Sacred Rides..

A speeding car, the mechanically cooled interior, pulsating music in the background and me, along with a few friends, hitting the most blistering roads of Mumbai...
Such is the appeal of the above journey that anyone would want to replace the word 'me' with his/her own name in it. The company of your loved ones, a car drive & music are in themselves some things that can mesmerize me with a great consistency, so the collective effect of all these things is obviously special.
We all generally start from Goregaon. After winning the battle for the front seat (I never lose, you see!) and safely neglecting how many people are sitting behind and how uncomfortably are they sitting, I throw myself completely into that small, closed world of mystic, as we hit it off famously with all our enthusiasm!
Everyone sucks at humour in his/her unique way. While some people feel that factual description of some age-old events is a funny thing or keep on repeating the same question with the most weird hi-fives always accompanying it, leads to humour, the others feel that wincing back at the touch of any human or shouting 'Shut up' in a voice as cacophonous as Himesh Reshmiya is the funniest thing on the earth. Though, these misconceptions of some your friends can lead to a testing time as per acting as an audience to them is concerned, they all make the drive & in turn, the world a happy place for you.
Buying the most pleasureful smoke on earth after oxygen, is a thing that has to be a part of our long drives. Now, the sentences like, 'Smokers die early', 'Smoking is a dying art', 'Cigarette smoking is injurious to health', 'Smoking is slow death, I`m in no hurry' , are just a part of those things we regularly laugh at. That smoke, sure gives us a momentary pleasure that can be bought quite cheaply & every drag I take, personifies the 'Fuck Cares' attitude.
The final destination, generally being a beach, we relax our senses and cherish our friendship for a while. All the jokes cracked, all the beauty seen and all the thoughts that surfaced automatically get loaded into my permanent memory, as we start the journey back home.
The journey back home is as rocking as the journey from home, the only thing thats sad is the thought that a sweet little tale that completely took us out of all the sorrows in life and gave us a chance to have a fantastic time together, is going to end soon. Though the traffic on the S.V.Road acts completely in our favour and plays the lead road in preventing us from reaching home soon, the journey obviously has an ending at some point in time as all the other things, leaving behind another addition to the folder in my Hard Disk, named 'Sacred Rides' !

An Afternoon of Nostalgia

Today, on an unusually sunny August afternoon, I was roaming around in my class in the lunch break. The semester is just a month old and naturally studying is an alien activity for people like me. While some were busy preparing for the classtest to come, few others including me were talking amongst each other on the stupidest & the most insensible topics. I, for a while, thought of giving others a chance to talk & detached myself from the crowd to reach the huge window of my class. As mentioned earlier, the afternoon was unsually sunny to be a typical Mumbai afternoon of mid - August. The sunlight was bright and appealing whereas what I was thinking was vague, unclear.

If nostalgia is a disease, I`m on the last stage. Often do the afternoons take me back in time to a bright lovely era which is gone but not forgotten for sure. The brightness of today`s afternoon shifted me straight from Borivali, 2007 to the window of the drawing room of my wadi house in the mid 90`s. Well, A house which I still consider to be my only house. 15 years of love, ecstasy, pleasure, sorrow, tears, smiles, anger, etc... 15 years of LIFE! What have I not done in there? That was undoubtedly the best place on earth for me for a large period of my life. I could picture myself standing in that window shouting out various names of my friends loudly, as a kid. I could see myself playing with my grandfather in the compound right outside that window. I could see my mom, I could see my dad. I could see everything that could together define the term LIFE for me. The window seemed magical, it was a window of Time. On one side of it, there was me with all the things I love but unfortunately that side was out of time. On the other side there was me again, with an empty smile on my face accompanying me as ever, but unfortunately (once again) that side was very much real!

An old poem to start with

My Darkest Hour

U werent there...
Below the moon, besides a tree, I stood alone
faint memories grew darker
I looked for you, but you were gone
nothing to express, nothing to say
You had gon far away

Memories captured my mind
the breeze was flowing fast
my mind was fumbling here n there
& the darkness was quite vast

I could smell you in that breeze,
feel you in that cold
see you in that sky
only to realise that it was mind which was seeing you
& not my eye

I was missing you continually
but couldnt find you
I challenged the sun to come up
but even that was reluctant to shine
& for a moment i mistook the serenity of the night sky
to that of mine

Outside was dark, darker was inside
I asked myself, "Is it reality or just an illusion?"
Well, my mind was not ready to answer my question
whatever it was, it was a painful ride
& I pitied destiny`s ruthless pride

It was all stuck, stationary
be it real or imaginary
I was helpless, even with all my power
as if I was going through my darkest hour!