Its cold here!

When its really very cold, all you can find is a single sock, a single mitten and surprisingly not even a single woolen cap by yourself. After hunting around for a while you keep coming back to mismatched socks and mittens and no cap still. My mom and my sister vehemently vouch that it happens only with me but thankfully my younger brother can testify in my favor!

Then there comes a winter evening when suddenly you realize you have grown old, very old and oddly cold! You find yourself standing at your home balcony and waving goodbye to your brother as he heads off to his college. Your mind keeps thinking of all the goodbyes when he was young enough to be at home while you visited on college breaks and office leaves. Me, my mom, my sister and my brother all can agree this time, it is a different goodbye when the youngest in the family takes on to the road!

Wishing him good-luck and hoping to have our rendezvous again. God bless!

Homecoming

I slipped back into my life in India with an involuntary ease, neither the people around seemed to sense much change(yeh to jaise gayi thi waise hi dekh rahe hai..) nor I seemed slightly out of practice when I shouted at the taxi people outside the airport early in the morning for trying to point me to multiple taxis when my token clearly said 41.

Driving around Delhi on a Saturday morning at 6a.m. has its own charm. The sleeping city is slowly waking up, but there is no rush of the techie office crowds instead there are the regulars jostling around with chai, some nimbu-mirch threads, newspapers. The people who live on the small earnings of the day do not have the luxury of weekends.. As we drove to the hotel in Paharganj where my friends had managed to find the most posh hotel, I listened to the trials and struggles of a migrant taxi driver with IIT dreams for his kids studying in Kota. I at once assumed my old identity of a techie working in an Indian company and listened to his stories with a sympathetic ear. Luckily for the taxi driver, right at the hotel entrance there was an anxious father with a suited up son who was looking for a ride to the airport since the taxi they called didn't show up on time. My taxi driver was all happy, dropped my luggage inside, forgot about his earlier pitch for some extra chai-paani and gladly drove away!

Then it was the grand reunion, college friends, old flatmates from Kolkata, my sister. 7 girls can create a lot of noise especially if they meet after such a long time. The hotel people had no clue why girls kept dropping in at regular intervals in this weird Paharganj ghetto. From Paharganj to Comesum at the old Delhi railway station, we scared all the sleepy eyed Delhi places with our loud laughs and old reminiscences.

I was wide eyed all along, until my train lurched gently for the sleepy hills. And then I slept sound and deep until the train finally came to a halt. Waiting at the train station was my tall little brother coming to pick his two elder sisters. And that is the story of the homecoming.. to be continued later..

Pot of Gold!

There sure is a pot of gold hidden somewhere in the sky above. Sometimes the winter sunset gives it away..and against the silhouette of the leafless trees you can catch all the radiance of the shinning doubloons!

Bells

I tried to refrain from writing another nostalgic post, but the chime of 'memory bells' broke into my school anthem and I thought I better write it down before I forget the lines.

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The bells of St Mary's ring out far and wide
Their echo resounds from the lake and hillside
They call the young ones to work and play
They call us to duty, they call us to pray..

O Bells of St. Mary's we hear you repeating
The dear song of gladness of sweet memories.
You tell us of striving, of frank and fair dealing.
You sing to us of truth and love and victory.

In the school of St Mary's we spent happy times
We learnt the fine arts and the rhymes
In the church of St Mary's we find comfort and light
To fight a good fight and do what is right..

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Their echo resounds from the lake and hillside…

We hear you repeating the dear song of gladness, of sweet memories…

To fight a good fight and do what is right.

For me these three lines encapsulate the entire 11 years (prep->10) of schooling- the town, the friends and the lessons of life. I believe that there are certain things in my life which always find a way in any conversation somehow. I can see it in the eyes of the people around me, they can see it coming- a story from Nainital, or my farm or my school! I appreciate how they patiently listen to the same story nth time and smile politely when ‘the memory bells begin chiming’.

I believe most people love the place they come from, it’s a part of them in some way and stays with them wherever they go. Alternatively it may not be your birth place but the place where you feel most at home. I may be biased but I also believe that your school stays with you forever; it is your first version of the outside world. In some ways we humans are like trees, we might branch off far and wide but still be rooted in some way in some place, in some school of thought.

It’s interesting how the word bells bring to mind my schools and the sight of the bells reminds me of my home and my father. He is a believer, he believes in the existence of a power above, he believes that his prayers watch over me. The sound of bells reminds me of his daily morning prayers culminating in the ringing bells. 

The sound of bells reminds me the morning prayers in the Naini temple resounding all over the hills. The afternoon bells from the church, whispering grace. The evening prayers on the Ganga- the Arti with the light lamps floating on the river.

Perhaps bells may be the most powerful symbolism in my life. They ring in my school, my hometown, my home and my relationship with the god above. 

Photo credit:sr