Atypical Mountain Road

Destination: McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh

I’ve always found some places like paint palettes. Contrasting hues of vivid lives, stories, memories and symbolisms blending together to create a uniquely beautiful something. Something that I’m unable to precisely define, is there any word for a living, breathing place? But we are all human in the end, for the intricacies of the place start falling away as the clock carries on. We go back, unpack, get back to work, pay the bills, and as we start losing track of sleep and time, the place starts fading away little by little. Until an insignificant weekend, when you stumble across the forgotten pictures and try remembering the bits that stayed. More often than not, these bits sing a single hue. And these hues are the ones that will define the place for you, in all the coming years.

Take Me Back to the Start

When waters were clearer and would take time to turn muddy yet. When air was a little fresher, and you could see most stars at night; you’ve forgotten most constellations by now. It was a lot cooler, and the blanket of heat wouldn’t make its way yet. It was when spring didn’t seem to end and lovely winter lingered in obeisance, just a wish away. Now a century away it seems, love how much of it behind did we leave?

I think we forgot, we somewhere forgot to pack in our empty suitcases the times when raindrops felt perfect while walking back home, hand in hand. Or when the music played its tunes with pretty songs and we swayed along with uncertain feet but without any care for the beat; I think we did okay. Or when the sun shined a little too bright, but we somehow found shade beneath the trees jade and talked the afternoon away. Or when leaves fell with an old yellow and I was unusually mellow and you were, you were warm perhaps. Beside the sea I remember, I captured some fine sand and let it play with your hair and hands, and you, you were looking at our transient footsteps. Like that photograph you loved. I did too, at least some. And when the green grasses spread, light moths, wrinkled, circled as the water sprinkled, we didn’t want it to end; but it did end. Like all things worldly, good or bad.

Darling, take me back to our start.

In Pursuit of Happiness

I bought a one way ticket.
I bought a one way ticket of the train that never stopped and never returned, like the ghost ship cursed to sail the eternal blue of the skies and seas.
I sneaked out one midnight. Do not ask me, for I do not know why. I barely even waved goodbye.
Though at station, they asked, asked and asked. Why?

Between the shadowy mountains and green pastors, I thought of recent times. Somewhere, somehow, I lost something. Something almost tangible, like a locket, a ring or a halo; I realized.

Beside the meandering rivers full of life, I thought of my family. I thought of how little and little I saw them and how, little by little it stopped bothering me. I thought of how the voices over distant phones cracked and how concern was laid to dust by the lethargy of routines. And how routines dragged us into oblivion until one day, one morning I woke up to realize that I forget them on most passing nights. 

Palaces that Speak

Do you know that some stories can make your memories come alive? The enchanting rhymes of the low and high bricked walls of a faded old city, do they not mesmerize? These walls, and those homes, towers and lakes, they all live and breathe inside that magnanimous stone palace. You stroll inside it as if moving through a maze – hushed, your breath held. For you do not know what awaits at the next turn, for you do not want the sound of your breath to shadow what its walls are trying to tell so softly. The intricate alleyways keep turning and twisting, like water seeping through the roots of a banyan tree, only making it stronger. The rich contrast of the lush palace and the unassuming alleyways makes you believe that they hold forgotten secrets. Tales of lives, love, wars, and time slipping by. And once you hear this, it is not about what the paths lead to – the picturesque courtyards, the lavish rooms or the sacred temples – but the journey, it itself becomes your home.

A Letter to History

Dear History,

When I allude to you, I do not only mean the alluring tales of love, wars and lives lived and lost.  You are also the pervasive story behind my carved musical box. The bluestone that I picked from a Kashmiri antiquity shop, it sings of a forgotten raindrop. The little dairy I saw him weave in painted streets of Rajasthan, did it speak of a tradition not yet lost? And those sands of the worn hourglass, I fancy them to be of the ocean where I spend so many days, both blissful and lost.

I see you, I see you in the engraved wood of a certain Deodar. I wonder, how many tales will you tell of travelers who passed. In things that fade and in things that do not, I see you in that shop selling Turkish crafts behind the largest mosque. You are the forgotten time and stories of a place that I do not know exist, you are the mystery of an unnamed crypt. In the crude drawings with marvelous colors, in murals and porcelain glass, they sell you. For you are rumored to get better with age. But what about the place? Or the setting? And the gripping story that staled? I want to know it all. Dear history, I write to tell you that you have me charmed.

Yours truly,
Imagination

(Picture Credits: Varun Rustagi )

Trigger

Do you remember the last time when music became the concertmaster of the symphony of your emotions, like the moon on whose mandate waves rise or fall or just lay still? Or when the eyes of your lover looking deep into your own made electricity run through your veins as if it were the first time? Or when that string of words seemed to sting you every time you read it, like nails on the heart of strung passions that you’re to let go but cannot. Do that. Let go; muster the courage. Life needs more inspiration, more elation, more angst, more emotion. When did you last feel?

Nightmares, they linger.

Golden sun. A long road, stark against the sunlight, stretched into that golden sun. Clear, crystal clear was that road, the road that met the sun. I don’t remember if there were any trees or not, any green or not, or any other color for that matter. All I remember is everything being tinged by a different shade of golden – be the air, the land, or the sun; the happy, summer kind of golden. Everything except that road, that long grey road.

We walked on the side of that road, me and her. We both wore light sundresses, flower patterns I remember. Strikingly similar were they, mine and hers, both the dresses and the patterns. We both looked pretty alike, only she some bits taller. It felt warm, spring-like. Friends we were once, best friends. Did I tell you that? I trusted her. More than myself, more than I had ever trusted anyone. Because I grew up with her. What did they say, we had a lifetime of memories together.

I guess it was a simpler time, that day. Before all of that, any of this. We were still friends – the humble, true kind. She knew me inside out. And I thought I knew her too.

A Humorless Muse

Blues. Navy blue. Sky blue. An ocean and sand blue. Oranges. Milk-ish orange. Fiery orange. A more deep artistic orange. Probably streaked with a reminiscent orange, of countless evenings spent out in the playgrounds. It seemed a really long while back, so alien that it might as well have been another life.

Then the Violet. The powerful, relentless Violet. It was the Violet that pervaded the mega cities of the world. I never saw that myself, only in the sparkling photographs of that world beyond mine, far beyond mine. That Violet always seemed to have a million diamonds embedded in it, on earth and the sky. Unlike this one. This one did not care for the aesthetic, picturesque sense that the world clinged to. It was a raw swathe of darkness that commingled with the orange sky and the green land, as if conquering them both. A fearless, regal violet, that leapt out to rule the whole of horizon. Like the vicious smoke of a witch’s cauldron, it kept drowning the day with each passing second. 

The Evil Queen And Her Puppets

She sashayed across, her long ebony gown trailing her.  The enigma of the land, revered by its inhabitants, her aura carried a magic inexplicable. Every living being in the ambit bent down to its might, even the trees seemed to bow. The wind lingered in obeisance. Reveling in the power of her own power, she smiled a sinful smile in my direction; a smile dripping dark with triumph and conceit.

I failed to fathom that smile, those surroundings. I looked around at everything; everyone. This was the world I grew up in, the people I grew up with. I knew it all, and yet it was all unknown. Life revolved, and I stood there living my worst nightmare; I was a recluse in my own world. Everything that I had known, everything that I had ever believed in blazed in that moment. A bright fire danced around me, grimacing, laughing at me. Its effulgence engulfed my memories, my beliefs, and my reasons for happiness. I watched, helplessly, my whole life coming down.

They, who I believed to be mine, just stood there. The fire danced around them, it threatened to immolate them too, but not one lifted a finger. All had conceded to her, all. My eyes, dewy, lingered over them; a thousand questions lingering in them. But no one dared to look up, no one dared to meet my eyes. And each of those unmet glances shot through my heart. Each of those unanswered questions spread like venom through my veins, poisoning me from the inside. They left me a heart with an open wound.

She looked down at me, at my glinting fresh scars. A vain contentment suffused her, it was the fulfillment of a desire she long coveted. She drank to my failure, she drank to her victory. She drank to my helplessness, she drank to her power. She drank to those few moments that shattered my world; those few moments which belonged to her.

My whole life decimated to a masquerade, where she was the queen and they her puppets.