Wapasi - The Homecoming

This is the house we lived in for almost ten years in Lucknow. This was home from 1991 to 2000. Very close to the one we lived in from 1981 to 1985.

Parents in transferable government jobs have a bittersweet task of making their children understand the lack of permanency of space, friends and feelings with no fancy compensation for the same. What is your today,belonged to someone else yesterday and will belong to a completely different person tomorrow. It's like explaining 'Geeta Saar' to a seven year old who doesn't want to leave his friends. Getting attached to a thing, place or memories are strictly forbidden for these children. That is the only way they will survive in this ever moving world of theirs. True, they make many friends and learn a lot owing to various cultures and languages thrust upon them but the absence of roots is evident when you ask them, "Where are you from?" and they answer, "Oh I grew up all over the place". More often than not, they wouldn't be proficient in their mother tongue as well, thanks to diverse influences.

Most of these children hope to return to the houses they lived in. These houses are the connect to their past. Roots they long for.

They are advised against it though. My father always said ," Once you have moved on from a house, organisation or a loved one...never ever look back. The pain of it 'not being the same' is far greater than the pain of separation."

Yet we are fools. We crave for a cathartic closure.
Almost all of us go back.
I went back too.
12 years on, I went to see my old house.

Radhika, my friend drove us there. On one of the most beautiful roads in Lucknow (Kasturba road), hidden amidst trees and lovely gardens is the house I grew up in. We went and saw it. I couldn't stop myself from ringing the bell. It was Sunday evening. A lady in oiled hair opened it. Rashmi. She was about to go in for a bath. I was guilty of intrusion. But she was very warm and the moment she knew why I had come, she smiled and said she herself was an Army kid and has revisited her old houses in Ambala.

She asked me which one was my room. I pointed to it without hesitation. She gave us a small tour. The whole house was just as it was earlier....of course much neater and beautifully decorated.

It seems like a tradition. Old occupants coming over to visit and the new ones welcoming them with open arms. The bond of 'leaving just when you thought this was home' is a strong one. Especially in the Fauj (Defence forces). We all understand each other so well in this regard.

As we sat in her living room, tears rolled down and I started crying. I remembered my mother (we lost her few years back) shouting and running after us to make us clean our rooms. The birthdays. The anniversaries. Our cats clawing the sofas. Dogs in the garden. Cooker whistles. Idli whiffs. Wall hangings. New notebooks smelling of fresh wood spread out on the dining table, waiting to be covered in brown paper. Beginning of a new academic year at school. Dad in his uniform. Me and my brother trying hard to velcro his kamarband, he put on weight every winter.

I was teleported into another time. It was as if Dad would come home any minute on his scooter, after playing badminton and I should run out to open the door for him.

I held myself back and wiped those tears. I had made a complete fool of myself.

Dad was right. Even though the house was just the same....there would never be Mummy screaming at us to clean the room....our cats are dead and gone...no notebooks to cover....the Scooter has been sold off for 2000 rupees....Dad can hardly climb stairs, let alone play badminton. The pain of 'it not being the same' is definitely greater than the pain of separation.

I decided never to go back again.

I wanted to write about it but didn't know how.

Today I heard of another homecoming.
A homecoming that remains a dream till date.
I met a lady. She is in her seventies. They belonged to Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan). Had huge kothis (mansions), friends and a lot to go back home too. During 'The Partition' (division of India and Pakistan along the Radcliffe Line in 1947) they were asked to sell off everything and go to India. Their mother refused. She said, "We are going away just for a few days. We will be back." Everyone thought this was just a passing phase of a high voltage political drama. Sure and soon enough, they would all return.

Sixty Four years and they still haven't been able to go back home.

Pakistanis who finally settled in their house in Rawalpindi were good people. They sent back their horses, cows, clothes, jewelery, utensils etc.to them, only to be robbed on their way in to India.

She is a rich and influential lady. All the diamonds and pearls couldn't hide the glistening tears that welled up as she spoke of all this.

Be prepared to know that whenever you look back, things will never be the same. Savour the moments you spend with your loved ones. Take a lot of pictures. Keep mementos. Breathe the place in, look at it and close your eyes. Remember all good times. Remember the times when everyone in the family was healthy and happy. This is what will remain forever. You will remember how it felt to be there. You can take it with you wherever you go knowing fully well that you might never come back to it. Homecoming is not for everyone.

Speechless

This video humbles all egos and left me speechless.

Made in Heaven

Sail & Swati's May Marriage :)

Salil got maried to Swati on 21st May this year. I had promised him I will attend the wedding, whenever and wherever it happens. So here I am  :)

This makes me believe that marriages are truly made in heaven and it is best to let the heavens make you meet the one meant for you. It is an arranged match but they are so much in love that it's a pakka love marriage :) These days the fine line has merged anyway...but these two sure made it vanish :) 

No Wonder...

 Goose pimples...red eyes...chipped nails...puffing and panting....

Looks like I ran miles to the east before realising that the Sun would rise in the west today. I guess he had a fight with his beloved and got off the wrong side of the bed. Why does she do this? Why doesn't she realise that it's not her alone that he belongs to. The Sun belongs to the world!

Little does one know that she is mad at him for kissing the earth and encouraging lovers to dream into the horizon. She is mad at him for fathering the gold laden farms. No wonder his beloved spewed venom.

                

She always wondered why they never took a vacation, somewhere away from the maddening clutter of planets and moons. Someplace where they can be alone. She smiled and asked..."Shall we take a trip?" 

He said, "How can we? Who'll take care of the earth? She won't breathe without me.She wouldn't live without me. She'll die. We have to think about all those lives." 

No wonder his beloved fumed!

She looked at the Sun lovingly and asked him if he loved her. He said, "Yes...more than the earth!".

No wonder she got hurt. No wonder she fought. No wonder he got off the wrong side of the bed. No wonder he had to rise from the west instead and turn everything upside down. No wonder the whole world is waiting for him to set it right.

No wonder.....

(Artists, leaders, doctors, activists, soldiers etc. belong to a wider audience. There is nothing personal about their lives. They live for the world. Familial ties and responsibilities hold them back. It is wrong to ask them to be yours alone.

I saw the movie 'Bal Gandharv' yesterday and was reminded of this fact yet again. )

b.logarithm

Every blogger has a rhythm. 

Just like our body clock is governed by an endogenous rhythm, every blogger has an in built compass directing when or not he/she is going to blog about what. If you look closely even the topics they choose to write upon have a pattern to it. Totally unaffected by any external stimuli (though they like to believe that something that touched their heart made them pen down their thoughts), they write in uniformly disorganised cycles.

Some write short one line blogs everyday.

Some write long research based pieces once in a while.

Some erupt when they are emotionally charged.

Some are imaginative enough to spin their thoughts creatively.

Some like to share.

Some like to impress.

Some like to guide.

Most of all, every single one of them wants the other to read theirs and comment.

Work, food, travel, technology, photography, art, music, architecture, medicine, spirituality, parenting, romance, social causes, business - it takes all kinds to fill up the blogosphere.

Most blogs are introspective, visual and personally conclusive in nature with very little factual data of any particular use to anyone. They are short, post more frequently but at irregular intervals. They have a wider (not so loyal) audience as the posts are usually generic and a reflection of human thought process. 

Niche blogs deal with a particular field. They are research based and have a a loyal specialist following which might be fewer in number but is more interactive and of similar mindset. They post infrequently but at regular intervals.

We find that many languages are spoken faster than the other. This is a myth as a language with a relatively simple syllable structure like Japanese is able to fit more syllables into a second than a language with a complex syllable structure such as English. As a result it sounds faster.

Similarly, they frequency of posting on the blogs is related to what you have to say. If you can say a lot in just a few lines (even if you write once in a while) and leave the reader with immense residual imagery of what you just said, you might come across as being more regular than a daily blogger who has very little to say and leaves the visitors with no take home.

The upbringing and current social circumstances decide if your blog is futuristic one or delves in the past most of the time. These are the ones to look for if you want to learn potential developments or life's simple rules.

The nature of work dictates the time you post. Housewives tend to blog in daytime, fixed-time office goers in the evening and people in the creative field at night. Flexitimers are characterised by the absence any set timing of blogging. Even if they are free everyday at 8:00pm and can afford to set a time, they are governed by the drifting clock which refuses to bind itself to a point.

Just like in a song, poem or dance; every blog has a meter. Short petite sentences or long compound ones are decided by the tempo and gusto you think with. Simpler the thought process, shorter the beats hence smaller the sentences. The complex ones have an option though. They maybe be difficult and boring or they may decide to put to use their cognitive ability to separate elements of the abstract. They write in simpler forms so that the piece in its totality conveys a far bigger picture than the easy straightforward sentences mean in themselves. "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts", applies beautifully to such blogs.

Then there are some bloggers who post with such irregularity and variance of subjects that at first look one would either find them to be jack of all trades or too scholarly to focus on one thing . On deeper inspection one finds that absence of timing or a line of steady thought is just the outline of the Kanizsa triangle. The blanks speak as much as the written word. The illusions these blogs create by flitting from one topic to the other belong to a three dimensional world which is visible if you can constructively read negative space.

It is true that we blog because we want to put our collective thoughts out there in the universe so that anyone who needs to tap into them can do so. We might write about modest things in minimal words but they do say a lot about us. At times you might feel that there is something is askew with your blog. Then as in life, you just need to revisit the pattern and set your blogarithm right.

Right & Wrong

I no longer know what is right or wrong. The lines are either too fine or too far apart for me to state the difference. If I find something to be right, there is an argument opposing it. If I say something is wrong, there is something to contradict that.

I never thought highly of degrees and qualifications on paper. I always thought the fluidity of mind and matter far exceeded what the certificates mentioned one was capable of. These days I find my belief overturned.

I believed existence always takes care of you. The more you plan something out, more it goes the other way. I never bothered and I was always lucky that I was well taken care of by destiny as well as the people in my life. But these days the unforeseen scares me.

All my convictions have gone for a toss. Money never mattered to me earlier but it does now. Growing old was never a problem but it is now. Worrying for no reason was something only the fools did but I do that now. I believed I was blessed and gifted but now I think I am as normal as anyone else and maybe lesser. I thought I had friends and family that totally understood me but I wake up these days older and wiser coz I slept with my thoughts tightly shut inside me. I can no longer share them with anybody. Nobody gets me these days. They always tell me "how silly of you to think like that". I can be silly once. I can be silly twice. But for me to be silly all the time either there is something wrong with me or something not right with them.

My thought bubbles look like storm clouds now. They don't float, they burst.

I miss being rooted. I have been a wandering monk all my life. I thought that is what I like. That's why I travel so much. But everytime I sprout roots and start getting comfortable in a place or with a set of people, the circumstances whirlwind me out of there into a totally new place with a brand new set of people. I don't even get to take a few of them along for the sake of continuity.  It's a whole new life all over again. Time and again.

To know that it doesn't stop here and I am due for a world of change many times over in the coming years. This tires me. I want to dig my feet in but I no longer have the means or clarity of vision to do so.

I feel like I have everything at my service yet nothing is mine.

I no longer know what is right or what is wrong.
I live in a dazed world where the days pass but the time doesn't.