Clouds in the valley...

For all the peaks you’ve never seen, There is a song, a prayer: Of snow-clad peace in white and blue, And smiles in the mountain air That song is spun from plumes of snow, That the peaks present to the sky, Which rushes then to gather notes: Melodies, sometimes a sigh The gurgling brooks add a metre of melt, To the song of the peaks unseen, The chorus comes from the velvety vales, And the bugyals you’ve never been The mountain freshness binds the song, With the northern winds, it flies, Until it comes to the lesser lands,  To the city of shade and lies And there it falls with a pitter of hope, A patter of dusky rains, There is sadness in its petrichor, Yet, salvation for your pains For it brings alive the mountain song,  And the hillman inside you, And gushes forth an alpenglow, In red and orange hue What does it say, that mystique song? Does it open then the cage? It reminds you of the journeys left -  The unmade pilgrimage There are meadows left to trod and climb, Many ...

We never do justice to our memories, do we? I mean every single day is full of eventful moments, and the collection in our human minds is overwhelming indeed. But more importantly, we are so busy adding to these petabytes, there is seldom time to sieve a few of them, dry them out in the sun-kissed warmth of a yesterday, or roll these gems in our fingers, feeling their rich exquisite cuts, iridescent in the last rays of an Autumn sun. Yes, a stray memory blows with the winds here, a shard glimmers like a mirage in a n’orwester there, but that’s about it. We are too busy accelerating on the F1 circuit of our everyday, that seldom do we sit down and look back at that wildflower-laden path upon the meadows. Yesterday more often than not, looks less exciting, slow and often not worth pondering upon. Add to this the wiseacre corporate gurus who tell you to look ahead, not behind blah-blah-blah…  But sometimes, maybe sometimes, it is worth sitting with a cup of steaming tea on a ruddy eve...

Having visited the Kedar-Gauri temple, I decided to take a walk in a nearby green park that seemed devoid of the pilgrims that otherwise thronged the Kedar-Gauri. It was precisely these numbers I wanted to avoid, for which I had skipped the Lingaraja and the Mukteswara temples. In the large temple complex of the latter, I found the Kedar-Gauri, paid my offering and walked around. It was then that I found around the park, yet another rock cut temple, small, but as beautiful and ornate as any other. It was, however, on reading an ASI placard at the entrance, that I was literally left breathtaken!  The small but ornate sandstone edifice was the Parashurameshwar Temple, the oldest temple in Bhubaneshwar, dating all the way back to the 7th Century A.D. Yes, I had read of the splendour of Konark, Jagannath and Lingaraja, and these were old enough, dating back to the tenth and twelfth centuries. But here was another one, which predated the big three by four centuries, if not more. For the...

Befuddled was an understatement. ‘So where exactly is the sea?’ asked Justice, somewhat appalled that we were at a sea-less beach. Calling the black sands of Bordi a beach was proving to be extremely difficult especially after I had dragged my friends into an Innova to explore the dramatic sea-line up to nearby Daman. I mean, there we were, after over two hours of a sticky, sweaty, summer drive on a sultry, soggy Saturday, most dressed in swimming trunks, to splash in the seas - only that there were no seas! The sea was present, of course, but it seemed to have receded far away, to the horizon, leaving us  stranded on what seemed more like an ugly wet mudflat rather than a sandy paradise. ‘Where are the palm trees? The white sands? The cool breeze of the Arabian? At least give me some water to chill!’ demanded Nikhil. I wished I had a bucket, I would have happily splashed it on him at that moment. I turned around and headed to our cab driver, ‘Sharmaji, where is the sea?’ The corpu...

Is this a land I have been before? I ask surprisingly -  Ignorant that more than the world, has changed the eyes that see It was the end of December, perhaps one of the most pleasant times to travel in the sub-continent. And I was standing on the ochre sands at one end of the Golden Beach in one of the busiest, most touristy beachside towns of eastern India - Puri. It couldn’t get any more festive than this - the skies were drowning in pale crimson, as a magnificent sun was dipping in the Bay of Bengal, as if in obeisance to Lord Jagannath himself. All around, throngs of tourists and travellers, from every part of the nation, had descended on to the sands to make the most of yet another speckless sunny day, their collective zeal as if supercharging the golden sands, and riveting all senses of any passerby. You could smell the crackling oil that was frying hot crispy pakoda and samosa, while elaichi tea was being sold in the gallons all around. Colourful beads and bangles, shells, n...

Chapter 3 - Deluge The rains had begun again - dark, sombre clouds, tinged in blue, came forth, flowing against a translucent sky that had given up on the sun. The mood back on earth couldn’t be more different. Rain-worshippers as ourselves had escaped from the confines of the city for precisely this purpose - to dance in the deluge, to splash  in the showers, and to wade in the waterfalls. Wet earth - tick, chilling waterfalls - tick, the RGB scale on the hills escalated to full green - tick. Just another bout of bounteous rains required to finish the album of the day. Tick. And then, there was glee. Why you ask? As the Buddha had said, ‘The trouble is, you think you have time…’ When you know you don’t, life speeds up. For you know then that with autumn, the emerald hills will dry, the ephemeral waterfalls will cease, and there will be more emptiness in the hearts than in the hills. Then you know that you will have to wait impatiently for another year before the hills bloom again....

The skies swirl in blue and pink A solar storm? No, it’s something more –  A different world, a different time I know I am lost in another lore There are stars hidden in the underground I don’t see, I can feel them all And around them each, a pulsing force Inside my spine, they rise and fall And the skies and the ground, they seem to merge A force that wills us, to die to be one The world an atom, a bubble of dream That needs not sky, nor moon or sun The stars fall apart, I can hear the cries When a pair of eyes opens in the sky The Blue G od wakes - if his dreams don’t last Then all must fall that once was a lie ‘Go back to sleep,’ I softly croon ‘It’s not yet time for you to wake’ And I somehow will th e God to slee p For I alone do know, what is  at stake And as He sleeps, I seem to wake The green skies turn to the blue I know, The noisy world comes back to life, And I seem to feel the times that flow ‘What happened to you?’ my cat, she asks Did I utter anything i...