Desert Rose

Was sitting pretty behind a sand dune in this red desert. The milk-white sky, which was very low, smelled sour and dripping blood. The droplets were pouring in ultra slow motion; creating big craters in the ground with booming sound. Sometimes they didn't actually drop on the ground; got stuck in their own motion and couldn't end the journey, which made a wonderful view. Blood droplets stranded still in the air, hanging below the milky-white sky, completely freeze. You could only hear the occasional hissing sound from the not-so-old craters. I didn't know how and when I had reached this place, neither I knew how to get out from this desert. Did I really care to move? I didn't know, rather, I didn't want to know.

"Helloooooooo"-Who called me here? I turned around and spotted her. The source of the voice was still quite a distance away. A girl. Seemed naked. Had long, flowing hair. Limping. Had a rainbow-color umbrella with her. I shouted and told her not to come in this way. There was no way out from this side. She stopped. Looking confused. After a while again she started walking. She was coming closer now. I could see now her face, eyes, and the entire body. She was not naked, but wearing a skin-color dress. She was wounded. Blood was oozing out from the various parts of her body. She was thirsty. I made her sit. Gave some water and biscuits. She felt good. Closed her eyes. I watched her closely. She had a chiseled face and expressive blue eyes. But her ears were peculiar. They were big and tapered in the top. She looked at me and said something. I didn't understand what was she saying. She spoke in a different language .She started telling something. I could only make out the meaning of some of the words. But her gestures, expressions and emotions were familiar to me. She seemed not so bothered about this language barrier. She kept on speaking. I continued to listen. When she finished, I understand the complete story. She was here before me and she knew how to get out of this place.
[to be continued...]

Morning Diary

I open my eyes,

blink and close again.

After repeating a few more times

I finally am awake.

I dial 98......81 to wake

you up too.

Selfish I am.

You hate morning,

I know.

“Hel-l-l-o-o…”

I don’t answer

You keep on speaking

I don’t know

What you speak.

But

I feel you smile

I feel you cry

I feel you touch

I feel you beside me.

The morning

starts blossoming before me.

You stop abruptly

trying to hear my breath

“You there?”

I don’t answer.

Then you scream

“Kaaliiiiiiii, look

how is he bugging me”

Your pet bitch.

Everyday she sleeps

beside you.

Interferes between us

with her never-ending sneezing and barking.

Drag your immediate attention

You get busy with her

I keep on calling you

“hello, hello….”

Finally I'll hear

“will call you back in two minutes”

Disgusted I am.

Jealous I am.

You call me up.

It’s my turn now.

I start grumbling

like a school-going kid

“I don’t want to go to office today

When will I buy my digital-SLR

I want to leave this boring city

I want to cuddle you, right now”

My wish list continues.

You giggle in between

share my yearnings with Kaali

as if she is one beautiful fairy

who’ll fulfill my wishes

I stop finally.

“Anything else?” you ask seriously.

“No” I say grimly.

And you burst into laughter :))).

“You are a kid. Grow up, you dumbo..”

The verdict is out.

I am a kid.

I hang up the phone in anger :(.

But it starts ringing again, frenziedly,

until I pick it up.

You start talking again

This time I listen to you;

your words

your moods

your shenanigans,

till you scream

“Its already 9:30

when will you go to office?”.

I rush off.

I am again late for the office.

Well, that was a morning

few months ago.

Now , the morning sits beside my bed, quietly.

The conversation is over.

I don’t grumble now.

I don’t hear any giggle or barking either.

The silence has filled up the empty morning.

Home

You come to your flat. Open the door. It’s dark. Is that your world lurking inside? Put on the lights. Oh yeah! It’s your home. Then enter into your room. Move the curtain from the glass window. You see the silence out there, trembling mildly in the bronze color light coming out from the post under the big, hairy tree. The shadows from the leaves like the mysterious sibling of the silence, whisper. What is it saying? For whom is it? Is it for you? You come to the balcony. You see the people. You can't see their faces because they are wearing big hats. You watch them closely. So close to see their shining claws and hairy hands. Now, they look at you. They are not human. They are wolves. You run into your room. Go to another balcony, open the door.

You see the long, busy road, the headlights from the cars; coming to you, flooding, and fading away like the memories of an old kingdom; the beautiful apartment and the pretty woman in the window; oh! you gasped; this is the world you know, yes. What you can see from this balcony is nothing new. It’s your world where you live. It’s your world what you see from your flat. You felt sleepy.

Darkness slowly perches on your eyes. You see your loved ones in your dream. Then it’s light again. You can feel it. Your eyes are getting wormer. You can't keep it close. Eyes wide open. Light is coming through the glass window. The honks-the running shadows of the wolves on the broken wall-the marching sound of the troops. You open the window. A battle tank, tearing apart the night with its creaking sound appears from the dark. What is it doing here? You close the window and turn back only to see yourself standing alone on a ground. Naked.

An obituary to Majestic Mansion:Continued...

Kalu

Kalu was a black, desi (Indian) dog. He looked scary because of his big size and jet black complexion but actually he was a very tame fellow. Kalu never went out of the Majestic Mansion. Ravi, the caretaker of the Majestic Mansion told that kalu came here as a puppy. He didn’t even dare to go out to fight with the other dogs outside the Majestic Mansion. But yes, Kalu's barking was really commensurate with his appearance. His barking, deep and somber, echoed around the old walls in Majestic Mansion. Sometimes, amidst the hymn of the pigeons, in lonely afternoons the sound did create an eerie feeling. But generally we laughed and used to say that Kalu might have seen a mouse again. Everybody loved Kalu. So he never had to worry about his food.

Kalu knew that Abhishek (my room-mate) invariably carried some foodstuffs when he returned from his office, late in the night. kalu used to come along with him and sit quietly and waited patiently in front of the door. As I told earlier, he was a thorough gentleman. Kalu never tried to come inside the room, neither did he bark. He would be in his own world;busy with himself. He would go silently once he satisfied his saliva. Kalu used to have his dinner in our dada’s (elder brother) flat. He would have his nap in front of their door in the evening. After his nap, Kalu would start pushing the door with his head slowly to anounce that he was hungry.

Few days before we left the Majestic Mansion, Debu (another room-mate) and I went to that dada’s flat. While we were chatting, suddenly the half-closed door opened. I thought it was Kalu and about to ask jethima(aunt) , kalu eshe geche khabar jonye (kalu had come for the dinner), then I realized, it was done by the wind, not Kalu. But that reminded me, I hadn’t seen Kalu for the last few days. I asked jethima and Arindam da,” where is kalu?”. They looked down. I asked again-“what happen?” Then Arindam da said, the dog-catcher squad of the Municipal Corporation took him away. “what?”-I was shocked. Then I heard the complete story. Someone from the Majestic Mansion only, called up the Municipality and alleged that Kalu had become a mad dog. He started biting people. The dog-catcher squad came in one afternoon and took him away. Ravi was not there. Jethima was sleeping and she didn’t know anything. It was Kalu’s destiny. Ravi went to search for Kalu in the Municipality. But he didn’t find him. So either Kalu was killed by the lethal injection or he would have been left outside the city in a dump yard. In either way he was going to die. Because even if he was not killed by lethal injection he would be killed gruesomely by the real mad dogs over there in the dump yard.

Kalu had lead a peaceful and sheltered life all along . He didn’t know how to fight. He was old and might have lived another couple of years. So I asked Arindam da, what was the motive behind this? He said, the person whom he suspected, was a woman who stayed just below their flat. She came to Majestic Mansion few months ago. She was a teacher, so a number of students came to her flat to take tuitions. Some of them might have complained about poor Kalu to her because he used to sit on the steps for most of the day.

An obituary to Majestic Mansion:Continued...

Chacha

Chacha as we named him had always bidi (tobacco wrapped in unprocessed leafs-hugely popular among the poors in India) in his lips. His white uncut beard turned yellow from the nicotine residue. Most of the time we saw him dozing on his stool beside the main gate of Majestic Mansion. You can’t gauge chacha’s age from his fragile and lanky physique. Chacha’s eyes- always red and smudgy which made us suspicious about him of taking grass though we didn’t get any proof. He used to wear an old and torn jacket and a dull orange monkey-cap all through out the year. He became active in the night. Between twelve to two’ clock you could hear the irritating sound of his bamboo stick stomping on the ground accompanied with a whistle. He became hyper-active when he saw any Auto-rickshaw or cab (various office cars used to pick and drop their employees from the doorsteps) in his territory, i.e. inside the compound of the Majestic Mansion. He would blew his whistle first, then he would jump out of his stool immediately and rushed towards the car with his stick. Chacha always gave green signal by waving his hand to the vehicles coming in or going out from the Majestic Mansion. He never bothered to see if a vehicle was coming in or going out. Whenever he heard the sound of the cars or scooters or whatever, he opened his eyes and waved his hand. So a lot of time, it had happened that the vehicles almost bumped into each other.

A few months before we left Majestic Mansion, on a wintry morning, when I was going out , I saw Chacha was not there. Two well uniformed, smart and young security guards were there. I asked the caretaker of the Majestic Mansion, what happened? He told nonchalantly, “ keya hoga? Us buddhe se kam nehi chalta. Usko bhaga diya. Abhi security agency se hi humlog guard mangayega “ (what will happen? That old chap was good for nothing. So we have thrown him out. From now on we’ll only appoint guards from the security agencies.)

Ufff! After a long time.
Here I'm. Again.
Grinning.
Nope. Things can't go on like this.
Resolution: I'll update the blog on a regular basis.
At least once in a week, if not twice, thrice and so on...
Lets see!!!!
Boy, you've to believe yourself.

An obituary to Majestic Mansion:Continued...

The Pigeons

I found them a lot in Hyderabad, like crows in Calcutta. But unlike the crows, these pigeons are really harmless and gentle in nature. Majestic Mansion had a plenty of them. A group of pigeons stayed just the other side of the glass window which I could not open due to their presence. I coudn't even put on the lights of my room in the night. These pigeons generally treat a portion of our balcony as their maternity ward as well. They did not mind either to enter into our rooms if the balcony-door was open. It was so funny to watch them roaming around in the room, which recalled me, the way my grandfather used to walk with his hands folded behind, flashing an attitude of wise and composure.

But I’d done something awful to one of them for what I still feel ashamed of myself. We had a big, open water filled drum in the balcony. And these pigeons used to stand on its brim and sipped water from the drum. On one such day one unlucky fellow fell down inside the drum. When I came to the balcony, I saw it was trying to come out of the water. I just watched but didn’t help the bird as I thought it would come out of its own. I went back to my room. This was happened in the afternoon. In the evening, Debu, one of my roommates came to the home and noticed that the pigeon was still in the drum. He took the bird out of it. It was shivering in cold and almost half-dead. Debu tried his best to save the poor bird by warming it up. We all tried but it was too late. The bird died or rather killed by my carelessness.

An obituary to Majestic Mansion

The Building
Yes, it’s huge as the name suggests but not exactly has a royal appeal. It is the name of the entire residential complex where I have spent my last five years. One of the oldest in the area, but surprisingly fresh looking than its age, Majestic mansion is divided into three blocks of apartments. Each apartment again has two interconnected blocks. So, there are six blocks altogether and named as A, B, C, D, E and F. Each block has twelve flats on each floor.

People like us who have migrated to this southern state of India from the other parts of the country throng into this apartment mostly because of its low rate of rent against the prime location it enjoys. Majestic Mansion is also famous in the area as a bachelor’s den. Believe me, though the condition has been improving but still it’s a pain to get a decent flat in Hyderabad if you haven’t married yet. But the landlords of the Majestic mansion are astoundingly kind to us, the bachelors. We were not lucky enough though to manage a flat other than the top floor (each building has four floors). But at a quite regular interval, the flats were get vacated. So anyone from Hyderabad, new to the city, bachelor, searching for a flat desperately, please check out Majestic Mansion at Shyamlal Building Area, Begumpet.

Vizag Diary:Conclusion

27th Feb, Monday:5:00 P.M.

We watched a splendid sunset from the Rushikonda beach. Though the sun set over the city sky but the reflection of the sky on the sea was unforgettable. Rushikonda is the most favoured beach in Vizag. This time only Tirthankar and myself were there as the others went to office. We stopped our car near the beach. It was a perfect evening on the beach. Some localities were playing volleyball. Couple of stray dogs was wandering aimlessly. A boy and a girl were sitting forlornly on their chappals beside their motorbike. We walked down along the shore and stopped at a spot from where we can only hear the howling of the sea. We stood there silently for some time and let the sun down behind the hills which surround the city.

After the sunset we came back to the city and decided to check out a new route. We drove straight along the beach road and stopped in front of the Vizag port. We thought of going back initially but then changed the decision. We bypassed it and went straight ahead without asking anyone where the road was going. We noticed that we came into perhaps one of the oldest area of the Vizag. The buildings and the factories there bore the sign of time. We still moved ahead and then stopped near a train line. The surroundings had changed. We were deep inside the industrial area. That was another face of Vizag about which I'd read in my geography books. Vizag port is the most important and thus the busiest port in the east coast. Vizag is famous for steel manufacturing. We saw the factories, trolleys and overhead ropeways. It was quite fascinating to be there. We were thrilled and excited like kids as we discovered a new world. While returning through the narrow and bumpy roads Tirthankar almost made an accident with a huge carrier but luckily we survived.

Vizag Diary:Continued...

27th Feb, Monday:12:00 P.M.

We took the beach road as usual. Tirthankar and myself. But it was pretty crowded. Yesterday was a festival day for the Hindus; Shivaratri. There was a fair in the beach to celebrate the Shivaratri.So people from outside Vizag also thronged here for this purpose. We took an alternative road to avoid the heavy traffic. We went to a supper market for some shopping. It was quite hot and patchy outside. As we were coming back on our way to home through the congested roads, suddenly appeared the sea from the narrow curve of the city. The afternoon sun was smiling all over the sea. It seemed like the water was on fire. The sea looked so gorgeous and vibrant. We stopped the car near a tea-stall. The breeze blowing was cool and refreshing. After having the tea we decided to visit the fair on the beach.

Shivaratri means "the night of Lord Shiva (one of the Hindu Trinity known as Destroyer or Re-producer of life)". According to Hindu Mythology, on this day Shiva was married to Parvati (human avatar of Hindu Godess Durga). For more information on this you can visit http://festivals.tajonline.com/maha-shivaratri.php

The main festival took place on Sunday night. So it was comparatively less crowded and moreover it was lunchtime. A huge Shivalingam was erected on the beach. It would be approximately 10-12 ft. in height and had a diameter of about 6ft. And the Shivalingam was created using small Shivalingams of identical size and colour. Many temporary shanties had been erected on the beach with the help of bamboo sticks, cloth and dried tree leaves. Devotees were taking rest under it in the scorching sun. Many of them were cooling themselves in the sea. People had come from the neighboring states also. Mostly these were poor people from villages.

Business was there too along with the religion. Hawkers were selling products made from seashells and stones; chains, lockets, fancy stuffs. The shops were generally running by a group of people. I went to such a shop and as I was taking photographs, people, from elderly woman to kids, got very curious about my digital camera. I took few snaps and showed the photographs on the LCD display panel of the camera to them. They returned my gesture with such a natural smile that I hadn't seen in a long time. One of the elder in the group asked us, from where had we come. Hearing about Kolkata, he said that they stayed in Kolkata for ten years. They used to sell stuffs made from the skins of squirrels and that sort of animals. After government imposed a ban on selling and purchasing these products, they became jobless and struggling to earn their living. They were virtually traveling with their family across the India for the business.

Government and NGOs these days take care of the animals and forests. There is a widespread awareness about the preservation of forest and wild animals. But there is very little concern for the people who live in forest or earn their living from the forest. They have no other skills to make their livelihood. These people are not poachers. Government and the NGOs working on this kind of projects should also take proper rehabilitation measures for these poor, hapless people.

Vizag Diary:Continued...

26th Feb, Sunday:10:00 p.m.

We headed straight towards Sonora Beach Resort in Aditi's black Corsa. The same group. I was disappointed as the others, once we reached there. An area approximately of a tennis court size was barricaded with tent-clothes and bamboos. Music was too loud and the DJ deserved a kick. Ekta decided to go and check the chaos by herself first. So she entered and came back by the time Abhishek finished his cigarette."The music is all crap. Most of the people are already drunk. There are separate areas for the stags and the couples. Stags are peeping lecherously at the couples. It is dirty out there"- Ekta quipped angrily and headed straight towards the car.

So, what's next? "TDS, where else yaar?" - screamed Tirthankar. "Can we go for a drive in the highway?"- I asked gingerly. Ekta was silent. Aditi and Abhishek then decided, we would have a mix-and-match outing today. We went to TDS first and repeated the yesterday night. Only exception was, I carried my SONY Cybershot digital camera today. We came out after couple of hours. "I'll drive"-announced Ekta. "No" said her sister. "You are drunk". "But only two shots of whiskey and the rest are just beers"-Ekta tried to argue. "I can see that. No more discussion. Get into the car."-Aditi played elder sibling's role perfectly.

Vizag is a small city. We were into the highway in ten minutes. This highway, one of the finest in the country, connects vizag to Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta), my native city in the north and Hyderabad in the south where I have been working at present .The highway is breathtakingly beautiful in the day. In the night it is magnificently charming. Soil is red in this part of the country. Small, broken hills stands like old fortresses on both sides of the road. We were moving in great speed. Some Punjabi Bhangra song was playing in the car's audio system. It turned into a noise from the song after sometime, as it was absolutely silent outside. I asked Aditi to switch it off.

And suddenly the night came inside the car. We stop talking. Rather we could not. We were mesmerised. We could only see the portion of the black, tall reptile like highway in the diffused car light. The night was in a move so was I. Suddenly the eerie feeling of the yesterday morning came back. I was in that state of mind when there appeared a yellow dot on the horizon. It started to grow bigger and it kept on growing. Once it came close I realised it was a huge truck. It whizzed past us. It was so close or may be it appeared like that, I thought. But Aditi was sitting cool. I just peeked at the dashboard and saw we were going between 130-140 km an hour. We went ahead for another half an hour before Abhishek broke the silence by saying "aab waapa's chal (lets go back now)".

I did a stupid thing while coming back. I was feeling a bit suffocated inside the car. So I lowered the glass of the right side rear window and stoop a little bit outside. The stream of air hit me like hell and almost knocked me out of the car. The sound of air was so deafening. I couldn't hear anything. The vision got blur too. For a moment I felt I was flying in the air with the car. Someone told something from inside the car. I couldn't hear anything. And then Tirthankar drag me inside the car and shut the window glass. "What are you doing? Are you trying to kill us all"?- Ekta snapped at me. I was not aware of the fact that it was dangerous to open the glass of the rear window when a car was moving at a speed of more than 100km/hr. The car could be gone out of balance. But before any damage done, we drove back to our home safely. We all dropped at Aditi’s place.

Aditi’s apartment was opposite to the Taj Hotel and along the beach road. Her balcony was bang opposite to the sea. We all sit there. I looked at the sea and saw how a horizon merged into another. It was difficult to figure out whether the stars were twinkling from the surface of the sea or the ships with their tiny lights hanging from the sky? I just could not make out at which line the sky blended into the sea. The crystal clear dark sky with blinking stars emarged from behind our head and landed on the sea in front of us. It’s the seer size of the sky and sea made me numb. The concept of plane looked very confusing to me at that point of time. An absolutely surreal view. It was completely quiet at 3’0 clock in the morning. Only the sound of waves at repeated intervals hit my ears. But after sometime it also became a part of the silence and I couldn’t make the difference. Abhishek started singing “akash bhara surjo tara…”-a great song in Bengali, composed by Rabindranath Tagore. I translated it as far as possible to my non-Bengali friends. We came back to our apartment in the early morning before sunrise and collapsed in the bed immediately.

Vizag Diary: Continued...

25th February, Saturday: 9:00 PM

Abhishek is a tall and moody fellow. Tirthankar is stocky and comical. Both of them work in HSBC's BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) outfit in Vizag as Assistant Managers. I'd stayed with them during my visit in Vizag.We had a plan to go to a newly opened Pub in Vizag. Two others joined us. Aditi, a Manager in HSBC and Abhishek's friend and her sister Ekta, a Manager in HSBC and has pretty eyes. I’d come to know that this unique group visits regularly TDS a.k.a Ten Downing Street, the pub. But we landed up in Chrome, the oldest between the two pubs in Vizag. Raison d’etre -some new DJ, Sanjay Datta. The pub was small and may be a tad too cozy for some of the couples over there. But the music was crap.

The girls decided to move to TDS after a drink. So we followed them in Abhishek's red, old Maruti 800 .The girls lead us in Aditi's black, sleek Opel Corsa.TDS was more spacious than Chrome and it had a small dance floor too. The pub was already geared up for the Saturday bash. We reached there at the right time. Abhishek and Tirthankar moved straight into the pub with a comfort of entering their bedroom. The ladies accompanied me. Unfortunate we were as there was no table available for us. But we managed a table by sharing with a couple. I was told that ninety percent of the people in the pub were HSBC's staff. The music was enthralling. A couple of drinks; Tirthankar, Abhishek and Ekta dashed towards the dance floor. Aditi and myself sit there for another half-an-hour. Gulped one more pitcher of beer. The beats grew louder to our ears. The intermittent flashes of disco lights slipped of from the colorful nails, bare arms and drowsy eyes. We joined the party.

Flashes of lights and beats of sounds all around. People from the rank of senior management to newly recruited fresh graduates; everyone was dancing like there would be no end. Every weekend, they come to the same place and shake their legs with the same tunes and with the same people they work through out the week. May be this way they have formed their social-language to survive in Vizag, which is a small and not-so-happening city. People from all over the country with different cultures and languages have gathered here. They are so far away from their home. In India, which is so big and diverse in cultures, one can find himself alien in other parts of the same country; and most of the people here are below thirties and for some of them its their first job; thrown into the tough and hectic professional life from the casual and fun filled college/university days. Most of them work whole night and sleep the entire day. Yet they don’t crib and refill their energy bottle to work for the entire week from the weekend.

I looked out for my gang members and I found they were busy dancing in the crowd. Then, I spotted Abhishek standing alone in a corner, letting out smokes like a steam engine from his cigarette nonchalantly. I asked him- “what happen?”. Without looking at me he said - “ So much noise around. People are trying to forget themselves and the reality under this jazzy light- so untrue yet so real for this moment”. I tried later to think about his words. What is the reality to these people? They work in a virtual environment. They speak with HSBC’s customers all over the world. Their colleagues were from different parts of India. They have their family, friends and close ones in their native place. Some of them have a family here also. In some cases, where both husband and wife work, they only meet each other in weekends. Reality is a multi-face dragon here and it’s very difficult to identify the original face of the dragon. All the faces change their position randomly.

As the night grew older, the prices of the alcohol shoot up. I was going to buy a bottle of beer, when I found Tirthankar, standing in front of a table. He was dancing and looking around for someone. I thought he was looking for us, searching. So I tried to call him. But I was wrong. To my utter shock, I saw him grabbed two chicken kebabs (deep fried, spicy boneless chicken pieces) from a plate on the table and dispatched in his mouth immediately and again joined the crowd. I wanted to emulate him, not for the food but for the beer and I ended up in a mess. I saw a half-empty beer bottle on the adjacent table.

I gathered all the courage and took a couple of sip from the bottle and then I saw a fat, grumpy face lady approaching towards me with disdain in her eyes. As the thumping sound of her feet coming nearer, I looked out for help around me and saw my friends looking elsewhere with a I-don’t-know-you-kid face. I did the best acting of my life and tried to convince the lady, that it’s a mistake on my part as I thought that was my bottle of beer. She wanted to blurt something before her husband who was not in a mood to wrangle over this petty issue, drag her out from the scene and pushed her into the crowd. “God is kind”-I whispered. Then came my brave friends and the idiots broke into laughter. I joined them too.

Vizag diary

Reader's guide about Visakhapatnam a.k.a Vizag:

-This eastern coastal city of Andhra Pradesh (located at the south-east coast of India) is famous for heavy industry.
-It is famous for it's beaches (Bay of Bengal), hills and valleys as well
-This is the base for Eastern-Naval command of India

Enough! For more info on Visakhapatnam you can log into http://www.visakha.org

25th Feb, Saturday:6:00 AM

I opened my eyes, squinted and closed it immediately for the shining sun stared straight at me. My Legs were folded painfully; one hand in my pocket clutching the mobile phone while the other had been working temporarily as my pillow, I slowly got up from the sixty degree declined seat. The bus was crossing the Godavari river. Godavari is the largest river in the southern India. The view was breathtakingly peaceful. The early-morning mist floated on the bank of the river. But that gray coloured mist had been melted down in the vibrant orange of the river water in the middle, which was painted by the early-morning sun. Wooden boats of various size were patrolling the river for fish. Some people were taking their bath on the river. The bridge is pretty long. The bus took approximatelly five to seven minutes to cross the bridge. There is another parallel bridge over the river for the train.

The bus was moving slowly with a few up and down jerks over the bridge. I had been looking through the glass window of the bus. Everything was in a move so was I; the slow stream of the river, the fish boats, the people there on the bank taking bath and the sun. The motion started to take shape of the river streams, the fish boats, and the people, in a way, that I had never experienced before and I felt myself transfixed on my seat. For a moment an eerie feeling engulfed me; I was in that hypnotized mood when the bus suddenly stopped with a screeching jolt. In the beginning I didn't notice it's rampant and continuous movement as I was still entwined into that eerie feeling. It was in a form of haze. A mixture of white and red in color, that haze became clearer to me gradually. Then my eyes grew big and finally I saw it. It was a white haired dog, run over by some vehicle and lying on the road in a pool of blood. May be the big truck, which was before our bus, I didn’t know; what I knew at that moment was, the dog was still not dead and shaking violently before it's last breath.

Date with Dawn:Pics

Date with the Dawn

My morning starts at 9'0 clock. I have made it a routine. So as usual, yesterday, I got up from the bed and went straight to pick up the toothbrush and glanced at the clock. This is also a skill I've acquired over the years because I know what I would see. So I turned my head to the clock and as usual started moving towards the toilet. But then I said wait, something must be wrong. The stupid clock was laughing at me at 6'0 clock.

I was stunned. And angry and ecstatic. Immediately the thought came to my mind was run for my sleep and dive into my bed. This eternal run-or- not to run dilemma dangled dangerously for a while. Then like a white bearded holy saint another thought flashed into my mind- I could run for my life, oops! Could run into the life that was dawning outside. I patted my back on this noble thought and discovered the reason why I was standing like a zombie in that odd-hour. There were some well sculptured lumps on my back and on my face too which were created magnificently by some tiny vampire like bloodthirsty artistes. Mosquitoes.

I pulled up the socks, put on the sneakers and tracksuit and ready for the sole and short trip. Oh! I took my SONY Cybershot 4.1 MP with me too. There is a small reserved forest known as KBR National park which is a half-an-hour journey from my home. According to the authority, One of the largest parks within the city KBR National Park is a Southern tropical deciduous forest and the last vestigial representative of the endemic flora of Hyderabad region, with over 100 species of birds, 20 species of reptiles and 15 species of butterflies.

It was pretty crowded inside the park. The same old and tired city walking and running around me there. The morning was demystifying before me. I started to walk deep inside the jungle and came to a point beyond which it is a prohibited territory. I decided to break the law. And I was rewarded by the nature to break the law of human's. The morning was very lazy and completely relaxed over there. Playing with the leaves and flowers of the plants. Strolling alongside the peacocks. Singing with the cuckoos. It accepted me too as a temporary member. By accepting me in her family may be she wanted me to realise, man is more complete in the nature where he has his origin, not the society he has created to live in.

I've tried to capture the mood of the morning in my camera. Iwill be posting some of the snaps in my next entry.

I always find it difficult to start anything. I am a poor starter to say the least. I have been staring at this empty white space for quite some time. The arrangement is complete. The invitation is there. But I am sitting hopelessly. letters, words, sentences, thoughts, images, smells and God knows what else, are wandering in my mind at their will. I don't have any control...so I have decided I'll put whatever I catch hold of those...so I started and wow!...I've almost drafted a paragraph...

Starting a blog reminds me of those days of diary-writing. I started writing my first diary when I was in my early teen. I discovered a small pocket diary in my grandfather's drawer. I never dared to touch the drawer when my dadu was alive. So I thanked him for this unintended gift. The date written in it was 1963.The pages had turned yellow. Holes created by the insects were sprinkled all over the pages. But that didn't dampen my spirit. I started puting my days and nights in it. Kept it secret from my parents for obvious reasons.

I've been thinking to start a blog for more than a year. But I could'nt.
I've given myself a year-full of excuses and abuses. So here I am, atlast.
Kudos to me...