Hopes.
Futility.
They go hand in hand. Sadly.
But the joker parties on! And the fool removes things from tabletop-s and laptops.
Words.
Memories.
Emotions.
Three things you cannot wipe off. For everything else there's toilet paper.
And still the joker sings merrily. And the fool shouts "Land ho!" in midsea. The world pretends that he's right.
Part II : Of whiskey, hotchicks and pain
Okay. That’s what a lot of whiskey does to me. Now, don’t laugh. Or else I may cut you into two. Hnu hNu baawa!
As for hot chicks, I have got two very serious reasons for not uploading any photos. First, this space is too limited for all of them(And alas! My kind self can't tolerate to see any one tight-ass big-bosomed beauty being preferred to another). Second, I generally, while taking pictures, concentrate on other parts of their body than the faces. So some people might even find those innocent pictures a bit "aesthetically jarring".
Huh! If you thought that I would again start my usual teary-eyed "raindrops keep falling" stuff with the pain part, this time I have you fooled. Yippee! The pain comes roughly twice a day. Once when you have to eat something for the lunch and once again when you have to take dinner. Cooking is a serious concern. For people like me, who have always had plates full of wonderful food put in front of them(even when you don't exactly feel hungry) by loving mothers and grandmothers, it is even worse. Believe me. Even if you are starving, the very thought of cooking something for yourself can be very disconcerting. In one way, actually it can be good. Oversized PIGS(poor Indian graduate students) who can't afford to eat out regularly and who can't manage to cook regularly, it actually helps them to reduce some extra flab. In maximum scenarios, the survival factor : MAGGI!!!!!!!!! And yes, I can cook very tasty maggi, that too in three different flavors!
P.S: That's where I go if I don't feel like cooking. Sometimes I go there even if I feel like cooking, if there's a generous friend hanging around with me.
Part I: A different dawn
17th August, 2007. The day before, i.e 16th, was an important day. Very important. Not only because it was my mother’s birthday but for some other reasons too. The night of the 16th was stormy. But not a storm that everyone could see or feel. It even rained. But again, not the sort of rain everyone would be drenched in. As the storm and the rain subsided slowly in blissful sleep, it started to rain even harder. Only this time, the whole city was wet. The rain continued as I reached the airport around 5 in the morning( As someone later pointed out, I could have written that the city wept because I was leaving. But that is too melodramatic, too much me. So I deliberately decided not to write it). When I checked in, the sun was slowly coming out of the clouds. Then, a long and tiresome and uneventful journey punctuated by red wines and vodkas and whiskeys on the rocks. And about 30 hours later I was standing on a wooden verandah in a house in New Jersey. Watching the sky reddening. Watching the sun coming out once again. Only this time, an American sun on an unknown sky marking a different dawn. And for the first time in those 30 hrs the feeling sank in. I knew I was away from home. I knew I was not going back soon. And it rained once again. Inside.
P.S: This has been long due. Perhaps too long. Especially for someone like me who cribbed a lot about the usual leaving-ones-city-and-roots-and-going-abroad stuff. That too, publicly. May be even to some people’s dismay. But settling down in a new place, getting your internet connection up and working, cooking and above all, getting into a mood for writing, surely takes up a hell lot of a time. That is more or less what delayed this.
