Europe Diary 2026: Days 5, 6 -- 14, 15 Oct 2026

 Day 5: 14-Oct-2026

Zürich, Switzerland

Prosaic. Uninspiring. Austere. It looked straight out of a postcard, although like a one a Mumbai-based accountant from the 80s would have related to. Arriving in Zürich from Paris didn't help either. For all its insouciant-bordering-on-brusque locals, Paris still made up to visitors with its charm, art, and neighborhoods. Zürich lacked it all. 

We lost a goodie bag somewhere between Zürich HB station and a local pub; and we felt really bad about it. 

The day had Rhine Falls in it. The falls are not something an Indian would have in mind but they were still pretty. The marriage of reliable civic infrastructure and breezy climate delivers on the promise of worthwhile visits to even mediocre attractions in Europe. 

The day drew to a close with us finding ourselves in Lucerne. Lucerne blew Zürich out of the water for us in mere 5 minutes of us arriving. You move your head and there's a visual arresting your senses. Public infrastructure was laid out mindfully, with travelers as its centrethought.

The relatively-less-famous attractions of Lucerne had us in for a surprise for all their charm & magnificence. In days leading up to the trip, when well-meaning curious friends asked about the itinerary, I said I was looking forward to 'walking.' And, boy, did I walk the hell out of Lucerne. Gleefully. 

The cafés were so inviting that I looked past safe Indian dining options with indifference unbeknownst to me. We landed at an Irish pub -  Alpineum Kaffeehaus°Bar where we devoured their bread menu and washed it down with Belgian lager. 

P.S: Every time you tilt your head to spot a visual, there'll be more than a handful of Indian heads poking into your visual frame. Well behaved though. Most Indians are well behaved when their surroundings look frighteningly clean. (I can't help but chuckle, remembering Manu Joseph's Why The Poor Don't Kill Us here).

 Day 5: 15-Oct-2026

Mount Titlis, Switzerland

Start of the icy adventures bit, slated to last till 17-Oct. Mount Titlis at the top of the list. Day started with a multi-changeover journey from Lucerne to Stanstad to Engelberg to Mount Titlis. I'm beginning to run out of words to describe the scenic landscape. But, what awaits at the base of Mount Titlis is a human engineering endeavor to marvel at. An undertaking of highest ambition with visitors' gasps & shrieks as its end goal. Cable cars and ice-walks lead you straight into the mountain's bosom, a cold one at that. There's enough coffee at the 3000-mt altitude to let you continue enjoying the view. 

It was hard to spot a non-Asian on the mountain though. I held up a magnifying glass to spot one finally, who was staring into the abyss, probably wondering at the effects of globalization that practically Asianized tourist spots in a country like Switzerland. 

A handful of memories (read: pictures) later, our way back to Lucerne was like clockwork: transiting through trams and buses at right timestamps to arrive in this mountain-village Wengen. 

You do a 270° sweep, standing at the mouth of the railway station, and the village reveals itself entirely to you. It looks straight out of European postcards we laid our hands on in the 90s. It's a village with no cars. We were walking up the street to arrive at our hotel, and we knew we were in a special place. The night was concealing it all but showing just enough to perceive its specialty. 

< 100 mts. from our hotel is a glowing Irish pub with Aerosmith playing and IPAs flowing. Crystal Bar. The name took me straight back to RTC X Roads in Hyderabad. A couple of Belgian lager pints and a crusty pizza later, we nestle ourselves in our room with a balcony that oversees the snowy mountains. 

All in all, it's been 12 hours we're here in Wengen. The sights of mountains and the smells of Mary Jane waft on the streets. Each one has something to take. We'll go with the sights. 

We have a 4-hour mountainous adventure for the day, and that's it. 

More to follow.

Europe Diary 2026: Days 2, 3, 4 -- 11, 12, 13 Oct 2026

 Day 2: 11-Oct-2026

Paris

It's ironic that 'productive' is the best word to describe 11-Oct. It was a heavyduty on-foot day, covering: The Louvre, Palace of Versailles, and the Eiffel. Age is catching up. Swathi & I looked at each other almost at the same time our lower backs broke because of walking. As I sipped beer and we munched potato chips, we reminded each other the importance of working out. The endpoint of our last stop was the entry point of the Palace of Versailles; where the notorious Ironman contest was being concluded. I stood there looking at (a) the opulent palace on one side, and (b) the finishing triathloners on the other, with beer on my mind.

It's unfair to expect people to be ambitious in a climate like Europe's. Where you turn your head, and there's a scenic visual waiting to be rejoiced. The cold and the daylight (or the delay/absence of it) don't help either. All in all, it's a continent of idyllic leisure, if you ask me. But I am typing this with my fingers dipped in privilege, I'm aware. For, I've been walking, sucking in the good-AQI air, sipping coffee & beer here & there, walking again, and trying not to remember my life back home. That's been the theme.

Back to it: the Eiffel was breathtaking at nightfall. As ordinary as it looked during day, it acquired a glory rivaled by few, at night. Swathi was thrilled, like most women inexplicably feel at the tower's sight. It was pleasant around the neighborhood. We walked after the customary pictures.

Back to the hotel, we were welcomed by the 'closed' sign at the Marriott's restaurant. Walk again, and we landed at a Tibetian restaurant. We found the base dishes of what we wanted but we were struggling to explain 'how' we wanted what we wanted, to the lady at the counter; and then comes Zikma to the fore. He studied Buddhist Philosophy at Varanasi for 12 years, who had once emigrated to India from Tibet, before he slunk himself into France illicitly. Spoke to us in Hindi as we expect a Tibetian would speak, but boy, the words fell like notes on the piano. After he tossed & made fried rice to our Indian liking, he sent us back with a story of his homecoming that's been due for 26 years. He smiled that he sees his parents on video calls, though. 

P.S: Mosa Lisa was just whelming. Not over, not under. 

Day 3: 12-Oct-2026

Normandy

This was the day I had been looking forward to the most ever since the trip had started taking shape. Imagine a handful of zealous men. They led countries, commanded armies, and surmounted seas. And yet, their greed transcended the realm of human v inhuman. And they caused wars. Ones that shaped the world we live in. In the process, millions lost lives. Most of them kissed goodbyes to their loved. Many of them did so for the last time. Before fighting wars they didn't start. 

Each name embossed had a story of an unreturning son, a moved-on spouse, a broken father, and an unresolved grief as its honorifics and postnominals. 

It was too pleasant for a cemetery where 9389 soldiers were buried. Blame my privilege for having unwittingly spotted the 'niceness' of the place. A sombre outing. 

There's not much to talk about today, except for how a Hungarian tour guide lamented about fake cigarettes in France, at 6.00 in the morning. 

Day 4: 13-Oct-2026

Pârïs Again

Alright. Slept well. At a hotel in Montmartre with slightly shady alley leading up to the hotel. What opened up in the hotel after pulling up was a nice surprise. An upscale hotel in the bohemian Parisian neighborhood. There's a tension felt by most Asians, I guess, at the check-in/concierge counters at hotels in the West. A faceoff point of cultures and invisible one-upmanship battles between unwise hagglers. One general upside of not-unhealthy mental ageing is social insecurities perishing. I am much less insecure now. And it's fun to put the other person of a perceived fairer race on a spot, with a request or something - ask them for something tricky, disarm them, see their superiority advance to their forehead, disarm it with a compliment, dart a question sounding like a compliment, say thanks in 2 languages, and walk away without hearing them out saying the cab's speeding away. Just a no-harm-intended fun. 

A lot of walking today. Covered a few spots Instagram algorithm reminded my wife to not miss. Most of them lived up to the visual pleasantness Instagram promised. Say, the Bibliotheque Nationale  or the Arc dé Triomphe, and the likes.

The vain me tried shopping shoes at the Galleries Lafayette but I realized I am not wealthy yet. I will come back. Speaking of vanity, it's such a fashionable country with people of all genders, ages, and walks being impeccably dressed. The climate supports it. So does the culture, and its outdoorsy attitude. Fashion capital for a bloody good reason. From waiters in cafés to drivers to corporate honchos to sports coaches.

I type this as we're minutes away from Zürich's train station.

Next stop: Switzerland. A country whose ice mountains looked so inconquerably far & otherworldly, that when someone gifted me a New Year greeting card with an Alps' picture - that made me wonder & feel wistful instantly. This was in the mid 90s. 

14th has Zürich in it. Along with Rhine Falls in it. Hopefully a lot of walking, coffee, and beer at the end of it. Before 15th brings some icy adventure with it. 

Will come back to this space.  

Europe Diary 2026: 10-Oct - Brussels --> Paris

 Day 1: 9-Oct-2026

Arrived at Warsaw from Delhi, by midday. The small, cosy airport resembles the city's smallness, an Italian coffee-drinker on the next table remarked, planting his earphones back into their pod as an act of politeness to my courteous nod when our eyes met.

2 Heinekens (I) and 2 cappuccinos (Swathi) later, we found ourselves en route to Brussels. As the flight soared, I peeked into the window to find what's a rare sight for an Indian who travels domestically: large, sweeping tracts of greenness, well manicured and well apportioned. The latter both plague an aspirational Indian's thoughts - for a homeland that looks well from above & within. 

Brussels - A neat city that borders on looking abandoned, strange for a European city on a weekend night. People look at you, and express a ready sorriness of looking at you without your permission. All in their eyes. All in that fleeting second of passing by. As opposed to the 2 extremes we are experts of: either disregard the passerby with utter dismiss or stare them down attributing incrimination. 

A decent Indian meal at Rangla Punjab brought the day to a close, but not before observing why the Indian attendant was inexplicably rude & loud to us. Was there some immigrant guilt he was forcing us to share with him? How would he have known that we're not patriotic people? For, what more allegiance can triumph over our loyalty to capitalism?

Day 2: 10-Oct-2026

An obscenely early time to wake up, so that we can sleep in Paris tonight. So chained am I to the idea of 'vanity in traveling' that we have more than 1 suitcases each to lug around. Our Indian knuckles (bestfriends of sweat, heat, and dust) are beginning to say hello to cold. Swathi has a run-in with a French concierge man, as she requests him if he can help us print our train tickets. It is too early for a Frenchman to comply sweetly. And he is French enough to point out the same. I try charming him with my perfunctory smile. It works, and he smiles back. A win for my face's Jack Nicholsonesque reputation. 

We're here at the Brussels-Midi train station, well ahead of the train's departure time. The morning's slowly showing its true colours. Coupled with cold. English isn't received kindly. And the private-run train service is an apparition no one's heard of. 

We are pumping enough caffeine into our bodies to battle the cold, and the cruelty of cultural chasm. The views all around are a help though. Easy on the eyes. And, the cafés are universally lifesaving. They're accommodative, without a glint of neophobia. I'm on my 3rd cup of coffee as I type this, and the black-dressed Frenchman smiles as warmly as the coffee is. 

The bus-ride to Paris is 40 minutes from now. I am looking forward to ingesting myself with pleasing visuals of the European countryside. From amid the warm confines of a bus that doesn't honk. 

A thought cloud begins taking shape, about Paris. For all its broadcasted beauty, fragrance, and notoriety. 

Will come back to this space. 

   

This darned thing called Life

 I open X after 2 hours of an intense task at work, to get my periodic dopamine fix. I read this tweet/post that talks about how fast time whooshes by when you're compelled to do something you don't particularly enjoy, say, work. And, I catch myself wondering how the hell it's already August!

 

2 more hours pass after I return to work. The tweet continues swirling in my brain, poking at every corner it whizzes past. This is like the inverse of leaving everything you find in a better shape than you found it. The tweet does the damage to my brain that's been in overdrive for weeks.

 

I pause and catch myself thinking about times when work was a mere component in our lives before becoming our all-consuming identity. At least, for most of us. [I still know a few folk who resisted the corporate tradeoff, and it seems they knew exactly what they were choosing].

 

Anyway, there's a dull, droning psychological malaise all around us. People are generally unhappy with their lives. So, they choose to pepper social conversations with carefully-inserted details that elevate them above their peers. Except, such peppering is most times unsavory.

 

I was once that person. I thank the general ageing of my mind for coming to its senses before I got sentenced to being a phony for the rest of my life. It's stunning to witness the acts people put up to impress people they don't particularly like. I did that too. Boy, was it so tiring. I only realized how tiring it was after I stopped.

 

Is baring one's self to everyday life and its contours freeing? I don't think. It has its own nuisances to bring.

 

Cutting to my life, there's a long-due European vacation that starts 2 months from now. Barring the 3-day whirlwind of a Japan trip in 2025, I haven't taken a vacation in 2 years. Given how 'undeserving' I've felt of 'nice things' for most of my life (thanks to the passed-down, unwittingly keyed-in insecurities), this is a vacation I've damn-well earned and am looking forward to with a childlike anticipation.

 

Since it's been a while since I last put pen to paper, it is not unwarranted to jog your (the rare reader of this blog) memory about my chronically-skeptical self. It's the same person with same insecurities, anxieties, and yes - the occasional good things too. Except, all measured & managed a bit better, with 'restraint' being the underlying theme of it all.

 

It's both sobering and disillusioning when you realize that the 'magical tomorrow' never comes. For me, it's forced me to worship the cliché: enjoy (or try to) the journey/process/blah. I try to meet the optimum markers, and leave the rest to the indifference of it all.

 

For what is this darned thing called Life? I've never understood it. But there are a few nice things in it I don't dislike. 

Being Friendless and Other Stuff

 Truly at midlife. I am not sure what to feel about where I am at this juncture. But, one feeling stands pronounced: "Friendless." Given how it all (growing up) started about 17-18 yrs ago, I had always thought I'd be socially wealthy. Sure, I've burnt a few bridges along the way, but who hasn't? Finding myself practically friendless right at my midlife juncture is something I'd never thought of, or worried about. And, here I am. 

It's interesting how my personality is trying to bob away to the other end of the pendulum. I've been quite a private person for the last 10 years. Not by force, but by organic choice. My abhorrence for 'small talk' has done its job far too well. [For the first time, I've looked at my watch twice by the time I finish this 2nd paragraph]

Now I'm making voluntary efforts to indulge in harmless, yet patience-demanding small talk. At airports, the gym, the cafe I frequent, etc. The fact that it's going to get increasingly difficult to cultivate new, meaningful friendships with each passing year, is unsettling me. 

I've come to believe in the philosophy that it needs hard-work to be able to enjoy finer pleasures in life. The persistence to endure a couple of stage-setting chapters, to power through a few mood-building episodes or the discipline of living cleanly to live well, look well, feel well, and age well. And yet, I falter. But, I don't want to. To waste years in faltering & wobbling - only to reminisce this time wistfully a few years later.

I've got this gnawing feeling somewhere deep inside my stomach that this decent run I've been having for the last few years -- is all going to come crashing for some inexplicable reason. The rationalist in me reasons that it all depends on how I act. The irrational pessimist in me refuses to nod & agree. 

I know the importance of living mindfully. But, events come by and compel me to react, at least in thought. I more often than not react. I try to right the ship for events to not adversely affect the next ones, but its price is mindfulness. Perhaps, I have to extricate action from 'thought' to get there, but hey, a man can fall and try, right?

The pit I had once thrown myself into was so deep that it took ambition, not progress, to crawl out of it and make even with others. But now, I've discovered traces of ambition for a net positive future. But me being me, I am not sure how much the ambition will hold up. Again, a man can try, can't he?

My psychological need to splurge on proverbial perishables to keep proving to myself that I am not  deprived anymore - has finally subsided. I now don't buy often. I don't buy needlessly. I buy good stuff, with moderation & unforced restraint. 

I remember tweeting this:Who knew efforts to rediscover the ability to wonder at smallest of things would come to be a part of my goals?

That about sums it up. 

The Eventual Belongingness

 How long it has been. To sit and think about anything but next project, its people and the pains they bring. And life has kept happening, oblivious to the grand plans I dream up and minor inconveniences I frown at. At times, I stop in my tracks to realize I am in my mid-30s. Meaning, half my time has flown by. 

The very next thought that unfailingly hits me is about the outlandish dreams I once had so naively dreamt for myself. Makes me feel funny & wistful at the same time. 

I've come to work with people who are obsessively ambitious. Almost to the point of wondering if they know they are not here forever. They chase their dreams so feverishly that it's very fascinating and tiresome at the same time. On good days, it reminds me that it's not too late to dust the naive, outlandish dreams out of the dream-vault (that everyone has). On bad days, it makes me long for the lightness of being unaccountable for anything. 

I reach airports well in time. A little too well in time, often. It leaves me with a lot of time at boarding gates. Amid yawning adults and bored kids, I yank away at my laptop. When I don't, I think about who I've come to be. It pleases me to have become a resilient and an accountable person. I like that about the 30-something-me. 

Talking of airports -- being displaced from home makes me despair. I have always been a deeply rooted homeboy, who didn't bother visits but hated stays. In fact, I always have taken pride in being a homeboy who felt pinched by distance & the despair it causes. Lately, all that changed a bit. It's because I travel dizzyingly. I travel so much that I don't have time for the sweet melancholy of a displaced homeboy. 

But many hundreds of miles away, I have a home. One that I've built with a woman I trust more than I trust myself. A home that awaits my fortnightly return. A home where I seek and find quiet. 

My 30s as They Unfold

 It's funny how I once thought of Writing as my saving grace. It is now almost a defunct pastime in my life. They say, life happens. It has happened, for me too. As life's been happening, somewhere along the line, I have gotten busy in reacting to it, that I have hardly stopped for a moment to observe. 

What's happened in the last 3 years: more steps on the corporate ladder climbed, newer liabilities (in the garb of possessions) acquired, and torn between cities. While all that has been happening, quality of sleep has declined, appetite disturbed, and peace disrupted. I think I now get it when they say ageing slows one down. Sure, I'm still in my 30s, but that's a whole 10-years period after the phases of unbridled hope for a bright life. 

I am not complaining. I have a good life, materially. I don't have to check my banking app before making a purchase, small or big. That's a small victory, given where I started 10 years ago. But, there was this idea of a 30+ me in my head when I dreamt about my future in my 20s. A man who's made peace with his follies, and someone with a measured approach to things that affect him. Someone who's sure about his strengths, and painfully sure about his weaknesses. Adults tell young ones a lot of things, but what they don't tell you is they don't have it all figured out either. I guess, man's disregard for time's overarching superiority stems from his refusal to accept his smallness being amidst nature. 

Cutting to the chase, the man I thought I'd be in my 30s had always been an elusive idea. For, back then I always wanted to be a different man from who I was. A longing for an overall better-ness with no shape or direction to it. A few cues I had were: to read more, to think deep, and to emphasize on empathy, one day at a time, incrementally. 

I've got to thinking about these 3 cues lately. Have I read as much as I'd have liked to? Hell no. Like I told you upstairs, I was busy reacting to life. Have I come around to cultivate deep thinking? Nope, I have failed to build the agency to think deeply. Empathy? I guess that isn't a hard fail. I guess I've done okay in this department. 

Yet, there's a certain confidence I've come to possess. Perhaps, it's an awareness about self in the worldly sense. That I'm going to be around. Because, I think I've learnt to find a balance each time after every curve-ball that tried to throw me off. Or, this might as well be a delusion of confidence, owing to the last few good years I've had. But hey, there's no way to know, right?

As this cycle spirals forward, I just try to do my thing, and be kind.

Thoughts Mid-air

 The city looks tiny & flickering below.

As the aircraft soars its way through misty clouds,

the city below reduces to a faint ball of light.

I tilt my head gingerly to stare into the endless darkness,

and I find the old moon staring back at me warmly.

The moon - of which tales have been told & on which mankind has trudged,

reminds me of the 'giant leap' taken decades ago.

A leap of faith that attributed familiarity to this milky white ball of a moon

A reassuring though amid the indifferent sky - to know that man has only captured it, but not capsized by its vastness.  

A Transient Breeze of Warmth

 I took the left to take an immediate right that'd put me on the service road, as we colloquially call here. Something like an ignored, unassuming younger sibling of a prodigious, elder one. 

That guy was there, standing in his usual position - behind the iron block, which is a dosa pan for commercial purposes. He splashed a handful of water on the iron slab to wipe it off with a broom before he could scoop a few mounds of dough and make dosas for the impatient customers.

That sight has been etched in my memory since its capture. A sight that made me feel home & belonged. For inexplicable reasons - rendering me failed in articulating. I turned the wheel back to stay on the service road, and on my left, I spotted another figure whose presence reinforced the familiarity of the frame. A warm familiarity that put me ease at once, in my head. 

What do sights like these mean to me? Do they induce warmth because they constitute the 'home' I have built up in my head? If yes, does that make me a person frightened by unfamiliarity? 

I thin this longing for familiarity has inadvertently driven a lot of decisions over the years. While I have partner who's ever willing to handhold me into new adventures, my proclivity for the familiar occasionally teeters into obduracy. And, I recognize the sense of annoyance it can trigger in normal people, who want to explore new things in life.

As I write this, an early childhood memory flashes transiently. Of how I used to not let my mother go back home from school after feeding me lunch - and the maximum bargain I could take was an (obviously fake) assurance from my mother that she'd wait for me at the same spot for the next 3 hours until I'd be done with my classes. 

Back to the 2 figures who put me to ease by merely featuring in my mental image of 'home,' how oblivious they were to what they made me feel & how they added warmth to my mental imagery. Both of them - fighting their wars one day at a time, to be somethings and to not be someones, yet brought a rare warmth to my ever-freezing melancholic spirit. 

I may not see them after that day. Or even if I do, I may lack the mental faculties to recognize them. But I'll remember that they once made feel home, despite being unaware & distant.

A Journey with No Return

Wintry morning. He'd seen many mornings like this one before. When he'd helped his father deliver milk to townsfolk and steered his cattle towards the unsullied pastures for their daily grazing. 

Yet, this morning - he was feeling different. The air felt cruel on his cheeks that were already cracked from cold water splashes earlier. He stood under the emerging shade of the village's bus-stop - where buses to and from the capital halted to transport aspirations. 

He held an old, ragged duffel bag, probably acquired by his now-dead father where there had once been a prospect of him going to the city and continue his education beyond 10th grade, before that year's crop mocked them with abysmal buyout prices - like it had happened earlier and later, many a time. 

He had been to the city before. On multiple occasions for short visits - each visit punctuated with a sense of home he'd had left behind as buses that carried him gruntled ahead. Rides back home filled him with an increasing sense of aplomb with each mile closer, for he and his village were one and inseverable. 

This morning, all that was about to change, and he was painfully sound of that. He was making a one-way journey to the city. To start a new inning - as a watchman at one of the newly-constructed apartments, to break bread with people who spoke an incomprehensible dialect of his mother tongue, and used things he didn't know existed. 

He boarded the bus, and the bus lumbered towards his new home. 

At that moment, was he aware that: 

• He'd find a partner for himself and form a family in the years to come? 
• His kids would suffocate in the city for their smallness and in his village for its smallness? 
• He'd no longer spot pigs around - uninvited, yet unfailingly present around him in the village that were considered disgusting in the city and had no habitat to live and breed in? 
• He'd forge friendships that would enrich and belittle him at the same time? 
• He'd be slapped by one of the homeowners in the apartment for standing up for his inalienable dignity? 
• And he'd take it lightly by washing it down with a quarter of whiskey - something his old, village self couldn't have? 
• He'd grow gaunt, burdened with 15 cars to clean and 5 floors to sweep & mop before the sun rose every morning? 
• He'd forget how pristine the fresh air in his village felt to breathe? 
• He'd spend long, unending afternoons swatting away flies and salesmen from the apartment? 
• That he'd die in the city, amid his daughters, their partners, and kids - none of whom knew about that morning, its weight, and its irreversibility in his life? 
• And he'd be made a part of the city's soil, alongside tens of thousands of other, nameless, forgotten dead - who made the city it was and will be, on their backs and with their hands 

He wasn't.

A sense of Loss & Inadequacy

Today I am here, writing this. Almost a decade ago, I was in a foreign country - going about my business - perhaps walking towards my college from the train station. I don't remember the specific time and date of such a day but I am pretty sure I felt the same way I felt today. Out of nowhere a passing thought about my grandmother (maternal). Such thought must have brought warmth to my heart on that day, I can confidently guess. But today, such thought only disheartened me out of incapacity. 

My grandmother - she had never known anything about human ambition; for her ambition only existed amid the four, soot-smeared walls of the kitchen. Since she had not known about ambition, she had never seen a reason to worry about her grandkids' academic endeavours. She was just bothered that we didn't stay on the shady side in summer afternoons and ensured we ate full and beyond.

Me being an unenterprising boy by nature (but aspiring out of peer pressure), I had found great solace in her affection sans concern. I had hated the ennui of never-ending afternoons (blame the incessant power outages during Indian summers in the '90s) back then, but now I reminisce them with her breezy smile slapped all over my memory. I cannot forget the twinkle in her eye, the dimple in her smile and the cups of her large palms stroking my back when I hugged her.

Today's reminiscence of my grandmother was triggered by an old lady who works on my work campus's Building Management System staff. I and a colleague went down for our postlunch walk and I saw this 60-something lady, dressed in a depressing uniform, standing there accompanied by a broom and a trashcan, staring into the distant green of a manicured lawn. I noticed her alternating her stance between her tired legs. There, that stirred a pot of memories, served with a scoop of overwhelming nostalgia.

I stood there, leaning against a wall, at an obtuse angle from her, looking at her, allowing her to paint a picture of my grandmother in my head. She looked tired. She had a limp - out of dotage I suppose - yet she was there, at her workplace, toiling away and taking moments to stare into the manicured lawn before she resumed. The sight filled me with a feeling of sorrow I haven't processed yet.

I walked up to her and told her she reminded me of my grandmother. 

She flashed a faint, fagged smile and said nothing.

I hesitantly pulled out my wallet and offered my inadequacy.

'No no,' she refused with a sustained smile. 

'Can I buy you a cup of chai?', I meekly proposed.

'They serve us at 4 pm,' she said.

I gritted my jaws in loss of words when she picked up her apparatus and slowly limped away from me, but before that the smile sustained.

Both women deserted me. Grandmother lost her mind to Alzheimer's and estranged herself from me. The latter, she took away from me someone I wish I had. 

Unions end in either ways and more

We as a race are suckers for duality. Anywhere between right and wrong, anything between black and white unsettles us and unsettled, we try to grapple with those anywhere’s and anything’s. After a few failed attempts, we let them be and go about our lives.

Of non-platonic relationships, we are fed with and taught a very distorted idea. People unite, in the name of matching wavelengths or finding similarities with people amid their worlds full of dissimilarities. They long for physical and emotional warmth a person can offer, and they call it Love.     

Sure, there are people with whom relationships define you positively and there are people who break you with the sheer destruction their relationships with you yield. But there is a middle ground. A hazy, ambiguous, undefinable middle ground. There are relationships that leave you perplexed – torn between your inability of categorizing them and ineptitude of mending them.

You meet someone, call yourselves to be in ‘love’, make plans and work towards them, face obstacles in working towards the made plans. Somewhere in this sequence, life presents to you a facet or more of their personality that perplexes you. It welcomes you to the hazy, ambiguous, undefinable ground where duality loses its meaning and you learn to see versions of truths and fallacies previously unbeknown to you; where exactly your core goes through a grind and your moral standing is tested to its tooth.

You question the union that got you here, heck you question everything that led you and the opposite to this point of ambiguity. For some, meaninglessness triumphs out – for some more, grit emerges domineeringly and there are other ‘some’. Those who find out that they are lost. Those who find strength in such finding out and those who just feel anything and those who just feel nothing. Those who wander out in search of something and those who slump down, reminiscing the past.

Some come out shining and some let it mark the beginning of their fall. Some feel it as the microcosm of everything and something don’t feel it as resemblance of anything.

Unions end in either ways and more.

Malakpet

People move; in search of survival, progress, ambition and change. People arrive in a place, own the place with their routine: like visiting a grocery store every other day or frequenting a meat shop every weekend – they let their routine smear a place with their footsteps.

In search of progress, my father arrived in Hyderabad on a fateful day in May 2001. Clinging to our belief in dad’s superpower and mom’s reaffirmations in positivity, I and my brother arrived too – wide-eyed, gaping at this city and its constituents with a never-before wonder in our minds and fear in our eyes. Wonder for having never seen such a bustling city and fear for the possibility of drowning in its hustle and bustle.

Days wore by and we settled into a routine – intercepted by events that now we reminisce with a touch of nostalgia and a rusty taste on our tongues. In Hyderabad, it so happened my dad chose this characteristic neighborhood called Malakpet.

Being quite at an insulated distance from the city’s gentrifying neighborhoods at the turn of the millennium, Malakpet, like how it has a lazy ring to its name, has stood up as an emblem of the city’s much-romanticized charm  - with people taking their own sweet time to start their business hours into late afternoons and mildly sweaty evenings with underaged boys selling flasked chai, wandering from street to street.

It’s only in retrospect these things are occurring to me – because back in the day, I and my brother were busy leading our respective pubescent and prepubescent lives that revolved around our mom’s daunting and dosas, totally ignorant to the neighborhood’s charm and character.

Slowly time passed, and we moved across a couple of blocks, still part of Malakpet and a new chapter began with that relocation. I gained new friends, they showed me new alleys, abandoned playgrounds, and charming cafés.

It so became a part of us to stop at a café to enjoy a hurried cup of chai before bringing back my mom’s saree from a drycleaner store and to climb up the abandoned Raymond’s Tomb’s highwalls to reach the former French General’s memorial ground and bring out the hidden pints from our pockets and drink to the city’s lights at dusk.

Handful of friends scattered in and around Malakpet gave place to stashed memories in different backlanes at different times of the day – I only remember (and retained) a few friends now, but I vividly remember how carefree I felt while riding on Malakpet’s lanes to meet those friends and back.

I joined college and the perimeter of my friends’ houses extended beyond Malakpet to other neighborhoods in town. With new friends, outings increased and that’s when I discovered what a beautiful city I have belonged to and how unique is it in itself.

And then career surfaced into picture. I got busy in making a place for myself in the race. I grew to financially support my indulgences and that opened whole new directions to explore. New directions had new people in them and I waved my way through – stopping at each waving and spending a portion of life. All this while, Malakpet lurked in the backstage, silently being there as a neighborhood that still felt home at the end of the day by offering a homelike familiarity of its cafés and laziness – whenever (means, almost every day) I felt I was drifting away from where I belonged to.  

Career progressed well for quite some time and then I found my wife. She still tells me how I went on and on about Malakpet when I first took her to the neighborhood, with a glint of ownership in my eye and a sense of ‘at-home’ in my droop and gaunt.

And so, recently, I moved to elsewhere to find a new footing in life. I weighed in practical factors like distance and the associated distress because of commuting from Malakpet to work and back and so, I have moved to a new neighborhood. Quite distant from Malakpet and has quite a character to itself – for its own reasons and follies.

I have been visiting my parents on most weekends ever since I moved here. Weekends in Malakpet – that still gives me a chance to sit in cafés and slurp tepid cups of chai on stained saucers. I look left and right while ambling down the road to fetch my mother a sheet of tablets and I see one old clock store being replaced by a funky, modern furniture store, one more café giving way to an outlet of global chain of bakeries.

I sigh, and I remember – it’s the Malakpet I have been familiar with and will be increasingly unfamiliar, one new store at a time.

These days...

Okay, so I(we) have moved into what I'm constantly reminding myself to call 'our own place'. The prospect had long been on the cards but had acquired a sudden gravity and urgency over a lazy weekend's yapping between the partners. Boom! We kicked off the project and we found ourselves in our new place within a month.

Most of the few friends I have have already experienced living on their own. I did too but it was so long ago that it renders my memory hazy. Now I live in my own place in my brimming consciousness.

I can say, it's been a smooth ride so far. Thanks to my wife who's made my life easier over the last 2 years, on all fronts.

Apart from this update, there's nothing much to add - except I am afraid there is. It is because I've been busy living a nondescript, middle-aged man's life. With a set routine intercepted by aberrations of indulgence every now and then (from which I've to painfully recover to tread back onto the routine).

Personal goals - their half-baked outcomes; post-dinner evenings spent staring into the nightly darkness, wondering about how to roast the half-baked outcomes further and convincing myself that the desire to roast so adds up to optimism. All this before falling back into the ennui the routine perpetuates.

Purchased and unread books adorning the living room's shelfs but diligently ticked-off lists of films/series on the subscribed streaming platforms - this gives away the details of a lazy, mindless and gluttonous consumer of digital junk I've become.

My wife and I - we daydream as she folds the sheets & does the bed while I sit there juggling between channels hunting the next national scandal in brewing. We daydream about the places we'd want to visit one day and things to do - but we also conjure meticulous Plan Bs in case of a career outage; like opening a chai shop in a tier 2, mountainous town or something underwhelming yet alternatively romantic like that.

Next moment, we talk about the curtains to be bought and their ideal colour to go friendly with the walls. I spring up from my chair, go light one and bit my lips at being so sold-out. That's when she yells that my coffee is ready and steaming. I walk back into a world of sovereign slavery.

Now that's how life these days is. I'll have to go hunt for a new series on Netsucks.  

A long-forgotten wistfulness pays a visit

I distinctly remember the first time I felt it. It was a dry and hot summer afternoon, and I was staring at the labyrinth of lanes in my workplace's neighborhood, standing on my office's terrace. The summer wind slapped me across my face to remind me of its presence. It was a feeling of yearning to be elsewhere. When I thought about the elsewhere, I tried to dream up a place or a precinct. I failed. It was a general and sweeping sense of hatred towards where I was. The distaste was so strong that it impaired my imaginative ability. Where to be was just an 'elsewhere' with no tag or tangent to it.

With what followed, I had learnt that imagination wasn't the only thing I lacked.  I lacked expression. I think I still do. Since it was a deeply abstract thought, I inadvertently locked it away, and then life has happened since.

A lot has happened since the lockup. There has rarely been any stillness to hear the sound of Silence. I have learnt that the sound of Silence id very distinct in its absolute. And human condition hardly offers the room to gratify one's self with that sound.

To retract from my digression, today I felt the same I had felt that afternoon a few years ago. It lasted for a moment or two and left me with a deep wistfulness as it passed. Now I am feeling wistful as I write this. Soon, this wistfulness slips away.

A Premonition That Almost Came True

They both bumped into each other with premeditated fists to blow.
Words exchanged and jibes hurled at how each of them were as black at heart as a crow.

Anger transcended its dignity and jibes turned into insults.
Both failed to see what this scuffle produced as results.

He wondered, how hard it is to sleep next to each other, on a fine night, pretending nothing ever happened.
He thought he thought aloud but his loudness didn't overpower her wordy weapons being sharpened.

He pulled out his ultimate weapon from the bayonet,
he said she'd have to repent if something happened to his heart.

Something did indeed happen the next morning.
Was she found mourning?

Ordinary Life

As a habit, I logged onto Twitter this morning as I settled into my desk. Scrolling down, I saw someone tweeting this quote "An ordinary life is the ultimate happiness" and accredited it to Thomas Merton. It got me wondering if this Thomas guy had a very extraordinary life that got him reeking of torpidity, so he had come to embrace a mystical idea of an ordinary life.

I believe I am categorically eligible to bicker about ordinary life because? simple, I am leading one. As much as it is to the perspectives of people, there's each to his/her own. So this is mine, consider this disclaimer.

Ordinary life has bestowed me with two struggles I grapple with, every living minute of mine: Anhedonia and Restlessness.

Anhedonia:

We were at a bar on one of the recent weekend evenings. Nibbling away some super fried patties while guzzling down some pints over age-old conversations with an old friend. It began to rain & it battered the glass wall. The bobbing droplets helplessly trickled down. It was picturesque. We were sitting cozy and pretty on the warmer side of the wall. And then it struck me: why wasn't I able to enjoy the moment? I tried counselling myself by remembering my amazing partner of a wife, a peaceful career, decent health and intact appetite; only before I gave up and glared emptily through the glass wall.

Restlessness:

I am hardly able to sit through a movie for 90 minutes, let alone determining to put a book to its permanent rest. When I'm home, my limbs years for some ambling and when I am out in the world, I ache for a silence only a room can offer. I am always here or there but my mind is invariably somewhere else. I long for a still calmness which evades me like a feather on a windy field.

Ordinary Life - a tantalizing condition that barely is the ultimate happiness.

The Indian Middle Class's Melancholy

Two traffic rules broken: triple riding on a motorbike and no helmet. But he does it with an air of sympathy he wish to evoke in a traffic cop who might stop him for his rule-breaking ride. He could use the 'family man' card that may strike a chord with the cop - who too would ride on his own bike with his wife and child(ren) on a Sunday evening. And that card may as well turn out to be a trump card that walks the man out of the intervention with the cop, lossless.

What is striking in that frame - the man with his middle-aged wife and his prepubescent daughter on his 100 cc motorbike - is an ethereal melancholy. A melancholy that's an underlying part of the Indian Middle Class.

What follows is a starkly fictional painting of the man-on-his-bike's life. It could be total farce in its authenticity but it stands for a sect (a humongous one) of people I've grown to know in my life.

That man might be an ordinary graduate with a nondescript job that makes him a tuppence above 30 grand a month. Staying in a single bedroom rented flat in an apartment complex in one of the ignorably sidelined neighborhoods of a metro's downtown, he leaves to work every day by leaving his wife behind at his house. His wife while earning her spot in the family by conscientiously catering to the daily needs of husband and daughter, looks forward to a Sunday of no household chores and one that ends on a high in a cinema theatre. She feels anxious every time a jewelry store's ad shows up on TV, in the short recesses of the daily soaps she religiously follows - soaps that are overdosed with melodrama (an antithesis of this woman's life). When the power goes off  suddenly but unsurprisingly, she takes a deep breath, straightens up her posture and leaves a sigh - reminiscing her teenage fantasies and their permanent inertness.

Reminded by 'teenage', it brings us to their daughter. Her hormones already might have begun getting the better of her but her family can't afford to buy her wings; and she's aware of that in some way. She suffices herself with inexpensive yet almost-unrecognizable frills to keep up with her peers. She's not yet to an age that is brand-conscious but wings, wings of freedom she knows about - about their existence and her family's unaffordability.

Talking of unaffordability, it brings me back to the man. I don't think he remembers the daydreaming from his youth about a plush life. Every day, life forges a slab of mediocrity on his brain that its memory sheets full of once-grand fantasies have evaporated long ago. His bike's servicing prods him for an extra expenditure next month, his daughter's approaching finish line of schooling in the near future and his wife's long due wish of a pair of modest earrings before it's already his daughter's wedding (this, the distant future) occupy his mind.

So there they stop, amid cars, the daughter safely tugged between the man and his wife. The man impatiently stares at the red light, the daughter peers into her father's thinning hairline and the woman looks away into nothingness.

An almost-made choice

It no longer surprises me - the facade of "i-got-it-all-figured" people put up. It's merely concealing their cluelessness to pretend they are a nick ahead of others out there. Because, "out there" is a notorious place and everyone is sound of that fact.

That takes me to the conflicting spot called "to be or not to be". Mind you, this is like poring over different spending models for a lottery, forget winning, even a ticket hasn't been bought.

So there's this conflict between: 'take my vision of societal contribution seriously and work towards it' and 'mind my own business and work on personal success' (again, I'm neither looking at a serious strategy for the former, nor working diligently towards the latter, yet).

It's just that I am taking a bit too long to decide: like taking a whole academic year to opt between math and humanities. I've been stifled with the narrrowness posed by these two choices. When so much satisfaction promisingly entails the prospect of being in a socially exposed job, personal cushiness seems like a petty choice. On the other hand, I've grown to believe that personal success is not a bad idea either. But that mostly involves turning a blind eye towards the former: focus on getting bigger as a corporate slave and climbing higher up the ladder with elevated lifestyle and financial sustainability as its rewarding byproducts.

I am a schmuck, a victim of the lifestyle I aspired and cultivated for myself. I am mostly drawn to things I've acquired and accustomed to, over time with my increased affordability. A giant leap towards the other side of the river - which looks like a real example of glorified living (for the others) involves un-weighing myself by shredding my plum possessions. An unloading that's too heavy and pricey to consider.

I recently let my wife in on the agony of this conflict and she reaffirmed that personal success is not a bad idea at all; and she agreed to my cynical wondering saying this place we call our society is being too deeply gnawed away by its infections that a mere topical pain cream lasts only as long as its moistness on one's skin. I smile to myself about the choice of marrying her - probably one of the very few right choices i have pulled off.

I almost decided to work up the ladder, or in other words, let this tricky word called 'ambition' run its course; while feeding my artistic aspirations with their regular supplies. Chips shall fall where they may. 

A consumable combination

In contrast to my previous post, I also like to believe that every man carries within him an ounce of childishness which, in moment, can come as close to its innocence as it originally is. Having said that, I happened to spot a teen-like jealousy in my partner's tone today - which rarely comes atop her visage of being a grownup.

She expressed a gentle disappointment. She asked me why I haven't written on this blog about her? Why haven't I? I asked myself and the reason was immediate to surface. Writing, as a form of expression, has long taken a backseat. Earlier, be it an incident of angst, words smelled like ash; be it a happy accident - words choreographed a shoddy sequence.

Somewhere around in November of 2016, I found myself watching The Shawshank Redemption on TV and the word that rang all through the movie and in my ears was hope. Like neural connections one's brain makes, hope always had been Futility's connection in my head.

Hope for a meaning? Futile.
Hope for a morning that doesn't bring in wrath as the day wears off? Inescapable
Hope for an evening with eyes full of tired content? Greedy
Hope for fairer principles to live by? Too human to attain
Hope for a day free of guilt from feeling privileged yet underutilized? Improbable
Hope to stand up for my ambition without giving into indulgences? Distant
Hope to affect lives in a fulfilling way? Hopeless

I've grown into this person who's terrified of smallness. A small life at the feet of a mountain city had once fascinated me - it now terrifies me for the long, unending afternoons and the associated ennui it comes with. I loathe people but love their mindless ambling around me.

Magnanimity almost entices me with fulfillment as a lure before its small cause pops up in my head. I smirk in my head when people sloganeer lines like 'do your bit', 'give back to society' and etc. The ocean of misery isn't going to reverse its essence with one drop of my charity.

So I've come to be this man - perennially trapped between an utopia I can't achieve & a rottenness I perpetuate by existing. A non-resident of either worlds and also, a person scared of dissimilarity.

Then she came along. She chose to be with the man with all these vices. She chose to take in his vices as a pickle while drinking her own peg of sour bourbon of life. She says the pickle and bourbon make a consumable combo. I nod, at lack of words.