Category: Delhi

In floral aquatic dreams of the night before, the Titanic survived

Demons are on the prowl in the name of making an all weather road.  They are ruining the hills and inflicting irreversible wounds on them. Who is going to heal them? Not just the hills, the streams, the rivers, the trees and shrubs, the wildlife, the insects and birds, the air, even the very life and livelihood of its residents is in danger. STOP IT NOW. 

I woke up to this. Convinced that I was midway through a dream, I let the heavy eyelids droop and pulled the freezing toes inside the blanket. It didn’t work – the cacophony of shrieking barbets (सतबहनिया as they are called in hills) forced me to look at the plate glass window where a streak of condensed moisture was trickling down. I could hear a faint pitter patter hitting the deodar branches and the leaves on the terraced hillside. In a few seconds I could hear the gushing rapids hitting boulders in Dhauli Ganga in the gorge. It was a narrow valley cut by the mighty river gushing down the hard rocks. There were other sounds too, of crickets, of Himalayan mynah, of a Bhotia dog barking in the distance and a full-throated snore of the guy on the other bed but no sights, none at all.  The sheet of grey had spread itself evenly from end to end. As one would say, the visibility was Zero. I tried hard to peer through the glass for a ridge, the outline of a tree, clouds, birds in the sky or even the earth – but no, nothing. It seemed I was suspended between the earth and the sky. Even when there is no breeze one can sense the fog moving, rising or settling but this one was like a still curtain. Neither thinning or dissipating, leaving no hole or a crack to look through. The fog, the mist and the low lying clouds had covered everything. A world, a universe or another dimension was hidden behind them. I had lost all sense of direction and knew not which side was East, where should I look for even a faint impression of sun or sunlight. On a clear morning I would have been able to see Nanda Devi massifs towards north and the Neelkanth peak in north-west. Twitching my toes I was lifting and resting my feet in turns to prevent them from freezing. A faint cold spray brushed my face every time I turned it. Tiny beads of water were dripping down my long matted hair. The clouds had cast a spell on me. They so mesmerized me that I had forgotten about the phone in my hand and its camera. Leaning precariously on the railing I had forgotten to pull on the other sleeve of my jacket. My one arm was cold and wet. Pulling up the phone I saw the time ‘ten minutes past six’. There was nothing to aim at, to focus, to shoot and to photograph. What do I click? I asked myself, numb not by the cold but by the sheer magic of what was spread in front of me. It seemed a thin layer of dust had rested on the phone screen. ‘This is it,’ I told myself and snapped ten odd frames. A magpie flew very close to my face and vanished in the clouds. I was certain it didn’t notice me. The world was sleeping, no one saw this spectacle and it was difficult finding words to describe it. 

मुनादी हुई है कि आज सुबह से दूकान का नाम बदल दिया गया है। ये “हिंदुस्तान की पहली दूकान है , पहली चाय की दूकान”। सनद रहे आज तड़के ही एलान किया गया है कि अब इलाकों की पहचान ऊपर से नीचे होगी। सीमा या बॉर्डर से लगे गांव आख़िरी नहीं पहले कहलायेंगे। माणा गाँव हिंदुस्तान-चीन सीमा में पहला गिना जायेगा। चलिए बदलिये सब।  आज 21 अक्टूबर 2022 को बद्रीनाथ से लगे माणा गावँ में प्रधानमंत्री जी ने ये घोषणा की. 

​How even an inconsequential object or a disagreeable sight can trigger fond and precious memories. Just like us, a chair also has a lived past – this one too has seen its days of power and desire. As I reminisce, this innocuous looking image startles me by morphing to a pair of ghosts floating in and out of time and space. The still-life drips lapsed moans echoing through the ficus called life. An abandoned whisper curls up to my ear like the serpent in Eden. Images float in and out of eyes barely holding back the past. The chair sings ‘Celebrate’. Celebrate you must, year-after-year

 – for you never know when the powdered ‘footprint of time’ trample this ephemeral life.

The footprints tell us that two distinctly different people mounted this chair together or at the same time. For what? Only this chair can tell.