What Happens When You Walk on Clouds

If there was some sort of a system of giving certain titles to the years of your life, I’d title my 26^th year as the Year of Awakening. It’s also because I began 26 in a not-so-sober-state. Post the drunken stupor everything is a rude shock.

A piece of advice before I elaborate the Awakening:

I know getting drunk on your birthday is really cool and all, but then it really isn’t. The person who got you into this world had to bear a lot of pain to push you out. She did not have the option of taking a tequila shot. She brought you in sober, and the doctor gave you one hard smack to make sure you were also sober. So being sober on the day you were born is a natural choice. Stick to it and you won’t have life smacking you back to sobriety. That’s the end of my advice.

When I think of my 26^th year so far, I see a caricatured version of myself with a crooked tiara on her head. Her eyes are shut because she is smiling ear to ear and she is walking on clouds. Below these clouds are people looking at her, clapping, holding their stomachs and laughing. They don’t see the clouds, they just see me with my eyes shut, smiling and walking on what I think are clouds. When I woke up I saw the same.

It’s tragic and comic. I woke up when the clouds decided that I was to heavy to walk on them. They didn’t tell me that they were going to give-away just like that. They did, and I fell with a thud on the marble floor of my house. That was the first why in the string of whys I have been asking since then.

"Why did the clouds give away, they could have told me I, I would have moved?" 

The now awakened part of me said, “Sweetheart, there were no clouds. You were high on something, it was this very marble floor maybe you got confused with the colours.”

"Why were all those people laughing at me? I knew some of them, they could have told me that I was not walking on clouds."

Awakened me said, “Honey, it’s rare to find an idiot who thinks she is walking on clouds. Everyone likes a good laugh, so they built more clouds for you and laughed even harder.”

“No one’s ever going to tell you the truth. They should, but they won’t, it’s for you to figure out. And you will once you fall flat on the marble floor. What you figure out is always going to be wrong according to someone else. You’ll be told that you were walking with your eyes shut. And that’s not entirely inaccurate. But now that your eyes are not shut anymore you can stop serving yourself up as entertainment to others.”

That was enough of a lecture to put an awake person to sleep, but it worked the other way round for me. So Awakened me and groggy me got together, we sighed and said the last ‘why’.

"Why me?" 

We could spend the rest of the 26^th year looking for an answer to this question. Or just say, F*** this S*** and figure out a way of building more reliable clouds to walk on. For starters, let’s lose some weight.

Awakened me nods, and votes for option two. So do aye!

  

The Magic of Ink

It was red and teal. My first ink-pen. Then it was the first step to growing up. Pencils were for kids. Twelve years later it’s not very different.

I had a terrible hand-writing, so my teacher in Class IV would not let me use an ink-pen. The rest of my class, however had made the transition.

But the inevitable happened, I was in Class V and everyone has to write with a pen in class V. I spent hours at the local stationery shop, looking for my first ink-pen. The Chinese nib ones, were not good. Our teacher was particularly critical of them, so they were a big no. Parker or Pierre Cardin were not for beginners, Mont Blanc was out of question.

So I settled for a red and teal ink-pen with a silver nib. The ink-tank in that pen had an injection mechanism. This made my very ordinary pen, very cool.

Thus began my affair with ink-pens. My hand-writing was still not very good. But I believed that a good pen would make a big difference. So I spent a lot of time at the stationery store, trying out different pens.

Then on a certain birthday my father gave me the most beautiful ink-pen ever. It was black with golden rims. It made paper feel like silk. It made my untidy hand-writing legible.

We were perfect together. It set in my palms, like it was made to be there. Writing with it was a pleasure. Exams, class notes, homework as long as there was something to write. 

I’d start all my exams with that pen. With it I managed to clear most of my tests with decent grades. It was good, it could not have been better than this. I had found my magic.

I was writing my final exams for Class VIII. As always, I had my beautiful pen with me and we started out on yet another examination journey together.

English language and literature papers were always very satisfying. After once such paper, I told the girl who sat in front of me about my beautiful pen. About how well it wrote and how good we were together. That the colour and the model of this pen was not easily available in the market now. I was very-very proud.

Then, before our next paper, my pen was gone. It was very disturbing. I had just kept it in my box, where could it go?  I bought another colour of the same model. It was horrible. It looked the same, but it wrote like dried wood.

Before our last paper, the girl who sat in front of showed the new ink-pen she had bought recently to me. It was black with golden rims. She said it wrote beautifully. I knew it did.

I shed a few tears before going the bed. I cursed the day, I told her about my pen. I cursed her for taking it away for me.

After that, I did not write with an ink-pen again. My pen was gone. It was with someone who did not even value it. It was over.

I moved on to gel pens. They were new and cool. I collected loads of them in different colours. I had my favourities there too. Then I fell further and moved to cheap disposable ball-point pens. Now, it’s mostly the keyboard.

After almost 12 years, I thought of going back to the ink-pen. I went to the staitonery shop and asked for one. They looked at me like I had asked for a dinosaur egg. They threw the Chinese nib ones at me, and I said no, instantly. Then the owner walked in and pulled out some old, dusty boxes.

I automatically went for the black pen with golden rims. It was not the same. So I settled for a simple grey pen.

When I wrote my first sentence, my hands quivered like they did when I was in Class V. I am re-learing and re-writing. It‘s like I am writing for the first time. The feeling has not concrete definition.

It’s like meeting a long-lost friend. Or meeting someone you liked after many-many years and realising that you never stopped liking them. Then you wonder, why did you ever give up on them, if you liked them so much in the first place?

I don’t know how it works with people, but I know that I can hope to find my magic again. I have found my long-lost friend. I have found the one I always liked, and I am not going to stop till we fall in love with each other. Together we will weave beautiful stories. We’ll create worlds beyond and our dreams.

….and this time I am not telling anyone about us.

The Exclusive Time Zone

"You live in a void, a time-zone an era that never existed. It's somewhere between today- tech-savvy, fast moving and yesterday- the time without this technology." 


Since I heard this evaluation of where I exist, I can't  help but keep playing the conversation in my head. Each time, I feel a bit more proud of it than before. Though this was supposed to be a reprimand, I can't help but take it as a compliment. I live in a exclusive time-zone. It is super-cool.

I was a child in the 80's. I knew a world without much of its advancements. A teenager in the 90's, the advancement started. I stared at them wide-eyed, and saw them enter my life so easily. I adapted I learned. An adult in the new millennium, advanced with all the mind-blowing advancements, yet yearning for the time when there was no advancement.

Putting it very-very simply. I know how to use a laptop/desktop/whatever-top, I write and send emails, check Facebook and all that jazz. Yet my emails are never what my letters used to be. Getting one, does not make me as happy as tearing open an envelope and reading a letter over and over again.

I maintain a blog, but what I write here, is not even close to what I wrote to my 'Dear diary'. Not even close.

I can type fairly well, but I can write faster. Pen and paper make the words flow. They are my magic. Writing on bits of scraps is more fulfilling than complete, saved word docs.

I read a lot online, it is never as good as reading from a book or a page. Books are beautiful. The print, the paper and the way it ruffles, that's what makes reading a pleasure. Turning pages in real has its own charm, you flow with the story, it could be a matter of life or death. Clicking next, does not do that to me.

An old book is more exciting. So many must have gone through these, now yellow, pages. They must have experienced all kinds of emotions and created mental images of the characters. When you pick up the book after years, you join this secret club. You take the same journey and you come out, feeling a little sad that it is over a bit too soon.

I am not too sure, if x number of page views give you a similar feeling. Maybe they do, and I am yet to feel them. Numbers, however are the anti-thesis of words. They are dead, cold, sometimes harsh. They tell the truth, rather they lash it out in your face.

This does not imply that I hate technology, or I am reluctant to embrace it. The reluctance comes in when I have to replace one with the other.

I don't want to. In my time zone or era, black and white co-exists with colour. Carriages and cars ply on  the same road. The writing pad and the iPad lie side-by-side. Google loads, while I rummage through a fat, dusty encyclopedia.

Okay, I am a hopeless romantic. I do wish that people talk, the way they did in Pride and Prejudice, and in my era they do. Some of you probably co-exist with me.

Hello! I think it's you, hiding behind an old, thumbed version of, lets see, a Dickens? 

Red Pants

They are red, you can call them maroon.
They make you feel like you are walking on the moon.

The blistering sun does not make them shy.
When the rays touch them, they turn into ice.

They have magic in them, I believe.
No rythm, no beat, they make you dance automatically.

Cool, nice, sexy and so fine!
I am so happy these pretty red pants are mine.

Tracking tales: A strange love story

Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle, All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain, Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye, Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles, All by himself and gathering brambles;

Here is a tramp who stands and gazes; And here is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart runaway in the road Lumping along with man and load;

And here is a mill, and there is a river: Each a glimpse and gone forever!

This is R.L Stevenson’s famous ‘From a railway carriage.’ I learnt this in Class 1 or 2, but I can still rattle off the first half of the poem effortlessly. Funnily, in the same way I learnt it back then.

The luxury of time

As a child, travelling by train was a norm. Especially, to the place where I had to go to spend my summer vacations or winter vacations, train was the only option. Infact, even now train is the best option to that place, they have an airport with a few flights, and people usually go there for picnics.

As we grow older we start to worry about things like time because it is running out all the time. To catch-up with it we give up the joy, the leisure or the comfort that a vacation is supposed to give us. So we fly, feeling all important and sophisticated, walking around busy airports and saving travel time.

Realisation dawns in the evening

I never realised how much I miss train travel till I took on this really long journey. Every moment reminded me of the anxious moments I had before every vacation. Are the tickets confirmed? Will we get good seats?Where are we placed on the waitlist? Most of the times we did manage to get through all these, but once in a while we did come back from the station, disappointed, with all our luggage intact.

Starting over

This train journey was different. It was my first without any family, I was more-or-less alone, it was after a really long time and it was a route not frequented by me as child. I could just call it my first train journey ever, but that would be wrong.

But that’s the superficial different. The big difference was doing things I was so far ‘not allowed’ to do during a train journey. I left my berth more than a dozen times. I’d come back to check on my luggage, with  hope that the senior citizens with the prized lower berth had fallen asleep, so that I could unlatch my middle berth and sleep myself.

Checking out stations

I stepped out when the train stopped at some station for really long. This was a privilege usually reserved for the grown-ups. Even as I stood at the platform, I kept checking if the train was moving. Some part of me was still scared of being stranded at the platform. Inspite of all my wishful thinking, I knew that Shahrukh Khan was not going to give me his hand and pull me onto the moving train. I’d end up running and catching it myself.

So at the very first sound of the siren, I jumped and quickly got into the train. Only to realise that it was for another train. But that’s okay. Atleast I got off the train and walked around a random station.

Bad girls stand at the entrance. Being bad is great! 

Next I spent a major part of my journey standing near the entrance. The best part, the gates were open. So I literally lived every word of Stevenson’s poem. I stood there watching the fields, the mountains and the rivers race past me, each one in a great rush to get somewhere. I want to believe that they all stopped and took a deep breath once the train passed them.

It’s not like I have not seen scenery pass by me in a train before. In the past it has always been from behind the dirty window seat. Watching it from open doors is exhilarating. Real colours, real textures, so real that you can reach out and touch them.

Breeze, speed and love

It’s normal to start humming when the breeze from the speeding train blows through your hair. It’s like nature is touching you, caressing you tell you, that she loves you. It’s her way of leaving a part, of all that is passing by so fast, with you.

So I stood there, letting the breeze caress me and staring at the tracks till they hypnotised me. I swear, if I’d stared any longer, they would have started talking! So I broke my gaze and looked away. Ofcourse I was dizzy, but then I could not keep myself from staring at them again.

Then it was time for the sun to set. Sun sets are beautiful, and watching it happen from a train is mystically beautiful. Both the train and the sun are hurrying, they've been running all day and as destination comes closer, they want to get there sooner. They want to get home, get rest and start running again the next day.

A strange love story

The destination was not too far away and now it was time to step out of the gates that were my window to a moving world. Everything was standing still now. Resting, maybe panting, after that really long and fast run across the country. I took my bag and left to continue with the rest of my trip. While I continued with the mundane life of a new-comer in a big city, I couldn’t help but think that I had rediscovered my love for travelling by train again. 

I was in love all over again!

Rant on a Grumpy Day

Right now I don't want to face the world.
I don't want to say a word.

I want time to freeze.
Just let things be.

I want to close everything out.
No looking ahead, no turning around.

Future I don't want to see.
The present is not where I want to be.

The past makes me smile.
But I can't have it again,
eventhough it's mine.

11 11 11 11 11

It can't get lamer than this. Just wanted to to leave my mark on 11.11.11.11. How many ever elevens there are supposed to be.