The bus journey was boring. I tried to read James Herriot's Every Living Thing, but closed the book - shut the book I mean - after I ran out of attention on Page 14. I looked out of the window then and took in Kalina or the road that looks at you as you look at it while the bus decides to spin along that route. It's surprising that so many trees line that route. The one from the Bandra Telephone Exchange to Kalina Campus. Okay, not exactly from Bandra Telephone Exchange - but from the point where the bus turns in to get to the road that leads to Kalina Campus. Thereon, after Kalina Campus leaves you and the bus, you come across Kalina village. It's a quaint old village. My choirmaster still has his bungalow here. And everytime I pass the village, it makes me want to look at it over and over again.
The houses are so close yet know to keep their distance from each other. And the lanes add to their effort of maintaining that distance. Quaint - oh I am using the word over and over again - and peaceful for some strange reason, the gullies wind into the space between two rows of bungalows and lead onto open spaces inside - further in, sorry; inside will be wrong to use
here. The people don't seem to be in a hurry there. At least, at 8:35 when my bus passes that village, no one seems to be bothered that along that road a slew of vehicles are fighting time and hell bent on making it to Andheri and beyond by 9 just so that officegoers within these vehicles land up at their desks or in canteens by 9:30.
Really, no one had a look of haste wiping their features into a contorted mass of worry. They all ambled around and looked down or up and never was there a change of pace. Probably, that's because I sat in the bus and caught only a momentary glance of them in the lane. Probably, it's because I merely wanted to see faces that were not worried - that can happen you know when people - I for example - look for a calm face when they themselves are in anxiety.
A stupid thing is anxiety. Just reduces you to a mass of nerves. And for the life of me, I do not quite understand it. It comes when you are fraught with worry. Why doesn't it time itself to arrive with happiness? I guess because it doesn't like happiness. They don't seem to agree.
Oh but let's get back to the bus journey. And to that village - Kalina village. It - I feel - smirks at the developed areas around it. You will rarely find blocks of apartments there. I don't understand how and why no builder rammed into this piece of land and began to erect those dull bland monuments of man's necessity. Perhaps, that's because the village itself denounced the builders and shove them away. The power of a village - you know - cannot be underestimated.
Well, the bus left it and turned to its left to consider a winding road that sidled along the Army Camp there. Oh it's splendid - it's a massive sweep of land covered with trees and greenery and it sits right in the middle of the city. It's refreshing and I always crane my head to it as the bus passes the Camp. The walls that seal it off limits are whitewashed and the men who guard it seem - again - in no hurry to gun anyone down. You see neither the army nor the village nearby seems to be in need of some haste. The only ones who need it are in my bus. All set to tackle a new day, a new file of nonsense, and a new set of weirdos who really have no clue what their orders mean or how they are to be executed.
Ah! Life! It revels in sitting silently and observing you go through it with disgust or awe. You never hear it speak to you, do you? Whatever it has to convey is in its actions and situations that it plies you with. Life! One wants it - I want it. And some don't - I don't too, at times. But one cannot leave life. Just as one cannot leave a job for the sake of it. Not at least in these times of recession. One struggles, holds one's head in the palm of the hand and says: "If only one had to make a choice better than this, I would not be travelling to misery and ennui every day of the week." The irony is when we did choose, we thought it to be the best decision that came across our thoughtful minds. It's funny how the choice itself spoils its reputation as we work with it and ultimately goads us into loathing it.
But life is something far far more complex than a job. It has the undercurrents of emotions deeply rooted in the psyche of a mind that has gone haywire and recovered just in time to appear normal. It breathes in the vestiges of the fulfilled desires that man created for himself and knows not what to do with them next once they are fulfilled. Given this labyrinth that it derives its existence from, do you ever think it will be simple to decipher why it at times is cruel to the very being that it owes its existence to?
I don't know. I hardly even understand myself at times. And to make sense of what this mass of pure mysterious aura is, I think I might take a lifetime.
The houses are so close yet know to keep their distance from each other. And the lanes add to their effort of maintaining that distance. Quaint - oh I am using the word over and over again - and peaceful for some strange reason, the gullies wind into the space between two rows of bungalows and lead onto open spaces inside - further in, sorry; inside will be wrong to use
here. The people don't seem to be in a hurry there. At least, at 8:35 when my bus passes that village, no one seems to be bothered that along that road a slew of vehicles are fighting time and hell bent on making it to Andheri and beyond by 9 just so that officegoers within these vehicles land up at their desks or in canteens by 9:30.
Really, no one had a look of haste wiping their features into a contorted mass of worry. They all ambled around and looked down or up and never was there a change of pace. Probably, that's because I sat in the bus and caught only a momentary glance of them in the lane. Probably, it's because I merely wanted to see faces that were not worried - that can happen you know when people - I for example - look for a calm face when they themselves are in anxiety.
A stupid thing is anxiety. Just reduces you to a mass of nerves. And for the life of me, I do not quite understand it. It comes when you are fraught with worry. Why doesn't it time itself to arrive with happiness? I guess because it doesn't like happiness. They don't seem to agree.
Oh but let's get back to the bus journey. And to that village - Kalina village. It - I feel - smirks at the developed areas around it. You will rarely find blocks of apartments there. I don't understand how and why no builder rammed into this piece of land and began to erect those dull bland monuments of man's necessity. Perhaps, that's because the village itself denounced the builders and shove them away. The power of a village - you know - cannot be underestimated.
Well, the bus left it and turned to its left to consider a winding road that sidled along the Army Camp there. Oh it's splendid - it's a massive sweep of land covered with trees and greenery and it sits right in the middle of the city. It's refreshing and I always crane my head to it as the bus passes the Camp. The walls that seal it off limits are whitewashed and the men who guard it seem - again - in no hurry to gun anyone down. You see neither the army nor the village nearby seems to be in need of some haste. The only ones who need it are in my bus. All set to tackle a new day, a new file of nonsense, and a new set of weirdos who really have no clue what their orders mean or how they are to be executed.
Ah! Life! It revels in sitting silently and observing you go through it with disgust or awe. You never hear it speak to you, do you? Whatever it has to convey is in its actions and situations that it plies you with. Life! One wants it - I want it. And some don't - I don't too, at times. But one cannot leave life. Just as one cannot leave a job for the sake of it. Not at least in these times of recession. One struggles, holds one's head in the palm of the hand and says: "If only one had to make a choice better than this, I would not be travelling to misery and ennui every day of the week." The irony is when we did choose, we thought it to be the best decision that came across our thoughtful minds. It's funny how the choice itself spoils its reputation as we work with it and ultimately goads us into loathing it.
But life is something far far more complex than a job. It has the undercurrents of emotions deeply rooted in the psyche of a mind that has gone haywire and recovered just in time to appear normal. It breathes in the vestiges of the fulfilled desires that man created for himself and knows not what to do with them next once they are fulfilled. Given this labyrinth that it derives its existence from, do you ever think it will be simple to decipher why it at times is cruel to the very being that it owes its existence to?
I don't know. I hardly even understand myself at times. And to make sense of what this mass of pure mysterious aura is, I think I might take a lifetime.
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