A Journey A Day

I am clumsy with luggage; it always ends up weighing more than I can carry.

I was carrying footwear for the sun and the beaches, another pair for a quick stroll in the evening chill, another one to trek along slippery hill sides, a pair of heels for a fancy evening and just the one I needed now to walk in snow and drag this heavy load to my apartment. I am sure the snow underneath quickly worked out the math as I tried to wheel the bag across. 

I am clumsy with zippers; they take focused attention of both my eyes and hands to work their way. Put in a strong wind as well, with snowflakes in flight and a long knee length jacket. I put down my luggage, focus my entire being to the task in hand and yeah zip out the crazy wind.
Now to the next task in hand and make the trek to the apartment. Naah! it wasn’t going to be easy dragging my luggage in the snow; the wheels of the stroller were just piling up snow.
The flashy glazed paper bag, I was carrying thought this to be the opportune moment to come falling.
I balanced the stuff from the torn package on top of my stroller, lifted it and made my way to the apartment. I rested and looked around when I reached the steps of my apartment. Not a soul in sight, not a sound, no colors rebelling the serenity of white. I walked up the steps, after two shifts I finally stepped into my apartment. I smiled, as I answered the phone I was happy to be back to the nest after insane travelling for a month. 

I visited so many places that I cannot even rattle off their names in one breath. I saw new places, met with new people. I made this long trip banking on old friends and acquaintances. And I just realized that trusting old people in new places is a risky bargain. The world, the relationships as we know them are ironic; they hold both beauty and ugliness in equal measure.

The journey ‘timeline’ started with 15^th Dec 5:30am for 8:00am bus to Chicago, I was bound for Los Angeles. The actual travel hours would add up as Champaign to Chicago: 2:30hrs, Chicago airport via local transit train: 45mins, Chicago to Los Angeles: 4hrs, LA destination 1.5 hrs. in traffic.  However with my nervous nature to buffer in the time that I am wont to getting lost, I clumsily travelled for a day. Smiled and hugged an old lady who needed help with her luggage coming in the carousal. Big cities, lonely old people.

17^th Dec, Camarillo it was, the sprawling outlets and the multitudes that walked in and out the stores. Walking around in malls tires me, window shopping ain’t my taste and buying is beyond means for now. We drove to Malibu beach and pier. It was my second drive here, the mountainous route that alternatively conceals and reveals the Pacific Ocean. I was now familiar when to anticipate the ocean but the beauty betrays any signs of familiarity. We stayed till it was all dark when you could register the presence of the dark waters only in their stirrings.

18^th Dec, it was an early morning drive to Santa Barbara, for we wanted to drive back to San Diego in the evening. We left the waters in the dark only to revisit them in the morning. The sunshine snuggling comfortably in the wooden pier and lazy birds posing for the shutterbugs, you could almost feel time slowing down its pace a little. The quaint little place had a strong Spanish influence in the architecture. Everything around you confirms that all you need is lots of money to live in that picturesque place. And perhaps you will be all old and grey before you see that day!

On our way back to San Diego, we visited the Malibu temple and the LA Griffith observatory. Saw the LA city lights (you don’t show that to people who have seen Chicago skyline!) Late night drive back to San Diego.

Instead of counting the places and the dates when I visited different places in San Diego, I would rather put down just my general impression of the place. I loved the place. It was beautiful and within reach to afford a living. It had lots of different flavors to offer. The Hispanic influence comes across strongly, in the architecture, the language and the general vibe of life there. Topographically it is beautiful with the hills, lake, coves, ocean, beaches and the sun. Interestingly in that far flung place, I met a fellow pahari, who swore she could identify my native place seeing my face.

Post the San Diego leg, there is Christmas in San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. New Year in LA & Ventura and then another short spell in Racine Wisconsin before I am back in Champaign. Calls for another blog post.

Another new year!

To look ahead 365 days from now and take a wild guess as to where life would take you is beyond imagination. To look back 365 days from now and think how far you have come along just makes you realize how life has its own way to unfold just one day at a time. I understand that the reverse clairvoyance to see that far back may seem overwhelming for some people. For those of you the closest example I can think of would be a kaleidoscope. The patterns change and emerge with each gentle movement. I saw the simplest version of a kaleidoscope at a roadside stall along a beach. It was just two perpendicular glass tubes, filled with a colored liquid and some sparklers. As I looked though the eyepiece, the sunshine around magically conceived the most beautiful patterns in the glass tube in my hand and with each of my hand movements I saw new patterns evolve. So it is with life the patterns emerge, distort and keep changing. Some days it just gets cloudy, some days the hands are just not steady. What lies inside stays the same but what shows on the surface is never the same. 

I am not sure whether I want to hold the glass tube steady and keep looking at what I behold now. I somehow invariably have the itch to shake things slightly, move them around to see what more can evolve. Then I have a second urge to hold on to some patterns that just seem too dear. But incidentally someone too likes to play this game and sometimes he chooses to smile radiantly with all his warmth and sometimes he just shies behind some loathsome cloud.

So for all the sun-shine, clouds, rain and snow bring them on.. its a New Year yet again!

What do I have?

An old sea man, with his beautiful collection of rock pieces looks at the passing inquisitive tourist and with an enigmatic smile that is deeply self satisfied  proclaims, "All I have is rocks.."
 'I ain't got no house/Ain't got no car/I got me a 1950 Les Paul guitar/Wont you take it mister. Banker'- lyrics of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song."All I have is my music... you might as well put a price on that.."

I stood looking at the water front that stood between me and the shining lights of the city. This wasn't the all powerful ocean, this was just a stretch of backwaters. The waves didn't surf and foam. They rippled and danced all synchronized. There was something in the sound of the waters. It was like the sound of the oar cutting through the waters. An invisible hand rowing across, creating all these gentle waves. It was perhaps some wandering soul looking in the waters of life, for that 'pearl'. For the answer to the question, 'what do you have to offer'?

Things that should change

I slept reading about the financial frauds of the developed world, the 'subjectivity' that shrouds financial transactions as you become the JP Morgans' and the Barclays' of the world. There is a causality like the Lehman brothers, which lives and breathes for hundred of years and then becomes illiquid and disappears from the economic world.
And then I woke to the cruel reality of my country, developing countries where lives are lost in freak accidents. Life and death is the fraud of developing countries. It happens on every scale, human error, natural calamity, terrorism. It is not to say that developed countries are immune to any such occurrences. Its just that our societies have become so passive that day after day such instances occur and we brace each one with a stoic face and move on with the guilty roaming scot-free. It is here that a Bhopal gas tragedy trial can stretch that long that the guilty die a natural death before being proven guilty. Why this apathy? Why have we become so numb? What will wake us up from our reverie?
We are a argumentative society, why do all our arguments turn mute when it is time to bring the guilty to the book. When I look at societies here, i find them more vociferous in communicating their disapproval. There is a 'system' mindset, which tells, this is how things are suppose to work and there is minimum tolerance for deviation. Our society is deviant is all regards it is hard to find a working system somewhere. There has to be a method to madness for survival and we somehow miss it in the entire conundrum of events around us.
My heart goes out for the families of people who lost their loved ones in the AMRI hospital fire in Kolkata. I witnessed two major fires in the last three years that I spent in the city. The city has places which seem as if there are waiting for an inferno, waiting for a tragedy to happen. Is it now about time to raze outlived structures and lay the foundation of new structures and new societies.. I don't want to be the bard who sings paeans of change, I want to figure out how to bring in the change.

For You

I keep coming back to you
For there is a part of me
that lives with you...
For there is a part of me
which is you..


I smile and I cry when I think of you
I smile for the good times..
I cry for the good times..
But the smile I'll always owe it to you..


You have always walked me back home
Listened to my stories of the day
You could read the sparkle in my eyes
You could sing back the song, i had in my heart..


I can't see you everyday
I don't hear from you everyday
But I just believe somehow
we can always pick up the threads
from where we left..
and walk along new routes
and sing along new songs..

Incorrigible optimism

As I look outside my window. I realize that winter is all around. The fall colors are gone.. the leaves lie rustling on the ground trying to have a hushed conversation with the trees that adorned them once. What could they talk about? What could they possibly share. Its the end of a conversation. The leaves will be blown away with the next wind and there will be far away.. all the dry dead leaves awaiting their burial. The tree will stand just where it is and wait for the spring to come to adorn it once again with new fresh leaves. The cycle will begin once again, the cycle of Life and Death. The beauty of fresh arrival and the bitter sweet pain of death and decay. It is the template nature follows.
When I try to decipher the rustle of the leaves.I try to look beyond the hurt of being cast down on the ground, of lying there trampled beneath feet.  All those sounds that I hear around me are not cries. At least that's what i want to believe. I want to believe that they are promises, they are reassurances, they are words that say believe that things will change. Believe that the winds will usher in new life. Believe that its all a part of a plan and someone up above has something good in store for us.
Surprisingly I try to sound convinced about my own theory only when I see someone else losing faith. I tower over my own doubts and misgivings and tell him to believe. Believe beyond reason that things will be fine! I myself have less of an inkling of where I am going and so just to lull myself for a moment I smile and think, 'why dis kolavari kolavari diii'. Its something you don't know, you just take in the craziness, to make light of the somber winter around in the hope of having an effervescent conversation with the sun, the leaves, the trees and the the breeze one spring morning :)

Resemblances II

Why do i see such a strong resemblance in everything that I have been writing in a while :)

I need a new theme to explore instead of just being nostalgic. And i just recalled this line Shashi Tharoor wrote in some article.
"Nostalgia is a middle-aged affliction; it attaches importance to the memory of experiences that mean little to the majority who did not share them."
The focal point is 'middle-aged afflictions'..  :) (Not flattering!)

Resemblances

Do we seek out for them or they just jump out to us? I am more inclined to believe that we try to seek out for them. At certain points of your life when you are unsure of which direction to take you seek consolation in the slightest resemblance of your predicament you see around. There may be real people but if you have a real good imagination then you can look up to characters from a novel or movie or TV series characters.  I am not sure if you should applaud your imagination for figuring out that uncanny resemblance or pity yourself for seeking out fictitious pillars of support. We like to believe that we are strong and rational but we are fragile and irrational at the same time. So we are willing to believe in a make belief world only to make sense of the situation that you find yourself in.

I wish I could dismiss this just as an over activity of my mind. However I can’t and I’m here to argue my case. The imagined characters we see, read about evolve out of someone’s own experiences at some point of time. They do have an iota of truth about them and there can be a possibility that that truth resonates with your own belief. Art comes closest to life when people can actually relate to it in personal terms. So I would say it is good art if it can make that relation and strike that resemblance. Moving from pure art to commercial movies and soaps, don’t sneer just as well because I was someone who did that just a few days back and then I realized I’m also culpable to believing that sometimes your life, your personality comes close to some fictitious character on the idiot boss.

However nature is just not good at creating identicals, it doesn’t repeat its code. The closest it allows are resemblances, certain similar traits, but then the parts don’t add up to identical wholes. So it’s just about fleeting or uncanny resemblances and nothing more. The rest from here is your own imagination. And just like that a moment of your life may have a little resemblance with a character on the TV. And just like that you build comradeship with a certain character in the make belief world. And you wait to watch what happens next J