Exasperating, infuriating, irritating, aggravating, mind-boggling, mind-numbing, beautiful beautiful India. One would never have imagined that a two month stay would be too potent a mix for the hardiest.. but so it is.. I have drunk my fill.. I have realized that I will drink.. in memory and from a distance (many continents removed) rather than from within. I have much respect for those who brave its beauty and pleasures as also its corruptibility and madness from within. I am not worthy. Pakeeza in New York is much more fulfilling and meaningful for the creature that I have become..
Many lives ago I would listen, on the gramophone (His Master’s Voice) in Lucknow, at my grandparents house, to the songs of Pakeeza. All these years I never once saw the movie. Tonight after twenty or more years I saw the picture itself. The imagination yearns to create moments appropriate to the sentiments it thinks it is hearing / experiencing. It was quite mind-altering to see how far removed I was from the original. It was nostalgia misplaced.. I created a world that did not exist for an emotion expressed in a completely foreign context.. almost it would appear the beginnings of a creative mind.. Sentiment, apparently, once it is expressed gets a life of its own and the situations it can express are myriad.. depressing and very releasing at the same time.. needless to say it is refreshing for the sentiment to be proved wrong.. Creation can go on..
It is hard to remember the visit in its entirety.. one remembers moments and instances.. India has changed and keeps morphing and mutating.. My parents new house thrives because of their stubborn fascination of staying where no man has stayed before. The garden is in full bloom because of a servant with an amazing green thumb.. he prefers gardening to cooking and cleaning and they just let him be..
India was a yearning.. something I had missed so terribly.. like all yearnings, I have to say that the object failed to satisfy the Yearn. My family was as exuberant as ever.. however the milieu was like that of a picture I had visited and lived in and yet had faded.. or had changed in some crucial aspect which was unfathomable to me.. for the first time I was Lost.. I think I had changed or All had changed.. a two month stay should have been enough to have found broken threads.. but I think I heard the Snap this time.. I had always thought I was a person adrift.. my trip confirmed and reinforced this notion.. I was not meant to belong to any place or anyone.. I was truly Lost or more devious still in the karmic evolution of Life.. I was Found. The Monsoon and the Mangoes were absolutely awe inspiring, the former in its majesty and colossalness and the latter in their flavour and range and sweetness.. something I had not indulged in so rapturelessly for years. While it was very disorienting being in an environment where everyone was dark haired (specially after spending some time in Sweden) I had completely forgotten how many of the Indian populous supported mustaches Рmen as well as women.. extremely disorienting. But then it is just about impossible to describe the flavours One indulged in.. the Food, the beauty of the People and the diversity of the Land.. I find myself going into raptures like one of those travel books which are so so pass̩.. but it is True.. and maybe I have ended up becoming more removed from the land of my birth and more Of It with each visit.
Ahhhh.. the Sweet Sweet escape to Manhattan.. my City, my Citadel, my Planet, my Life.. but it was not to be.. Darkness struck.. it was supposed to be mayhem.. but it was Not.. it was Life.. it was Freedom.. it was a Celebration.. while it was potent reminder to me that I may never escape from power cuts and claustrophobic crowds and to the powers that Be that no one is beyond Murphy.. it was a joyous heralding of a homecoming.. the effects of which are to be seen nine months hence..
Manhattan remains an Enigma.. a contained One that I explore at my own risk (and others).. The only public spots that remain where one can smoke in peace are the New York Taxi cabs and the hooka bars on the Lower East (unlike London where I partied (and lit up) till the wee hours with much abandon on the cobblestones of SoHo.. and no one batted an eyelid and furthermore joined me)..
It is the Love one shares with a true Lover.. self destructive.. and infinitely rewarding.. if One surfs it well.. One might still Escape.. to where.. I do not know.. but that is the Beauty of it.. and probably the Undoing.
Anywhoo.. I am back.. I am well.. no the Tree wedding did not happen because of complications with the Tree and the Jyotishi (Future Reader (for want of a better word)).. my architecture projects are going slow, but going strong.. my projects with my parents in the Railroad business are seeing the light of day.. the apartment is alive and awaits your presence..
Salaam from New York
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