Into the Horizon – III

After stopping for a sumptuous Maharashtrian lunch of Bhakhri, Brinjal, Kadhi rice, Lahsun ki Chatni, dal and Pyaaz at a comfortable place before Pune and confessing home about the trip, we landed in Pune. I had been drenched and dried up innumerable number of times. While the moisture goes from your clothes, the dirt which the rainwater carried with it doesn’t. And you only bother to, in fact you only can, wash your face and eyes at the roadside Dhabas.

Thoroughly shivering, I stopped for a mug of hot chocolate in Pune. The receptionist of the mall gave us strange looks. I headed straight to the washroom, and as I looked into the mirror, I knew why that had been so. And I had a sudden, secret two minute crush on my friend for hugging me when she had met me a few minutes back. I wouldn’t hug someone who looked like I was looking now. And never in my life if I were a girl.

—–x—–x—–

It was the second straight night on the bike. Dusk fell as the lights from Pune were left behind. Climbing the Western Ghats, it grew chilly. The socks which had been adorning the tail lights, the shoes slung on the front bumper, and the windsheeter which been tied around the waist all came back to serve their purpose.

Upon the Ghats and later was a journey I do not wish to describe in full detail. There were the two of us riding for well over  24 hours now, now under a thundering Western Ghats rain, over bad, treacherous mountain roads, in the Mumbai Pune highway (and not the expressway) traffic in the night. On top of it was a fog thick enough to facilitate a view of your own shadow formed by your own headlight right in front of you.  If you compare our journey to that of the fast bowler’s spell, this was the time when under 45 degree centigrade temperature, Sachin and Sehwag were blazing away at full throttle and there were Chris Gayle, Ricky Ponting, and Kevin Pieterson oiling their willows in the pavilion. With the added clause that one wrong delivery and the bowler, alongwith all his balls, will go for a long, long toss. Full marks to Daddu for his bikesmanship. In terms of real adventure, this was the only patch on the whole trip where we encountered any.

—–x—–x—–

There are numerous ways to enter the huge Megapolis, and a wrong turn can cost you another hour or so in reaching your destination. The road turns ugly on the ghats near Mumbai. Because of so many trucks plying on the road, and not less because of the heavy rains, and not the least because no government gives a shit about mountains and mountain roads, it is often broken. And for most of the way smells sickeningly of oil. Stopping trucks that are hurtling down the hills in the middle of the night under a roaring sky, and asking them for directions was one remarkable feature of this patch.

—–x—–x—–

From the height on the edge of the Ghat, when you first look down on the patchwork of islands and reclaimed land stitching them together lying below, it looks like a forest on fire. So much light that against the darkness of the forested Ghats, it is positively blinding. As we rode towards it, I couldn’t have enough of looking at the  sun which is always risen in India’s west. The heart and soul of India’s economy, the city which never sleeps, where lights never go off. Mumbai.

We reached Vashi at around 12. It was Ramzan time, and I got packed a Tandoori chicken from Sion. We reached Narsi Monji after a full three hour bike ride, this time over the still busy expressways and flyovers, dark lanes and lonely bylanes of Mumbai. The hot bath I then had at Sanket’s brother’s flat, after which the entire bathroom was under a layer of  gooey blackness, was the best I’ve ever had. After that, the Tandoori chicken was the best I had ever eaten. And after that, the crash on the simple mattress in that cramped students’ apartment in Juhu, resulted in the best sleep that I ever remember having.

—–x—–x—–

I lived a whole life in those 53 hours. A few things I’ll always remember. The shopkeeper in Karnataka who gave us water melon flavoured ‘medium class chocolates’, four for one rupee.  The Dhaba owner in the middle of absolutely nowhere, who gave me a tattered chatai to sleep on. And where moisture seeped into the ground due to the rains outside and I practically froze from the cold wave coming in from the earth while I was lying face down on that chatai, using my jacket as a blanket. All this, while Daddu slept on two plastic chairs in the rain outside.

The dhaba owner boy refusing the tip I offered. And telling us to ride carefully as we took leave.

Finding a drunkard crawling on the highway near Solapur, and passing him by. A while later realizing that one simple act of dragging him to the side could have been a possible life saver, and that in our hurry to reach home fast, we had left him for dead from our side. Being condemned to live with that thought for the rest of our lives.

Coming across places called ‘Bhosari’ and ‘Shitole’.

Leaving home from mumbai, all set for a 750 km long journey, and getting wet inside out within the first five. And then realizing that there was no polythene to protect the cellphone, picking up a cover from the drain overflowing nearby and putting the cellphone in it and keeping it in the pocket.

Almost getting stamped upon the highway by a truck gone mad. And a few kilometers down the line, finding out that it actually had stamped a few people to death.

Riding into the setting sun for two days straight, riding into the full moon on the third night.

And on the fourth morning, to finally reach Hyderabad, our new home, riding into the rising sun.

Like the Hindu mythology says, the end itself contains the seeds of a next beginning.

 

Into the horizon – II

What do I write about my Mumbai bike trip?

What do you write about the British teenage pacer who bowled for two days on a flat Indian test match pitch, and returned figures of 60-20-100-2? Except for the two wicket taking deliveries, the odd half chance which ‘could have been’, maybe one or two misfields, or the odd LB appeals, what did the bowler do, really?

We hit the highway at around five, and were pretty much drenched by six. It were the monsoons, and rains were not something we could make an excuse for stopping. so the sky became our washing machine, and the wind our dryer. I was the smart one here. Wearing sleeveless gym T-shirt over my drip dry track pants, which I had rolled up to my knees. Like the Hindu cycles of births and rebirths, I would get wet, dry up, then get wet and dry up again. There were no such cycles for Sanket, though. Wearing a cotton shirt and vest over his thick denim jeans and jogging shoes and socks, he was accepting with aplomb, and then not letting go of, any of Allah’s offerings.

Well, to each one his own. As long as the other one remains beside you and does not ram you into the truck passing from the side. That’s the first lesson you learn on the road.

—–x—–x—–

We both tend to get a little high on the open roads. The mind leaves behind all the clutter of the corporate life, and the vision is clearer. The thoughts which come gushing in then, are more neutral and plenty, and make for some mind blowing BC. The only problem is that although you are able to soak in the rain, and are able to see the skyline five kilometers to your left and five to your right, and can look up and count exactly how many stars are in the galaxy, and can scream ‘Hey you up there, I’m down here’  without thinking about your manager, other people still are  not looking beyond their desktop monitors a few inches away. They don’t have any reason to look up, ‘coz they would only see the ceiling (often false, that too), so they don’t even do that, and thus the computer screen remains their world, and thus…

Conversations like this happen.

Boy: Hey, how’re you doing?
Girl: I’m good. Do you know what time it is?
Boy: Um, hmm, I’ve kinda lost track (Checks his mobile)…yeah it’s around twelve.
Girl: Okay forget it. Where are you?
Boy: Umm, somewhere in Karnataka.
Girl: What? Where in Karnataka?
Boy: Somewhere. Some place you won’t know.
Girl: Okay okay. What are you doing there?
Boy: Right now? I’m lying down, face up.
Girl: Where are you lying down?
Boy: Umm, see there’s this grass on the side of the highway.
Girl: Okay.
Boy: Yeah, so that’s where I’m lying down.
Girl: What? Aniket! ANIKET! ANIKET!
Boy: Hey, hey! Hold it. I’m gonna visit you tomorrow.
Girl: Okay! When do you reach here?
Boy: It depends.
Girl: Depends? On what?
Boy: On how fast we ride the bike.
Girl: Bike? what bike?
Boy: Ohho… tumko to har cheez samjhaani padti hai… what bike can it be? Vahi jispe hum aa rahe hain!
Girl: Aniket! ANIKET! ANIKET!
And this would go on.

If you notice the number of exclamations and question marks on the ‘Girl’ side, and the corresponding lack thereof on the ‘Boy’, you would realize how much was the difference in the states of mind. It’s mind boggling that the conversation actually took place.

——x——x——–

Tired of riding slowly in the rains, we slept off in the dorm of a roadside motel, and were on the highway in four hour’s time. While we had been heading west, into the setting sun the evening before (which had made for some awesomeness), and I had sung practically all the Lucky Ali I knew, this was dawn. Time for spiritual, soul stirring Mantra Chanting, and Kailash Kher, and Piya Basanti. And it became a new journey again.

We would pass by a tree, where the birds were a bit lively. The sound of the Royal Enfield, solace to lonely ears in the stillness of the night, was then the roar of a hungry lion intruding into a Wordsworthian pasture, and so we would kill it. And let the birds have their say. We would stop by a hillock I would find particularly interesting to climb, and we would park the bike at the side of the highway and climb the hill. And the gazing at the vast, flat Vidarbha countryside, so covered with young, freshly washed grass shining under the cloud cover, we would smell the air. And then we would do nothing but close our eyes and feel the air filling our insides with all the promise of a new birth, till we felt as if we had been born again.

We would see a mandir, and bow to the one who has made it all.

And then we would move on. It was the most beautiful morning of my life.

 

Into the horizon

It was one o’clock in the night. All through the previous day, people had been closely following what looked at that time to be the strange and increasingly worrisome disappearance of Dr. YSR from over the Nallamalla forests. Sanket and myself, along with Sanket’s cousin were closely following each and every second of coverage of the disappearance over the net, while BCing away to glory into the night. Out of our fertile imaginations, various theories about what could have happened, what will happen next and the reasons for them were emerging.

Out of the blue, Sanket suggested that we went to Kurnool and took a first hand look at the search operations going on. We looked up the search area on Wikimapia, and realized that it was some 100 km farther from Kurnool. Kurnool is some 250 km from Hyderabad. We figured out that the round trip from our home in Kondapur, Hyderabad to the search area and back would take the entire next day. We still decided to go ahead and leave at 2 o’clock in the night, i.e. in half an hour from then. I went downstairs to clean my bike to get it ready for the trip.

It was only then that Sanket’s elder cousin, who had been a party to all the planning we were doing realized that we seriously intended to go. He firmly put his foot down on the plan, saying that there was no way he was going to let us go at 2o’clock in the night to cover 700 km on bikes, in the middle of the monsoon season to the Naxal infested Nallamalla forests on a wild goose chase. We decided to reason with him, but realized that it was futile. So with our tails firmly between our legs, we went to sleep at around 2:30.

—–x——x—–

As soon as the news of Dr. YSR’s death reached Hyderabad,  there was mourning all around. In addition, there were chaos. Congress workers started shutting down shops. They sent home all the public transport and beat to pulp anyone who dared protest. Our managers sent us home as a precautionary measure. Since office had closed for the next day, which happened to be a friday, also, this translated into an extra long weekend for us. Both of us had been wanting to go to Mumbai for some time, so we decided that this was the best time to do that.

We left at around 4:00 in the evening from our flat on Sanket’s Thunderbird. We looked for an ATM to withdraw some cash, but realized that even the ATMs had not been spared the bandh. Similar was the case with petrol pumps too. Along the roads, there were signs of violence. Tyres were burning here and there.

We reached a deserted Allwyn Circle, halted our bike and shouted questioningly over the roar of the Royal Enfield to a lone 7-Seater driver -

“MUMBAI???”

Looking us up and down with some curiosity, he pointed out towards what I already knew was the direction on the highway.

We set sail for Mumbai. With exactly Three Hundred and Sixty bucks in our combined pockets and 80 kilometers’ worth of fuel in our tank, with no source of cash and/or fuel nearby, and faced with a situation unprecedented in the history of India due to which we did not have a clue as to how far we’d have to go before we found any of these. But none of it mattered, really.

‘Coz we were on the road. Under the boundless sky.

 

आओ बैठो

किसी भी कविता को देखने के दो तरीके हो सकते हैं. पहला तो ये कि कविता को कवि से अलग रख कर सिर्फ एक रचना के रूप में देखा जाए और कविता को पढ़ कर कवि की निजी ज़िन्दगी या उसके अनुभवों पर कोई नतीजा न निकाला जाए.

कविता पढ़ने का मेरी नज़र में यह कुछ प्रौढ़ तरीका है. लेकिन इंसान, इंसान है और जहां पर इंसानों की बात होती है, वहां पर कुछ भी इतना काला-सफ़ेद नहीं होता. कविता आखिर भावनाओं से ही निकलती है, और जहां तक मैं समझता हूँ, कविता पढ़ कर पढ़ने वाला कवि के व्यक्तित्व के बारे में कुछ न कुछ इम्प्रेशन ज़रूर बनाता है.  

यह कविता यहाँ डाल रहा हूँ. भावनात्मक रूप से इस कविता से जुड़ा हुआ था, इसलिए अब तक पोस्ट नहीं की थी. वो भावनाएं अब प्रायः महत्त्व नहीं रखतीं, और यह कविता अब सिर्फ एक रचना है. इसे मैंने लिखा है, इसके अलावा  अब इसमें मेरा निजी कुछ भी शेष नहीं है.

आओ बैठो
आओ बैठो
कि मिलकर टहलेंगे
शेक्सपियर की दुनिया में
मेरी गोद में सर रखे तुम
डूब जाओ
जूलियट की जुल्फों की खुशबू के
मदहोश नशे में
पीछे एरिक क्लैप्टन गाता रहे
‘डार्लिंग यु आर वंडरफुल टुनाइट’
पृष्ठभूमि में
मंद मंद

या फिर
उड़ चलें हम
हवा के घोड़े पर होकर सवार
कहीं अनंत आसमान की सैर करने
आगे आगे चलती तुम
और पीछे बैठा मैं
चख लिया करूँ, बात बात पर
उस सुराही में से
जिसे तुम अपनी गरदन कहती हो

या फिर कभी
यूं ही समा जाओ बाँहों में
और यह नरम अहसास
मेरा है
यह महसूस करते हुए,
सीने में से पिघल कर बहती हुई
कब की एक भयानक हूक
में तुम्हे नहलाते हुए
फुसफुसा कर तुम्हारे कान में कह दूँ
कि कितना इंतज़ार किया है
हर एक इस पल का मैंने…

 

हैदराबाद

वक़्त की कमी कहें, लैपटॉप का न होना, माहौल का बदलना, या फिर मेरी काहिली – पर एक-डेढ़ साल में पहली बार ऐसा हुआ कि तीन महीनों तक कोई भी कविता न निकली. स्थिति यहाँ तक आ गयी थी कि मेरे अन्दर का जो थोड़ा बहुत कुछ कवि था, वो मरने वाला है, ऐसा लगने लगा था. 

ग़ज़ल लिखने का ये मेरा विनम्र प्रयास है. हैदराबाद शहर की फिजा, और ग़ज़ल लिखने का हुनर, शायद दोनों के बारे में ही मैं कुछ नहीं जानता. लेकिन फिर भी इसे यहाँ पेश कर रहा हूँ, क्योंकि कारपोरेट दुनिया कवि को अभी तक तो नहीं मार पायी है, ऐसा संबल देने का अहसान तो इस ग़ज़ल का मुझ पर है ही.

हैदराबाद

वक़्त की मार कर देती है निजामों को भिखमंगा,
ये गन्दा नाला भी कभी मूसी कहलाता था.

रईस बड़े बनते हो, लम्बी कार खरीदकर
निज़ाम जैकब हीरे से मन बहलाता था.

शहर की फिजा बदल दी, ए सी के झोंकों ने
कभी यहाँ आदमी, आदमी को सहलाता था.

अजान पर हाथ जोड़ता पंडित
मौलवी शिवलिंग को नहलाता था.

शान – ए – निजाम कहलाता था
नग़मा – ए – दक़्न कहलाता था
जिसे आज पुराना कहते हो, कभी हैदराबाद कहलाता था.

 

Fishing

(Vivek and Aish are chatting.) 

Vivek: Hey Aish, I hope you didn’t mind what I said last night. I wasn’t totally in my senses, you know.

Aish: It’s alright vivek. I don’t think that much.

Vivek: thanks Aish. You’re a honey.

(A few minutes pass)

 

Vivek: Hey Aish, you don’t think too much na. Good.

Vivek: You were looking positively beautiful yesterday.

Aish: Hehe Thank you thank you.

 

(Next day they meet each other in a Store)

 

Vivek: Hey Aish! Surprise! Wassup lady!

Aish: Hey Vivek! Hi. You know what!

Vivek: What?

Aish: I don’t think too much.

 

Hi, good morning… thank you, good night sir

It’s been a really long time since I last posted. I know it’s really uncharacteristic of me. But life has changed so much over the past few months that I’m wondering whether a stable concept like ‘characteristic’ even exists.

My last post was around three months back. The last comment on this blog came about two months back. I’ve written exactly one poem in the past three months. I now own a bike, live in a flat, earn some money, take a bath twice a day, wear formals everyday and shave once in two days. Over the past three months, I gained ten kgs, before shedding four of them.

I’ve been drinking roughly about twice a week, have made three bike trips longer than 150km over the past month, and look forward to many more.

I remained in isolation as a suspect swine flu case for three days.

I once blew up 1500 bucks on booze in a single evening, smoked bong, rode 450km bike in a single day, and twice lifted 30kg in Bench Press.

I’ve quit running.

I fell in love once, but have been forced to remain single. And I’ve figured out that that’s the way it’s gonna be unless something really, really unusual happens.

I’m sitting in office alone, the surrounding average age is in excess of 30 years, I have no idea when the day will start, much less when it will end. And I have decided that letting my blog die wouldn’t be a great idea. I wrote all that came to my mind, and would like a longer comeback post. So here I’m assuming Namrata’s tag and answering some random questions with all the honesty that I’m capable of…

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?
“No dude, not the bed again!”

2. How much cash do you have in your wallet right now?
INR 71/-

3. What’s a word that rhymes with DOOR?
Bore

4. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?
My didi

5. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone?
No favorites here, but the standard Nokia tune’s been there for a long time now.

6. What are you wearing right now?
A striped formal shirt over a pair of dark pleated trousers and formal shoes.

7. Do you label yourself?
I sometimes try to.

8. Name the brand of the shoes you’re currently owning?
Reebok, Adidas, Gliders

9. Bright or Dark Room?
Bright.

10. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
Namrata. She works on the same floor as me.

11. What does your watch look like?
I don’t own any.

12. What were you doing at midnight last night?
I was asleep.

13. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?
Last night. Daddu asking me how it was like to work.

14. What’s a word that you say a lot?
Aw’right…

15. Who told you he/she loved you last? (please exclude spouse , family, children)
I’m yet to open my account here.

16. Last furry thing you touched?
A random teddy bear in… I think Reliance Fresh a few days ago.

17. Favorite age you have been so far?
My Solahwan Saal – (Sixteenth year, class X)

18. What was the last thing you said to someone?
“Excuse me… hi, do you know when Padmini comes in? “

19. The last song you listened to?
Alvida, last evening, in the office.

20. Where did you live in 1987?
Ajmer

21. Are you jealous of anyone?
Not jealous, but yeah, envious of a lot of people.

22. Is anyone jealous of you?
Would someone be?

23. Name three things that you have on you at all times?
My wallet, my cellphone, my handkerchief.

24. What’s your favorite town/city?
Kasol, followed by Hyderabad.

25. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?
I think it was a loveletter I wrote to my first crush, way back in class X.

26. Can you change the oil on a car?
Would like to learn how to.

27. Your first love/big crush: what is the last thing you heard about him/her?
That she’s now an Air hostess with Kingfisher Airlines.

28. Does anything hurt on your body right now?
Surprisingly, no.

29. What is your current desktop picture?
Bank of America logo.

30. Have you been burnt by love?
What’s that?

PS: Book I’m reading – ‘Audacity of Hope’ by Barack Obama. Wish we had politicians like that in our country, too. And wish I could read more books

 

Ooty

This is one of the few diary entries I wrote on the batch trip. This simple night walk in Ooty will always remain with me as one of the fondest memories of the batch trip.

Walking on the hill streets in the night is like, in many ways, reading a book. Everything comes to you in black and white, and it’s left up to you to fill in the colours.

It is a reader’s delight, though. As you wonder off into the night to scale the streets of upper Ooty, the Enid Blyton novels savored in the long gone years of childhood come alive in front of your eyes. The British architecture gels so well with the natural beauty of the hills that after a point it becomes difficult to tell one from the other.

The road snakes through the hills. On one side, the sloping hills end in a grey stone wall, and on the other, the valley is protected from the road by an ivy covered wire railing which looks as old as the British rule itself. On both sides of the road stand oak, deodar and chir trees. Stalwart, yet humble sentries, tilting a bit on the top to meet each other over the narrow street, as if forming a canopy to welcome you to their home.

Walking away into these upper streets is like delving deeper and deeper into your Enid Blyton. The lights from the valley keep peeping in every now and then from behind the ivy and deodar curtain, carry with them the British style sloping roof houses and white churches located down there. Narrow streets, little more than metaled footpaths actually, occasionally digress from the main road to end in gates marking the entrance to some age-old colonial property. Attempting to follow them, one ends up encountering address plates which say something like Kel Marsh, Haydock House, Colson Street, making one wonder if one really was in India, and not in some British rural idyll. Not infrequently, these properties, to mark their entrance bear two pillars surmounted by entrance lights, and nothing more. The ways of the world, it seems, will still take a while to catch up with this place.

It’s 3 o’clok in the night, and the next action packed day starts at 6. Inhaling the perfume the earth has prepared after the evening’s rain, you start walking back to the lodge. Crickets and warts are having a ball in the surrounding woods. Down in the valley town, a few dogs are barking. An occasional truck passes by on the highway a few kilometers further ahead.

You keep walking, and looking at the trees, the ivy, the hills and the barely visible sky, you try to figure out what color they would look under the sun, from the different shades of grey they give off under the half moon. Walking down the same street you walked up five minutes ago can be lonely, and to pass time, you think of adding some more music to this black and white movie unfolding before you. You play the music in your mind. And then you break into the tune.

But as soon as you listen to the sound of your own voice, for the first time in all these years you are disappointed. Because you realize that unfolding before you is one movie which has been provided enough music by nature itself, and can do without further human intervention. Having committed the cardinal sin of breaking the stillness of the night, but having taken your lesson nevertheless, you proceed towards your lodge.

Half an hour later, as you snuggle inside your sleeping bag, you realize that things are somehow not the same. The some part of this precolonial night time Ooty has followed you home, to probably stay with you forever.

 

The journey

Sitting inside,
peering out of the windows of,
dangling from the doors of,
or traveling atop
the luxury bus

its air, conditioned
from all dust, smoke and soot,

and in august, pure company
of a hundred beautiful people

we looked down
upon those
running helter skelter
unprotected, alone
on the road outside.

Only to become one of them
after a four year long
unforgettable journey.

 

Memorabilia

Empty chips packets, bought to stave off the mind numbing hunger which results from missed lunches. Fruit peels, the reminders of the promises of a healthy lifestyle made to self over the years. Piles and piles of newspapers, drooled over during exams, untouched otherwise. Except for special reasons.

CAT and placement books on the table – reminders of those bygone times when I used to think about studying. The entire wardrobe on the backrests of the chair of the bed. Colorful, random crumbs on one particular pair of jeans. Remind me of that crazy farewell drink.

Eggs, egg peals, chaney, Tiger Balm – remnants of the sports day.

A few black wristbands, random gifts I picked from Tirupati for my sisters, never presented it to them. A green pen, bought long ago, for no particular reason. An orange colored whistle, looted from Himank on our awesome last cult nite.

A pair of scissors, bought to trim nose hair. Small pin-up national flags, long preserved on the window sill. Broken pairs of glasses, from one of the dirt football matches. A small lock whose keys I lost somewhere.

A game of cube I could never solve. Coins left randomly here and there. In times when the need to really scrounge for money arose, their predecessors always showed themselves up out of the un-likeliest of corners.

Question papers, memorabilia of all those dreaded times one could never wait to get out from.

The dust on the guitar, the less than perfect laptop and the huge Shield won on the sports day.

And finally, the reminder pads and sticky notes, bought to remind myself of cleaning the room, and later cosigned to the piles of debris.

Such richness, so many souvenirs. It never ceases to amaze me how much memorabilia you can collect only if you don’t clean up your room!

And just to think that after tomorrow, it’ll all be gone…