The Earth is Flat

Joe is a man who lives at the top of a large mountain. Life is simple and harsh on the top of a mountain. It is about survival. Joe buys vegetables and meat and milk and beer from a shop down the street. Joe is also the public transport system of the top of the mountain. He gets his money from carting people around the top of the mountain. 

What gives Joe a reason to live? Talking to the people he carts around, asking them what makes them happy. They say talking to Joe makes them happy. Happiness is a circle on the top of the mountain. It is not flat. 

When Joe looks down and into the distance, Joe sees a mountain sloping down, and then clouds. Joe thinks the Earth is a mountain all the way down, down below the clouds. That is what he sees, and so that must be true. 

Sometimes the top of the mountain receives visitors from below the clouds. They say they come from a place that is all flat and then all you can see is water till infinity. They call that place a beach. Joe does not believe them. If they show him a picture, Joe says the picture is fake. The Earth is a mountain for Joe, so it must be a mountain for everyone. The Earth is a mountain floating in space. 

Why does Joe believe in the existence of “space”, if he has never left the top of the mountain? Why does Joe believe the meat comes from animals who grew up below the clouds, if he has never seen them? One day I will ask Joe. One day I will ask him why all you can see below the clouds isn't a pile of meat.  

Blue and White Echoes

I look at simple things and write about them. Where is my mind? Walking through a Hindi song, trying to grasp home. But my words want to run in front of me, past what I see. What do I see? I’m trying to focus on a cup in front of me. A cup, blue and white. The handle is white, and the bottom is white, but what makes it distinguishable is the recurring pattern in blue. It seems more like a pattern in white over a blue background. It could very well be a blue pattern, though. Why does my mind feel this way? What makes some shapes stand out from others?

Backgrounds are rectangular. They are bigger than all else. Sounds a little counterintuitive, considering backgrounds often lie in the background, ignored. But they are the biggest thing that we see, that we perceive. 

Anyway, white cup, blue background, white pattern with recurring circles. If you go approach the circles so that you are near enough and the circle is all you see, the white circle becomes the background. Finite blue background to infinite white background. And then there are patterns in blue on that circle. One big blue cross, and then echoes of that cross. The cross echoes in all four directions, so that it looks like one blue echo is eating the next white echo and so on and so on. After all, all echoes feed on each other. each first echo eats the next, and each next echo is born from the first. 

The Fan

The fan keeps on rotating. Why does it love the ceiling so much? Why doesn’t it just fall off—a mess of wires peeking through the hole that is the mouth of the ceiling? It almost seems like its rotation gives it energy to keep holding on to the ceiling. A helicopter flying upwards, but slowly so that it doesn’t break the ceiling. Why do we imagine that the ceiling holds the fan when it’s clearly the fan pushing upwards on the ceiling? The thought gives me discomfort. A push is discomforting, a pull is natural. 

The Trees of Delhi

There is something special about the trees of Delhi. What is it about them that makes them so different from the trees of New York, that makes me miss them? Is it the trees I miss or the way their leaves adorn the ground with their shadows? Am I attached to the colour of the sunlight that seeps through the trees? My imagination is filled with that evening yellow that soothes you. Or is it about the colour of the ground? It complements the shadows, after all. The colour of cement, or the feeling that the ground is made of cement. A stubbly grey is what I’m thinking of. Maybe there’s something about how the colours of the trees go with the various other colours of Delhi. Or how the colours of the trees go with the various sounds and smells of Delhi. All I can think of is some kind of music in the air—music composed by the variety of people around you. What I’m thinking of might not just be the pleasure I get from sight. The synesthesia involved is beautiful. Or is everything just about nostalgia? Nostalgia that grips all your senses. 

Psychedelic Universe

I close my eyes. I see the mountains, and I am on top of one. The sky seems to blend with the mountains, even though the sky is grey and the mountains are white. My eyes search the end of the world but still can’t see a soul. The mountain feels higher than before. The wind grows stronger and the darkness grows. The darkness is mysterious, hiding everything, which is why it seems infinite. 

Music plays in the background. Is it just in my mind? I hear strings. When I imagine each string moving, I feel it on me. A vibration moves through me, the music is part of me. It is coming from inside me. How do I describe the sounds? They are sweet, but not exactly so. The best way to describe them is by condensing them into a harmonic force. A scraping feeling. They make you breathe faster, but in the best way possible. 

I think I am hugging the sky. I think I am visualising infinity in an infinitely less amount of time. The closeness of the hug expands my mind. I look at the mountains again. I was looking at them the whole time. The euphoric feeling enveloping me makes me think I am looking at everything all at once. It makes me one with infinity.

The mountains are covered with snow, with brown and black rock peeking through. The dark patches pinch my mind, somehow make me feel like I am even further high up. I open my eyes. 

Or do I? I think they were open this whole time. 

Before the Light Comes

The clock inside me says it is dawn. A faint glow escapes to the room through the curtains. The silence enveloping the room is comforting, like home. Along with my relaxed breathing, the warmth of the blankets is part of the silence. The air is sad, filled with longing for the winter night to return. The sadness, however, is serene. Gratefully, the darkness welcomes it.

I hear the sound of a train passing. I hear only the prolonged horn but my mind imagines the rest—the wheels grinding harmonically against the tracks; the tracks extending over all of space, infinite. With torches as eyes the train looks ahead and searches the darkness. It seems like it's near. As a child, I often used to pester my mom, “How is the train so close? I don’t remember seeing any railway tracks nearby!”. The train is not close. It is actually very far away. But it likes to spread a message each time the sun is about to rise in Paschim Vihar, New Delhi. The air is eager to follow the bidding of the train. 

And so every winter day, in my half-awake state which is followed by another few minutes to hours of sleep, I think of everything. I never remember those thoughts, but I do remember my disposition to think during those moments. Thought is somehow part of this image describing a dark sky coloured faint orange by the street lights. The feeling of my feet being warm extends its existence and joins the image. Every form of being alive is condensed into a picture. I see my eyes wide open—an unexpected lack of sleep for which I have no explanation. 

I do not remember falling asleep once again. The train woke me up, the train sang me to a forgetful sleep. 

Winter at Home

The sunlight calls my mother, who calls me outside to the balcony. The day is the 4th of January, and the clock reads 12:30 pm. Sometimes my mother directs me to wobble into the bedroom and wobble back out with two chairs we could sit on. Sometimes we spread a blanket on the balcony floor and sit next to each other, basking in the sun.

No words are spoken. Our mere presence around each other prevents darkness from knocking on the door. We kneel with content in front of the shining sun. Occasionally, our hands pick up some roasted groundnuts (moongfali) and the sweet addiction of cracking them and eating the peanuts envelops us. Slowly, as the sunlight my mother so adores shifts and dances, the sounds from the park four floors below waft upstairs.

Old women sing bhajans, devotional songs which enamour both devotees and non-devotees with the love coursing through them. A little child sits next to his dadi on this nice Saturday afternoon away from school, collecting memories, learning the ways of the universe. More grandchildren play in the vicinity, and keep playing until the end of the world. A cricket game never ends, come darkness or rainfall.

My mother always likes to point out the chirping in the park during the holidays. The whole community gathering outside, brought together by the sun, is reassuring and invigorating. Who cares about the winter when you can bundle up in sweaters and shawls and jackets and ten layers of socks, when you have your relatives and friends around you? 

As soon as school begins, silence settles on the whole place. The swings swing by themselves, empty and rusty. I leave home, once again, only to find it impossible to say goodbye.