Clouds in the valley...

Can you hear the cicada cry? It has perhaps, nothing to say - And yet the sounds remind of home, Lost somewhere far away   A wooden house atop a hill, And a silver stream below - Red earth, those whistling pines, Home in the mountains, long ago   Lost in the hills, but still a home Where every journey starts, Where summers were blue endless skies,   And winters, stronger hearts   And hills that made me fall in love With melancholy clouds of grey, Lessons that there can be hope Beyond a sunny day   The cicada stops, I wake to ask If I go back, will the hills be kind? But then, home was never far away, Home was lost, in years behind...

People here often ask me which part of India I am from. It follows with which cities I have been to, and naturally, the names they enquire of are the biggest metropolises, roughly dotting the four corners of my beloved diamond shaped country. Oh, you are from Calcutta? What about Delhi? Have you been to Mumbai? Isn't Bangalore the IT capital of the country? etcetera, etcetera, etcetera Usual questions, until the other day, a colleague asked me, ' So, you have been to Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta! But how would you differentiate the three, maybe in one word?' Interesting and difficult question - the ultimate elevator pitch, with the challenge of unfairly encapsulating an entire city in just a handful of letters. But I tried my best, closing my eyes and replying with the first word that came floating in my emotions as I thought back of the days and months and years that I spent in each of these places. I responded, 'Culture for Calcutta, Money for Mumbai...

'When did you take these photos?' Newton asked abruptly while I was trying to distribute the soup his mother sent in two portions. Newton was my lanky next door neighbour - No, he was no wizkid in any form of science, but had earned his moniker from gravitating on the floor of my living room every time he came, ignoring my moderately expensive Ikea ottoman sofa. But science or no science, the boy was interested in my photography and often took the role of critic and fan alike. Today, he was browsing through my photographs taken from a boat cruise a few weeks back which I had happily ignored as I did not get the shot I was looking for. I tried explaining the Newton. 'So it was a whale watching cruise?' he enquired 'Yup...except that I did not get the snaps I desired' 'But some of these are quite good!' The boy was always genuine in his feedback, so I went back to the photos he was parsing. 'But these are not what I wanted!...