Conversations with You

2nd March, 08

Dear Diary,
What a feeling to wake up to!
The first thought that crossed my mind today when I first blinked sleep from my eyes in the morning was that 'Today is a Blessed day'. In a long, seemingly endless count of one day after another this seemed like a Sunday granted after ages. A real Sunday...to take a breather from life and inhale the air that normally rushes past you on a busy day...on busy days. So here I was, on a Sunday morning, endowed with the luxury of lying awake in my bed for that precious amount of time without having to worry about getting ready, about missing trains, about reaching places on time, about changing, struggling, acheiving...about being happy. I could stare at my stickered cieling, unsuccessfully try to distinguish from each other the three blades of the fan as it moved, notice the various books, clothes, papers, bags, shoes strewn across the length of my room, leftovers of an entire week.

And for the first time in a long time, I saw the morning dawn in my very room. Slanting inside from behind three vaguely lit curtains drawn across two brightly lit windows. I saw the morning paint itself golden on the walls of my room, get caught in the corner of a glass frame making the room slightly warmer.This brought back a burst of nostalgia...nostalgia of summers I spent in similar fashion...how long back was that? How weird is nostalgia? In the growing heat what touched me the most was the occasional brush of cool air from the fan...and that reminded me of happiness, of repose and calm...of similar cool rooms on hot days...of summers...because that is what summers are most remembered for...their coolness.

And as I finally shrugged from me, the remains of the previous night to brace another day, another week, I felt refreshed and energised like I hadn't in months. Giving my room, the morning and the gold filtering through the windows one last look, trying to imprint the image, both the warmth and the cool, in my mind to remember until another such morning granted me itself, I stepped out into the world.


17th jan,08
Dear Diary,
Another long walk from the crowd to the crowd like every day. As I climb the stairs to the hall with the faint strains of music ...from the outside... growing stronger I brace myself for another few hours of my "journey". I reach the hall, the excitement, the music, the competition and zeal everything is at its peak. I wave to known faces, smile at unknown ones. Then, instinctively, I walk behind the mirrors that I drag back to a store every night am here. Further on is a door, before which a group of orderly positioned people are dancing in 'disorderly' fashion, struggling to 'get it right'.
I open the door. I step out... and step in. When the door closes, the voices have muffled, as if from a distant carnival and what remains is the length of a long passage at the end of which is sunshine. I walk towards it in the semi-darkness, for a drink of water. Pit Put Pit Put... Along empty classrooms. Suddenly I want to stay here the whole evening. On this side of that door.
As I keep walking the voices grow softer, until I can only hear the chirping of the birds. Miraculously, the door hasnt blocked that sound. In the frame of the solitary window of the corridor, the sun sets. Vague this should seem so peaceful when just 50 m to its right is the busy maddening world, honking and roaring.
A figure walks in the shine of the black tiles, the brown polish of the walls. A figure I wouldn't see in the mirrors I drag back to a store every night am here, but in this refraction of light, it seems fascinating.
I have my drink of water. Look at the dark side of the passage and then at the light. I like them both. Looking back across the corridor, through the glass of the wooden door I see no one. They have all gone. And its time for me to go too. I walk back. My two feet issue two different kind of sounds.
Left Right Left Right... Pit Put Pit Put
I extend my hand. I open the door. I step out...and step in.



8th dec,07
Dear Diary,
A brief half hour between jobs gives me an opportunity today to lunch, alone in a crowded restaurant. With a book in my hand that all of a sudden I find unable to keep down and tray of food that is my answer to lunch- the iced tea going down my throat in spite of my cold. The excitement in the voice of the person at the counter has got nothing to do with me and everything to do with the number of people queued up behind me. Once in a while, I spot a face I turn to look at a second time, maybe even a third. A group of foreigners huddle together, they look odd- not as much by the colour of their skins as by the scantiness of woollen clothing on them.
Delhi is seeing another winter!
(Already my light 'Jaipuri rajai' has been replaced by heavy quilts.)
My lunch is over within minutes and I have an entire half hour to spend before I catch a bus to my next destination.
I plug myself to the radio and walk out of the restaurant, with a bag full of clothes and my dancing shoes on my back and a jacket I find too warm for the day, on my arm.
I cross a left turn and then a zebra. The traffic is thick, urgent and busy, just like it is on all the other days. But something seems different today. I follow a car with my eyes. It turns right at the traffic light and past me. And then another and another.
The music plays in my ear as I begin to walk on the pavement lined with rectangular shops. My feet match the rhythm of the song. The green of the trees bend with weight allowing the sun rays to play yet another checkered game with the season. I see a lot of faces that remind me of a lot others, that resemble...even if for seconds...the contours of faces I've known well, seen day in day out, bumped into somewhere, forgotten.
A beautiful number from a yet-to-be-released film plays on the station I'm tuned to. Suddenly the music stops, long enough to make my hand pull out my phone from my pocket, but its only a pause, followed by the crescendo. I increase the volume.
I feel certain that this number would be a background score in the movie- a background score to scenes that the director wishes to linger on or furnish with poetry rather than monologues.
Its giving me a warbed sense of time. As though time was not the 24 hours, not the Greenwich Meridian, but this- this chaos and this beauty where everything around me seems to be ticking...standing still in eternity.
I seem to be walking a street from out of one of those books that are remembered, not so much by their words as by the images they leave in our minds like footprints on wet cement.
The market is flooded with people. On a weekend like this, the entire town seems to have stepped over the threshold to shop.
Three shops in succession, selling footwear. The walls on either side are lined with picture-perfect, eye-catching jutees, kolahpuris. The same design in 20 colours...repeat...on the next wall. I'm reminded of one such photograph I had seen. The colours had struck me then as they strike me now. I look around and I suddenly realise whats different today- the colours of course.
Multi-hued, multi-shaded, today is too colourful for a winter day...or so I perceive.
For I have always associated winters with gray and black. I love winters and I love black but nobody wears so much colour in a season like this.

Moments later when I will step into the main market I'll begin by scanning all the black from among everything else.That is what I wear now, and that is what I want to wear, until I'm left awed by the immense display of colour this winter.
I'll go from one shop to another, admiring the brightness of the pink here, the dazzle of the yellow there, the gleam of the turquoise, the burgundy, the green, the peach, the blue...not meaning to buy anything although my wallet keeps a stack of crisp notes today. I'll see people touch the fabric for warmth, point to sweaters hung beyond their reach, haggle with the shopkeepers.
I'll walk up and down and emerge from this fish-market, stand aside for a dumbstruck family of three to pass who will gape at the shops and their brilliant wares. And then as I walk back once again, in and out of sunshine, I will smile-wide and unabashed, making people who see me wonder what makes me so happy with myself.
I'll take the zebra again and walk two streets to board a bus, watching the city come alive,watching this winter I've never seen before, as if from a distance-all in a matter of half an hour.