Passing By

In the deepest of my thoughts, unraveled by the exquisity of adventure, never did I feel any mystic propulsion of spending a weekend in Mathura, vrindavan, a trip I am on now. I spent my childhood in a home in Calcutta, where earning a living, fighting out the days and spending the nights in a future thought of the next day was all I grew up in. Listening to stories from my aunts, groping up the cassettes in their full volumes which echoed the epics in an embroidered tone, intensifying the mystified dream of a child’s mind. Krishna, Balaram, rama, Laxman, Ravana….. were characters much closer to me than the same aged neighborhood friends. The cricketing shots I used to bastle around in the evenings had the wooshings of the arrows Ram spanked at Ravana in the background.
Then all of a sudden I started growing up, extending my mind to feel, allowing it to think more than required then gradually understanding and accepting….............. life can never be the same anymore.

The last decade has been a tiresome experience, being trained to compete with those who were once my friends, with own sets of secrets and fantasies, dreams,…................ now we compete, stab each other at the back............... with elderly proverbs chanting at the back…................. this is life, survival of the fittest ‘. I always felt, all this will end in a fuck...........…how long do we live, I used to question,perhaps to myself, what do we take back, from where does this incessant crux of competition arrives that compels each one of us to thrive through life with hopes of success, ruling the world, wealth , materialistic pleasures,………. And finally retire at an age with only the strength of wealth to crunch upon. I thought this every night, and in the day I would dress myself again as a cruel competitor, compromising my willingness towards a security even unsecured.
Today, I am working, utterly bored through each of the hours that pass by at office, with no idea what its leading me to….. and on my way to Mathura with my parents. We boarded a train from New Delhi station, Jabalpur Superfast express. The weather is fine, warm, sunny,….. a perfect one for a holiday. I am sitting by the window, side lower and reading a book by one of my favourites…… Paulho Coelho. I look around, its not much but still well crowded. People from different cultures all boarded on the same train to different destinations............. Mathura, Agra.... Jabalpur. In our coop there is a Kashmiri family, on a trip to Agra………………… two men, two lady, a boy and a girl. The first time I stepped in the coop, I saw the lady of the family arranging the luggages............. beautiful and elegant......... rarest of the birds in a canvas of dusk. I felt like feeling her, embracing and kissing her and let her know ‘ you are beautiful, born in the heavens, sculpted by HIM’............... but alas!, may be I am free, I can dive in any adventure without blinking about what happens next….......... but not everyone is. They are free in their birth and death ........ in between routing themselves through the crossroads of relationships….............just like the stars, born in the BIG BANG, colliding with many others and travelling several billion light years, and then dying in a black hole.
The train has by now steadied itself gaining momentum. In the next coop there are three foreigners, they look Americans . Many eyes were glued on them when they first stepped in...... the white gods in the distant east. One of the ladies was sitting next to me, looking through the window, amazement in her eyes, curling her blonde hair with the left index finger. Her eyes are blue, blue in search of adventure, to know the world, to know the areas I was not born in, to celebrate its vastness, ............. one day we will not be there, one day the milestones we achieve will be crossed by, one day the sun will be more intense, one day the dust would fade away, one day the trains would slow down, slowing to eternity............ we will not be there to celebrate that day, the world will be more beautiful, when the heavens will pour down at dusk, more canyons will be found, Gorges discovered, Peaks proclaimed. But still, the world we have is priceless. It has beauty, it has hope........ a surrendurable vastness,.................... and in the same chain of thoughts a blooming cloud unfurls from the sky, partially shadowing the sun. A mustard field passes by, rather we pass by a mustard field, for a moment confusing who is in motion. A part of it remains shadowed while the other moistened by the glowing sun. A splashy moment that passes by even before the camera emigrates. But the splash stays on, I feel relaxed, nature is bearing up with me again, re-enchanting me from the exile , subdued now for over a decade. I felt like crying, felt like pulling the chain and getting down on this unknown land by which the train is now gliding through.

The train meanders along. Among the distant smog and cloud, I see ranges of hills, hovered one over the other. Delighted , I tell my dad and other coop mates about it. They laugh out loud………………’ Oh dear, hills down here, have a sound nights sleep, Ho Ho Ho Ho .................. I smile too, understanding the tremendous loss these good people have suffered over the ages burdened with services for a better life. They have surrendered themselves to reality, to materialism. They feel that they see what is there while a turn around thought of what we see is there could have been worth a vision. Does a hill means the triangle shaped big huge roof tops with brownish green flakes all over......... does we holiday in a mountain only for that beauty/????/ …...... Uhhh! Certainly not me.!!!!

They proclaim a different imagination, a magical realism, a magic that sustains long after we leave, long after we grow old, long after we die. A magic that hauls over us in a mist of cloud and fog, a place to surrender whole heartedly, where everything and everyone appears far off and distant ..... and builds in you the slimmest of the shivering thoughts to sustain there for eternity .

With my diary in my lap, I keep gazing towards my mountains. They are still there, distant and far,unhurt by the mockery of my fellow gentlemen, alluring me, inviting me for a beer with them. We have lots to talk about, certainly in a telepathic manner, caressing each other in mysticism. But I can’t go. Whatever crap I think off, I still belong to this world, materialistic in its hinges, I was born in. I have promises to keep, promises I do not know when I made......... I have responsibilities, social responsibilities, as my mom says.

Alrite then, let me make a promise for the first time by myself and for myself………………….............. Dear imagination, dear cloud, dear fogs, dear mountains, and all those dear ones who has built there elements unto myself………. Dear Mother Nature, …………………. I will be back, I am yours, one of thy elements, I will come back to you with a mug of chilled beer.