Life is beautiful

I would have liked to talk about me, about what I like or don’t like, what I do and so on and so forth. But no, not today. Today it can’t be about me. Today, it must be about Him. God. And Life.
Right now, I am sitting in a closed room, with only a small window to my back, that opens not to the open skies as I would have liked, but just to the garden in our colony. But the sights, the sounds, the fragrances are still fresh in my memory, burning brightly with an inextinguishable flame. I so very dearly hope they will burn forever. You don’t chance upon God so often.
Imagine. You are walking on a road that you traverse often, more like everyday. You are alone, or maybe with a friend. You are engrossed in your thoughts as you often are; life in recent days has been pretty hectic for you.
There is a gentle wind, not warm as is expected for this time of the year. Not cold either. It just is, a soft hand caressing your cheeks, soft lips kissing your brow. You don’t notice it at first, you hardly notice the weather: what more is it than just a noisy television playing in the background? But then, ahead you see a tree. The tree is flowering, little yellow flowers that you never found beautiful, that you in fact considered disgusting in the sweltering heat of the summer. But today they have acquired a strange charm. Today, the wind lifts them out of their home, out of the tree that they so serenely drape, and blows them around in the gentlest of swirls. You look at the scene and wonder. In those flowers, little yellow petals that seem shapeless and formless, you imagine you see a princess. You see a princess, smiling, draped in yellow, borne on the wind, playing with it, entwined in it. You see in that scene a glimpse of joy, pure, unadulterated joy that for a moment cruises through your veins like the sweetest of nectars, that swims in your head like the most enduring of dreams. It is gone, of course, for you have tripped over a stone; but wait, dear friend, for there is bound to be more.
Later in the evening, you are going home, swept along in that mundane drudgery of the city they call traffic, thinking nothing, seeing nothing. But today, my friend, you are going to lose yourself. For today, God has taken out his canvas, taken out his paintbrush. For today, God is going to paint.
The sky is overcast, or at least has been so for the past several hours. It is gray, the dull, steely gray that seems to mock the summer, threatening to wash it off in one single burst of rain. But now, the first shafts of sunlight pierce through the clouds; the sun, in its dying moments, will breathe one last breath of pure gold. Suddenly in a patch there, right ahead, or maybe slightly to the right, there has emerged a patch of blue. And no, it is no ordinary blue, it is flushed, it is the freshest, the most eternal blue you could ever know. That patch of blue, then, is bounded on its sides by little wisps of cloud: gray and white, they intermingle among themselves like tiny little tendrils growing into one another. They bring up in the sky a landscape almost as detailed as that on earth. There, there is a mountain, a peak of gray cloud, capped on the top by a wisp of white. There, then is a valley; if you strain your eyes, perhaps you can see a thin river of blue running through it. And perhaps that little strand there is a coast: a cliff jutting out to sea. You look at the sky, and little by little, you forget where you are. You are no longer here, in a Delhi traffic jam, you are there, among those clouds, around you their snowy fluffiness, and you hold in your hands little fluffy blobs of whitish gray smoke. You twirl it around, and it becomes a thin strand of rain, falling to the earth. You blow it out, and it becomes a veil of cloud, to drape the moon yet to come. You run, you walk, you fly, for in this world everything is possible; for in this world reality has melted in your hands.
And then you turn your gaze a little lower, and are aghast. Above you the clouds were gray-black, silently but firmly trying to restrain the sky, and the sun, but near the horizon, they have given way. And there stands the sun, like a bride parting the curtains, looking at her groom and blushing. There she is, brilliant yellow, the most priceless gold on earth, and around her that fitful yellow-orange glow, as if she has set fire to the sky. But no, the fire is not violent, for the light is gentle, the flame more like that of a candle, striving to light, yet too shy to push away the fatherly clouds that surround her, so that color dissolves into color, and like two hands holding each other, like two souls so different and yet so alike coming together, the sun unites with the clouds, the day unites with the night, so that the horizon ahead is that soothing, divine mix of an ancient gray, and a mature yellow that strikes at your heart, that shuts down every single thought that you might care to think. For what must you think, brother, it is all up ahead, the greatest painting, the greatest poem, the greatest song all rolled into one, right ahead of you, and it has all been created only, only for you. You look at it, and look, and look, and look, through the trees, between the buildings, from your balcony, every moment relishing it, every moment feeling contented that you are here, just here, even if here is a mundane house on a mundane road in a mundane city, for God is playing out to you. And as you turn away, the scene etched in your memory, you whisper, as if anything loud will break the spell – Life is beautiful.

The Window - a story

The Window

I saw her first in the summer of ’99, a month or so, that is, before I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I must not say “diagnosed”, or so my psychiatrist tells me, it seems too “medicinal” a word. Perhaps I should say they discovered I was insane; the kind of thought that has the mild flavor of insanity that every self-respecting madman should possess.
But again, I wasn’t delusional, or something like that. I know, I know. I can almost see you shaking your head. What a pity! The poor guy! No, I wasn’t at that stage just yet. Not that stark raving insanity that people actually call madness; just a little off the hook. A little cuckoo, as my friend says. Meaning that I did carry about with my daily life as normal people carry out, but I was a little prone to, you know, imagining things. Whispers. People. Sometimes even plots and controversy.
But her , she was real, more real perhaps than anything or anyone I saw around me. Much of my life during that time was a vague mist of uncertainty, a foggy veil which would occasionally resolve into a familiar face, a well known voice, and at other times become a solid brick wall, or a labyrinth. But she, she stood out in the whole fogginess. Right there, so true everything else faded away into another world, another time.
Who was she? I do not know. I didn’t know her at all. To say the truth, I never even saw her properly. All I remember of her, as I put my mind to it now, is this dark shadow, standing in front of the window, silhouetted in the light from a nearby room. Yes, I saw her through a window. I always saw her through a window; the shape and form of her shadow etched deep into my mind.
I remember very clearly the day I saw her first. It was night, a full moon night I remember, and the unnaturally large disc of the moon stood poised on top of frail, listless clouds as I walked back home from the market. I remember the moon, for I remember having seen it and wondering why, after all, did the moon have to be so large, why it didn’t simply fall away from the earth, leaving the world in its well-deserved darkness. That was when I stopped, for some reason, in front of the house just opposite my own, still looking at the moon and wondering. It was then I had a feeling someone was up close, and I turned my head to look.
And there she was. Behind the window the scratches in whose glass reflected the moonlight in diffuse patterns she stood; all that was visible of her was a dark shadow, her hair fallen delicately on her shoulders, and ruffled slightly by an unfelt wind, her hands pressed on the glass, her fingers trembling delicately as her chest heaved gently in a slow, melancholy sobbing. I went and stood directly in front of her, imagining she would perhaps see me and back off from the glass, but she just stood there, even when I stood right in front of her; the weight of her sorrow was perhaps too large. There she was, still, yet so full of life that her sorrow pierced my heart, silent, yet so loud her cries banged into my eardrums. For some reason, I thought I looked into her eyes, her eyes filled with slow pearl like tears that stood poised on the cheek, the final stand of beauty as it fell to the harshness of the world, her eyes that beheld so much depth they drowned me in them completely, that held so brilliant a flame they set fire to my soul, that for several days, months, years to come would become the definition of life for me; the eyes that I could not see and yet could look at with wonder and awe.
That was not the only day I saw her. Throughout the next few weeks, I saw her often; sometimes in the divine light of late evening, sometimes in the darkness of a moonless midnight; always the same, though, the same shadow, sobbing gently behind the glass. Sometimes she would just stand there, looking, or so it seemed, at the far end of the road, her hands gently caressing the window sill even as her mind, I imagined, caressed her injuries. At such times, she would be more silent, less sorrowful, and no one who looked at that shadow of the lady behind the window would have refused to call her beautiful, and indeed divine; so perfect was the rustle in her hair as it fell on her shoulders, so true was the movement of her fingers. And at other times, she would fall back into her grief, crying softly as she pressed her hand against the glass; pressed it as if she was reaching out, wanting to come out, searching for that lone hand, any hand that would grasp hers and lift her out of her misery, bring her into the light that she so clearly deserved. That was the image she evoked, trying to reach out, and that was what prompted me one day to place my hand on the window exactly where her hand was. I wanted her to know I was with her, I would help her, bring her light; I wanted her to know that I would clasp her hand, but she did not notice. Perhaps because I never could do what I promised, perhaps because I never could understand. Perhaps because, somewhere, the chasm between us was more than just an inch-thick glass window.
Yet, that single touch on the glass sent tremors through my heart and soul.
And at all times, it was just a shadow. The same form every time, the same light from a distant room, the same silhouette that held me in its depth. And above all that same inherent sorrow that was so deep it drowned me, and yet so beautiful it gave everything a pearly, tear-like glow.
Then one day I stopped seeing her. Or rather, she stopped coming to the window. This was the time I actually started doing rounds of the psychiatrist, still trying to pronounce the name of my condition. The doctors were all very busy and helpful, playing as they were with a brand new toy that by a stroke of luck happened to me. Not that I hold anything particularly against them, or against my mother who took me to them, but they did seem enthusiastic to cure me.
But what they did or did not do to me was never my concern. There was only one thing that was real in my life, and that was her, and the fact that she no longer stood at the window left a hundred unanswered questions and a million shattered dreams. For hours everyday I stared into the dark, black void of that room, hoping that somehow the darkness would resolve into that familiar hair on the shoulders, the familiar hand that trembled gently as it pressed on the glass. For hours I waited outside, not knowing why I was doing so, not knowing who I was waiting for, except for that vivid fragrant memory of the days gone by; now nothing more than a silent reverberation in the depths of my heart. Try as I could, I could not forget her. I could not, because there was nothing else but her. Throughout the days she had been at the window, I had spent my day in anticipation of her, my nights in the revelry of her thoughts. But now, she was not at the window, and yet she was everywhere. The shafts of moonlight were her unseen hair, the fragrance of flowers her perfume, the sun in the day her face, and when I closed my eyes, the darkness I saw was but her shadow.
You must understand that this was not that once a day kind of love you come across. In fact, this wasn’t any kind of love at all. For here I was, getting insane, and knowing it, above all; and somehow this girl of my dreams was suddenly the girl of my reality. She was what truth, and reality, and above all sanity meant for me. She was the battle between reality and fantasy, she was the rift between truth and dreams. For even as I thought of her night and day, even as I let her hair run through my hands or put her palm to my lips, there was a dark undercurrent of doubt that nagged my mind: Was she real at all?
The knowledge that I was insane had split my world into two different universes: the real and the fantastic, the truth and my dreams, the real world and my world. To which world did she belong? To question thus, to wonder if the woman I loved was just a figment of my imagination; it chilled my bones and sent searing currents through my heart and soul. The questions would leap up like fire out of a volcano, burning all those thoughts that I was nurturing and reveling in. Often I would cower in a corner, afraid as much of these questions of doubt that screamed in my mind as of the less real ones that whispered in my ears; and yet I was afraid to answer, for I was afraid of the answer. Afraid, perhaps, of the truth.
But soon there came a time when the burden of not knowing who, or where, she was grew too much upon me. I could no longer cower inside myself, living in her memories, real or imagined. She either had to be part of my life, or not exist at all. So I mustered up courage and walked across the narrow road that separated her house from mine. First I looked at the window where she used to stand, but no, she wasn’t there: just a uniform shade of dull brightness. Then I walked around to the main door and rang the bell, but no one answered. I rang the bell twice more before I noticed the large lock upon the front door. With panic welling up inside me, I ran up to the neighbouring house and pressed the door bell frantically.
“Who is it?”, asked a frail, irritated voice from behind the wooden door.
“Umm...”, I said, “Can you please tell me where the residents of 96A have gone?”
“Who are you?”, the voice replied suspiciously.
“Actually, I owed them some money”, I said cautiously, hoping the voice would hurry up and start to trust me.
“They just left for New York”, came the resigned reply.
“New York?When?”, I asked, my heart sinking.
“An hour ago. They have a flight at six.”
A flight at six. A flight at six, and all my dreams and night mares waiting for that flight. I looked at my watch. It was already half past five. If I hurried...
I ran to the main street and jumped into an auto.
As I waited impatiently for the auto to reach the airport, my mind was surprisingly clear. The murky indecisiveness and baseless fear of the last few weeks had all but gone, replaced now by the clear, transparent thoughts of a man with a motive; what had been lurking in the shadows of the mind, waiting, stalking, was suddenly now out in the open. The moment of truth had finally arrived.
I paid off the auto and began to run into the airport.
“Sir, do you have a ticket?”
“Err...no..actually I came to see someone off...”
“Sorry sir, only passengers...”
“This is for the information of all...”
“...are allowed..”
“passengers traveling to New York by Air India flight...”
“...beyond this point.”
“IA 690. Due to technical difficulties the flight has been....”
“But sir...I have to, have to meet this lady....”
“delayed till 7:30 pm”
“Wait...is this announcement about the flight that was to leave at 6:30?” I asked, sudden fountains of hope springing inside my bosom.
“Yes sir. Now will you please step aside and allow the passengers to enter?”, said the guard, politely but firmly pushing me aside.

There it was. I knew now that the love of my life was inside that building. I knew she was waiting, no not for the flight, but for me, for that was what Destiny had meant i to be. Yet, all that remained between me and my destiny was this stupid guard, who just wouldn't let me in.
I came out restless and impatient. I had to get in somehow. I stood there making and discarding plans in my head when for some reason I turned to look at the lounge on the other side of the road, and in the far corner, speaking to the guard, was a young lady. Through the large glass windows of the lounge I saw her; the same hair falling on her shoulders, which I saw now were the darkest of black, the same quivering fingers. Another place, another hour. But the same. The very same. Her fingers shook even as she spoke shyly to the guard, clasping and unclasping each other in a fervent nervousness. I could see her eyes now too, wide open in childish wonder, staring as if even into the depths of mediocrity, her lips, opened into a slight timid, yet gentle smile. She wore a simple pink tee over blue jeans; her entire person gave no indication of any unnecessary adornment or jewelery. Unnecessary because even in the harsh white light of the airport lounge, she looked beautiful, far more beautiful, in fact, than when she had stood there behind the window, setting her hand on the window sill. It was as if the delicate melancholy that had pierced my heart then had crystallised now in her face in so beautiful a manner that all the goddesses of heaven seemed to converge into her, quiver as she quivered, stammer as she stammered.
A car honked and I realised I was standing in the middle of the road: I had walked a considerable distance while still watching her. I sprang off the road, my person electrified by her sight, the air fragrant by her presence. I had found her! And there she was, behind the window again, but now I could reach out and grab her hand. But first, there was the question that remained...
I half ran, half hopped to the door of the lounge, and caught hold of the guard just as he took his seat.
“The lady who just talked to you. Is she travelling to New York?”
“I..I am sorry sir... I don't know if I can give you that information....”
That was enough. That was it. She was real. All those questions that had been burning my heart and soul for all these days had suddenly vanished in a miraculous swipe of fate. She,she of whom I had thought day and night, dreamt even more, was real, and within my reach.
In the electrified ecstasy I was in, I walked gaily upto her.
“Excuse me”, I said gently.
“Uh..”, she began, turning suddenly as if from a dream. She paused a moment, looking timidly at me. Then, “Do I know you?” She asked it more as a question than as a demand for an introduction, as if she were wondering about the question herself.
“I don't think you do. You see, I live in the house opposite yours.”
“Oh”, she said, with feeling. “I am sorry I don't venture out so much.”
“Yeah I know”, I replied, “I haven't seen you much myself. I saw you today leaving with your parents in the evening...they are your parents, aren't they?”
“Actually no”, she said, easing up a little. I noticed that she had stopped clasping her hands, which now lay freely by her side. “They are my uncle and aunt. I had come here for the winters.”
“You live in New York?”
“Yeah, kind of. I mean, my parents live there, so that means I do, of course..but I do come here sometimes.”
“I get it you are travelling on this 6:30 flight everyone is crying about?” I asked.
She laughed softly, but her laughter rang out throughout the airport lounge, which had grown silent, or so it seemed to me. “Yeah. Though I am not exactly crying about it you see.” She looked at her watch. “Umm..I think I must leave now. If I don't get through with the customs check now I probably never will make it to the plane.” She took up her bags and started to leave.
“Wait”, I wanted to say to her. “Why do you stand by the window in the night?”I wanted to ask. “Why do you cry softly?Why don't you come into the light? Why don't you laugh as you laughed now? What grief do you even now suffer deep in your heart?” There were a million unanswered questions that screamed in my ears and swam unchecked in my mind. Yet I asked none. I offered to help her with her bags, but all she had was a handbag and a small valise, so she declined. I muttered a feeble bye, and she smiled in return, but none of the million conversations that were banging inside my head played out. All I did was watch her leave, her person leaving an indelible mark on my soul.

That meeting, however, had cleansed my soul, so to speak. The knowledge that she was real, that she was part of the sane part of me somehow seemed to imply that everything else was too. In the days that followed, my thoughts of gloom and conspiracy, the murky world of my mind collapsed, and was replaced instead by this brand new world, colourful, brilliant, vivid, in which I played in my mind that eventful airport lounge conversation again and again, in a million different ways; always seeing her, her lips, her eyes, her fingers, and often her fingers pressed against the glass. It was a relief to my mind to know its love was true; and it was all it needed. I recovered rapidly, or got cured rapidly. And all the time the psychiatrists looked at me and marvelled at their proficiency, I thought of her, I thought of her when someday, next winter perhaps, she would one day fall into my arms.


It was about 3 years later that the Malhotras came to dine at our house. The Malhotras, in case I haven't told you, is the family who live opposite our house(yes, the very one). It was some function, I remember; I think it was my brother's thread ceremony. We were dining at the table, and Mr. Malhotra was seated right opposite me. “Sir”, I asked,unable to contain my curiosity, “Is your niece still in New York?”
“Pardon?”, he asked, looking up.
“Your niece. Is she still in New York?”
“I don't know who you are talking about”, he replied, “I don't have a niece in New York.”
The sun sets behind me now as I write these words, making vivid red patterns of light and shadow on the wall in front of me. I look at them and wonder. Are these real? These shadows that flit now hurriedly across the wall, contorting themselves into wierd shapes, are they anything real, or just a figment of imagination? Perhaps they are neither. Perhaps life is so too. Neither true nor fantasy, but both, a splash of imagination on the canvas of reality. Perhaps, someday, sitting on an easy chair struggling to see these patterns that are so evident now, I will understand. Understand that sometimes, it does not really matter who or what you are in truth, what you see, hear or feel in reality. Understand that sometimes, shadows flit past that are not of anything real or true, and yet are more meaningful in their fantasy. Understand that, when all of life is flowing past in the blizzard of reality, perhaps sometimes we must accept whatever little warmth comes our way unquestioningly, even if it is just a fantasy, even if it is just a shadow with its hand pressed against the glass.



Endnote : This story has its origins in a kind of daydream I had one day, sitting in a boring Physics class and trying desperately not to doze off. To be fair, I had a fever of around a 102 that day, and in the delirium that accompanies such a high fever, I suddenly had this little vision, this image of a shadow, nothing more, the shadow of a girl, seen through a window.

I thought nothing more of it that day, of course, for I fell asleep soon after, but about a week later, in a sudden flurry of inspiration, I wove a story around it, and in a whirlwind session of writing (I had never before written so much in such a short notice) I wrote down about five pages or so of it.

At least half of the credit for this story must, however, go to my friend, whose name I wonder if I can mention here. I had written down all about this strange little love affair, all about the shadow, right till the point when the girl behind the window disappears. But where should the story go after that? What would happen to the protagonist? I asked this friend of mine, and in a half-serious tone, he said that my dear narrator would go to bed with another girl thinking it was her!

And that was when the whole story in its current form was framed in my mind. Suddenly, it was all in front of me, crystal clear, and it so infused me with joy when I wrote it that I mailed it to a couple of my friends, with the subject "The best thing I have ever written". In retrospect, perhaps it isn't so good, but it had me started on writing as a hobby, so I hold it close to my heart.

The Beginning

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage we never walked
Through the door we never opened
Into the rose garden

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

You might have guessed, perhaps, that the name for this blog is inspired from these lines above. No, don't ask me what they mean - to say the truth, I don't even know! No, that's not entirely correct of course; I do have a vague inkling, just a vague inkling, mind, of what these lines mean, and this first post is exactly about that very inkling.
When I had put it into my head that I was going to start a blog, and had come to this site and tried to follow their "3 easy steps" (Don't mind the sarcasm, you'll be irritated too if you were on a slow internet connection wondering if the LAN cord is even plugged in), I got pretty frustrated by the fact that I just couldn't get a URL for myself. I mean, I had tried to write down everything, everything, mind, that was even remotely connected with me, and here it is in blithe, red letters, "Sorry that url is not available"! And the whole rummy thing about it is that the stupid thing even gives suggestions, and - what's more- suggestions that sound like those weird chimeras they create in biotech labs. Anyhow, here I was, with a blog in my head, and without a name, and suddenly, this quote flashed by. Like, swoosh. And yes, there it was, all that was me, all that I ever believed in, written in four brilliant verses by (well, everybody calls him that anyway) one of the best poets the world has ever seen.

But what do these lines mean anyway? What, in other words, do I stand for?

Look around you, and what do you see? You are sitting in front of a computer, probably, so you'll have a screen in front. A table, maybe, made of steel, or wood. A room around, with a window maybe, showing the city skyline, something that, like everything else you have seen for eons on end. It is what I see around myself too. But that isn't all there is, is it? Reality isn't all there is.

It is surprising how many of life's greatest experiences are not experiences at all. You undergo an accident, but you have fallen unconscious, so you don't know what happened. You have passed the JEE, yippee, there's your rank on the screen. You have screwed up your exam, great, now sit up in the summer. And yet, when you lie down and close your eyes, what do you see? You see the girl you love, or would have loved, and play out conversations with her that could never be. You see yourself standing and receiving a prize, but that's yet to happen. You hear the next song you might want to compose on your guitar. As the first waves of sleep lap over your soul, you move farther and farther away from the real. You move into that magical world of thought, of fantasy, where a flick of your brush and your deepest desires become true, a blink of your eyes and your greatest fears are in front of you. What matters, in the night, when you fall off to sleep, when you bring out all those life's experiences that you have kept stashed in your memory, is not life at all, but what you saw of it, what you wanted of it, what you dreamed of it. What resides, my friend, in the deepest recesses of your soul, in the coldest waters of your mind, in that unerring servant you call memory, is not reality, not truth, but your very own, personal dream.
And that dream, my friend, is what Eliot talks about. Did what happened happen? Does what comes into memory actually part of our past? And the answer, according to me, is simple. It does not matter. It matters not what is real or unreal. It matters not whether your dreams come true or not. If in the dead of the night you can sigh, and fall off contented, joyous, even a lie told to your heart is a truth. If in its treacherous deceit, memory takes you to the rose garden, would you let go of its hand?