What is it about this song? Is it the tune.. or the lyrics? Or the current mausam and stage in life perhaps. It could be the dard in the voice... can't figure it out.

Aaoge Jab Tum... - Ustad Sultan Khan (movie: Jab We Met)

Aaoge Jab Tum Saajna
Aaoge Jab Tum Saajna
Angana phool khilege
Barsega saawan, barsega saawan
Jhoom jhoom ke
Do dil aise milenge
Aaoge Jab Tum Saajna
Angana phool khilege

Naina tere kajrare
Naino pe hum dil hare hai
Anjane hi tere naino ne
Waade kiye kaie saare hai
Saanso he leher madam chale
To tu kahe barsega saawan
Barsega saawan jhoom jhoom ke
Do dil aise milenge

Aaoge Jab Tum Saajna
Angana phool khilege

Chanda ko uta lakho mein
Hai zindagi tere haton mein
Palko pe jil mil tare hai
Aana bhari barsato mein
Sapno ka jahaan
Hoga khilaa khilaa
Barsegaa saawan, barsega saawan
Jhoom jhoom ke
Do dil aise milenge

Things are never where you look for them

Following interesting things have happened:-

1. I am back to making lists.. It has almost become an obsession to pen all the 'things to do' on anything ranging from the tissue paper (that's what we call the napkins in the restaurant in India) to last pages of books to random flying sheets of paper. Invariably I don't remember where I kept the list... Thinking of making a master-list of the lists' locations :-)

2. There are kabootars in my room. I keep wondering what these birds ever do. Mate and recreate and mate and recreate and peck! That sounds a very promising life, and suddenly all that gyaan of getting a human birth after 'chaurasi-laakh' janams doesn't seem justified.

3. There were cows on the main road. YES! They really were there... not in some far-ended suburb of Mumbai, but right in the heart of the city, on the main road in Bandra... and not one or 2, but three unforgivably unfazed cows mulling and chewing cud.. and in general doing what humans should.

4. The trains.... ah! The trains. I fail to understnad, or rather choose to fail to understand the obsession with the local trains. It is there everywhere in the train and in the travelers. Try as you might, but you can't escape it. I spent about 15 minutes shifting from the slow train platform to the fast one, then getting absolutely horrified by the vision of dupattas and their wearers precariously protruding from the train.. and so, stumped, I went back to the slow train to be greeted by warm greetings from the warmer people leaning out of the incoming train. Their joy on seeing us ladies was boundless.. so excited did they get that they extended their hands outfrom the moving train, only to welcome us...
Aargh! Finally I could get in. And I forgot that I was supposed to hold on to something when the train starts/stops. And ouch went the foot of my neighbour and I got a fitting snarl!
Whatever... the more I write, the better... but betty bought some better butter to make the bitter butter better :-)



WEll well... after coming back from USA, I was looking for Mumbai. I thought I had lost it... or perhaps lost myself. I looked for both - Mumbai and myself, in several places... in the paani puri on the streets, in the lost waves on Carter Road at night, in the mindblowing jokes of Jay, in the make-out sessions on deserted roads at night, in the longingness on Dadar bridge, in the old songs played on Radio Mirchi, in the talks with the rikshawallas... even in the never-failed-me local trains of Mumbai... but I think I was looking too hard. Things, events, people.. feelings are often misplaced. They are often not there where I look for.

Finally, I got up today.. on this lazy Sunday morning at 12.30 in the afternoon... had a very sumptuous meal and a gratifying fight - friendly and yet fulfillingly aggressive fight with Yamunabai, and then read the Sunday Times of India... read Shobhaa De's article which made no sense to me... and then read Bachi's article which was sooooooo interesting, that that made me feel that I have arrived.

jaane woh.. ya jaane na

Two friends sitting on bandstand, in love and not knowing it until it is almost too late. That is essentially the story of the movie... a movie that entertains, that has nothing novel to offer in the plot... and yet... and yet, something about it touches you. Well, for most parts it is the humor, and the freshness (a word used by almost all reviews).

But the real review in her mind is so intense that she is scared to think. It relates way too much to some part of her past that she frantically shuts some portion of her mind.

In the process of shutting down portions of her mind, in the process of training her emotions, channelizing her zest and monitoring her unfounded fears, controlling her anger and keeping in check every extreme emotion... she has lost herself.
She is so much in tune with herself that she can order her emotions... typically she analyzes the situation and evaluates what her emotion should be.. and then turns on that emotion.

She is not sure if she is right in doing some things.

Does the raw, un-mediated emoting give one most joy, or is it the power of control over them that has the potential for greater joy?

She remembers her days on bandstand... with great joy. She remembers the tingling in the stomach when she walked down the Dadar bridge and saw him, the first boy she had really fallen in love with... and then the conversation in the train that left her speechless, and thoughtless... her input in the conversation which made no sense to her, then or now. And then the ensuing date at 9 in the morning, on bandstand. Ah! That was when she emoted... there was the thrill of being proposed! Dam! How much fun it was, how much excitement! It was a perfect day... too perfect... the sound of the waves, the wet breeze, the opening of the day... and sitting opposite to the best guy in the world!

She wonders if she'll feel the same again. Dam this maturity, this growing. She yearns to feel the excitement that she is afraid she won't.

Who am I?

Am I the person who braved loneliness in the long distance trains,
Or am I the person who longs for solitude in the din of even friendly chatter?

Am I the person who thinks about the purpose of life, process of evolution,
or am I the person who gossips about the love life and potential success of Harman Baweja?

Am I the girl who enjoyed possessing 5 t-shirts for 4 months?
or am I the girl who took 15 minutes to decide between the right lip-balm?

Am I the person who craved speed on the highways?
Or am I the person who shuts her eyes in disbelief at an app[roaching low-speed rikshaw?

Am I the person who talked like myself 3 months back?
Or am I the person who is talking like myself now?

Well, that dont make no sense!

It feels like I am losing myself... I liked myself 2 years back, before I went to the US. And then I went to US and gradually changed drastically, and then I liked the changed me. And then I traveled, and changed drastically in a short while, and I liked the newly brought changes to the changed me. And now I am back to where it started... to India. And I think all the changes are getting reverted. I am talking just like I would, had nothing changed!

Can one revert? Isn't change somewhat irreversible and persistent? Or is the mind such that if it wants, it can display no effects of change, and yet live with the manifestation of the changes? I mean, do I have a facade that starts working autonomously, and in a way that interacts with everone differently?

Aaargh! I don't know how to phrase it... and that's perhaps because I don't understand it myself. I haven't had time to spend just with myself, talk to myself, have a romantic dinner with myself in a long time. And now, when I have stolen a few private moments and I try to assimilate the things happening, I feel that my newly found ideas, thoughts and philosphies are either slipping or getting covered by the sticky garb of phrases like 'daily routine' and 'social life of India' and 'family time' and such.

I don't want it to happen. I don't want to lose what I gained.

Even the writer's block has gotten replaced by a lack of desire to write well!

blah!

She meets an old friend in a place full of 'memories'. There is the annoyingly unputdownable attraction, of course. But she has matured, of course.

They talk, they do their business, and they part... just as expected... or just as unexpected.

She sits in her car for half an hour, talking to someone who wasnt there. No, it was not the friend. She was talking to someone else... someone who was not only not there, but someone who isn't!

Some people are crazy. But they think they are normal. Of course, eccentric people think they are normal, which is why they are that way.

Well, she starts thinking. She wants to clear her head and start from the start. But what is the start? Is it when she met herself in the last few months, or is it when he taught her how to think, or is it before that when she hadnt had any personal persons, or is it when as a kid, she thought she was inconquerable? Or is it when the cosmos burgeoned?

okay chuck all this! This is big-time digressing, and more than that, it is bigger time bullshit. And she knows it.

Alright. A decision has to be made. Lets put down the pros and cons. Lets evaluate the way we are taught to, the way things are supposed to be done, the way in which there is a higher chance of success.

Well, outcome after 1 minute of serious manipulation - she cant afford to take life that seriously. She had to keep taking random paths in the forest, to make a colorful pattern by splashing arbitrary colors.... and she likes doing that. She loves forming intricate curves out of just a few points of reference... she likes building a marble sculpture after getting a glimpse of the side-face.


Aargh! Another draft in the blog section. She has something like 10 drafts in the last month, and many more completely erased.

Damn this desire to write well, to make sense, to have cogent convincing arguments, or to have a romantic tale, or an interesting perception, or a poignant saga, or even a curiously interesting random thought! All this is too much expectation from herself.


Is the golden mean just as elusive as they make it sound? She read a borrowed book on the flight today... on 'controlled separation'. Of course she had to return is quite early to the owner who was intears every other minute. 'Is there a way to find a path between the finality of a divorce and the suffocation of a failed marriage?'. Well, it was better frased, shethinks.

BLAH!
Blah and stuff are her favorite words. They epitomize abstraction to an uplifting level.

Alright, some posts dont have endings. She has to stop typing.




She misses travel!

Inexplicable events

Some things leave you happy, some things leave you in awe,
some inspire respect and some evoke pity.

And then there are some things that make you say with genuine disbelief - "What the #%&@!"

It's an outright crazy place, with crazy people right from the Pharoahs to the modern day office going Egyptian. There is crazy traffic on the streets, and there are the crazy vendors, there are stupendous monuments and there is the crazy belief in the will of God.

After staying here for more than a weak, one simply gets immune to anything outrageous. Bizarre is routine here.

But it touches you and makes you see things in an unprecedented way.

When we chatted at the dining table during family breakfast and lunches back in Mumbai , dad would tell us stories and events of his childhood. And they seemed to be so different from the incidents of my childhood. And then, bhai (grandpa) would tell us stories of HIS childhood, and they almost seemed like a chapter of history. He would talk about things I could not comprehend or imagine. And I would be fascinated... it was like getting an insight into the world fifty years before my time.

And today I walked through the Egyptian Museum. I am drained. Not drained by any physical fatigue, but simply by running through my mind a self-created movie of life not fifty or hundred or five hundred or even thousand years ago, but something that happened more than four thousand years ago. While the growth of this civilization has been articulated by several historians, writers, artists in admirable ways, it has moved me enough to express my two pence worth of adulations at the cost of pale redundancy.

There was something about these people that make you uncomfortable. They did make some monumental structures, and they did make mind blowing paintings... but that is not what really strikes you. Although it is commendable that they could come up with the math required to build the pyramid so high, or the knowledge of chemistry to come up with colors that survived through 5000 years, it is their sense of logic that hits you the most... enough to make you uncomfortable within your skin. It was the proof of the development of the human mind that happened then, that does not fall in place with my view of evloution. Philosophy, logic, rationale - all these perhaps are essential for survival in any age whatsoever. But I kinda assumed that having a structured philosophy or a defensible rationale happened much later... It may be that one does not agree with their ideas and philosophies (of resurrection or power of the Pharoahs), but one cant deny that there existed a well-founded (that being a relative term) for all their actions that we see today. They were a people who knew what they were doing... and that too so well that the unity and strength of their beliefs is what made them a civilization that generated awe and inspiration and a unique respect from all those who came later.

And the process of mummification makes you bow involuntary to the mind of the genius. There, in the museum, right in front of me, lied the proof of intense knowledge and talent that existed back in those days.
When I stood in the mummy room alone, seeing the bodies, the signs of well-combed hair, the cleaned nails, and the organs of men who lived 5000 years back, I was in daze. I could not believe it. I still cant. It could not have been. Could I really be seeing the actual hair and skin of the man who lived several milleniums ago?

Recommending a trip to Egypt would be redundant. I can only say that even if one is 'not into those kinds of historical things', one will get into them. And if one is, then nothing compares to actually seeing the manifestation of that crazy people in real.
As for me, the ankh is attached to me for good (pun intended).

Inshallah!

There is what you know and read about in the random travel mags on the flight/online,
And then there is the stark truth you can see for yourself.

There is hassling and juggling through the persistent salesmen,
And then there is the friendly invitation to chai... as a symbol of Egyptian hospitality.

There are expensive restaurants with 'awesome steak' and KFCs and pizza parlors,
And then there is the gastronomic orgasm while eating the Falafal and sipping tamarinda.

There is smoke and dust and dirt...
And there is the single felucca sailing through the pure waters of Nile like a dreamy scene of a Hindi movie.

There can be loud commotion everywhere,
Until your ears filter out the noise and you lose yourself into the faint sound of Arabic music.


There is irrefutable proof of 5000 years of civilization... and the crazy genius of the Pharoes,
And then there is all the unabashed brutal reality of raw human nature... untouched by any element of civilization.


Egypt is surely a place that can test your patience. But just like the ankh, it always gives you energy for more life...