The Unexpected

Today let me tell you all a story of a Hindu and a Muslim. Story telling, a dying occupation ? Let's revive it.

It was a bright summer afternoon in the Capital. They were somewhere in North Delhi. She, along with a few friends came near a small tea-stall on some road near some street in some place in North Delhi. (Names of people, places, spots, roads, etc. are not important!) She, in a long colourful Pakistani kurta, long enough to touch her calves, came and stood at the tea stall, her back faced him. He looked at the beautiful shape her back was forming right in front of his eyes, he looked passingly and then turned to look again. All he could see were dense, long curls covering one of the most shapely backs he had ever seen. He wanted to look more. His eyes followed her as she passed along and finally stood with a bunch of her friends laughing. He had not heard such a ringing laugh before. The voice of a laughter that stayed with him. He wished to look at the face of this beautiful body and his wish was granted. She was so animated, in a moment she is here and now there, meanwhile he stole a glance at that, much desired face.

He saw a forehead that deserved at least a hundred years of praise and then her eyes. Her's were the most beautiful pair of eyes he had ever seen. They were a pair of round almonds pointed at the edges as if carved by a sculptor who had  beautifully clad them with black kohl and decorated the lids with a turquoise glitter. He thought he could look at them forever. Her lips, he thought were how heaven must look like. She wore turquoise earrings. Her hands and feet looked like the clouds. They could disappear the moment you try to touch them. There was something celestial in her beauty. He thought she was magic. She looked like a hyderabadi princess. He had noticed all this about her in a minute's time and now all he wanted was to get to talk to her. But, how ? It was somewhere in the 1980's. You couldn't just go and talk to a girl then. Talking was out of the question so he made the most of his time trying to make eternity pass while he gazed at her from the corner of his eye.

But, they say somethings are meant to be. So was this. She looked towards them and waved. He stood there numb questioning reality for a second on watching her wave in his direction until he realized she knew his friend. She went across to meet the friend who introduced them. They met. She saw him, there was something magnetic. At once she had an urge to talk to him. But didn't. She did not want to seem too forward, or too interested. He was just another guy after all. Just another boy, who had the deepest eyes and the naughtiest smile. He did not look like a good boy. He was one of those who break hearts, or so his appearance said. People who don't take life too seriously, she thought. Yet, there was an inexplicable magnetism in that mischievous smile. But, just another boy. She had noticed him looking at her and being blessed with the heavenly quality of being a woman, in a moment she realized his inclination. The friend urged them to sit for coffee and they all did just that.

On a square table they sat beside each other. She thought he was a Hindu Rajput and he couldn't dare to think of her as anything other than a Hyderabadi Muslim princess. They exchanged names only to find out that all this while they were thinking the exact opposite of each other. She was a Hindu girl and he a Muslim boy. It's funny how looks deceive, they laughed. He kept her engaged in his talks and poetry, somehow everything he said seemed like a sonnet to her. Everyone else disappeared from the palace of warmth they were creating with each passing moment. She began drowning in his eyes, her mind stopped her with the fear of letting her out too soon. Even then, she was drowning and he knew he couldn't ever let her go.She seemed to him as one of those finely groomed ladies that men eye but hardly get. She was a treasure. All he wanted was to continue talking to her. He asked her out on a date for the very next day. For a second, the invitation shocked her but going completely against what her mind and morals said, she agreed.

The very next day, they met again. She saw him sitting on the boundary of the first floor of her college building looking at her, while she talked to her friends, their eyes met and she was so drawn towards him that she dodged the conversation and immediately walked to meet him. They smiled. His smile had posed the question and her smile had given the answer. He asked, "shall we?" and she said "Yes". Since then, there hasn't been a looking back. They are together and in love. Love happened the moment they saw each other and there was a connection, like they had always known each other.


Where is the Hindu Muslim drama? Not all Hindu and Muslim stories have to be tragic. Sometimes love overpowers them all.
                                       
                                           

Breaking through: Living Alone blues

I am Twenty two. I live alone in an apartment in the Capital. As soon as people hear this, they bombard me with questions.Questions concerning my securities, fears of living alone in an apparently carnivorous city like Delhi where men see you as meat, then, they mellow it down to how do I manage my food or 'kill' my time, etc. etc. Thankfully, I face no issues in dealing with any of the above posed problems. In fact, living alone was a very conscious choice. It wasn't the first of course, but, when circumstances lead to it and I moved in an apartment alone, I questioned myself for not having thought about it earlier. Living alone is bliss. More so for people like me who are greedy for their own space and company.

The struggle is not the fear of a paranormal activity, robbery, theft or molestation. The concern arises during times when all I long for is a human company to bring me back into the real world from the parallel world I am then inhabiting or a chain of thoughts that has led me way too astray, into the real. It arises at times when you spend hours sitting in the same position, thinking, and you don't realise the amount of time that passed meanwhile. When a soul shaking idea recurs in your head and all you want is something to protect you from it or at least distract you. And there is no one. It is a fit of loneliness that either brings along restlessness or leaves you dazed. I crave to concentrate all my energies and thoughts in one place but pertaining to my womanly multi tasker mind, I can't. My mind wanders away in thoughts and places that I fear the most. I want to sleep it off but either insomnia hits or my overtly active subconscious keeps a dream picture of the same thought ready to haunt my sleep.

Those moments are horrifying but I HAVE to cope with them on my own. I have to wipe my tears off after an uncontrollable session of crying. When one cries, mostly there is someone to ask them not to but crying alone is a commitment. You know you will cry your heart out and then will have to shut yourself up. But when it's over you know you won't cry again. You learn to wipe your own tears and get back to work. You don't starve yourself too long because there is no one to offer you food or force you to eat. You have to help yourself. You are your own friend, the one who never leaves your side. It's really a fight between the conscious and subconscious. When your fears that reside in your subconscious overrule your stability by entering the conscious mind, you break. If you succeed in holding yourself together and act as a dam against the flowing in depression, you have mastered the art of living alone and if you fail, you will learn soon. Just don't give up.

Living alone makes you strong. It is frightening, challenging, back-breaking and demanding but, it helps you discover yourself. It is an experience, it's like your den, people come and visit but you're the one that lives and rules. If you're a lion/ lioness you will survive and your problems will fear you or become your meal ! And we all know "food" is always welcome, we know we shall finish it !

After all, there is always yellow light(I like yellow more) at the end of the tunnel.

Attaining 'Nirvana'

Aren't there a gazillion times in one's life when each step weighs a dozen more kilos and thoughts in the mind's temple are stuck in a maze of the necessary and the unnecessary,when all one wants is to elope to an unexplored land to attain some stability, a partial "Nirvana" perhaps, times when actions are eclipsed by thinking and your thoughts pace up with the speed of light. If all of the above is true and the path of 'Overthinking' seems like a familiar territory, one should consider a SWOT remedy. (Don't confuse it with the evermore depressing SWOT analysis). SWOT here stands for the need to gaze at the limitlessness of the unpolluted Sky, experience the thrill of Waterfalls and the Winds, breathe in smoke free Oxygen and Travel to realize that there are larger things in life (literally!). In short, mountains are calling you !

I realized all of this when I applied it to myself and did not let the pettiness around take on the better, stronger side of me. I traveled to Mcleod Ganj, a suburb of Dharamsala in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, India. Although, the idea of travelling in itself is empowering but, I prefer the mountains because they heal and rejuvenate me like never before. On reaching the foot of a mountain you realize you have signed in for something you will never forget. Mountains liberate you, they make you conceive  how supernatural the sheer idea of nature can be. The indefinable shapes , the unruly growth of untamed plants and trees, the crooked man-made roads that lead to them and the possibility of being the habitat of unpredictable species of dangerous fauna, makes them wild and powerful. But, the dominating feature still remains the soothing effect that it causes to the eyes and the healing effect on the soul.

Mcleod Ganj was like a rain filled cloud over the barren land of my deserted heart and the dying vegetation of my unproductive mind tirelessly indulged in overthinking. The moment we entered the concentric roads of the Kangra region my heart sang with the winds as the droplets of rain kissed my face. I helplessly fall for places which aren't very crowded, where there is more nature and less people to look at and Mcleod Ganj was just that. Think about places where cameras fail and photography enthusiasts begin to feel that capturing images with their eyes and engraving them for a lifetime on the tablets of their hearts is more worth their while ! Standing on a natural rock in-front of the Bhagsu waterfall,I closed my eyes, faced the sky, opened my arms wide to embrace the scenery and wished with all my heart to terminate the flow of the ever-moving time and let eternity pass in that very moment. 

People often associate the idea of attaining 'Nirvana' in the heavenly 'stuff' available at the Shiva Cafe of Mcleod Ganj(very interesting place but for another time ;)) for varied infamous/famous reasons but my experience says otherwise. While in Mountains, the amount of 'grass' is not in question, what matters the most is the 'trip' you take in every moment. That leads to Nirvana. How does one determine whether they have successfully attained it or not ? It's simple, the moment your heart perceives, 'What are 'we' when compared to rocks and mountains?

I do.

Rings that teasingly came forth but vanished before she could say, I do.

They warn. That's all they do, warn you. Don't drink. Don't smoke. Don't go out in the night. Don't fall in love, it's a trap. Love is a lie. But, these two were thousands of galaxies away from those who warn and those who complain and all those who exist. They also say "Don't make a person the center of your universe !". But, they had created a universe of their own. A niche where the center or the corner didn't matter, they owned all of it together. They were like the first borns in the garden of Eden only without the fear of a forbidden fruit or the temptation of limitless knowledge, or anything at all. There was no fear. They merged to create the sublime. What then was left to fear ?

She was like the ocean to him, with a body that was curvaceous like the waves and her presence, an encompassing stretch so elaborate that she conquered his vision. All he could see was her limitless beauty. As far as he searched, all he could find was the depth in her eyes and the truth in her existence. She had cast her spell and he was taken. For her, he was like the sky. Where ever she looked she found him looking right back at her, gazing with eyes pouring down pearls of love. He was a poet and his poetry was the mild breeze that blew through her hair and tickled her face as she smiled.

They lay together all day, drowning in each other's eyes and falling in love each moment. Together they were art. Even lying on bed together seemed like a beautiful piece of art, where the artist has carefully placed two bodies and worked on them so religiously that their eyes make them one. He loved reading to her and she loved listening while she played with her dark deep wavy hair, he thought were like a flowing river. He leaned against the bedhead, with a book in his right hand and a cigarette in his left and read to her. She listened carefully for exactly a minute or two and then blew along with the smoke rings with each fag.

She didn't like that he smoked but was guilty of basking in the artistry that lay before her. She somehow relished watching him smoke. Each time he smoked she was so bewitched watching his bare torso resting on the bed-head and the belted jeans stuck at his hipbone taking drags of the cigarette and reading love sonnets to her that she found herself enmeshed. As he pulled at the bud with his firm lips, a dense array of smoke rings followed that commence together from the halo that his lips form and then disperse. She made castles of the smoke in her head, imagining one smoke ring to tie them forever while another would make a headband.

When the cigarette lounged between the first two fingers of his left hand, she noticed the shape his hands took. Once again she was captivated by the perfection of the carvings of his hands, she looked at them and wished to hold them between hers for the rest of her life.He tilted the cigarette on his fingers and tapped on it twice to drop the ashes that had stacked on the lit end and redid the poetry again from bringing it to his mouth to dropping the ashes in the tray as she lay with him adoring the whole act until the cigarette was pushed against the ash tray and all that remained was the residual bud, last trace of the mesmerizing art she bore in her mind but never produced. Like the wedding ring she saw coming each time but he never produced.

Some leaves from a life I never lived but is still mine.

Have you ever visited a very old building, a monument perhaps, and felt that it belonged to you or you to it ? I have heard a lot of people talk about a strange nostalgia in such places. I felt that too. Not only do I feel that I belong to the place but also that I own it, or did, at some point of time, in a past life (yes, I am a believer). If the nostalgia in question was a disease, I would describe mine as stage four, incurable, laden with infections like mistaken identity disorder and 'chronological outrage'. But, science or medicine can neither pollute nor begin to fathom my feelings of belonging-ness in them.

My hometown is Agra (yes, Taj Mahal and all that). The earliest visit that I can remember to not only the 'Taj' but to all other Mughal monuments in Agra and the latest explorations of Mughal architectural sublimity in the Capital, were all embellished by the same recurring feeling of belonging to them. I am incapable of imagining the forts without the many army men that must have guarded the place back in the 1500's and later until the domino like downfall of the Mughal Empire. Although, I feel more attached to the times of Akbar. In fact, as complicated as it gets, I feel like home in the monuments associated with him. Take any that he has laid his glorious feet on and I feel it's mine too. Living exactly 100 meters away from his tomb, Sikandra, in Agra, could have etched an everlasting mark on my heart but that is only a factual justification for something so deep that I can only partially describe, unless I write a book about it.

Everytime I am about to enter a seraglio, I look up only to find a Dasi (help-maid) showering flowers on my head from the little Jharokha (An arched window to let light in) to celebrate my homecoming. Eventually, on entering I see the hallways adorned with the best quality red, velvet curtains and the floors carpeted with gold-embroidered carpets, the announcers announcing the gracious arrival of Shehzaadi "So and so", while, I walk through the passages owning the whole 'Royal Palace'. Every moment I spend inside, takes me deeper and deeper into the abyss of my belief that the place still belongs to me and I to the time when it was in it's full flourish. I never see the roofs with their present cobwebs and faded colours but in the way they must have looked when they were just built and exhibited to the King for the first time, when performances and 'Mushairas' were held under them and when torches and jewels were used to light the quarters. I always visit the 'Meena Bazaar' of the Agra Fort like Jodha would have, with the excitement of a little girl on looking at the decorated shops and the discretion of a grown woman to bury it inside (yes, I am always in character!).

I don't simply visit these monuments but each time I go, I do myself a favor by living them. The visit is a treat to myself in times of crisis, happiness and otherwise. Needless to say,that I make sure I pay them a visit when there are hardly any other visitors, which is, very early in the mornings. That helps me imagine (read hallucinate) better. The premises are empty, un-populated, unadulterated and peaceful at that time and I can easily quench my thirst for tranquility in the harmonious, home-like atmosphere. Each time I leave, I find a part of me left behind reclining on the pillars on the terrace or the arched corridors, looking at the crowd coming in to turn my home into a tourist spot. You might think that technically I am a tourist too, but no, I am not a tourist. I am a traveler and in this case, a time traveler.

P.S. : Of course, all this happens in my head, but why on Earth should it mean , it's not real ? ( Harry Potter to the rescue, ALWAYS)