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. 

Dilli ki Naan-Sense

While walking on the concrete path surrounded by a sea of green formed by leaves and the red and blue and green of the sweets-selling shops and the gol gappa vendor, the curious aroma of Central Delhi - incense mixed with tobacco and wet grass - awoke my senses. A story rose from each variation, from each pedestrian passing by, from the people selling paan to the ones saturating the air with their prayers to Allah. Homesickness took birth inside me before I had left.

Dilli ki Naan-Sense is a fitting term for the magic that courses through the veins of this city - a city that demands a love you can explain only once you are going to leave. I originally used this term as the name for a food blog I initiated with three of my friends, one which never took off. Even though this post isn't about food (as pointed to by "naan"), I found the term befitting since you'll hear many people in Delhi pronouncing "non" as "naan".

Why am I writing about this city just weeks before I am about to leave? I never appreciated before the collective story its sounds speak, nor did I acknowledge how much I had gotten used to the noise of the traffic, to the vendors announcing their wares, to the many people filled in a few square metres. Not until I moved to Gurgaon, another city bordering Delhi, which is bustling but not so much as West Delhi where I resided before. The relative quiet calls me to revisit Delhi, or Dilli as I prefer to call it, to board the Metro once again and see for myself the magnitude of human life.

The smog obscures what is beautiful. While the intense competition that exists due to the high population might be too stressful sometimes, deep beneath everyone supports each other, intentionally or unintentionally, and life moves forward. Behind a regular schedule, a regular job, is the feeling that Dilli is our home. That feeling of constancy that bores us one day fights for survival the next when it is being defeated by change.

Before I leave, I might write a lot about what fascinates me about my home, owing to the increased observation of my surroundings triggered by the knowledge that my time here is limited. Everything seems beautiful before the end, before change grasps you and all you have left are memories.

Of Memories and Goodbyes

As I finished writing the last word on my Board Exam answer sheet, the bell echoed through the room and my mind alike. I knew what was to come. With each changing tone of the bell, memories switched through my mind - of all I had achieved in a span of 14 years, how I would never have imagined being in the place I am when I first walked down the corridors of my school. I thought of how some of my best friends in school were made in the last six months of my time spent with them. Friendship, though something strong and valuable to me, is something I find hard to admit.

When all of us exited the gates of the Exam Centre, somehow the notion of separation found its place among the relieved emotions of the culmination of exams and of school. Goodbyes echoing all around, I bid farewell to those I knew, hoping childishly that one goodbye would fix them in my memory forever. Everyone hoped, in one way or another, that the hasty scribbles on their shirts, the many photos clicked together, would somehow neutralize the emptiness we all felt inside.

Perhaps what irked me the most was how I could not meet everyone that afternoon, could not express to those I knew how important they had become to me. Being the shy person I am, I never could say to these people I love how I really felt. To some of them, I didn't even find the chance of saying goodbye.

Why did I relate the memory of my friends with how I parted with all of them? Closure is something all of us crave. The disturbing part is how, when something ends or someone goes away, the regret of never getting to say goodbye is a thought saturating the crevices of all our minds.

The best way to say goodbye, to embrace the threshold of parting, is to never think too much about it. Associate people with memories, not goodbyes. In these short-lived moments of goodbyes, we experience little experiences of unexpected death. Death is a fact, life is what we're here for.

Home

What holds me back from the boundless sky?
The ground chained to my feet.
With dreams of change,
That penchant for the unpredictable,
Why does this smoke suffocate me?

A few years into my thoughts
Following the clouds, I start to fly
Yet the smoke bars my way
Holds me back up
When falling to the ground, I crave home.

Returning to the present, eyes blinded
By the black smoke of fear -
Fear that if everything changes
And life couldn't be more exhilarating
Would I ever return?