Found: There's No Place Like Rome.
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I have a holiday in Rome coming up, so I'm sharing all the places I can't
wait to see, shop, and, of course, eat. My annotated map included!
4
Silchar:
An early morning text from a fuckingawesomebitch. I
qualified the Delhi University entrance test for B.A. English Honours. Yay.
“Respected parents, as much as
I love Architecture, I want to do this instead.”
Drama.
Drama.
Tickets booked for New
Delhi.
Bye bye, pleasant summer
sky.
New Delhi:
The sun burns patterns onto my skin.
Midnight strikes. First cut off. Delhi College of Arts and
Commerce, otherwise known as the college with the depressing, ugly buildings.
And inefficient, rude office staff.
Traveling from one table to another with more papers, forms,
certificates and photocopies of those certificates than two mortal hands can
carry. Frustrated people. Slowly moving fans. After going around for two days for a simple
admission procedure: Aaj aur nahin, kal aye. A girl tears off her forms in
teary anger. Somewhere a parent threatens to go to his old friend, the
principal – or was it the chairperson?
Yours truly is now a DCAC student.
Three days, the second cutoff and a few more annoying hours
at DCAC later, yours truly is a student at Kirori Mal College.
*insert happy theme music*
Red Fort. Jama Masjid. Humayun Tomb. Dargah Nizammudin Auliya. Qutub Minar.
No rain here. People dying because of floods back in Assam.
Haridwar:
4 am wakeup call. Sleepwalk to the car. Short
weekend-in-the-middle-of-the-week weekend. Plug in the earphone. Fiona Apple.
Sleep. Wake up. Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. Breakfast at fancy resort. Shekar
Kapur’s The Sadhu. Sleep again. Wake up. Pine trees and milder weather. UK.
Uttarakhand, not United Kingdom. Kilometres long traffic jam. Haridwar. Humanity at its
worst. Humanity at its best. Bhajans set to the tunes of item numbers. Bells
ringing. “Uttarakhand police aapko Devbhoomi mein swagat karti hain.” Gushing
Ganga. Dirty Ganga. People drinking Ganga, bathing in Ganga, washing in Ganga.
Guru poornima. Crowd on crowd. Lodge room opening out to terrace looming over
the ghat. Monkeys on the roof. Monkeys on the terrace. Monkeys on the light
posts. Monkeys on the temple shires, above the gods. Evening aarti.
Synchronised fireworks. An reddish tinge over the scene. Devotees crying and chanting.
This unbelieving heart quivers. Reason returns in a while. Night falls. Tiny
specks of blessed fire floating over the river. Jai Ganga Maiya. Jai Bhole
Nath. Jai – watch where you’re stepping. Beads and shawls. ‘Off season rebate,
madam!”. Studying the ghat from the terrace under the pale shadow of the full moon. Midnight walkers of the ghat. Naked bodies on show. Slowly sleep
comes.
Rishkesh:
It’s raining in Haridwar as we leave it for its cleaner,
less famous sibling, Rishikesh. A giant Shiva bids us farewell. Never see you
again. Porcupine Tree on the earbuds. Sleeps comes again. “Bhaiya, aa gaye.”
It’s raining hard. A crowded parking lot. 10 rupees worth plastic, green
raincoats. With hoods. A guide from Calcutta. We get mistaken as Calcuttans.Temples built where the Pandavas
had prayed. A suspended bridge named after the flawed god-king of Ayodhya. Temples
built for the ficklest of reasons. A government approved museum cum jewellery
shop. White stones from the icy mountains sparking fire. A ek mukhi rudraksh. "Not for sale, saar, only watching." Sriyantra to maintain the vastu of the ghar, for the surakhsha of the parivar
and sukh shanti of all. A navratna necklace. “Action with phasion, madam!”
Rains? Where's the rain? Raincoats gifted to the driver. Bye bye, Rishikesh. The giant
Shiva passes again. As does the Ganga, muddy with soil washed from the
mountains. Lunch at the yoga baba’s humble 5 star medical cum yoga cum
whateverelse centre. Shanti shanti shanti hi. Bye Uttarakhand. Bye Uttar
Pradesh. Oh hello again, burning Delhi.
0
I'm in a mood to not let all the unpublished stuff go to waste, so I'm publishing this, even though I'd written this much time back.
I see that I've completely ignored my blog. Despite the promises made to myself of not screwing up the blog the second time round, I still seem to do the very same thing. Commitment phobia much? Anyway, a lot happened in these (many) few days. A few illusions and dreams broke. And broke with a lot of noise. But let's not dwell on the melodramatically sad stuff. I finally visited the country capital and it was just as I thought and better. Well, a lot of bling under the karakti sun lead to paining eyes but the pretty, pretty, pretty monuments undid it all. Witnessed no black SUV pulling in girls. Witnessed a LOT of beggars leaving their palm prints, the ones who still had their hands, on the car window glasses. And buildings from possibly all the time periods. Okay, not all, but most. A swanky airport. And the skin burning Delhi sun. A fort, three memorials to people long dead, a colonial gate and city children reigning over a fountain the masters left behind, the blocks of national governance, two towers, Two bazaars from different eras. A step well that was even older (seven freaking hundred years!).
I see that I've completely ignored my blog. Despite the promises made to myself of not screwing up the blog the second time round, I still seem to do the very same thing. Commitment phobia much? Anyway, a lot happened in these (many) few days. A few illusions and dreams broke. And broke with a lot of noise. But let's not dwell on the melodramatically sad stuff. I finally visited the country capital and it was just as I thought and better. Well, a lot of bling under the karakti sun lead to paining eyes but the pretty, pretty, pretty monuments undid it all. Witnessed no black SUV pulling in girls. Witnessed a LOT of beggars leaving their palm prints, the ones who still had their hands, on the car window glasses. And buildings from possibly all the time periods. Okay, not all, but most. A swanky airport. And the skin burning Delhi sun. A fort, three memorials to people long dead, a colonial gate and city children reigning over a fountain the masters left behind, the blocks of national governance, two towers, Two bazaars from different eras. A step well that was even older (seven freaking hundred years!).
UPDATE: Qualified for DU!
