A mattress of grey cold has
settled. The entire world is in limbo. Splotches of wet colour rest sulkily on
the sheets of empty rain: a tree here, a fluorescent raincoat there. The
freshly laundered morning smells of the earth and old times. I'd drink to
accentuate the staid pleasure of the morning—alcohol is like MSG for the
brain—but I don't want to partake of the profane this early. And besides, the
day is a virgin yet. As I rub the sleep-pollen from my eyes, I see the blown
raindrops caress the earth. It's homecoming for them. They lie, exhausted, from
whence they came, happy to be home at last. And waves upon waves of their eager
comrades fall to their death after them. Monsoons. The very protoplasm of life
is in a sombre mood. Everything is quivering with awakening life. Everything is
bathed in significance. It all means something. Everything is a metaphor. The
trees! Oh the trees. I wish you could hear them. They're talking to me. They're
telling me of the years their leafy eyes have seen; they have always felt the
first drops of approaching rain. Their resting roots have drawn nourishment
from them, and their leaves have washed in delight in the warm showers of a
hundred monsoons.
I cannot understand how people can drive on Indian roads
and not be dehumanized to the point of misanthropy.
The road is sweaty. Residual
water streaks back from the windshield as the car gathers speed; the wind
defies gravity. There's a metaphoric lesson there somewhere, but it escapes my
notice for the sleep-deprived minute.
We just hit a dog. It appeared out of the bushes and ran
in what appeared to be a desperate attempt to get to the other side of the
road. There was an unhealthy bump, a startled yelp (as the dog struggled to
come to grips with the sudden realization that it had been run over) and the
dog spun like a top three times across the road before executing a mid-air
pirouette and somehow landing on its feet and scrambling its way to freedom and
a place less inhabited by cars. Dad
didn't stop. I knew it hadn't been his fault; the dog had clearly just been
reading Camus.
The bordering rows of plush
foliage, the weeping sea-sky, the occasional Sunny da Dhaba, the occasional
thought of you, the lonely bus stands, the maniacal truck drivers, the moist
morning walking into the mild mid-day, the weathered signposts flashing by, the Goethe, the indecipherable milestones, the innumerable toll checks, the half-read Murakami, the
thickhotsweet chai, the Radiohead, the itchy earphones, the flour-dusty towns,
and always, the road, melded into one endless stream of thought-consciousness,
almost as if I was experiencing the entire thing as a whole rather than as
discrete units.
Travel helps me write. I’ve pondered over this fact, and
I think I’ve realized that it’s because of the comfortable sense of motion—I’m
going somewhere, I’m doing something, I’m excused from working, I’m Finally
Moving. This idea of peregrination has often been the root of a mood which has
subsequently borne the flowers (poems) and fruits (prose) of my artistic
undertakings (the above sentence makes me sound like a moody writer. I’m really
only a moody person [who has given up on academia and trying to earn a living
and basically everything that leads to a comfortable, moneyed future. Wait a
minute]). Trains in particular are my favoured modes of transportation. There’s
something about the rocking motion of the berth that lulls me into a sensitive
frame of mind. Plus, I can lie down, and this is wonderful for my comatose
tendencies. Trains have neither the spondylitis-inducing crampedness of buses
(I’m 6’3”) nor the sterility of air travel. I do have a have a favourite
airplane-related ritual though—every time we take off, I listen to ‘Learning to
Fly’ by Floyd on my iPod in gross violation of the No-Electronics-During-Takeoff-or-Landing
rule; we got a badass in here, indeed. I can’t really talk about cars, because
my father (I’m convinced) fancies himself an F1 hopeful; going into cardiac
arrest every few minutes isn’t exactly conducive to the production of
literature.
The first bead of sweat for the
day hangs from the cliff of my eyebrow. The summer, held at bay by the laden
clouds for so many hours, is creeping back in again.
Travel was never about the destination—it’s about the
travel, and epigrammatic statements.
We shall soon reach Jammu. The
light is dulling now. It shall soon be dark.
…
Life is a road. It’s all a giant metaphor.
