The song of the road..

It is one of my favourite fantasies, a long-cherished romance. And as favourite romances go; this one too is as yet unconsummated, waiting for a bolt of lightining to strike and bear me away in a flash. Cause that is the only way it will be realized.

And one of these days I mean to. Board the first sooty, smoke-belching State Transport bus or a train I see to nowhere. No plans, no nothing. Just like that. Me and my backpack, the bus/train and co-passengers.

Journeys fascinate me. It is my ‘fix’, though I have remained an armchair gypsy much more than I like. Travelling is a process I love. It is a simple kind of a joy, to trace the path you are going to take from point A to point B on a map. Wondering just what lays in store for you this time as you go through the motions of booking your tickets and packing your bags and taking stock of your fellow passengers as you make yourself comfortable on your seats. And then actually travel the way your finger has already traced.

But, as I said, it is a simple kind of a joy and though I revel in it, there is something more; before I could emerge as somebody befitting the tag of a traveler. In my eyes at least.

You see, it has always been the unchronicled that holds a special place in my heart. The undiscovered and the ‘boondocks’. The places you don’t hear much about. Or only of unsavoury incidents if you do. These are the ones that are the farthest from the ‘touristy’ and the ones described as sleepy. The places which long-distance trains whiz disdainfully past or stop by for only a few seconds.

But I want to sightsee these. To know their hawa, paani and fasal as Mulayam Singh Yadav would put it. To know the meandering roads those lead to these far-off places. Removed so far from the kind of life I am familiar with and know.

These are really small towns and cities. Some unknown and some fairly known. The kinds where a stranger would be immediately recognized. I want to experience their character, to know their reactions to a stranger who crosses their path for no apparent reason at all. No reasons, except a curiosity to just see their way of life and their native habitat.

Perhaps, it is the omniscient journalist in me, but it is a strange kind of longing this. To want to attach; an image, a face, an experience to these far off places that lure and intrigue and are nothing more than names on maps to me right now.I want to trade the known for the unknown. Revel in the luxury of knowing that I am unafraid to try the untested. To just step out off a train as it halts at some random station somewhere. Wish I had done that in Bongaigaon in Assam for no reason other than the fact that the name had a nice ring to it or Cooch Behar because it looked so beautiful in the early nippy dawn of December and I so badly wanted to linger around and wait for the faint pink stain morph itself into a heart-warming blazing orange.

Or oh, when it struck me the strongest in Delhi because she left the train there. She earns a living singing Bengali folk in trains. I don’t know her name, but regulars on the Azad Hind told me that though they didn’t know where she boarded from, she always got down at Delhi. I had followed her through the length of the train trying to speak to her as she went about singing the most sweetest songs I had ever heard.

Regulars greeted her with familiar smiles and so tuneful was she that first-timers shoved currency notes into her outstretched hands. She charmed me, this frail old lady with the most beguiling smile. She who made a living out of something which was a ‘heritage’. And while it put food in her belly, it also gave joy to people as she sold back to them their own long-forgotten and fast-dying out culture. I wonder if she realizes the enormity of what was for her a matter of living. This unwitting symbol who was a reminder and guardian of folk culture.

These are the stories I most like. The ones that I want to write. And there are many, I know. Buried in the boroughs of places salted away from mainstream eyes, going about their businesses far from the madding crowds.

I want to go there some day. To Mithila, Muzzafarpur and Deoband. To Gadchiroli, Jamkhed and Tikiapara. To Thangachimaddam, Shirpur and Malegaon.

And then some more.

To experience, a slice of life.

PS: Of course there is Prague too.

So, Godspeed.

-the girl.

tank tank tank

heebeejeebies.

see and edit.

waaaaaa.

The evanescent flicker

He stood in solitude in the looming darkness,
A candle of unrequited love mired in a tempest,
He burnt himself in futile waiting,
For a ray of hope to enliven his being.
But she turned deaf to his heart-rending pleas,
And blind to the drops, rolling down his cheeks.
Leaving time to heal his damaged destiny;
As she watched him melt into oblivion.
She thought the dying flame would leave no trace,
But in the hardened wax she could still see his face.

this is just it..just it.no explanations for its creation.

-the girl.