A happy insomnia

I wonder what could be the cause for me being awake every night these days. I'm not worried or tense, I just find it very soothing to be up till 4 a.m. The world is quiet and the early morning cool steadily creeps onto you and makes your toes go cold.


Cold, that is one thing I miss from my Doon, the winters when the hands go numb and the eyes water. February is a strange month in Dun, just like September. It's too cold inside and too warm in the Sun, there's a steady breeze that blows throughout the day, making those curtains flutter.


Aaaah and the nights are amazing. I usually sit out in the verandah, jostling with my ageing dog, who still likes to think he has the vigour of a two year old. You can smell the weather changing, the wet clammy monsoon giving way to the clear, crisp autumn.


The freshly painted night sky with the Orion and his dog, rising in the south, chasing Lepus. There is a slow moon that rises from the East, starting just under the hills, and about as big as my palm. On nights like these, I just sit out and stare at the skies, tracing those stories. I miss such a sky in Bangalore. I miss those mango trees, our red gate, the seasonal river, that road up the hill.


But then I forget all this when I am in Bangalore, I never seem to hanker for anything from home. I think they go into some dark corner of my sub-conscious and snapped shut. Only once did I dream of those wild flowers that grow on the hilly slopes of Mussoorie. I could feel that dew, cold on my palm, and smell that wet grass. I woke up. Funny, how it's never funny.


I guess in these early mornings, I remember a lot of things that I loved and have left behind. What I wouldn't give to watch the Sun rise from behind those mountains and sit in the bare branches of that gigantic semul tree.

My alarm clock

I just unearthed the alarm clock from my college days.It had been lying in a pile of forgotten belongings for these past five years, until I decided to rescue it. A battery change later, it's ticking off cheerily and has even assured me with its shrill electronic dual tone alarm.

Hmmm ... wonder why I feel so rejuvenated, so young because of a ticking clock. Isn't it supposed to work the other way? The clock running our youth down, grimly indicating to us the fleeting nature of time.

I guess it reminds me of my college days, when it would sit pretty on top my study table and when my life used to be regulated by its two unequal whiskers. All these years, I have been free of it, waking and sleeping and slouching as I please but today I have found that determined friend who will goad me to a schedule.

Its good to have friends.

Chooran waalaa

Its been a while since I last thought about that old man who we only knew as the Chooran waalaa. He was entirely unremarkable in his appearance; a small, dark, bald man who would always wear a white dhoti-kurta. In the 1990's he seemed an anachronistic relic of pre-Independence era. A man with nothing on him except a basket full of chooran and sweet and sour pellets that made your mouth tingle.

I remember him coming to where we used to play in the summers, calling out hoarsely in his guttural voice, selling to us his little joys of life. Two pocketful of goodies worth Rs. 2; there was nothing too expensive then. Not even fun.

Now and then I saw him walking along the road under the hot summer Sun with nothing but that basket on his head. He was a poor man. I often wondered what had happened to his family because he seemed too old for work like this. I don't think he ever complained about his fate.

We used to share our favourite spot in the canal near my home with him. Summers were just endless hours in the canal, thrashing about in  that cool water, trying to catch some fishes which somehow never survived more than two days at home. I still think that it was the tap water that killed them. Like the municipal corporation that killed our canal and overlaid it with a wider road.

His lunch was invariably in the old village temple near my home, where he used to put his basket down and chat with the man who pretended to be the priest. Though we knew he was no more than a refugee. Time was so simple then, you knew everyone around you and everyone knew you. Somehow all of it just went away; you went away - to college, got a job, started earning and lost him to memories.

And then you saw him again, still in his white dhoti-kurta, his skin still as dark as charcoal except for a huge scar on his chest, and you knew that this was the end. Somewhere a voice went silent, like your canal, covered, hidden and to be forgotten.

Old Ink

I was wondering when was the last time I wrote a real letter to someone, with a real pen and ink. The days seem almost hazy, I remember furiously scribbling down the last letter in my English Language exam addressed to God knows whom.
Ah, and yes, I almost forgot those four years at Engineering College were spent in the drudgery of University examinations, scribbling for grades twice a year.

But I'm actually missing the smell of a freshly filled fountain pen, the scratch of the nib as it works across the sheet of paper. Its a world that we have left behind, a world of letters and handwritten notes, of pens and letter-pads. Its makes me sad, though I know that we are in a better world and times, of electronic communication and instant status updates.

I have had this idea idly germinating in my mind to take up writing by hand once again. I have no rational reason for it, only a heart full of vague emotions and the ever growing dismay for the easy, at-your-service world. I'm not old or incapable, I want to do things with my own hand, see the world with my own eyes. I want to travel and jot down my experiences.

Maybe evolution is playing with me, kicking up my primal urge of self-reliance. I don't know, but I want to break-off with technology at some point and assert my own existence on the power of my animal will and sinews.