Oh, London!

 

When September began, that bewitching temptress of months, I turned another year and found myself to be in the city of cities, London. And might I just say, for starters and for the obvious lack of poetry - Oh, London, how pretty art thou!

An old soul wandering in an olde worlde - that's just the kind of escape my heart was longing for since days and the spontaneity of this trip is what makes it so incredible. Ever since we have been here, I've practically been all over the place: museum-hopping and walking past the now obscure residences of literary heavyweights; walking under the breathtaking weepy willows in a Alice-like stupor and learning the names of English roses in the royal parks; basking in the golden-green of the early autumn sun and enjoying the crackling crunch of russet leaves; childlike surprise upon spotting clumps of spring crocuses that seemed to have sprouted overnight in a great haste; oohing at the medieval architecture, a towering aspect of the city's majestic facade; experimenting the famous pub grub in the masculine-named English pubs along with cafe stalking, what with the addictive cappuccinos the city coffeehouses offer; the touristy fascinations of walking on centuries-old bridges and streets and marveling at the modern seductions added to a rapidly-changing cityscape; watching the sun set on the mythical Thames casting deep silhouettes on the the magical spires. Oh, it's all so overwhelming and surreal.

True, London can be intimidating, even terrifying at times, but a place where absolutely no one knows you can also be liberating in many ways. It is often so exhilarating to be a foreigner, to see a place with a pair of exotic, unbiased eyes. And I'll be doing just that for some more time. I purposely sat down today morning and hunted for a quote that would justify the myriad emotions I'm swimming in, for it is all too heady for me at the moment to construct a coherent post.

"The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

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.

March musings

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image."

~ John Didion

March.
When the other side of the globe looks forward to signs of change, to pearly sprouts of spring hopes, this side has begun anticipating the reign of a brutal sun and the imminent decay of anything and everything. Life and Death, spinning the wheels of the world.

A few days back, an Instagram friend asked me to which place did I belong and if I still lived in the US since my posts are pretty random without any chronological coherence, and the quirky hashtags #upperleftusa and #northwestisbest are used a lot to caption them. My answer was: "I live in Hyderabad now, my second time in the city followed by an earlier four-years' stint as a student though I belong to the coastal state of Odisha... and yes, we were in the States for almost five years". To this the friend replied: "You belong to so many places!", and that got me thinking.
I do after all, don't I? I even belong to places where I have lived only for a week, places that I've just been to as a tourist. Maybe belongingness comes easily to me, it's the uprootedness that I have a problem with. And in the process I have given shape to absent spaces, claimed certain parts and people of those places as mine and in turn, made them a part of my little world. How effortlessly I belong to each one of them, ever so easily like wearing a new skin, partaking in their joys and miseries equally. And therefore, I cannot help but mull over these geographies from time to time, be it the fate of the people or simply the changing seasons.

These days I go back to Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City a lot, a book that I started reading some six months back and have been deliberately procrastinating to reach its end. It's so sensually rich in nostalgia and so brilliant is Pamuk's rendition of his city, that one immediately feels his aching love for the much-fabled streets of Istanbul. An acute sense of loss and melancholy hangs like a light but omnipresent fog throughout the memoir which is beautifully laced with black and white photographs of the city as Pamuk has seen and known it. One sentence that often comes back to me from the book is: "Life can't be all that bad," i'd think from time to time. 'Whatever happens, i can always take a walk along the Bosphorus."

Which is my Bosphorus then? The beach and the mango trees that I call home? Or the view of the misty Cascades that I know as home? Or the disarming smiles of the Himalayan faces amid whom I feel most at home? Or the dusty streets of an old city that I had once proudly boasted of as my second home?

   

Taj

Taj Mahal. The first glimpse.

There are places that mesmerize you. There are some that sing to you. Others listen to you, borrow your sorrows for a while, and even heal a deep-seated wound or two. Then there's the Taj - it does all of that and then, just claims a portion of your heart, a considerable size, and simply refuses to give it back. In alluring echos, it calls your name again and again till you return one day. And return I did last month.

Legend goes that if you turn and look back, just once, while leaving through the gigantic gateway, you are bound to come back one day. It was a sultry June afternoon, the kind that sticks to your skin when the monsoons are just a taunting fortnight away. A wide-eyed teenager and all of just 14, I wasn't sure of many things back then. But I do recall a feeling of sadness, one that was beyond my years or being to fathom, that had lightly touched my shoulders while leaving the place. I also remember being so overwhelmed by what I saw that I was unusually quiet for most of the day, as if to speak would break the spell.
Only this time the magic became somewhat decipherable, but not enough for me to put it into words. Not yet. Perhaps it is something about not being able to bottle the wonder, the exquisiteness and bring it back with you; for try as much you would capturing it, inch by inch, standing there in front of it and getting awed by every single detail is something else altogether. The unparalleled Mughal architecture, the poetry in every little motif, and the strange calm in the midst of a frenzied crowd - it is nothing short of a trance when they all come together. And I am still swooning in it.

Through the Great Gate, when the sky was blue for a moment or two. The cliched, postcard Taj from the entrance. The beautifully landscaped Mughal gardens. The Taj Mahal mosque and its stunning sandstone interior. Photogenic doors with years of history locked behind them. A peek of the Taj from the mosque's entrance. The eastern view of the mausoleum. One of the four minarets framed by a misty Yamuna in the backdrop. The latticed entrance to the tomb, displaying the signature 'jali' work of Islamic architecture. Its walls plastered with breathtaking Persian plant motifs with colorful 'pietra dura' on the borders. The geometrically patterned marble of the huge dome. Calligraphy of Persian poems on the arch shoulders of the tomb. A very wintry view of the Taj as a resolute fog gives way to an early dusk. Quietly flows the Yamuna.

Place of my heart

 "There is nothing like returning to a place that has remained unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

~ Nelson Mandela

December. That same streaming of winter sunshine through marigolds and their fragrant, dark-green leaves. The view from the portico, a blurry tracery of gold and green. The tea that hasn't changed in flavor or the doting love with which it is made and served. Aai, my ever-smiling grandmother, pairing a ceremonial saucer with the teacup despite my repeated refusals. My favourite red-and-orange marigold that is planted every winter. The constant gardener, my grandfather, fretting over the indiscipline of the dried leaves in the yard lawn. And then, there's the sea. The never-changing, ever-same sea. The grey-green waves, folding and unfolding in similar crests, humming the same restless tune for years. Their self-destructive love of coming back to the same heartless shore regardless of the continuous battering.
The place of one's heart truly remains unchanged and so does that tiny corner of the heart that houses it. It will always stay the way it once was.

PS. Also, I did not know how else to pay my tribute to a great, wise man.

Ladakh, aka 'Little Tibet'

"The land is so barren and the passes so high that only the best of friends or the fiercest of enemies would want to visit us."
~ An old Ladakhi saying

This beautiful saying, framed on our hotel-room door, got glued to my heart for a very long time. True, only a very good friend would dare to traverse through this expanse of tall mountains, high passes, and cold deserts. And, only a fierce enemy like our neighbouring country would intrude with their troops now and then, every couple of months because our borders are iffy. Then there are some who would call Ladakh a No Man's land, and to some it is a land too foreign in its culture that might tickle their touristy apprehensions. To us, it was just perfect. A sanctuary full of natural wonders and kind, ever-smiling faces that make you forget the dust and drudgery of a mad, mad city. A place that heals, listens to your worries, and sometimes even talks back to you in soothing whispers. A place where one can just be.

Bald mountains and feathery poplars, the towering guardians of the place. Leh Palace, the stoic reminder of Ladakh's royal past. Prayer flags lending a hint of colour to rusty doors. The shambled past giving way to a green present. Bleached stupas, the ruins of Shey - the erstwhile summer capital of Ladakh royalty. Sindhu Ghat or the banks of the Indus River, a culturally significant place for the locals. A bactrian camel couple relaxing on the parched sands of the Hunder desert. Sweet-smelling wild roses, one of the scant blooms found in the region. Leh market, where a myriad colours and faces come together. Tibetan refugee shops, chockablock with many a treasure. The market walls adorned with inviting handicrafts. A journey to the culinary heaven via Tibetan momos. Beautiful Ladakhi buildings thronged by poplars and stumpy hills. The Royal Enfield, aka the 'Bullet', the wheels that take you through the ups and downs of the intriguing, never-ceasing-to-fascinate terrain.