The perfect closure

Old roads. Strewn with gulmohar petals, dusted with a fading nostalgia. The play of sun and shade dancing on their parched faces. A stray bicycle leaning picturesquely on a tree. Trees and trees all around. Tall, stout, leaved to their very best of summer glory. Somewhere a peacock calls lazily. Not many anymore as in those days. The familiar taste of the paratha and potato curry in the Students' Canteen. And the more than familiar, bureaucratic superiority of the administrative staff. Revisiting the old spaces. The verdant nooks that helped many to escape the world. Be it badly turned assignments or matters of heart. Driving to the signboard 'School of Humanities' and taking a sharp U-turn. What if no one recognizes me? It has been a good seven years after all.

It feels like the perfect end to my love-hate relationship with this city. My second home and my first exposure to life outside my culture, this is a city that I had once loved to the brink of my heart never knowing that one day I'll be more than desperate to escape it. And I've realized, one necessarily doesn't bid farewell to the campus after passing out of the university. Or when you leave the city (for the second time) for that matter. It'll always live inside you. A stroll between the rows of cork trees, my favorite space in the whole of the sprawling 2,300 acres, was enough to tell me that. And whenever I'm there I'll always remember the wide-eyed, passionate young woman who had arrived one July morning, armed with her Shakespeare and Keats and a little of something that resembled a small-town shyness that has never quite left her.

A summer of bouquets

"... When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table ..."

~ T.S. Eliot, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'

Last week, on a quintessential summer afternoon, we set out on a picture-taking long ride. As the mocking, piercing late-afternoon sun gradually began melting into a warm, golden twilight, things took a mellow turn. That is when Eliot's timeless poem struck me, when the sprawling, bougainvillea-laced roadside, draped with the pinkish-gold sheen took our breath away. We have always admired this green, wooded patch of about ten kilometres, a road that leads to my alma mater, the University of Hyderabad, but come summer and it turns into a different world altogether. Therefore, only passing by it and admiring nature's patchwork isn't enough; one has to capture their kaleidoscopic glory, the gorgeous pink-and-yellow embroidery of the bougainvilleas and the laburnums. A fine summer bouquet, I call it. Who would believe there's this huge concrete, IT jungle that lies coughing and panting right next to it!

 
The other bouquets, and none too pleasing as the above, that are looming large in our days is the hullabaloo of an upcoming move to a new city in June. This May marks the exact two years since we wrapped up our lives in Seattle for a much-debated return to the home country and now it's time to move again, to go through that uncomfortable process of leaving the old and adopting the new. And this time, unlike Hyderabad, it's an entirely new city. There's a world out there that doesn't know me and whom I don't know. Despite its claims of being the best city to settle in India for nomadic hearts like us, if you have been reading me for a while you probably know how and to what extent change bothers me. I am a creature of habit. To the core. But hopefully, with friends who go back a long way and with scenic getaways within hours' drives from the city, this time it'll be different. Hopefully, this time I'll be less complaining and more appreciative of my surroundings. Hopefully, this time I'll have a tree by my window and can watch the sky puff and roar when it rains. Hopefully.  

Renewing, restoring

I have been away for more than a month, though it feels much more longer than that. It has been ages since I've created anything or given shape to any of my countless mute ramblings. Words, other people's, are all I have these days, across which I splosh copious amounts of digital red ink. At times it feels strange, even a little cruel, to be striking out ambitions so ruthlessly, to tweak thoughts so mercilessly that someone would have spent hours constructing. But that is how the world works.

What does it take to realize that there's always, always a little corner somewhere where days recycle themselves and things start afresh? That there's still a world of splendour waiting on the earth that we haven't seen? A walk to the nearest plant nursery. A stroll amid the stoic, old tombs. The palm-sized, sun-hued hibiscus tells you that; it's velvety petals tickle you with life and joy, rubbing some of that magic on you. The inviting archway of the tombs that have been standing there forever and are currently undergoing a much-needed face-lift, say it too.
With the tropical winter breathing its last, well almost, and a very short-lived, confused spring blooming here and there, it's time to start afresh. To renew the yearly stack of hopes, to air the room full of dreams, and to get cracking before summer takes over our lives. Here's to hope. And to more blogging!

Of palaces and lost times

September rushed past me like those blurry landmarks of memory, where one lives but often forgets the experience. As if someone tore off the ninth page from the calendar; as if it is still waiting, breathing quietly, like an actor in the wings to make a grand entry. So much happened and yet it feels as if this month never happened. Our families were here, I celebrated another birthday, we bought a little apartment facing nothing but open fields and straggly greens. And yes, it has balconies that can be turned into decent-sized greenhouses!
Somewhere in between all this, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, a few weeks back, we found ourselves in front of the gigantic gates of the Chowmahallah Palace. A rushed visit it was, for it had started pouring with a vengeance and someone had decided it'd be wise not to lug around the big camera. Smartphones then, had to save the day.
 
The silhouettes and curves of the ever-fascinating Persian architecture rising against a belligerent, overcast sky. Corridor after corridor of what seemed like eternity. The walls cracked and the yellow on them peeled to a heartbreaking perfection. Through a series of open doors emerges the heart of the palace. The sudden, on-your-face opulence of the Durbar Hall. Rows of dazzling Belgian-crystal chandeliers. Silent, glittering testimonials to the grandeur of the Hyderabad Nizams. Of times lost and days blotted out in yellowed pages of history. 

Orange joys

With nothing much to tell and hardly any time for leisurely weekend jaunts, I have taken to capturing roadside colours and flavours. Being a lover of local sights always, and more so when one lives in a colour-chocked, prismatic country such as ours, it's hard to overlook the vibrant joys that are here, there, and everywhere. And quite interestingly, when I was trying to gather a coherent mood for this little post, these different shades of orange came together. Just like that! Like a jumbled picture gradually falling into place, it meant a lot, this little coincidence. Enough to tickle the Monday blues away, enough to remind me how fortunate I am to be surrounded by such an unassuming, permeating colour palette, and enough to bask in the joy of one of my favourite colours.

Brave gulmohars rising up against a belligerent monsoon sky. Baskets of feisty marigolds, those fluffy balls of orange wonders, thronging the weekend bazaar. Mouthwatering rows of roadside chicken tikka being grilled inside a rotisserie as we wait for our to-go, Saturday-night parcel. Two halves of an orange stare at me, trying hard to perk up my Monday-morning mood. And life, suddenly, appears to be not so bad. A little less dull. A little more orangish.   

Monsoon, interrupted

Of late, I've been robbed of many of my favorite things - reading, blogging, watching the rain, to name a few. Thanks to work piling on heap upon heap, I've been away from my world for what seems like an eternity now. I tried, and not once, to come here and drop in a few lines, but every time the words would evade me. True, it's no fun editing academic stuff, because then all you are left with is finding flaws and correcting them. And it's supposed to stay so for a month more.
The only hints of newness that have stumbled across my way, other than one full day of sale-shopping madness, are these hues of green - the ubiquitous Hyderabadi haleem lacing the city roadsides in colourful, illuminated kiosks, and my potted palm that seems to be making most of the monsoons. At least someone's getting to enjoy the rains!

North and South

No, I'm not going to write about Elizabeth Gaskell's compelling industrial novel. Rather, drawing from its title, I'm going to dwell upon the great climactic divide that exists between the north and the south of my country, between a city I love and another which despite my frantic attempts of disownment, clings to me as my second home. 

Delhi reels under an all-time low of 1.9 degree Celsius, they say. Off late, it has been reeling under many other lows, a desperate coming together of anger and anguish threatening its very existence. Once again, India's proud capital has been slammed as the most dangerous city for women. Despite the scathing shame, the city trudges along as the ever-bewitching fortress of culture and glamour, and for me, it has always been like the forbidden, fatal lure of an old lover. 

It was only last month when I was there, feeling the beginning of the quite popular Dilli ki sardi (Delhi's winter). On a balmy December afternoon, we had wondered amid the enchanting ruins of the Qutub Minar, smitten by its stunning architecture and the cacophony of the restless parrots adorning it. Then on our way back to the hotel, we had devoured steamy momos near a bustling metro station of south Delhi. The husband, being a huge fan of these mouthwatering Himalayan dumplings, has to have them whenever in the city. Later in the evening, I had met a dear old friend over cups of Darjeeling, seasoned with university nostalgia, Rumi and the literary perks of being professional editors. He disclosed his nascent fascination for monkhood, whilst I shared my long-cherished desire to live and teach in a small Himalayan town. It was beautiful - the interweaving of reality and illusion, that dreamy reunion of what was and what could be.

Down south, things in Hyderabad are starkly different. There's no winter. Other than that elusive nip in the early mornings, temperature barely dips below 17 degree Celsius. There are booming sales on winter-wear in the shopping malls and there are forced dahlias and roses, those quintessential winter blooms in India, adorning the balconies. But there's no winter. When we go out for post-dinner coffee gatherings on weekends, I carry a flimsy shrug with me anticipating moments of 'what if', but they just never come. Each time I open the wardrobe, I stare and sigh at the neatly arranged Kashmiri stoles hanging patiently in there. There's no winter. There never was much.

Lotus Pond

A humid, overcast September afternoon. The impending rains fuel the end of the weekend lethargy, and make buzzing, predatory circles inside my head. An equally wearied husband comes and says, "May be we should go out." And that settles it. We head towards the Lotus Pond, a place that had been on our minds ever since the days have become cooler and the sun a tad friendlier. A man-made pond, surrounded by a kilometer and half of walking area, the park is a lush green palette in the middle of the screechy, sooty cityscape. Well maintained and easily accessible, if one forgets the mean mosquito rampage, there is a diverse beauty in the park's chaotic wilderness - bamboo groves, colorful reeds, wildflowers, rock formations, and myriad water birds are just some to name a few.

As soon as one gets on the winding, reed-lined path, "Bow down to nature" commands an old tree and actually makes you do so! The late afternoon light paints a surreal picture of the pond, highlighting the pink glow of the lotus against a backdrop of muted blue-green. The carpet of beautiful leaves spread here and there, some dry and shriveled, give one the impression of a pond-upon-pond palimpsest. More than the dreamy lotuses, I am in love with these leaves and try to capture them greedily from every which way possible. However, more drama, more illusion beckon. A wooded path leads to more flowers, more charm. Dragonflies galore, and with their skittering wings of red and rust, the air is abuzz with flickering sparks. A pair of squabbling cormorants, carefully avoiding each other's eyes. The colorful melange of the pink and white bougainvilleas punctuated by stray bamboo groves. Soon, dusk falls and the twilight veils the pond in a magical hue. The lotus leaves turn a somber dark green and my heart moves back to them. Pearly water droplets slither and dance on their waxy bodies before finally calling it a day. An elfin, enchanting world. 

Hyderabad rocks

An old, old picture. The famous "Mushroom Rock" in my university campus. One of the many such strange, fascinating stray rock formations in the city. A site most frequented by wanderers and lovers, but mostly by nature worshipers like me. All this dates back to a good seven years, when the world around us was a little greener. 

To come back to the now, while on our way to the airport last weekend for a short trip to my in-laws', we were awed by the dramatic rocky landscape once again. The airport being far removed from the heart of the construction sprouting city, one gets an impression of being ushered by these stunning rock beauties lining both sides of the freeway. Balanced as if by magic and stoic from the scores of years of experience, the rock structures stand strong under a mellow sky. Part of the sprawling Deccan Plateau, the basalt and granite boulders are stacked upon each other in the most mysterious manner. 

But very soon one awakens to the sad reality, and not without a jolt - everyday, bit by bit, this spectacular rockscape is thoughtlessly chipped down to make way for towering buildings. The math is simple - more greed, more infrastructure, more money. Thus, in the name of urbanization, merciless quarrying of an ancient treasure has chiseled away years of history and heritage. If not for the laudable efforts of the Society to Save Rocks, this wonderful piece of nature's handiwork would be lost forever. Hope the much published and less practiced "Rock Walks" take a big leap into every Hyderabadi's heart and spread the word - Hyderabad rocks, noun or verb. 

Old tombs

My parents left yesterday evening and since then the emptiness of the house has been quite overwhelming, much more than what I had expected it would be. Ten great days punctuated by momentary disagreements (courtesy my string of tiring Virgo compulsions) sure did a world of good to the loner inside me. Now that they are gone, the gnawing unfamiliarity of everything has come back to haunt me once again. After all, amid all the chaos of the known and the unknown, the old and the new, they are the only ounce of belonging that encourages me to hang on and keep trying.

In my desperate attempt to unearth the old signs and songs that my heart was once so well versed with, I have embarked upon a determined journey - to go back to those places that once upon a time had rooted me to this colorful city. What could be more reassuring for a pair of searching, doubting eyes than a walk down the precious past. So braced with my parents and some cherished old memories, last weekend, I marched hopeful and brave toward my favorite jaunt in the city - the eternal Qutub Shahi tombs. Popularly called the Seven tombs for the seven members of the Qutub Shahi dynasty buried there, these cluster of soot-soaked mausoleums bathed in a charming timelessness has always held a special place in my heart. And this time, this is what what I came back with. 

A place of paradoxes. Enveloped in lush greenery yet covered in the dust of time and neglect, the blackened domes stand proud and mighty against all odds. A place of reverberating serenity. Pearly plumerias adorn the shaded path to the tombs while the quivering bougainvillea petals veil the weathered sepulchers in a dreamy magenta sheen. The soporific, monotonous cooing of the pigeons perched inconspicuously in the latticework. A place of surprises. The intricately detailed alleys and passages come to life with the echoes of footsteps while opening up to an unexpected facade at every turn. A place to get lost for hours. The fast fading but still breathtaking blend of Persian and Pashtun architecture takes one back to the days of poetry and grandeur. The mortuary bath, the carelessly covered sarcophagus, the dilapidated mosques strewn here and there, the watchful minarets, the aging bougainvillea - all define a time that is surely lost, but can still be felt.

Jasmine

"Plants that wake when others sleep. Timid jasmine buds that keep their fragrance to themselves all day, but when the sunlight dies away let the delicious secret out to every breeze that roams about."

~ Thomas More

Sam came home yesterday with a surprise - a garland of jasmines (my birdbrains had expected samosas instead)! For his flower-loving wife, it was certainly a big deal. Now it is very common here, in Southern India, for women to adorn their hair with jasmine garlands. Therefore, to find the roadsides laced with vendors selling fragrant flowers in heaps and bunches is quite a familiar sight. However, instead of going local, I chose to hang it from the mouth of a tall vase in the hall. How soon the little white flowers filled our home with their sweet, hypnotizing scent and with that tumbled along the bittersweet jasmine nostalgia.
When we were kids, how we cousins would get up at the crack of dawn and pluck the full-bodied jasmines in our grandmother's garden during the summer holidays. Groggy and half sleepwalking, the seven of us would tip-toe on the ticklish, dewy grass, lest we commit the unforgivable sin of waking up any of the parents. We had to be really quick because once the sun's rays fell on the flowers, they would go back to their shy sleep. Later in the morning we would all sit with grandma, over breakfast and mythological tales, and sew jasmine garlands for our gods and goddesses.

It has been twelve years since dear grandma passed away and since then we children have more or less qualified the huge test of being called grown-ups, managing tight, tiny universes of our own. But despite death, distance and differences, these small joys linger forever. Just like the unforgettable fragrance of jasmines.

India

Hyderabad. A scorching 42 degrees Celsius. A brain melting, nausea ridden fortnight. Sometimes a little guilt ridden and chokingly nostalgic too. For leaving behind the alpine grandeur and a home that already appears a little blurred in my memory-scape. Red and yellow clumps of gulmohar, perhaps the only spots of colour in this heartless, sprawling jungle of concrete. Hi-tech City, they call it with love and a strange pride. Bereft of life and charm, gone is that old city of Nizams. Five years! It sure is a long period of time. For money-minting builders and tree-chopping maniacs at least. We had once left this place and how heartbreakingly, only to come back and find it shockingly altered. What was once familiar has become intimidating now. And perhaps a little taunting too. One of the most uncomfortable feelings, may be.

I hope to dig some remnants of the old world glory, of the lanes and bylanes once steeped in history and dipped in tales. But not today. With the house hunt gladly done away with, it's mission 'salt to sofa' for the moment. Setting up another home, lining up another set of dreams. Life!

The gupchup diaries

Gupchup, puchka, golgappa, paanipuri... Call it by any of these names, the taste remains the same - irresistible. Gupchup, as we Oriyas call it, has very much been a part of my growing up and from the time I could understand the ways of my taste buds, it has remained a steady favourite. It's time I chronicled its meaning and memories during the various phases of my life so far.

1. Summers at Puri, which happens to be my maternal grandparents' home, were the best times of my childhood. Being the only grandchild/niece then, I was quite pampered and often had my own ways. Every evening Ma and my mausis would take me to the beach where I had the time of my life romping in the sand, collecting sea shells. We wouldn't leave before having our share of soggy gupchup and jhaal muri from the beach vendors. None of the brackish winds or the prickling sands dared kill that fun.

2. Probably it was the distractions of teenage or mostly my hatred for the branch of Sciences, but it wouldn't be a lie if I said nothing interested me in those days. After school hours, we would go for afternoon tuitions which would go on for two agonising hours. The only comfort that would keep me sane in these otherwise horrid afternoons were the gupchup sessions that were held regularly after the tuitions. How we friends would circle the vendor and wait patiently for our turns when he would toss the savoury delight into our leaf bowls!

3. I left the secured walls of home for my graduation in Bhubaneswar. In the initial days I found it rather difficult to adjust to the novelties of an independent student life. The only comforting, familiar feel was that of the rows of gupchup stalls right in front of our campus premises. Like every hostel, ours too had one common problem - unpalatable mess food. So the evenings, after a day of longish lectures, meant regular calls to the attractively decorated blue stalls.

4. After graduation I moved to Hyderabad, the mecca for biryani and kabab lovers. Not being a keen non-vegetarian, I would miss the simpler fares that my home state offered. No matter what, my cravings were such that I would go for the relatively bland paani puris and wouldn't notice the vendor's mean stare when asked, "Bhaiya, thoda extra pyaaz dena" (some more chopped onions please).

We have reached the rather sad end of my gupchup diaries. Life in the States can mean so many things to an Indian, culturally and emotionally. Mine is a long list of stubborn yearnings, right out of a Jhumpa Lahiri story. I have tried the tricky but extremely simple recipe at home from the ready-made gupchup pockets that are available in the Indian grocery stores. It turns out fine by home standards, but that nostalgic aroma of belongingness is always missing. Now all hopes are pinned on that once-a-year vacation, the most beautiful dream of every immigrant. Home beckons...

A whiff of nostalgia

Strange, how a certain place grows on us and then goes on to become a part of us, of the intricate web of 'who I am'. Most of the times this gossamer bond is formed due to pleasant people who go on to make sunshine memories. But there have been occasions when the tidings were a little rough. Still, I find myself so much tethered to that place, to its lanes and bylanes, to every one of its facade. A strange sense of sadness and loss overcomes me while leaving a certain place, even if the stay would not have been of such a conclusive duration that would define my emotions. It is not the coming change that worries me, but the leaving behind, the little somethings that I shall no more be able to hold as a part of my everyday life bothers me. There is always some bit of memory or a piece of my surrounding that I cling on to dearly as a remnant, a precious fossil of all these places.
A few days back I stumbled upon a quote by the French poet Anatole France which did help me to understand my predicament to a great extent: "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." And so I yearn for this dead life, one that has long shut its doors on me.

Most of the times I nurse my nostalgia with a characteristic scent of these dead lives. I have read somewhere that this tendency to associate memories with a definitive smell is called associative nostalgia. Isn't it strange how we decide to preserve certain memories in the backstreet of our minds? The world may not care twopence about them, but you do. I remember my childhood in so many ways - the festive air swollen with incense and the latest Hindi film songs during the pujas, the comforting scent of Nivea creme which used to come in a round blue tin box back then, the smell of old, yellowed books in Bapa's room. My inexperienced hostel days in Bhubaneswar take me back to the evening summer breeze that made its way through the windows to my study table where I would be fiddling with the bulk of A History of English Literature, knowing not what to do with the scores of literary heavyweights mentioned in there. Sometimes the graduation days also remind me of the fresh roasted bhutta (corn on the cob) in the rainy evenings or the citrus Elle 18 perfume which I loved to wear to my morning Honours classes. When I remember my days in Hyderabad, the city of love for me, I get a whiff of the old world charm from the ittar vendors along side the bylanes of Charminar. At other times the addictive elaichi chai (cardamom tea) of the university canteen does the trick. It is as if I live and relive these fond moments in these aromas, hence making them immortal and exclusively mine. The mention of Seattle brings back the characteristic dewy, dreamy scent of rain and pines. Our apartment in Redmond, the little Microsoft city neighbouring Seattle, reminds me of freshly mowed grass and a dish washing soap of water lily and jasmine fragrance. The minimal amount of time that we spent in the bay area of California contributes to my nostalgia bank as well. I would often admire the intimidatingly beautiful redwood trees during my solitary evening walks, and later would try to recollect their woody smell.

Jagjit Singh, with his voluminous range of ghazals that perfect such sombre moods has sung the most apt lines on the lingering fragrance of memories:

Shaam mehke tere tassawur se,

Shaam ke baad phir saher mehke...

(The evening is fragrant with your thoughts,

After the evening, the dawn is fragrant as well...)