Tuesday, March 24, 2015

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.






No comments: