Coming Home-II

Nainital, India:

After a very long time-almost 7 years I came home to the Monsoons in Nainital..

While growing up, these were the magical days of rising fog, green ferns, wild flowers, random waterfalls, brown snails & slugs, yellow raincoats, duckback rainboots, rainy-day holiday. This was also the season fraught with the perils of landslides, roadblocks, cloudbursts, waterborne diseases, fungi growth and damp smells. Every Monsoon season a wild river would usurp an adjoining village; a cloudburst would wipe off a complete village; landslides would trap unprepared travellers, but I guess we had accepted these risks as part of nature’s plan.

And then last year happened, days of heavy rains, large-scale destructions, thousands of deaths. However to call it nature’s fury would be naïve, last year was a man-made disaster in equal measure. We became victims of short sighted, half-baked development projects-Tehri dam, large-scale residential construction in eco-sensitive zones, greedy commercialization of religious pilgrimage and absence of any backup plans for a natural disaster.

I saw the ravages of last year and the current onslaught of the rains as we drove along the twisted-turning hilly road from Haldwani to Nainital.  We passed by broken roads, partially blocked roads and impatient people. Despite the sight of the lush green, the general air of apathy agitated me. The critical part of me could not shake off the thought: “Things seem to move backward here..”. Is it just the realist part of me questioning the status quo or am I enamored with the developed world and so critical of my modest pahad?

California, Nevada, Pacific Northwest USA:

California Coast: Brown hills with ridges sculpted by the whimsical winds and patches of stunted trees hurdled together in trenches. The restlessly beautiful waters, the splash of colors at sunset, the joy of taking the less-travelled secret hidden roads and discovering small cozy houses or lavish large ranches in the hills.

Nevada: Brown barren mounds of dusty hills, some had random single English letters etched upon them. This barren monotony was occasionally interrupted by pockets of sudden greens and flowing streams

Sequoia National park:Dusty brown hills with withered brown vegetation, sightings of burnt tinder and warnings of forest fires. Then after you climb 3000ft above sea level, the landscape changes completely, the hills became verdant green. These hills are home to some of the tallest trees in the world- Sequoia trees. You also find the sun at its playful best here, playing hide and seek with you and staging multiple ‘sun-sets’ as you climb down the hill.

Pacific northwest coast:Dark blue hills at a distance separated from land by water bodies, floating white clouds over the hills, tourists flocking with camera's to capture the colorful totems of the Red Indians along the waterfront..

When I drove along the US west coast soaking in the beauty, I was completely at peace, not a bit agitated by anything. The only distraction was the question of where to stop and eat (so many choices) first world problem!

It’s a familiar story you leave a loved one behind to meet new people. You see the idiosyncrasies and struggles of the old world in sharp contrast to the convenience and simplicity of living in the new world. You come back to the old world, only to find it encumbered in the old struggles. You look into the shriveled face of the loved one, the sunken cheeks smiling a shy toothy smile to welcome you.. You try to muster the humility to embrace him with the same warmth without the arrogance of judgment but it’s a labored effort.. Its not how it should be..

Then magically from somewhere the white Monsoon fog descends upon the hills, it hides everything from sight- everything visible to judgmental eyes- it conceals all the colors in its white embrace; the only sound is the falling rain. I stand at my balcony, stretch out my hands to feel the raindrops and in that moment of complete peace, I am finally home to the Monsoons in Nainital..

To August

I had almost written off August as an uneventful month only to realize that this month has special significance for all US college graduates. The degree of this significance (pun intended) depends on how much 'college' you have in you.

If you are a fresh student starting in the fall session, somewhere around the second week of August you will get introduced to a whole new set of people in your life, and it will be the start of a new august chapter. For an international student the significance is much more, we usually shore up in the first week of August just to get settled in before school begins.The weather too is on the kinder side to make the transition smooth. And this is the story of that one day in August when we made that leap of faith.

If you are living the sordid work life, this is the month when college football starts and henceforth you get a chance to proudly wear your university colors to work. You would have already paid the $6 monthly fee for ESPN so that you have something to look forward to when you head back home from work for the next 4 months. Better still you would have made a plan already to drive up to the University for a homecoming game and meet some old buddies.

If you are in any kind of relationship with a fellow college-goer, there is a good chance that sometime in August was the first milestone for the chain of events leading to the state of affair as they stand today. I would give milestone credit  to even that lame August evening when the two of you get introduced and have a conversation for the first time and the next day the girl doesn't remember the guy's name and confuses him with someone else and the guy intermediately writes off the girl as a snob with special note to himself- never approach her again!

This is how life unfolds and memories are made a day at a time, a month at a time. This concludes my ode to August and yay! finally a blog for this month and the record still stands :)

What's with the open mouths??

A hazy shade of winter

There are few times of the year when everything around slows down, everything else briefly gets all silent and  you feel all the more closer to the place you live in. Its seems that the place belongs to you alone and you do not have to share it with all the passersby on the roads or the stream of cars making you wait at intersections. You feel a particular kinship with the solitary beauty of the place, standing aloof and vacant. Its weird because the same scene might very well be the sorry tale of a lonely soul left all alone in a deserted city.

Since I am again all by myself for the Thanksgiving break in Champaign, I try to tread carefully given the dichotomous situation I find myself in. Now the reason why I ended up all by myself for the break could range from- being lazy, not listening to friends, saving up a little to buy some gifts for friends and family.. etc..the list can get very long. So in everyone'e best interest lets just skip this part.

I sit by myself doing things that I like most, starting with going back to swimming after months.(Thankfully my body didn't hurt so much the next day!)
Reading a stolen newspaper for straight three hours..ahh what a feeling. I might have to do some explaining for the stolen piece. But in my defense the newspapers lie dumped on the ground near the mailbox and I have never seen anyone religiously picking up their copies. And secondly with all the proliferation of smart phones and internet, who in US wants to sit down and read some over 100 printed pages of weekend Wall Street Journal. And thirdly my public apology to whoever sorely missed their weekend newspaper because someone else picked it up and actually read it when they were out of campus for a glorious Thanksgiving break.
Honestly I sat down with a newspaper on a Sunday morning after almost one and a half years. Somehow in the course of settling to the new ways of life in US, the television and newsprint paper have totally gone out of my life(substituted by assignments of-course! ).
The television got a revival since August this year when one of my friends moved into an apartment with a Television set and my room mate started her weekly trips to Chicago to her husband's place. (Those two chance coincidences have spawned a lot of things, the television viewing being one of them.)
But the lowly old newspaper was missing from my life until today. It was a reunion so dear, i remembered all the lazy Sunday afternoons spent with a newspaper and my diary! Imagine my joy at finding an article on Oscar Wilde( her wife actually) but I wouldn't complain because it had a generous sprinkling of Wilde's pithy, witty, rye-humored quotes.
I smiled inwardly reading this quote:

"The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life"

And you bet it went to my diary, though slightly modified, since I am not so aware of the married life as much  as the Facebook life of people. I wonder "when people will begin to get suspicious of anything that looks like a happy Facebook life!" I bet it will be the marketers who will get the wind first because they have the highest stakes in this marriage!

The opposite of Black hole!

Guess who possibly could be the opposite of black hole?

If black hole stands for all hope lost, the opposite of black hole, well is opposite. It is full of light, hope and inspiration.

I should perhaps offer a little help to make the question answerable.

Who won the US Presidential elections 2012?

If you answered Barack Obama you actually answered both my questions. Yes Barack Obama is the opposite of black hole. I had this brainwave when I read Barack Obama's speech after his re-election in Chicago. I missed the actual histrionics since I just read the speech text and didn't watch the actual delivery nonetheless I can still confer on him the title of 'opposite of black hole'.
Sometimes victory speeches have a cockiness, sometimes they are outright humble and sometimes they picture an imagery that elevates people to envision a glorious future with no black holes. They call it the American vision, it is interesting to look at the dichotomous reality of the vision, but topics of politics and economy later. The blog is intended to be the opposite of 'black hole'!!

The Black hole

I dread the black hole- no escape, no hope for anything to come back, to my mind it is the single most ominous reality. With everything in life that doesn't go your way you still have a flickering hope that your fortunes can reverse some day but a black hole represents the absolute irreversible truth. It represents the place in space where you hurl your stone each time with greater force hoping to finally make it stick and may be even shine like a star someday. Alas, nothing ever happens, the stone is lost, the effort is gone and you know there is never going to be a star smiling down at you.
However as I type the above lines I am wondering whether by condemning the black hole, I am maligning the wrong guy. Are we actually guilty of hope?

Its hope that makes us pick a stone each time, the black hole is simply the finality of the result- a dead end that seekers just run into. Sometimes hope can be brutal, it makes you go down the same path innumerable times only to come out all bruised and hurt. May be the black hole just tries to end the misery, bring an end to the vicious cycle of hope and trying. May be God just became tired of seeing folks hurl stones, and so created a black hole to stop them, dissuade them from trying.

I wonder if we can really be charged guilty of hoping, for that would raise questions about existence. An existence which lives in the constant shadow of its own black hole-death. Isn't life ironic, for all the hopes, struggles, black hole- it still should go on until the fateful end.

(Thoughts of an anxious job seeker braving the media frenzy of hurricane Sandy- crazy times)