on the path to wisdom

Sound of a peacock calling for his lost love…or plain horny…..still sounds the same in the orange twilight….somewhere a pressure cooker hoots for attention…I am back to the place I call second, no maybe third, home….a confined space I call my own….or a space I like to believe I own….though its not that simple….i am back in the city that nurtured me for five very important years of my life…I thought I was ready for the change…prepared to take this new turn into the old realm…but maybe not so much….i arrived in the afternoon to a dreadfully hot and dusty city…filled with familiar looking unfamiliarity…which I accepted whole hearted…who wouldn’t?....after such a painfully long journey of cursed silence and never ending railway tracks and the recurrent smell of unwashed loos and rust….the heat is comforting, the dust bearable, the money stripping jacks only a fashionable quirk…..but as I climb the familiar steps of the building that was home for two whole years….i am struck by a intense feeling of claustrophobia…….it was the same way I felt as I entered the department, the abode of knowledge….we now know better….but the name remains and the longing for it had lasted too….but suddenly I am struck with a doubt as to whether my life is twirling into a black hole filled with the familiarity of the womb….ask a child, a baby who has seen sunlight whether she longs for her mother’s womb….maybe not….yeah that’s the sense….


So as I walk into my old room…filled with old memories….i am filled with a sense of the new and the old…a yearning to create new memories….a comfort of the old….but I dread the old and that is glued to me like a generous claustrophobia….what on earth am I doing here?....suddenly I feel a rush of not so old memories of life I led not so long now…..of revolving chairs, comfortable apartment I called my own…..of spending five digits every month….i am a student again?...i m now stuck in the lower rungs of four digits….bloody hell!!....the feeling is reinstated as walk along the corridors studded with young women chattering about the maggi they made….chirpy young girls are always a pain…..i was reminded of a conversation where i was told I had the lower end of a bargain when I opted for a loo that was separated from the bedroom I my apartment….i was told I had to give up, maybe on privacy…suddenly that seemed like heaven…..i was back in that place where loos are never free, where the flushes are always out….when that is not the case, you crap with the mortal fear of being barged in by some unsuspecting chirpy young girl….those days when you wake up early so that you can have a decent bath….baths where water overflow till the puddle becomes a stream and the stream a river that swallows every space one calls dry….baths where women compete to create greater rivers…man I am back!!….But new information snippets have replaced the old…”use newspapers for sanitary pads only not for toilet”….i wonder how that works….or ….”please flush after use”….”please do not misuse…”...”please use only the toilets for …” things have not changed in its very essence as the snippets go…we are dirty, we remain…it took me a while to work out the rules behind having geysers serve as liveried sentry men outside every loo instead of being stuck on a wall with wires….eternal handiwork…I am back!!


So after sufficient looing around and chitty-chatting the maids I get out ….no , not from the air-conditioned dump I called office…but from an already sunny sweaty nest I call hostel room….to the road again…humming “here I am on the road again” (bob seger)…on a trip to buy amenities…well so far so good….I toss a few things here, a few things there….you never know what could come handy……… when suddenly as they add up the bill I am struck again by that old dread…calculations…of the need to count the bills before you hand them lest you plough back into a corrupted state of bankruptcy…no, not like the times when you could borrow from friends who earned in 5 digits…but bankruptcy that will lead your way to more moral discourse on savings and the oft told reminder….you are a student now!!!!....yikes….maybe I don’t need that strainer….maybe I can make do with just one spoon….maybe I should quit existing…now that there’s a time for everything…classes, bathing, mess time…time to eat, to obey rules….to be obliged to notify when you want to go out with your friends…I am just grounded for life…
A word about the sumptuous food…..everything in the mess is a variant of the priceless tuber aloooooo…potatoes…humongous looking triangular-cubical pieces float in every recipe for every meal…with its multifarious partners….where do they come up with so many combination beats my culinary skills…maybe they are undercover scientist or mathematicians trying all the possible permutation -combination for potatoes on a contractual basis…maybe they are studying the multiple effects of the tuber on the human brain….hope they find their results soon…Delhi is known for the stewed milky brew they call tea but in this haven it’s a little different…there is a pleasant but nauseating taste of the nectar, water, that has not been boiled enough to be part of the ancient traditional beverage…I got a taste of it the moment I came back from the great conquest…that’s when it struck me…reconciliation.


I reconcile…So I come back to my nest….my head stoop under the weight of wisdom…. and clean my little nest with all the love I can muster…for here is the grandeur of simplicity….of humble ownership on a path to independence….it’s my freedom…dreadful as it maybe…there is still the hope for a brighter future….future filled with new discoveries in a place I am less writhing in discomfort….i have chosen knowledge….hopefully…..and knowledge is power….says someone…and with great power comes great responsibilities…... says another…..so here I am with a lot of responsibilities….hoping never to complain again!!