Petrichor

The smell of lashed, wet earth leaking through the cracks of that mud wall. The white ripples on the surface of puddles amongst the grassy fields. The wet, wrinkled hair of the wild-hearted village women. A single drop flowing down the long ridge of her nose, slowly and dramatically. And the way, it stops and hangs at the bottom edge. Not collecting enough of courage or itself to fall down. Hanging like a nose ring. Broken bangles, bits and pieces, bouncing on the water polished rocks.

The way, the slim legged stork, prances about in the watery, green fields. The way she slightly lifts her lehenga, to reveal those nimble feet and glistening silver anklets, as she takes a hop over the muddy path in between the fields. The great big cumulonimbus overhead. Thunder and lightning as it slowly billows and blows over the Indian sub-continent. And, she looks up to see its coming and passing. Travelling from the south, bearing the aspirations of the dirt-stained, plough bearing farmers of varied language, clothes and customs.

She wonders whether it'll wash away the grime in the pans and pots inside the darkness of that thatched hut or whether it'll sweep the veil covering her unseen eyes. Or, whether it'll lighten the burden that she has become to her father, by reaching the age where she could bear a child.

The thunderclouds bellow. The anguish of the lowly and the downtrodden. Of the men and women, nearest to the soil. Yet, the rains bring a new hope. A new harvest. A new yearning.

Kilometres.

Near the top of the mountain, on those winding tarred roads, near one of those many yellow-white milestones, he stood with his messed-up morning hair, staring towards a far beyond looking into himself as much as into the Himalayas. He smelled of unbrushed teeth, of dried and scaly skin which had not seen a bath for some days and of long, repressed memories. And, there he stood drinking tea in that misty mountainous morning.

An overwhelming freedom seem to have enveloped him. It's not that he hated humanity, it's not that he hated bonds and people. But, there was something about solitude. There was something about a traveller's bag on his back and the worn-out shoes on his foot. Indeed, there was something about trying to fork those Frost-ian paths, which interestingly is on the verge of becoming clichéd. Miles to travel and all that.

Humans live many lives in their one life. And, at different stages, they turn to different things for solace. Friends who they can drink with. Relationships onto which they'll lean everything onto. Religion which promises them heaven, paradise, moksha and so on. Gods which bless them provided they paid their fees in prayers and cash deposits. Families so that they can beget children and see their dream happen through them.

But, it did him little good whether he cared little about the worldly or the heavenly. So, that's when he purchased a travelling bag, a pair of good shoes and just went to the nearest railway station. A journey to see India and maybe eventually the world. He wondered whether he was an escapist. Someone constantly on the run, especially from how life is to be lived. On schedule and with ties, purchasing diapers.

He suddenly heard the footsteps coming from the opposite side of the road. The village woman were coming down the narrow, dusty and grassy footpaths carved perpendicular to the mountains. Wrinkled skin and big nose-rings. Paan-chewing lips. With load on their shoulders and half naked kids by their side. Their lives untouched by time and seeping modernity.

How far can human beings run? An average person walks roughly half of equator's length. He can never circle the entire equator. Some say that it proves the fact that he needs somebody else to cover the rest of the equator. But, he surmised that it was to challenge the human in him, to persuade him to get out of this maze of regularity and to seek the extraordinary. The extraordinariness of a hot cup of steaming team on a mountainous early morning. The extraordinariness of observing the untouched and touched lives. The ability to freeze the schedule and the timetable on which the world runs so that one could take a leap towards undivided time, where the sun rose and set without counts.

That revolt was his raison d'etre. As he sat down on the muddy side, metres away from the precipice, all the faces that he knew passed through his memory. He smiled. Indeed, he had to find out. How far can a human run? From familiarity? From money?From schedules?From bonds? The steam from that hot plastic cup made his spectacles misty. He wiped it. He then took out a pen and a small pocket diary from his pocket. He began scrawling like he always did. The kilometres left and the places and the humans to be seen.

Ivan Yaaro

It can start with our hero walking backwards with his eyes closed, with his arms extended outwards. His shampooed hair ruffled by the light breeze in the campus. A dimpled grin on his face. At that precise moment, the new girl would be standing together with a bunch of her newly found friends talking very seriously but the conversation getting muted by that light romantic melody floating in the college campus. Her frizzled, wet hair strewn all over her face. Kajal-ed and big round eyes. And, then it happens. They collide.

Wait. Rewind the tape. Everything happening backwards in a very fast manner. Stop and start again.

Our man comes on a bike, roaring through the crowd. Heads turn. The new girl is totally oblivious to the sound, of course. He sees her first. She still doesn't see him. His head turns slowly. Two centimetres per second. The bike slowly veers off course and hits the stout tree. The melody still playing.

Naa. Rewind the tape. Backwards. Backwards. Quick. Quick. Staaaap.

The well muscled and sweat covered boy is playing football/badminton/cricket/hockey. It's the deciding last minute/shot. He wipes his forehead with his thumbs. He goes for the last kick/shot and out of the corner of his eyes, sees her. The rest is history. The match is lost. But, our sweaty, well muscled boy is oblivious to that. BGM is a must obviously.

Not quite right. Rewind the tape.

Rains. Aaah. The atmosphere creator. Not torrential, of course. Drizzle. Just enough for either the guy or the girl to dance. The feet should jump and kick muddy water all over so that the other can stand and gawk. You know the drift right now. Humming music all over the place.

Still not novel enough. Rewind the tape. Screeeeeeeech. Halt.

Bharat Matrim..Pftoooo. Faceb...Pftoo Pftooo. Blatantly unromantic. 

Rewind the tape. Get better. Un-cliched.

The calender pages swivel upward quickly. The digits in the years change rapidly. Hairs start greying. The unsatisfied, the cynical and the impatient settle over fire, flowers, the yellowness and illogical stars in crowded places to become plumper year after year. The satified ones, too. Skins sag. The camera zooms through time and space to our hero sitting at a bench in one corner of a park. Countless recognisable faces and lips and curves and conversations and arched necks in the contours of his memory. Reading a newspaper. She comes and occupies the other end of bench at the end of her long jog. Bags and baggages are placed underneath that bench. She sips a bit of water from her bottle and looks at him, gives a slight smile. 

Yes. That's when the music starts.

Alla, pinne.

The wanderer, he was.

A big, black balloon.
Millions of pinpricks and one big hole.
In that night sky, he saw himself.
But, then moonlight streamed around
And the stars twinkled.

He lay on the grass and looked up
They say that light travels slow
Too slow where the distances are infinite
That the night sky is the past.
Thus, the memories were preserved

The curly winds brushed the monochrome leaves
It's gentle sound, the very sound of life
In that gentle breeze, he drew new constellations
After that, he got up and put on his backpack
And then started his meandering walk

The wanderer, he was.

On the Velocity of Life(Jimmiki Kammal)

It was dusk. The starry sky and KSRTC night bus noises(they have a different noise at night) invaded Trivandrum. The call of the conch rose from a nearby temple. Moonlight streamed through the long, narrow leaves of the surrounding coconut trees onto that terrace. Seated on a mat there, were Raghu, Isha and Nair eating sandwiches.

"Nair-ey, you are so stuck up in your past and so stubborn to changes that you are letting go of the new memories that you could have made. Don't keep whining about not belonging. For you, that belonging came after you went neck deep in water. " Sneha remarked.
"Yes. But, I still want to savour the things that happen to me. You jump too fast and get tired too easily."He replied.
"Savouring can wait. Until, old age comes."
"And, when is that?"

"...Hold it."Raghu interjected Nair's dreamy narrative."So, all this is over a clash of opinions. Slow-mo and laid-back versus let's-conquer-the-world."
"That's simplifying it a bit. There were other reasons. But, at the heart.."
"..You were very different people to begin with" Isha finished the sentence for Nair."But, you people did carry off it with flair. I do not understand why your friends think she is to blame though."
"Because, they are our friends"Raghu replied.

"Don't do that bro-thing to me, eh. You Malayalis and your perversion towards simplification. Naive-and-simple-hearted-guy-in-the-gang faces breakup. The girl must be a bitch."
"Simple-hearted-guy can't be the dog."
"I did not say that. But, please eh? You knew Sneha before. You think she can be stereotyped into a black-white continuum? Bitch, my foot. People should reserve their opinion when they do not have adequate information."

"Raghu, you know. First time, I am seeing people eating sandwiches and getting angry."Nair grinned. "But, she is right. It was a slow and gradual attrition. To blame it on either of us, would be injustice. Anyway, that is not important. What's your opinion on the savouring part?"
"Hmm. Potayto. Potahto. Different people. Different ways."she replied.
"What is there to savour so much, around here anyway?"Raghu asked Nair.

"I don't know. This has always been a sleepy town, Trivandrum. And, now its slowly becoming a melting pot for all the different stereotypes. Khaki-and-mundu-wearing opinionated auto-chetans and jasmine-wearing churidaar chechis. Curly haired, thick-specs intellectuals in kurtas and sometimes marley t-shirts. Jeans-wearing college girls who get ogled at. All the prim and proper Catholic schools. Thattukadas. Strong chais. Temples and Mosques. Extreme conservatism fighting against a  new liberal generation. Alavalathis in superbikes. The pub culture slowly trying to seep in. Our sexual contradictions. I like this sleepy town. We work our asses off in other states and countries so that we can come back and let go here. "

"Haha. Like on this terrace, yeah. Eating sandwiches and toasting ourselves to the moonlight."
"Exactly. I mean you come to this place. And, your heart slows down a bit. You offload all the work. Have some good old communist, philosophic thoughts."

"KOBAYASHI MARU." Isha burst into the conversation.
"Huh?"
"What?"
"That's my opinion. Kobayashi Maru. It just struck me. Let me explain. Kobayashi Maru is a term from Star Trek."
"Aah. Star trek."
"Shut up. So, Kobayashi Maru is a simulation game that the Starfleet cadets have to undergo in order to complete their officer training. It's a no-win game. You cannot win that simulation and it's designed to test how the officers face defeat."
"Er so??"
"If you read all the philosophers, writers and religious gurus in the past. Camus. Buddha. Sartre. Fitzgerald. They all say the same thing. Life's rigged towards losing. People are too greedy and horny. They long for all sorts of stuff. They don't get it. They lose. Every one of us."

"Cheers to that."Raghu raised his sandwich.

"If so, what's important is we lose in a style comfy for us. I mean, we do it our way. We lose in a way that reflects us the best. For you, that means something slow. Dipping yourself in nostalgia often. You are the wine guy. You sip. You savour. You toast. You have sandwiches with friends on a beautiful moony night. You fall in love with a land that has so many assholes and as many sweethearts. A place with contradictions that is a reflection of you."

There was absolute silence for a while. Then, Nair spoke up.

"So if I am the wine guy, she must be the tequila woman. All shots. Lapping up new experiences, one after the other. Always on an adventure. "
"And both give you a hangover in excess. "Raghu quipped and winked. "But, Isha, this also seems like an excuse to mediocrity."
"Agreed. People should not make such a reasoning an excuse towards mediocrity. The whole point is they should chip at stuff they love and chip in a way they love because at the end of the day, nobody is really a success story. We all bob up and down in sine waves."

"So, the lazy going, mundu-wearing, beedi-smoking, philosophy-chewing and philosophy spitting commie uncle is doing it in style as well."
"Oh yes, he is. As long as that is the life, that satisfies his soul. "

Nair went to the edge of the terrace. He touched his phone and suddenly pink floyd filled the air in a subdued volume. He flicked his sandwich away.
"Haha. Isha. You and your theories."
"Sweethearts, both of you know one thing. I am always right."

Towards a new Sun

NB:- I hate poems and poets in general. Because most of the time, poetry is what people do when they feel lazy because prose requires sharper words, more number of words and more thought. Of course, some poems are an exception to the above and a class apart. This one below is not. 

Move aside.
Move aside, garlands, symbols, imagery and image-less.
To the side, beards and ashes.
To the side, rahu and ketu and shaitan.

And the old vultures encircling the bleeding carcass,
And the false red flags on the battlefield,
Burn.
They are here.

Destroying the gates, walls and the useless legends.
And stories that tell you what needs to be done.
Dusting the antique to see its worth
Wisdom, courage and humanity.

Hear them, descending down the mountains.
Each prisms of their past.
And yet lightly packed on their horses.
Each deciding the quantum they will bear.

Firm but light steps.  New rules.
Deep roots into a soil that sustains.
And yet winged to rise.
A lump of clay shaped by words.
Words that are blind.
Onwards.
To a new sun.

A stranger and his land.

So, today, I came back home after some time(The coming-back has become a rarity). I got out of the airport.

Random cab-driver: Taxi veno?
Me: Nahi.
Both of us: *pling*

So, I ended up replying in a language that I never used to like in my hometown to people who never really understood it either.

A little later, my dad comes to pick me up because of the luggage. On the way, I see that he is fumbling a bit with the driving. I duly inquire. "Mon, it's becoming a bit difficult to see in the dark." Age. Time slowly ticking away.

Time. These days, whenever I meet up with old friends, the topic always comes to how time has passed. It doesn't matter that we are all 20-somethings. Our faces wrinkle and asses elongate under the baggage of the experiences 20-somethings go through. Emotional disconnects. Flailing relationships. Career question-marks. An "Ayee Machaa..?" does not as easily bring back people as it used to do. Lost chances, love, success, opportunities.

People. A generation grows up. Little kids on sports bikes burning tarred roads under the hot sun. A far cry from cycles and muddy, dusty roads and shady trees. Succeeding generations coming to know what addiction is, one quantum of time before the previous one. No, it's not a criticism. To each generation, it's own.

The dilution of the left-liberal view of a society into a bunch of pseudo-leftists who create a heap of smoke and no fire, disruption and no solution. The creation of brand new hindutva, christitva and islamtva. Feeding a new generation into seeing only a quarter side of the coin. And the churning of bank officers, IT professionals, Yem-Bee-Ayes without rhyme and reason. Cliches.

 I pick up my old diaries, writings and thoughts and I feel like a stranger and a misfit in my own land. Like in the poem by Frost, where at the fork in the woods, my land took one way and I took another. And, neither one of us can decided which is the less threaded one.

Discontent. Pitch-black discontent.

At our greying society and lost ideals and 100 pavan gold at weddings.

And becoming a wanderer eating aloo parantha and pyaaz parantha, with no place to call one's own.