Everyday, when the train passes over this creek, I look in awe, at where the river and the ocean meet, I always wonder if the river knows where it ends, Or If the ocean knows where it's infinity begins to transcend...
I look at the marshes and I look at the mangroves, Wondering why the groves stand in the marsh despite all the throes, Is it for the white cranes that nest in the trees, Or their little chicks hiding and playing in the leaves?
I sit alone on the bridge today and watch the river flow, Out into the distance, into the sunset's glow, Its a wonderful sight that brings it's audience to a smile, As he sits here in solitude, on a Sunday with plenty of time to while...
This one ideally should've come with the pic of the creek but somehow, I forgot to click one yesterday whilst sitting there...ironic, considering how much I love my new phone and it's awesome camera! Such is life...or is that me???
Nostalgic tears that clear my memory but make the sunset a blur,
This is where, long ago, my tryst with Bombay had once begun,
This is where, now, I begin my farewell to this wonderful city, watchin’ the setting sun…"
‘What are you talking about? How can you be leaving now?’
‘Well, I think I have reached the end of whatever little part of my journey I needed to make with you. Reckon I’ve taken as much as I can out of you. It’s time to throw in the towel.’
‘No you haven’t. You still haven’t reached your goals or achieved anything of what you had set out to achieve. How can you be leaving any of that incomplete? You still have a long way to go…’
‘No, I haven’t achieved anything of what I had set out to achieve…and that is the reason I must leave now. I haven’t come anywhere close to achieving any part of what I had set out to get for myself. I cannot allow myself to go on this way. I know when I am beaten…It’s time to make a fresh start now and I know it has to be far away from you…it has been a long journey with you. Lots of good memories to take away, a bunch of lessons learnt that only you could’ve taught. I am grateful, I truly am. But I cannot carry on anymore…’
‘You’re on your way there! You’re so close on almost all fronts! How can you think of quitting now? You’re just being unreasonable. Stop being a cry baby and gather yourself, you aren’t going anywhere. Life is long…very long! Stick around and fight it here with me. You chose me…don’t leave now!’
‘I chose you for all the wrong reasons…all the wrong reasons that once again brought me on the same crossroads as before…story of my life - right place, wrong time… It’s always been that ways between us, right from the beginning. It always promised to be an intense love story with it’s fair share of trials and tribulations but it hasn’t been a rosy romance. I’m always in a love-hate relationship with you and lately, it hasn’t been good. You make me weak…I must go.’
‘You’re being stubborn. Who doesn’t have a love-hate relationship? You need to hang in there, you can’t be running away like this…especially not now. Whatever happened to all your beliefs and all that mad aggression and love?’
‘Hahaha! Love? Love! Love… I saw it first with you! I lost it without you! I came running to you hoping to find it again! But I’ve lost it now…the love you once knew doesn’t exist in here anymore…I need to find it again and I cannot find it with you…I cannot find it here. It is the reason I must leave!’
‘Your love will always lie here with me…what are you denying that for? Ever since the first time, has it not always been here, at the sunset that you’ve lived it up? What would you do away from here? The sun sets in the west not in the east! You’d never go anywhere else! Whom are you kidding?’
‘Myself, I guess…and I truly believe I must for now. Maybe it’s a mistake but like all the other times before this, I must make this one too…how would I know it’s a mistake if I didn’t try to work it and find out for myself! When I did choose you, I chose you for all the wrong reasons…that was a mistake too! But a beautiful one…a mistake that I’ll cherish all my life! I need to make another now…’
‘You’re not talking any sense…I won’t bid you farewell, for I know you shall return soon. I can only wish you luck and hope you have the strength and courage to gather yourself again…
Sometimes we think we’ll be together forever,
That we won’t have say our good-byes, ever,
But we forget that nothing ever remains the same,
And people leave for the same reasons they came…”
'I thought too that I wouldn’t say good-bye,
That parting with you would never be a reason for me to cry,
But life I’ve learnt loves playing with irony,
And the end of our journey together, now do I see,
I lived believing ‘In the remnants, my strength I shall find,’
But I’m weak today, ‘cause it’s me that’s leaving it all behind!'
Saturday, November 15, 2008
All she needs is a little to drink And I dont even need a reason, Of where we're heading I dont even think Nor does she in any season, We head out in the dark of the night Along roads we've never been before, We land up at a beautiful sight Somewhere along the sea-shore, Never has she failed to cheer me up And remind me of how much this life I like, A million such memories to sweeten my tea cup Of my first love...my dearest friend...my beautiful beautiful bike!!!
Hmmm… Life never stops teaching you something new at every stage of your life. I am no exception (although I can’t really claim to have lived enough to reach a stage where I could stop learning new things but…) and recently, after 24 years of more or less fruitless existence, I have learnt the literal meaning of a word that was perhaps unknown to me before. And as much as I would hate to admit it, I have to give Bombay credit for expanding my vocabulary. Never in the 22 odd years, that I have spent in Poona, of which a good part has been spent goofing around with nothing on my hands, have I ever and I mean period, felt the implications of the term to the extent that I do today. So here I am, 24, in the financial capital of the world, with nothing significant on my plate, and face to face with the term that all mortals on the face of this planet fear – BOREDOM…
I am enthralled with the rains here in Bombay. I know there are so many who simply are disgusted at the deluge that seems to happen annually here but I am not one to complain. I simply cant stop brimming over the beauty and all the sights and sounds of Bombay in the rains… One of my favourite sights here in Bombay is the high tide at marine drive where the ocean simply can’t contain itself and the waves crash and spill over onto the road (or the pavement or promenade or whatever it is that it is called) Year after year I have come down to Bombay for just that one sight and six years down I still can’t contain my glee at the sight whenever I see it. This year was no different and yesterday I was strutting the walk on Marine Drive. Unfortunately though, I missed the high tide and was witness to a receding tide. It isn’t a half bad sight in itself but pales out in comparison to the rising tide and the fury with which the waves crash onto the wall. This is where the theory kicks in. The receding tide meant that only a few spots on Marine Drive were experiencing the spill over of the waves. Enthusiastic as I am, I couldn’t help be enticed at the distant sight of the waves spilling over whilst at my feet, the waves just came weakly and splashed the breakers leaving me to the mercy of the rain gods for the hope of getting splashed. Now generally I am either alone or with someone whom I am so comfortable, it is as good as being alone. Yesterday though I was with my room-mates. Don’t get me wrong, my roomies are my homies but there are still places of me I wouldn’t take them. So when I suggested at walking down the promenade, I was welcomed with “You’re kidding right?” looks. So I took off alone. Now I was walking fast, almost to the point where you might’ve called it a jog than a walk as I chased off to the spots where the waves were spilling over. Unfortunately, the further I made headway, the further the waves seemed to get! I walked almost the entire length and got splashed just twice! Well, after realizing my homies were outta sight, I decided to turn back. Wet with a couple of drops of the splashed water and looking skywards to see little or no hope of rain. So I slowed my walk to the typical pace of a Puneite’s walk. As I looked ahead, I saw some kids playing in the little puddles on the ground and lost in the moment, I sat down and watched them play in glee. After about ten minutes of just looking at them and smiling myself silly, I felt a drop of water on the back of my neck. And I looked behind to see a torrent of rain approaching and almost simultaneously being splashed completely by a huge wave! In the next ten minutes, it rained cats and dogs and the waves hit me with great regularity! And that’s when I realized- “The further you get, the farther it gets…when you stop chasing it, it catches you!” Or something along those lines! But that more or less is the wave theory--- you can’t catch a wave, the waves catch you!
Have you ever spent your time loitering around the streets in the wee hours of night/morning? It's really nice to be able to do that, especially in Bombay. I believe Bombay is one of the most beautiful cities in the world at night time especially because of the sense of security it seems to exuberate at any hour of the day. I mean, you might get mugged or more likely be run over by a speeding SUV with a drunk, imbalanced bollywood star at the wheel, yet the city will not leave you feeling vulnerable at whichever hour of the day you might wish to loiter around. The streets of Bandra, Vile Parle and Colaba are some of the best places to loiter around late at night when you have had one coffee too many and cannot get some shut-eye. Catch a few friends and drag them along on an expedition through the streets of Bombay! Not-so-surprisingly enough, the streets aren't devoid of human life but the very fact that there are so few people on the streets makes you feel like you are in a beautiful small town somewhere that is not Bombay. (Unless you are around Colaba when the Porsche that just whooshed by in the blink of an eye reminds you that you unmistakably are in Bombay but the sight of the Porsche more than makes up for the misery of realising which city you are in!) Nonetheless, I haven't written this for some more Bombay bashing or sharing useful tips on night excursions around the streets of Bombay. I have written this to propose a theory on dogs. Have you noticed how most dogs are timid and scared during the day time and will almost always walk away from you with their tails between their legs if you walk past them in broad daylight? Yet, if you were to encounter these creatures in the night-time, they seem to be completely transformed into bold and ferocious beasts who would bark at you, chase the odd car on the road and definitely bite any poor chap on a cycle! I was wondering what was it that brought about such a stark transformation in these chaps and then the solution hit me when I thought about this behaviour in the context of the way most humans would behave. Most subordinates would almost inevitably behave meek and timid when their bosses are around but as soon as they are left alone, they suddenly seem to find their teeth! Dogs are pretty much the same. They think that humans are scared of the dark and hence prefer hiding away in their holes rather than face up to the "masters of the nights" (the dogs) and challenge their supremacy at night-time. I reckon they also think that maybe someday the sun won't come up and then that day, dogs would reign supreme and finally lay claim to their subjugated kingdom. Yet, somehow if dogs are thinking along these lines, they couldn't be too far from the truth could they? All human are scared of the dark and more so because they cannot face things they cannot see. Any adversity that is unforseen or unfathomed seems to be more than we can handle and most give up even before trying. I am sure the dogs are waiting for this eventuality to become reality and maybe then, they truly might rule the world! As an analogy, I suppose that even in our lives, there are dogs who are waiting for it to get dark in our lives and that would be when they would pounce and lay claim upon what is now ours. Guard yourself not against these dogs but against yourself because no matter how dark the night, daybreak is inevitable...the world will be yours again! It isn't a dog's life after all!
The world around me is never short of something exciting (or to be more apt, something weird!) Went to the sports bar with Anthony the other day. The two of us are nuts about watching the games (EPL, football… for those ignorant of it.) and so are always heading out to the sports bar whenever we can and whenever there is a major game. The ambience is nice, they have a plethora of television screens and a big projector too and for Anthony’s sake, they serve beer too! Oh! And they have a small ring in case you are in the mood to shoot some hoops! Well, anyways, coming back to the tale, we had gone on a Saturday evening to watch an Arsenal game. I walked in through the doors eagerly looking around for the best seats in the house. And then suddenly I found myself being stopped by a pair of hands! I wondered what the issue was and looked at the man in front of me inquiringly. I was informed I couldn’t come inside. My first reaction was there was a cover charge to be paid before entering. I was however pleasantly surprised when the guy said “Sorry sir, entry for people over the age of 18 after 6 p.m.!!!” For the record, I am 23 years, 6 months and 14 days as of today!!! Hehehehehe…
