Clouds in the valley...

Chapter 2 - Downpour Ethereal clouds had descended on these bleeding green hills – and wherever you looked, was a moving film of heavenly delusion, floating by in a wet, watery world of magic. Precipitation seemed to have taken a new form, combining heavy grey, nimbus clouds with swirls of fog and mist, surrounding us mortals in arcane, other-worldliness, warning us perhaps, that we had intruded into the realm of the rain-fairies. Yet, blocks of hand-cut stones, mossed up with incessant rains, formed man-made bulwark walls, reminding us that this was once a bastion of the mortals indeed. Not far away, a slow-moving cable car brought us back to the modern world, albeit for seconds, as the cabin ascended and disappeared in the thick swirling wisps of a monsoonal Bermudan triangle. This was Raigad, once the capital of the Marathas - perhaps the last empire of power in the subcontinent. Centuries back, they had hacked at the foundations of the Mughal empire, conquering their way even u...

Chapter 1 - Drizzle    The autumn leaves remind of time, That folds with wrinkles and some crease, But with these years come riches too - For what is life but memories… I read the papers – they say, the monsoons are on time, promising a healthy Kharif harvest. Far away, in a land devoid of n’orwesters, my restless mind needs but one fallen, ochre leaf to bring to life a verdant tree. I smile. On a less hectic, languorous Friday, working from home, there is time to amble in the gardens of your mind. The best part about this garden is you can pick and choose whatever you desire – no one stops you, time and space show no boundaries. And there is no dearth of flowers. Or of weeds. There is breathing space to smell the roses. And there is sunshine, both inside and out, to be dazzled by the glow of the amaltas blooms. I wander in this garden, and find myself lost in the Sahyadris – amidst the wonders of the Western Ghats, the pilgrimage of the pregnant clouds, and t...

‘Where exactly are you?’ It was my Manager at work. At 1 pm, I had not yet landed for work. He was worried. No, not for myself, but for the turnover target for the month. And I couldn’t blame him. Nor could I blame myself. For not getting down at my bus-stop next to my Office on the Bypass. For continuing to sit on the red and yellow minibus as it traversed outside Mahanagar Kolkata to some nondescript mofussil area that I never knew existed. For walking in the refreshing green fields and meadows, for breathing the air that smelled not of vendor negotiations nor inspection deadlines, for playing marbles with the children, and then, finally for heading to the Maidan, the one place that I could go to, without constraints, any time of the day, any day of the year. It was, after all, my Pensive Point. ‘I have not been well,’ I replied sombrely, as I lay spread-eagled on the green grass of the Maidan, my brown leather bag, imbibed with office notes, making for a very good pillow. A p...

It has been months now, A pale ochre lamp has become my morning sun. The world has changed, they say It limps in peace, and there’s nowhere to run.   Fortunately, my winter shawl remains the same It offers some solace in darkened green, Everything else is bathed in grey, Or in the darkness, better still, cannot be seen.   The Buddha on my desk says, in all your solitude, You have immersed in deeper melancholy And I say, isn’t it only natural, intrinsic? To slowly sink in deep - a life of gravity.   Solitude is a boon at times, it gives you space To see yourself in its purest form, Raw, imperfect, and a sadness deep That can raise within, a thousand storm   But I assure Him, this melancholy has its lustre too It’s not all dark like a lump of pain – In all its tears, it celebrates And its emptiness fills you up again.   And once you know you are callused strong, The pretentious world impacts you none, You look ...

I was in a dilemma, a big dilemma. (Though when I look back, it looks quite insignificant, such are the illusions of time). I had qualified for one of the better business schools in the country, after a half-hearted, half year of preparation. Now I had two options – the usual ones, take it or leave it. I could have taken the golden option, be content with the great education and opportunity - it was after all a great institution, though not Ivy League. Or take my chances and try writing the exam yet again the next year – with the additional risk of failing altogether. It was not everyday that one aced perhaps one of the toughest entrance exams in the world, statistically speaking in terms of success ratio. It was at this point that I decided to reach out to the director of the training institute I used to go to. He was a paunchy fellow, with an ever-present smile, that made it easier to ask the hardest questions. It was a wet spring evening as I entered the Camac Street office in...

There was something ‘bout that sandstone seat, Once carved by convict hands - That spoke of memories and love, Exiled in foreign lands For there she was, who used to stroll These garden rocks for long, And hum and sing with melancholy, Perhaps a Gaelic song   And though they say, she lingered here For she loved its pretty views – There was something deeper, more than just The gorgeous harbour hues   For she had left her home afar, And crossed the seven seas, Knowing future dreams would fail To match her memories   And when you leave your heart behind, The world is emptiness There’s liberty in a new-found land, Yet the taste is so much less!   So, she would wait for hours all day, To be the first to see, The ships that came with news from home To the austral colony   The tourists yell, the reverie breaks, Yet I stare into the chair, And deep within my soul perhaps More timeless words I hear:  ...

Windy. Incredibly, breathlessly windy. If there was one word that could epitomise the journey onboard the Inter-islander, it was ‘windy’. I was aboard the ferry services connecting Wellington to Picton, crossing over 90 km of the Cook Strait, and was being blown away, literally, by the roaring forties. My journey started in Wellington - the small but gorgeous capital of New Zealand, the southernmost capital city in the world and also, the windiest city on Earth (no, it’s not Chicago!) The reason being its location right on the Cook Strait, the narrow passage between the mountains of the North and South Islands of New Zealand that channels the already tempestuous winds into a sort of violent wind tunnel, resulting in 60kmph winds for half the year in the windy capital. Imagine then, the situation in the open waters of the strait, the winds having a field day, while I was fighting a dilemma to stay warm and cosy inside the vessel, or remain outside on the deck, face the chilling wind...

If you get to stand between god and man,  Whom will you choose if you can? The Art that glows with heaven’s play Or the Artist, who plays anew each day?   It was not even six in the morning, but I was waiting at the Taupo Marina, hoping for a tourist boat to take us to what is perhaps Taupo’s biggest man-made attraction, if not that of all of North Island – a 14 metre tall, rock carving of a tattooed Maori face at Mine Bay. The haunting face on the wall is accessible only by boat, hence my conundrum. I was in Taupo, a small town in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island. It is nestled by an eponymous lake, which is the bejewelled country’s largest lake by surface area, and also one of the largest freshwater lakes in all of Oceania. Situated in the volcanic heart of New Zealand, Lake Taupo has filled up a caldera – a collapsed volcano that erupted with great violence about 26,000 years ago, that still holds the record for the most violent explosion on earth for the ...

It is a bright and sparkling, sunny day here. Too bright to venture out, I prefer the shadowy solitude of my indoor sanctum. But sun and Saturday take me back, years ago, when the mind was desperate for just the opposite. Mumbai, May 2011 – the exasperated me had just landed in Mumbai to join work after my MBA. And the combinations couldn’t get any worse – chaos in life, a congested city to work (I always wanted to go back to my beloved Calcutta) and worse still, a job in the financial services sector! After my internship in a bank the year earlier, also in Mumbai, I had decided banking in Bombay was just not for me. And yet, when you seem to have antagonized life, you end up in a city you detest, with a job you abhor. On that first day, it was difficult to fathom which was worse The truth was, I felt stuck. In a city where the decibel levels never fell. Where people’s footfall was not discriminated by time of day. And worst of all, where there was nowhere to run to. ...