and it didn't rain today....

It was late afternoon, lying on my belly I was absorbed into the the gypsies and that stench of bichloride of mercury, and then everything around me turned dark. Dark as if it's night.

Remember, I said, late afternoon and I was reading the book. That famous one, because I'm still mourning and I know I will mourn another 100 years.

My eyes turned to the windows and through those sexy lacy curtains I saw a glimpse of outside. Sky is into a new color - as if hordes of animals just furiously sprinted by, spewing splashing muddy red hues on the horizon. I stepped out of my bed and peeped out of the glass windows - everything around seemed to be in a certain fury that moment. My favorite balcony corner by the neem tree looked even more scarier than that ugly scary smiley on my FB chat!

And I narrated this to myself as I went about to the kitchen to drink some cold water - 'neem tree shook it's head so furiously, so vigorously as if it went in trance, as if there entered a ghost in its branches through the roots seeping through the sewage water and it is trying to get rid of it'. Ah, I can imagine the pain in their struggle.

Hmmm. I checked from room to room for open windows and doors as everything and possibly everything within everything got into this uncontrollable motion adding to the frenzied existence of dust, darkness and dampness - it's 42degC inside the house and I am sweaty as if I'm under the running shower!

Things settled down after a couple of 'night in the middle of the day' kinda FB updates. I made myself an egg - just craved for some snack to witness this nature's playing with color :-) Then drank some cool ice tea and even got back to the same position on the bed with the book - only to realize the cool breeze marked the end of the fury and somewhere it must be raining.

And it didn't rain today. It still didn't rain here. It did not rain to cool me down, to soothe my soul, to drench me in love.

Drug. Sex. Insomnia.

Its well past midnight and I am doing some serious ‘burning midnight oil’ and it’s all about sex and drugs, err…drugs and sex. Well, this is no romantic escapades I am chronicling, if reading this far you envisaged some juicy anecdotes in the following paragraphs! Be warned, I am gonna talk about some real serious, real deep and really heart wrenching stories. And it involves me…yes, poor me!

I am happy that I finally got over that writer’s block I was suffering from and I am happy that I finally have a complete report right in front of me! Ah, I remember I did promise someone that I would share this piece of work I managed walking through all those spells of insomnias – well, it is now ready for public consumption! And I am really happy. Its rather not happy but a feeling which is so confidence boosting, a feeling which feels like as if someone is whispering sweet nothings into my ears! Well, it feels nice. That nice kinda nice :-)

Drug. Sex. Insomnia and a sleepy moi!

Some nights, working on my notes, I find myself sleeping on my belly with my face perched on the laptop keyboard. And then after couple of ‘turtle hours’ I wake up in the brightly lit bedroom to the tune of Sinatra. This could have been a scene of some nice, romantic, ‘sex-capades’, but alas it’s in my dreams, I dreamt of those tight embrace and those thick muscular arms!

Like a flower….

Picture this: Norah Jone’s husky voice filled the balmy air in the bedroom. It’s in closed door-window mode with dust storm outside– precautions for poor lungs which cant suck in thick air. Marquez’s orange yellow paperback lays upturned at page 17 and ‘remember me with a rose’ brushing on those tulip bed sheet, in the middle of a re-reading mode!

Oh, that orange yellow cover covered that famed cholera…err ‘Love in the time of Cholera’. Somewhere, that Medical Anthropologist and that Public Health Specialist and that traveller loses herself to a thing in the past on an unknown Spanish road, camouflaged as a Latina! Well, it had happened before; she had lost her ways to find her ways in life. And that was Barcelona. From Paella to Park Güell to Gaudi to Picasso and getting drenched in cava in those old Spanish pubs. Seven years since. Flashback moments and there was love. There was that husky voice, cat calls as you stop by the paid phone booth to make those phone calls to hear to that thick baritone from across the ocean. Yes, ocean! Hmm….flashback indeed!

Well, to come back to where it started from, yes, finally, suddenly, everything around feels so light, unburdened, as if there’s that lightness, a certain high from the first puff you suck in, as if there’s that slight buzz when you take a deep gulp after a nice swirl in your mouth, as if you just got kissed eyes all closed, all dreamy and light and as if a light feather just floated on the naked body.

The writing on ‘drugs and sex’ is complete and I am done with! and it all feels so dreamy yet real. Yes, drugs-sex and a bit of insomnia.. err …dreams :-)

Deep into the dark sky there are some stars smiling. Nice fragrant gardenias fill the air. A hint of sandalwood oil lingers on the nape and those saffron threads float on the water.

Surreal. Ecstatic. Blissful.

Spring Cleaning :-)

Spring cleaning!
Well, quite literally, actually I am in the middle of shifting to a new space both in personal as well as professional domain. You know, given my track record of travelling and moving with jobs, this should not make you any curious or jittery. Relax.

My office is relocating to a brand new seven storey building; I need to really pay attention to that email I received as I woke up on a Saturday morning. It’s the boss kinda telling in too many nice words to ‘get organised’. Though the email was sent to all who are currently housed in this beautiful ‘green building’ but I am sure many at work would know what this entails for me :-)

Well, moving to a new space which is not as spacious as your current work space can be a problem when you are dealing with a hoarder! C’mmon, I aint one, don’t you know how many projects I get to handle over this six years or so? And then I am very old world, I still like to do pen on paper and all my meetings with my students end up into documents which I keep referring until they complete their dissertation , even after that actually! So you get the scene, I keep accumulating stuff and quite like to keep them as I completely feel any tiny little interaction has the potential to inspire something and I am open to ideas all the time. You need to see my white board at work and how I scribble things on it and it’s a technique I have found which really helps me focus, helps me de-clutter and stay inspired.

Anyway, long story short, the mandate is ‘bring things which are useful to the new work space and leave the rest and they will dutifully find their way to the shredding machine’ .
Similar is the scene at home. There has been no email or no boss dictating or no new space on offer. Its just that regular spring cleaning – an extended one, you can say!

And what the hell of a cleaning it has been….huh!!

I remember reading a quote a few days ago and it went like this “you never know what you have until you clean your room”. This is so true, I have been staying put with my set of things (with intermittent additions from my many travels and some upgrade on the house etc)from pretty much the time I returned back to Delhi NCR in 2006 after staying in many different places for my work which almost started to have an annual pattern with a certain alphabet :-) I mean to cities starting with a certain alphabet! Anyway…

To continue with the de-clutter mode, I am trying to sort my books from travel documents, research papers from novels I read during traveling to some international conferences, painting and souvenirs from letters – hand written letters at that. And I am overwhelmed! First – so many people have been part of my life. Work colleagues, co-travellers, relatives (I have a very big family who don’t live in one place!), friends – so much memories and I am in no mood to abandon any of them. So what if I don’t travel back to see my old landlady in that beautiful summer house in Sweden but the joy that she thought of writing back to me years after I lived at her place is very endearing

. Notes, post cards, photos – and I am at loss how to organise everything. I have a dream to capture all of these, every experience of mine in a book. Yes, there I found this letter – a very lengthy, handwritten one, and someone very dearly telling me that I must do a travelogue as I write quite well. As they say, some things just don’t change and I am still nursing that dream!

I don’t know what was it that I started to write this blog this evening and now I am quite nostalgic, philosophic about life…err spring cleaning! But I guess, you got the point that there are so many people, so many things that shape you, that impact you and you only get enriched with each of these interactions, each of the trips you undertake, each of them….
Yes, sometimes in the passage of time some people or for that matter some memories are shuffled and sorted at a different layer which gets covered by the newer friends or newer priorities but they all remain there. It’s a different matter how you reminisce – I do with looking at old notes, old photos, books, letters etc.

I am glad that I met you all and I am happy that I remember you all and I have memories to cherish about you all :-) And wait, in addition to travel writing, I pretty much can even help guide/organize trips starting from the Great Wall of China to the Great Barrier Reef :-)

Tagore in the time of Love!

Had it happened to you ever that you are thinking about something and you see that happen in real life?

I am in that kinda phase, it is where I almost feel like a psychic – somewhere it feels cool but another way its rather scary and I feel confused, and depleted. My senses are so heightened that I can feel every kind of energy around me. I try to relate this phase with things happening around me but I don’t seem to put my finger on one thing! Its like those dimensions of multiple truths – yes, in reality things aren’t all that black-and-white, however much we would like to believe that way. Things are rather fuzzy, and it all depends how we like to make believe, how we like to see, how we like to find meaning to this whole existence called life! Well, pretty much its how you think!

I have been travelling quite a bit – mostly for work. I love to travel – I’m sure you can tell that by now! But sometimes these travels can get on to you as my area of work almost always makes me think deep, makes me philosophical, and I start to think through things. And then there are moments where I find peace, feel tranquil when I see happy faces despite all the miseries around us, when I see the spirit in people despite life threatening diseases that I feel humble, and feel content from within despite layers of turmoil splashing on me from all around.

So, I was reasoning it out about this unruffled state of being with my many travels that I miss my bed [read: sleep deprived] and the cosy environs of my own home. And that I have been out in the open absorbing so much energy from everything.

But then, being in one place does suffocate me. I am sure you will call me strange but I am dead honest and that’s probably why I love to travel as these trips keep me going, make me imbibe different things from different cultures, make me rationalize the ‘others’ , the ‘different’ and somewhere I feel centred, mature and wise.

Some places clearly attract me, some energy do soothe me, and I am naturally drawn to nature where I get to synthesise balance within me, get rid of the turmoil and get rejuvenated. I did have one such short trip and felt happy to be around family and friends.
I keep asking myself, whether I am trying to escape things, is it that I am afraid of facing something, is it that I can’t take risks and wait for the uncertain to unravel, is it that despite how I abhor people who settle for things regular, things commonplace, things stereotypical – I too am longing for ‘regular’ stuff to feel comfortable for this existence. Huh! confusion and more confusion, and I am happy not to have any answers as that offers me reasons to live, to strive and to wait. In the process, I only get the opportunity to grow, to mature, to be patient.

This is almost getting confessional here. I know, you will say- its like that all the time. Yes, I write the way I think and it liberates me. And this is my blog, so I have all the reasons to pour out how I think, what I think :-) And then, writing is cathartic and I see things getting unclogged and I see creative juices starting to flow - that feeling is very exhilarating. I feel happy, I feel joy, I feel alive and these help me to see through those confusion and I start walking :-)


And as I was talking of connections and feeling psychic – I got a book, a Tagore, last night and I read it before I slept. Call it a coincidence - it arrived all the way from Shantiniketan and it is a travelogue [Japan Yatri]. What more suitable of a gift it can be for a nomad, for someone who loves Tagore! And guess what, what did I chance upon? Travelogue opens with him discussing his needs to travel, why being in another place soothes him, make him feel creative. And for time and again he suffers from pangs to be with nature, to absorb nature and the need to feel centred. If you don’t believe me, get hold this Tagore vintage and read for yourself! Wait, I will help you read some of it at least…I am trying to attach a photo – these are Tagore’s letters to his friends, some are in English and some are in Bengali. Its interesting to read his works in Bengali as unlike common thinking a writer would be using complicated words and would make simple things complex – Tagore is a beauty in simplicity, I quite like this ‘school boy-ish’ expressions. Well, I know, you will say my command over Bengali isn’t great and that my 'Bangla' is rusted. But I find solace reading Tagore as he doesn’t mince words, he speaks the way I understand and I just feel he understands me so well :-) [that’s stretching things too far of course! Well, I am confessing my love for him unabashedly, and I don’t cringe!]

Oh, I realised this is gonna be the first post of 2014. So here’s wishing you all a very Happy New Year 2014. Hope this year brings all the joy, love and happiness in everyone’s lives and I surely hope to write many more posts this year and get a book published under my moniker. Amen!

I am the "Hallucination"!

In the dim light, under the moonlight, between all those hushed voice there was some warmth spreading between the two of us as we slowly warmed up with each other in our embrace, in our naked ness. Well, we were together in friendly, yet passionate cuddle and there was some kinda natural bent to it – no, it wasn’t as if we were trying hard, it was smooth, it flowed well. It was rather uncanny. It was rather unreal. But maybe that’s how adults try to know each other. May be that’s how it get started. May be it was none of that. As he often says ‘there is no…..’ ! Well, point taken!

For her it’s like a dream. It’s truly a dream and she kept pinching and pinched hard. For her it was real and she is quite stirred by the incident, something like a whirlwind. Indeed, he is like a whirlwind - he is real, he is big and he is there in front of you and he is all yours in kisses and tears, in sweet murmurs and then the next moment, he is that icon people look up to, he is in public domain and he is gone away from you! And you stay surprised by that whirlwind of a person who is a master in taming whirlwind in real life!

“he will be tall, very tall, well-built and he won’t be from your profession. And when you meet him, you will know for yourself”

Ah! as if I am recounting à la "Ketut" that Balinese medicine man in ‘Eat-Pray-Love’. It’s lovely to think that way, if pretty woman like Julia Roberts had to go through it, I am quite a game! Well, life isn’t a movie….but, wait, isn’t that life actually inspire those movies? Hmmm…..

But as humans, we all live in our own world of make-believe. I am one dreamer and I like to dream and I believe dreams do come true. Well, that’s about how I am….

He is one nice, down to earth person which is incredible despite all the adulation he is showered every day. He is indeed an epitome of success – if at all he approves that word. He is an achiever we would like to read about and listen to and narrate to our grandchildren. He is full of grey matter and quite charming at that – and these qualities he is very aware about himself.

She indeed was surprised and could not believe her eyes/ears when she met him. She is one hell of an independent woman, living by herself, setting her own standard in work and life, in her own little way. She is happy to see what life has brought to her, she is surprised to see how difficult it is to be a woman in this man’s world, when her chips are down and things are downhill she likes to think all this liberal ideas and feminism are bullshit and lucky are those women who stay at home and remain under their men’s shadow, she quarrels about hypocritical ways of society with her parents who encouraged her to be what she is today – an alpha fe-male! (of sorts)

He is honest and admits he is rude and arrogant when you stop by to tell him that. He walks like the boy next door in your neighborhood and doesn’t throw any tantrum when you don’t usher him in. He doesn’t have the need to bask in glory all the time, she thinks. He is prolly bored of all the awards and all the pep-talk he does far and wide – she conjures. He does not show any displeasure when she panics and she watches him walk into the twilight - she is lovelorn, but he is miffed and she is heartbroken.

She has a tiny little woman in her, and she realizes her womanly desires, her womanly charm and that façade of hers which she often hides. Though she enjoys that side of her and she knows how vulnerable she feels when that façade tries to peep out, as if she loses control. She did lose control and panicked. Hmm….

Well, we all are many layers deep and despite our layers and colors there is a basic tint that you portray and that’s what impacts the other. She likes simple things in life as it is easy to sustain, easy to hold on to. She loves little tears of joy and those weak vulnerable moments even though her mind must be racing to argue that colleague who questioned her research methodology. She wears a strong façade and underneath there is a soft innocent core to be loved, cuddled and fondled.

In their many layers, they will know each other and there will be a world of their own ‘make-believe’ which they will create. A world complex yet simple, rosy yet dark, hard yet soft and in the game of long and short they will find joy and laughter.

Yes, dreams they are and dreams do come true!! And you will know when you see it! And it is real and ‘there is no’ Hallucination! And there was moonlight and it was a full moon that night!

Its about Everything....

Everything by Alanis Morissette

I can be an asshole of the grandest kind
I can withhold like it’s going out of style
I can be the moodiest baby and you’ve never met anyone
who is as negative as I am sometimes

I am the wisest woman you've ever met.
I am the kindest soul with whom you've connected.
I have the bravest heart that you've ever seen
And you've never met anyone
Who's as positive as I am sometimes.

You see everything, you see every part
You see all my light and you love my dark
You dig everything of which I'm ashamed
There's not anything to which you can’t relate
And you’re still here

I blame everyone else, not my own partaking
My passive-aggressiveness can be devastating
I'm terrified and mistrusting
And you’ve never met anyone as,
As closed down as I am sometimes.

You see everything, you see every part
You see all my light and you love my dark
You dig everything of which I'm ashamed
There's not anything to which you can’t relate
And you’re still here

What I resist, persists, and speaks louder than I know
What I resist, you love, no matter how low or high I go

I'm the funniest woman you've ever known.
I am the dullest woman you've ever known.
I'm the most gorgeous woman you've ever known
And you've never met anyone as, as everything as I am sometimes.

You see everything, you see every part
You see all my light and you love my dark
You dig everything of which I'm ashamed
There's not anything to which you can’t relate
And you’re still here

And you’re still here
And you're still here...