Mirages
What you imagined to be a ship will sail only as far as the horizon in your imagination stretches. And once you blink, you realize it was neither ocean nor horizon, it was shimmering sand instead.
The ship has been lying a wreck in that desert since a very very long time.
So you blink again, in utter, incredulous, disbelief and the ship has magically transformed into a very grassy slope.
The Alpine mountains behind you are picture perfect as are you.
Total bliss, total serenity...
A swift, gentle, breeze carries a faint fragrance of lily-of-the-valley and snap, your trance breaks and you are standing in the midst of a cacophonous Mumbai street...wondering where all those cars came from? Where do people and crows hurry off to when the sun sets?
The bus driver behind you gets impatient and blows his horn angrily at your slow moving car...
You wake up on the pristine white sands of Velneshwar. The tide is slowly coming in and gulls and crows circle the sky in search of cheap, fish offals.
Things are pretty bleak now-a-days and they won't mind settling for a dog carcass instead.
Well, the crows at least.
The bird calls are loud but re-assuring. The sea tries to drown it in its own monotonous gurgle, but gulls win the day with their high pitched shriek.
The shriek takes you back 'home'...
a familiar place...
Is this Bonn?
Is this Poona?
Mumbai perhaps, you always wanted to live here...
or is it that Kokni village overlooking the sea?
The faint and wonted smell of Rajnigandha with strains of fragrant detergent and a heady note of boiling ginger wafts through the place.
A potful of water boils on the burner, sending off steam signals of freshly grated ginger.
You move towards it determined to toss in a couple of spoons of tea leaves, sugar and some milk.
But how many spoons must you add? How many cups for how many people?
Memories, essence, an unsettled past, a mirage like future, all boiling in that pot of gingered water in a place called home.
An identity called home created at much cost in the search for lasting peace.
An identity with wings like a butterfly which flits from flower to flower in search for other ghosts called truth, reality and expressed love.
The ship has been lying a wreck in that desert since a very very long time.
So you blink again, in utter, incredulous, disbelief and the ship has magically transformed into a very grassy slope.
The Alpine mountains behind you are picture perfect as are you.
Total bliss, total serenity...
A swift, gentle, breeze carries a faint fragrance of lily-of-the-valley and snap, your trance breaks and you are standing in the midst of a cacophonous Mumbai street...wondering where all those cars came from? Where do people and crows hurry off to when the sun sets?
The bus driver behind you gets impatient and blows his horn angrily at your slow moving car...
You wake up on the pristine white sands of Velneshwar. The tide is slowly coming in and gulls and crows circle the sky in search of cheap, fish offals.
Things are pretty bleak now-a-days and they won't mind settling for a dog carcass instead.
Well, the crows at least.
The bird calls are loud but re-assuring. The sea tries to drown it in its own monotonous gurgle, but gulls win the day with their high pitched shriek.
The shriek takes you back 'home'...
a familiar place...
Is this Bonn?
Is this Poona?
Mumbai perhaps, you always wanted to live here...
or is it that Kokni village overlooking the sea?
The faint and wonted smell of Rajnigandha with strains of fragrant detergent and a heady note of boiling ginger wafts through the place.
A potful of water boils on the burner, sending off steam signals of freshly grated ginger.
You move towards it determined to toss in a couple of spoons of tea leaves, sugar and some milk.
But how many spoons must you add? How many cups for how many people?
Memories, essence, an unsettled past, a mirage like future, all boiling in that pot of gingered water in a place called home.
An identity called home created at much cost in the search for lasting peace.
An identity with wings like a butterfly which flits from flower to flower in search for other ghosts called truth, reality and expressed love.
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