Bombay, my love!

Came across this website called India Memory Project. Sheer beauty. Phantoms from the past tugging at you, at the beautiful Indian within you. The stories of the lives lived in black and white India, through pictures. Going over the stories therein, I couldn't help but miss my city all over again. Bombay.

My first love, my joy and my soul, Bombay is one of the many facets that define me. Makes me who I am. No matter how busy or frustrated I get about anything, just a reminiscence of that love washes it all away and I'm at peace again. Love like that is meditation. Joy like that is bliss. This post is difficult to even put in words..but oftentimes I forget who I am or how I am or where I'm going and in that, Bombay roots me. Defines me for who I am and why I am and snaps be back to my core. They may change her name. But she'd always be Bombay to me. The city I call home, the city I've fallen head o'er heels for.

Curbing the lunatic in me from aimlessly romanticising on any more, here's, to conclude, a snippet from a friend with the common love, on his upcoming visit planned for January, 2014:

I can just imagine right now... Being on a plane going back home. As the plane drops below the clouds, I can see a big blotch of light. The plane travels on, hurtling at hundreds of miles an hour towards that blotch. Slowly but surely, that mass of light breaks up into individual, slightly smaller yet still fairly large patches of light. A few spaces of darkness between them. The plane continues flying oblivious of my emotions. It goes on and the lights continue to separate. They fill up the entire landscape visible to me below. Now I can see lights and discern their sources. Some come from buildings, most from streetlamps and cars. The city that never sleeps. Truly never ever sleeps. I pass over a building that I know is my home. The plane lands with a slight jolt, as always. I step out of the plane after it halts. And I breathe. My first breath of air in Bombay after more than a year and a half now. It reeks of refuse and waste. Of smoke and pollution. Of sweat and blood. Of a million dreams shattered. Of love at first sight. Of love after years of being together. Of flowers being sold somewhere on the streets by urchins out to make a last few sales to religious drivers hoping to bribe gods in their favour. Of a billion dreams being dreamt. There are a million things wrong about Bombay and there are a billion things right about it. And each of these things are in the air I breathe in. I am home again.

Fitting portrayal of the mesmerizing drug, Bombay; my love you will always remain.

The Joy of Writing

Early morning class. Incomplete assignments. Overload. Time crunch (need to come up with a fancier/different term). Bored and blank and inattentive at class. Math. Last bench. Smartphone and laptop both dead so nothing to distract myself with. Half hour down into it I shove my notebook aside and pull out my 'Ramble Journal' notebook. And start scribbling away.

The next one hour was bliss! Instant teleportation into a nicer world. All mine. All spelt by the words I use. My opinions. My ideas. My view. The awesomeness vantage point! Beauty and well, for want of a better word, stand-still. I hadn't slept the night before class thanks to all the impending assignments; didn't have time to grab coffee or breakfast in the morning. So was almost cranky. Was looking forward to rush home at end of day and either hitting the sack or catching up with friends (read: force them to since I knew nobody would be around at the hour) or do 10 of the 20 things on my to-do list. But that one hour; one hour of letting all that mental rambling and futility of planning come down on paper and there was instant calm. I was suddenly refreshed and awake. And the entire day looked up from there on. I was suddenly chirpy and cheerful! Like I'd just had a night of restful sleep and sumptuous breakfast! It was amazing!

Novels have been my lifelong companion. Inspite of being the extrovert I've always been, my best friends at the end of the day were usually that couch and novel. For writing, I've lost count of the number of journals I've had over the years. Then came Yahoo 360 blog followed by Blogger. Enter computers and smartphones and reading's been reduced to articles and writing's tweetish status updates or Evernote scribbles. Novels are still something I don't seem to be able to repeal off everything else and sit down with. Feels like sin with the constraints on my time. To enjoy a good novel, I need to be away from distraction (all that jazz). Something I don't get unless I decide to go the woods lately, which I oftentimes do now.

But writing, oh writing! The simple power of picking up a pen and putting it to paper. Or even just a blog post like now. I'm writing this while with friends (who're right now bonding over trying to solve my math assignment for fun!). And I'm here typing away on my smartphone. I usually have better etiquettes than that, but so long it is not Facebook or Twitter or Whatsapp that I'm at, I feel my crime is presently not so bad. I'll make up for it with a cheerful post-blogging me ;)

So yes, writing has taken a precedence over my other hobbies lately and I wish the relationship stays..well..uncomplicated and committed! Hope I can someday graduate from just rambling to actually penning down something meaningful. But even if that doesn't happen anytime soon or ever at all, the writing would never stop for me. So long as there is parchment, I shalt scribble my heart out. Cheerio!

(Blogpost motivation: A friend and me were supposed to attend the weekly Writers' Guild meet today at my university that we missed. So counter deal was to update our respective blogs. Works!)

Crunch Munch Rumble Ramble

Yes yes. Time crunch blog post again. 5 courses when I'm down to my 3rd semester at Grad School, office position at 2 student organizations, 1 part time job, sport and other extra curricula, and lots of friends and frolic! My excuse? 4 months of plain-nothingness-summer! So I work my everything off the next 4 months. Frankly like the setting. Vacation-work-vacation-work. Finances are rock bottom but that's something I try to ignore. Maiden gig few states away, yeah spend!

I remember watching some Super Soul Sunday episode on OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network, yeah I was a fan till she visited India and ruined it!) not so long ago where the guest speaker, Iyanla Vanzant, a rather annoyingly chirpy female, said "You ain't living your live to the fullest if you don't feel nervous enough each moment that you're gonna pee in your pants." Rather disturbing thought. I'd equate it to near heart attack moments and use that metaphor instead, and proudly say that happens more often than not! I do not finalize on things till the very end. Heck 3rd semester and I decide to jump from aerospace engineering coursework to mechanical. Thank heavens there's no other related field offered in my University or who's to say I'd take those up next Spring!

But yes, it is fun. I've come to accept the fact that I'm never gonna be sure of what I want to do or where I want to go next. Living each day one day at a time. Living or sleeping that is, either, have stopped regretting that as well. So if today I decide on something, I'd go ahead and do that, if I can get off the bed. Tomorrow, something else. Whatever tickles my fancy. So long as I'm alive and having fun with it. And I can be snotty enough to say I wouldn't change a thing about it even if I'm sure to regret it sometime in the future. That is not today so something I couldn't care less about!

Bleh, life is as you live it. Bring out the wine when there's nothing else to do. Or sleep and wake up to a new day and start. Cheers!