Dilli, Delhi, Home

The thing is growing up in Delhi, I think I fell in love with her, with who she is and how much she is. If you were to look at my city as a room then you have to find the trap door which is apparent but hidden in the texture of the walls and once you find it the walls fall away to reveal the butterfly effect of the room you'v always seen but this time its different. There are vines and creepers hidden along the undersides of the bed and chipkalis and kaan ka keedas and white colored 'susu' keedas where they really dont deserve to be.

Delhi lets you be not one but a thousand things and will show you her secrets if only your willing to look.

Its a city that can morph itself to your every mood, my city in winter encloses in itself the purest and most genuine feeling of elation. The light changes and when we think of Delhi the weather has a lot to do with out nostalgia. Warm, sluggish whirring fan, summer afternoons in Delhi University and monsoon in a car peering out at the road.

The train pulling into New Delhi station, a flash of light before dark, light,flash dark, dark, dark, dark and then the all too muchness of light. secret writing on the stones of a forgotten monument, secret chaste walks in Lohdi gardens when all you want is the audacity of the local leach to jump your companion, who if he or she is sensible is eating lemon tarts from the IIC.

Weeping at the sight of the purana kila all lit up like a bride who will never get married. Talking Bhartnaytam and other constructive activities or just general pretentious posturing with knees touching under a dirty table serving up momos or Kathi kababs.

The license to be pretentious and then be a jaat. to be pish posh and a dehati, to love and like and might I add hate with abandon.

You dont have to like Delhi to love her. Delhi is not 'nice' and she doesn't make it easy but its wonderful to be in love with her because sometime you cant tell if she is walking to you or away from you.

A biblical question

Adam of the fame of Eve and paradise must have been white to have been tempted by an apple. I mean if you must be seduced by a fruit shouldn't it be the mango? Ripe with juice flowing down your chin when you bite into it. The sour tickling the tip and the sweet flooding the countours of your tongue. I would settle even for a watermelon but men with watermelons in their throats would be difficult to digest. So mangoes it must be then, the ones where you tear of the top with your teeth and squeeze the flesh into your open, delirious with anticipation mouth. Paradise should have been tropical and Adam, chocolate with long hair.

Compassion and self pity hold one hand and slap each other with the other. Like conjoined twins unable to escape the truth of a shared kidney and an all too small heart but riding the nauseating waves of the world wide web in search of the elusive surgery that will finally allow them to get dining chairs opposite from each other.

It is incredibly easy to give in to both because ultimatly each is an excuse to feel the same thing. Compassion lets you feel love and feel good about it and self pity makes you feel like splitting your head open but generally over the love and loss of something.