kept you in my prayers. You are no Khyber Pass, but you gave me the confidence to face one.

Turn

If you could just turn,

May be walk up to the windows,

The ones in the east,

And pull the curtains away,

You would see that sunlight seeps through the pores of cloud,

And softly touches the dampened floor.

You might feel it too,

Rubbing against your hand,

Like a drop of honey on guarded chocolate.

Then make your way across the rooms,

In tip toes,

You can wake him up then,

Perhaps to his disappointment.

Sleep clutching on to his eyelids,

Making him blink ferociously,

The sunlight mild enough to not disturb,

It was just you,

And sleep wouldn’t go.

He would dump himself back,

Or probably wake up for he loves you,

But it wouldn’t matter.

For you would have seen certain things,

Certain other things,

Certain other sleepless things.

You would have seen a moth struggling with a bulb,

Lit still in early morning,

Ignored by a careless security guard,

Question the brightness of the sun.

If you could just turn,

You would see that the kitchen window was left open,

And it embraced the midnight storm,

Spilling vessels and what’s in them,

As the contents fell softly on a sack of rice.

You would have to keep the window open now,

So that sunrays can fight the moisture on the brownish granite,

As you quietly pick the coffee beans, fallen carelessly on the floor.

Someone would have knocked on the door,

Tapped it slightly, responsibly,

And you would find no one through the magic eye.

Partially open the door,

To get a smell of the ink they use in a printing press,

As news would be bundled on cheap paper.

Your hands would smell of coffee by now,

Maybe even a brownish hue on brown.

You would smell your palm and wish,

You would wish for certain things to come.

Newspaper would be carefully kept beside the bed,

Something for him to be pretentious about,

Something for him to start off a conversation,

That would do enough to curtail your anger,

But not involve you too much,

For he must be needing to flip through the pages,

Mental notes for his social discussions.

But then if you could just turn,

You would see a yellow light,

A yellow dot like a lit up hut in the midst of a darkened wheat field,

Summoning you from a pitch black music player.

You would find your feet taking you there,

And then find your finger press a circular button,

And darkness would come to life.

“Take a sad song and make it better”,

It would say, and you would hum.

A slight drizzle would come in spatters,

Against the glass pane of French windows,

The ones in the west.

You would look beyond,

Somewhere in a remote village,

It is probably raining,

Washing away the mud that layered the freshly laid roofs,

Drenching the children and their uncovered books,

Running back from the dismissed class of a quasi classroom,

Under the shade of an Asoka tree.

The drizzle would turn heavier,

Striking against the glass in a non rhythm,

Like ruthless mercenaries firing pearls from a distance,

And you would find your way through poetry,

Through words and lyrics strung together to win hearts and minds,

Through screams of joy and mud stained school shorts,

Through lovers under yellow umbrellas across the greying beaches,

Through sandy feet and inebriated embraces,

And dislike rain.

But then if you could just turn,

And rush softly back to the east,

You would see that a few rays in the distance,

A few honeyed rays from a misanthropic sun,

Make their way to the moist earth,

As if to shower some warmth to the souls that would wash away.

A few butterflies would find enough time to manage some ration,

A few crows would finally change trees,

As the sky from the west would thunder aloud,

And the rays would dissolve like the end of a movie.

And you might want to shut the window again,

Still warm from the morning sun.

The song would end, with a soft siren from the coffee machine,

Sounds of his reckless movements in the kitchen,

A spoon falling on porcelain, followed by a few curse words,

And you would smile.

Ma, revisited.

For me, as someone who grew up in the 90s, Raveena Tandon’s wet pelvic thrusts to the beats of tip tip barse paani in that dingy cave was perhaps the first taste of sensuality. Not sexuality mind you, for that can come in a very well written raunchy porno where the story and the build up make the ultimate act sexier than it is; but this is deeper than that. It is sexuality with a certain restrain that makes you fall in love. You don’t need to know the story, and you really don’t care about what she plans to do. You see her move, and you just know, that this woman, has the power to dig trenches inside your brain and live there through a hundred Holocausts. I for one, was and am in love with Raveena Tandon in that yellow sari for those few minutes watching her seduce her man; completely ignorant of the fact that she would become some sort of a motif when it comes to sensuous rain dances in Hindi cinema.

So it was a bit sad when I watched Bhuddha Hoga Tera Baap and found out that she has made her big ass come back as a bimbo who is smitten by Amitabh Bachchan who really doesn’t give a rat’s ass about her. But she doesn’t care, she goes on playing the middle aged slut with a pretty neat body and tries to seduce him like those women who become irritating, nagging and incorrigible, not knowing what the man wants. I am sorry, but she is way better than that. If her role had a significant part to play in the storyline I would have understood, but then, I am probably being juvenile and mixing my personal feelings.

But this isn’t about that, it’s not even about an actor like Makrand Deshpande in a role that could have very easily been played by rejected Bhojpuri actors turned to unemployed mimics in the streets of Bhopal. It’s about something else. It’s about something that I have experienced before, but not in this way. It’s about watching my mom, along with a few more unknown middle aged women in the theatre, watching the big screen with stars in their eyes.

I knew that this film was a tribute to Amitabh Bachchan and his pulp cinema of 70s and 80s. I also knew that whatever he did, he was a rage amongst the Indian youth. And though I have mocked and ridiculed his histrionics in those completely brainless films, never for one moment did I not have fun watching them. Of course, now we enjoy them as films that aren’t supposed to be taken seriously, as India’s lovable kitsch films, as sources of popular culture reference for anthropologists trying to decode the pre liberalized India. But in those times, he meant much more to the Indian youth than what film stars of today mean to us. He gave them that perfect gateaway which wasn’t really too much away from reality. He was the rebel that every unemployed man wanted to become if reality had a sense of humour and allowed them to do so. He was more than a movie star, (and oh yes he was such a movie star!), he was a source of catharsis for middle and lower class India, that gave them the strength to face the reality once out of the cinema hall. There was less romance I thought, but more rage. There was less sex I thought, but more idol worship. Everything Amitabh Bachchan said or did in those films was larger than life, and it was the perfect way to instill some imagination in the dreamless eyes of people; imagination, which was not unabashed, but somehow grounded to reality.

And so as a tribute to him and his movies, watching BHTB would be like revisiting his mannerisms and confidence, which he showered on the less than ordinary and almost nondescript adversaries with a mix of wit. I knew Bachchan had a very strong female fan base, and my mom is definitely one of them. But what I didn’t know was that, he had the power to make them teenagers again. I wondered what women like my mom would be like when Bachchan used to kick those goons with his long legs so many years back. They must be fresh out of college then, getting stolen away by young men in bell bottom jeans and thick side locks. There would be Kishore Kumar, R.D. Burman and Bob Dylan, there would be educated naxalite movements and political emergencies, with a smattering of Eastwood and Redford westerns. And there would be Bachchan, rude, yet subtle, angry yet witty, condescending yet with a tone of modesty, a sort of rawness that has kept some space for hidden polish, standing in all his 6 feet 2 (or something like that) avatar, making the women go weak in their knees. Today, when he reminded the audience how the queue starts from where he stands, he probably wanted to collectively take all these women for a ride in the time machine. I know my mom took that ride with a delicious smile in her face.

“It’s him who is singing isn’t he,” she asked almost not wanting to hear any other answer but a yes.

“Yes, but the rap portion was by Abhishek Bachchan.”

“Which was that? The English portion? Where he keeps saying Go Meera Go?”

“Yes, there was a bit more but yes.”

“That was hardly anything. But mostly it was him right?”

At that very same moment, I thought about a few other women I know of, and I wondered how they would have reacted. I wouldn’t really bet against them reacting in any other way. But looking at my mother’s star struck and completely infatuated face, I sat back sipping my coke with a smile in mine. I realized, that beyond the expected mediocrity and a series of clichés, beyond the offensive casting of the heroine of my dreams and beyond the over the top bullshit inspired from playing-to-the-gallery genre of cinema, this film still manages to somehow rise above the average. No, not in the “so what it’s still a hit” kind of a way, but in a proper way, as a good film must be. For it would not only make the guys at the stalls throw coins at the single screen theatres, but it would also make a lot of women like my mom, become silently gushing teenagers. And for those who completely dislike these pretentious tributes to below average movies, they might just take a pinch of salt as they enter the theatre. It’s a perfect mothers’ day gift if there was one.

I for one am mighty happy. For I finally saw my star struck mom romance for two continuous hours. It was dreamy, fierce and short lived, like love stories should always be.

It was a room

Yes it was. Not that you couldn’t have looked beyond the walls if you wanted to, but it was still a room. Not that sometimes there wasn’t any chance that you would spring out of your slumber a little earlier than you would have liked with a sudden burst of golden sunlight in an uncomfortable but beautiful morning hour, but it still was a room. Like the inside of a lonely sea shell, or the imaginary days and nights in the caves of unknown forests it made you feel safe within its boundaries. It gave you windows, like a sneak peak of what you were roomed against, saying that it wouldn’t hold you, that it wasn’t possessive about you, if you wished to leave, you leave. But then absolutes are for ignorant human beings. Human beings who stared at the stars and said, “See that’s Jupiter, it’s the brightest in the sky.” The room wasn’t that. So if you left, you came back again, when suddenly you felt that the predictable insides of your bounded world was somehow what you required at the end of a tiring, adventurous, even romantic day outside. Four corners, a ceiling and perhaps a furniture or two. They looked at you in a familiar way, and every now and then you would probably have a friend in the form of lizards and rodents, who got tired playing hide and seek with their own shadows. You would sometimes become wild at heart some day and hang a calendar, which told you stories of days gone by and gave you blank sheets of papers to write new ones for the days to come. Calendar was perhaps the wildest thing you would have ever done, giving yourself a sense of deadline, a feeling of mortality in things as you tried and kept a tag of hours and days and weeks and months that would eventually go by. Rest all were floating. Like the air escaping through the windows and getting inside to do a round of this small world where the horizon didn’t end in an arc. If those winds were people, they would have been naughty and curious boys and girls who always wanted to find out what was inside that dark fortress in the midst of lush green meadows. They would never want to stay there, but would like to see it, explore it for once, and rush out before the walls closed in. Floating beings inside a static fortress who never made any claims to stay. Or like how you heard people talk about their beliefs with passion. Beliefs that were results of suffering or celebration. Like when they believed in something with all their hearts and went against the world to stand by it, and when they loathed something even at the cost of being a cliché because they suffered when they weren’t supposed to. Out there into the open, every being somehow believed in something, and their beliefs changed with time, with age and with life. Everything inside the room, feelings, beliefs, passion, and even the stretch of the cobweb in a less than strategic position by a not so bright spider were all floating. There was music yes, trying as it always does, to put life in the lifeless, to inspire stereotyped phrases to writers who tried to describe it. There was music that changed according to moods, and then they changed according to seasons. There was music that even changed to play something that would dissolve perfectly in the dirt ridden calendar after you had forgotten to change the month for an incredibly long time. Music that played in your black cell phone, and made you wish for something more grand. Music never romanced the new you thought, it always suited perfectly with the old. Like gramophones and tape recorders. So you wished that you lived for a hundred more years with your black phone, by which time, this mode would have been old enough to be worthy of music. In that black phone you also spoke to people. Floating people. And there were a few neighbours, some were curious like the winds, and some nonchalant like the walls. You preferred the latter, for curiosity was an attribute that only suited children and winds. Sometimes, your foul mouthed neighbour who you always thought meant well would come and knock, saying your fucking garbage smelled like a monkey’s ass and you would have to get it out of this shit hole as soon as possible. But they were only few and far between, the neighbours were.

What were constant though, were you and the room. Now and then you would get out and wonder why you would get in again, and you would realise that you loved to be restricted. So what it surrounded you within the four walls, you still could look out of the window; so what the lizards ranted for the lack of food, you still let dust settle in to hide the graveness of the calendar; so what you couldn’t see the sky, you still knew that there were stars way brighter than Jupiter.

2 a.m.

Somewhere in the middle of these inconspicuously fast moving years, we see a lot of things that we remember and forget. The times when we didn’t have to wear underwear and the times when public embarrassments meant not being able to hold on to the extremely wild bowel movements. I know I am probably giving away secret facts about myself, but then as I said, those inconspicuously moving fast years, often ask our brain cells to take a breather and suddenly, those very things don’t matter to us anymore. In-house party jokes probably, or even first date conversation as a valiant attempt to make her laugh or smile. But that’s it. We move on, and make new memories. Over the years of course, embarrassments lower their standards to ridiculous levels, but then nobody said that growing up would be poetic and wonderful. But every now and then, we take a step or two back, and dwell on those millions of memories and smile to ourselves. We ramble on in front of others, even at the cost of some sudden leaks of suspicious facts, when everyone goes “what!!?? Really??” and a very ‘but then how does it matter’ look and smile with you. We all move ahead, for we don’t have a choice, but we just love to make the life that we have left behind, a part of the pages of our own fairytale. And fairytales are not always pretty. Some are prince charming, while some others are orcs. But for us, to live on in this world, in those moments of aloneness and blank stares at the sky or the computer screen, it is very important that nostalgia inks those pages with memories so we remember our own stories. Nostalgia is romantic; it is essential and beautiful.

I have this pair of extremely pretentious black rimmed spectacles. When I bought them, the first person who came to my mind was Woody Allen, and I got very happy. Some said they suit me perfectly, and some said I look like a dork, while my closest friends said that it doesn’t really matter because nothing much can be done or changed in a nondescript face like mine. So in the hindsight, it’s an advantage. Then I saw Amitabh Bachchan wear those glasses, and there went the exclusivity. It was followed by a few particularly buff men in malls probably looking for heavy bracelets and zoozoo t shirts. My wonderful bubble of impersonating an elite and intelligent man finally burst with a very mild pop when Ritesh Deshmukh started wearing them probably for a Sajid Khan film. They weren’t even pretentious anymore. But by then, I got attached to them. They reminded me of Dadu’s specs. How he used to carefully put them back in the case before going to bed every night and how he used to take them out right after he brushed and shaved. I think nostalgia saved those specs from getting replaced with normal ones. Like broken bats under the bed, little woolen socks in mothers’ cupboards, or rusted guitars in the cobweb ridden attics, those specs will now brace themselves for a very long life.

Nostalgia gives courage to be unabashed. When I started this blog, I often used to wonder what would inspire me to write and keep writing. As I started writing, I realized that I don’t have much to say, other than harp about snippets from the life that I have left behind. Sure I pondered about writing things that are less personal, but then at that time, I used to think that politics always had a context to history of that nation, and people truly fell in love only once. It was a long time ago. It was a world of wonderful three dimensions through a one dimensional point of view. And today as I look thorough my posts, from the first one to the last, I can see myself grow. From being in love and then out of it, to having a pretty awesome job to a very indifferent one, to certain phases of anger and joy, breaking away and curling up, this blog tells me a lot of stories. Stories that would have otherwise stayed at the back of my mind, coming in parts as momentary attacks of a revolting past. So I am glad I have kept on writing. Through turmoil and anger, sadness and joy, and lazy worthless afternoons and sleepless nights. Irregularly, erratically, but with honesty, I have somehow managed to keep writing. I am glad I never worried about the literary quality of what I write; glad that the nightmarish grammar didn’t deter me and neither did the dyslexic spellings. I never thought twice before using expletives and never stopped myself from crying while I wrote something sad. Today, I need this blog of mine, to make sure that I don’t forget the memories.

I want to live my life in such a way so that I can trip on nostalgia in the future. Thirty or forty years from now, if I am still alive and kicking (however weakly), I want to look back at my life as an extremely long movie. I want to watch it in sepia, except the parts when spring comes and everything is a smiling green. I want each of my memories to not lose out a second of its print. I want to laugh looking back at the first time I shat in my pants, or scored a goal or made love. I probably wouldn’t want to relive them, but watch them as an audience, and say that it was an interesting life. Children would have grown up, volcanoes would have erupted, men would have romanced revolutions and poets would have written their Love Songs, and hopefully, I would be there in all of them, collecting memories for my nostalgia.

In the meanwhile something new is starting for me, and I can’t wait for it to grow old. Beautifully, like a Birmingham clock.