Loving my city

I am standing next to a glass window of my room on the eighteenth floor of Le Meridian in Delhi with just a night lamp dimmed behind me.

The vast expanse of the city lying in front of me is so overwhelming with each twinkleof light having its own story. As my eyes get used to the darkness outside, I can recognize my city better, the Connaught place, the semblance of the railway station, the buildings on Barakhamba road, the sodium lamps on the ridge and the slowing moving traffic on the wide roads of Lutyens Delhi.

I have never felt so close to this city as I am doing now. I never felt so related as I feel now. My childhood and my teens seem to be strewn all over this place, be it the visits to Kali bari and children’s park with parents when I was a kid, or the school bunks to CP. I can feel the excitement of holi and the anticipation of Durga Puja. I can sense the anxiety of exams and the tension of results. I can also feel the vibrations of that rickety auto that took us to Jama maszid to buy crackers during Diwali or the flavour of the candies and the crax that mom got me for every school picnic. I can still feel the pain of that water balloon that hit me on Holi and the race I had to escape the colours that my friends wanted to put on me. I still miss those hide and seek games we used to play when DESU (Delhi Electric Supply Unit) had power cuts plunging the whole locality into darkness. I can feel it all, as if it’s all running like a motion picture in front of me  and it feels great to know that I belong here.

This was all that has made me what I am. This is what I am.

But that was then and time moved on. I don’t have to go to school any more, the holis and diwalis are there but have morphed in form, the companions I had are just a hazy picture in my mind, the games we played, the picnics we had the and the eighteen years I spent growing up with Delhi are all becoming a canvas that is gathering dust as the years go by.

Today, as I look at the expanse of this city, I feel it’s my own. I feel so close to each and every aspect of this city. I suddenly have a feeling that I want to grow again with this city and create new memoirs so that next time when I stand near such a window looking out, I have a new story to tell.

I own this skyline and it owns me.

These moments those years..............

It’s Déjà vu….all about reliving those moments and those years….

I clearly remember that day that year…….. seeing her standing somewhere in the corner and talking to some friends, almost going unnoticed………except for that dimple……that was peeping out of her cheeks.
I am so sure, would not even have taken interest if I hadn’t had a closer look when she came along with us, for something I don’t remember.
…and that second look….that look made me sigh! And skip a beat 
the dimple, the smile, the eyes, the personality….
and I knew……I knew it was the start of another story….
another infatuation……….
another effort to talk, to engage,
another search for a reason to bump into her…
another reason to feel like 16….

Almost every wedding that I have attended in the family, I have had an infatuation, a story that starts and ends with the wedding and yet bring out a range of emotions in me. It’s been the same story relived many times, and yet …. every time it feels so new, so fresh and so exciting.

I keep wondering if it’s the winters or the romantic me that brings out the mischievous me…..the me that is crazy and wants to live an entire lifetime with someone in just a few days and feel happy just thinking about it. Reason and logic take a back seat and all you want to do is to talk, to smile, to walk to fly…….to wait for her to give that one signal that shows may be she cares, may be she too likes someone and that someone is me….the anticipation that stays forever and the forever lasting for those few days…. The heart reads every single act of that mortal being as a heavenly sign of a bonding that would lead to something not envisaged at that moment.

Sooner than I reach the emotional high with the concoction of adrenalins and its likes, the realization dawns that the occasion is coming to an end and the window of opportunity to interact will close. The mind tries to run faster than time to foresee a future that never existed and it all comes down to just trying to keep in touch with an exchange of few smses…..and eventually getting to back to square one with a brand new occasion.

Today, as I stand a year away from my own wedding, I realize that all these emotions were evoked by certain incidences, but all that remains of them is the emotions that get etched in memory and the not the incidences. I have realized that this has made me richer with these emotions and it always seems like being through something I know, something I have felt and something I can feel again.
It’s Déjà vu….all about rewriting a new script with the same plots….