This happens to be a very common occurrence. And something which always begs publication into the various social networking sites to gain whatever little legitimacy that it feels entitled to.
It can be set off by anything. A beautiful summer evening in Bangalore ( and the coming of twilight in Bangalore is truly a beautiful thing). Bangalore has beautiful skies. Expansive, and you wouldn't believe the colours if you saw it. The high rise buildings are so far and in between that it never interrupts the sky. When you look into the skies of Calcutta, you don't really look into it. You are interrupted by the trees and the street lights and the buildings, though they are not really tall, these buildings, but still, the skies of Bangalore seem to dominate. The highway from the city to the airport, where I have been living for the past three years, make the most use of the sky. When you pass the air force base on an airport Volvo, you are elevated enough to see the parked choppers on the base, beside the hangers, as if neatly laid out for a photo op for an ad. And I would buy everything the ad would want to sell, because the sky makes the scene truly incredible.
But its the feeling that comes along with it that is making me write this. I am usually alone when I am in the frame of mind to appreciate the skies of Bangalore. And more often than not, I am also in transit. A bus ride from where I lay my head to rest to where I go to drink my guts out is also the narrow gap in time where what I have lost, unnameable and indefinite, and my yearnings, even more unnameable and indistinct, hit me the hardest. And the Bangalore skies play an enormous role in that.
I look at the sky, and feel the evening, absorb the breeze and the weather, which is Bangalore's biggest blessing, and it reminds me of freedom.
Freedom that I have, yet which I forget to appreciate. I could be sitting somewhere at eleven thirty at night and drinking and have no one to answer to, but myself. I could be standing and waiting for a bus home at Mekhri Circle at 11.30 pm, and again, I would have no worries of someone waiting for me at home, worried sick. I do not complain about people worrying about me. I appreciate it, and I love them in return for loving me so much. But I am talking about the feeling I get when I see no buses other than gigantic Volvo buses leave for destinations such as Hyderabad, Chennai and Mysore. These buses, predictably enough, define infinite possibilities for me then. They are my versions of sailing ships in the night. They have no barriers, and the world is open and limitless to them. I get a feeling that jumping onto one of those buses would bring me as close to being truly unfettered as possible.
And the night. The night always feel truly timeless in my head. A day is short and the sun runs on a schedule. But the darkness of the night you cannot track across the sky. It remains constant from the time it falls across the sky to the time it has to lift itself to make way for the sun again. Its the seeming endlessness of it is whats so wonderful about it. And there is nothing more beautiful as the night in a city. You can own whole cities then. They are yours to walk, and peruse, and revel in. Time stops then, and the city is suspended along with it. You can pick up bits and pieces and examine them, wonder at it, and then put it back. Nights are really when the city you live in is truly yours.
Combine all this together, and its a potent mix. But it still lacks the finishing touch: Age.
I was going to the city yesterday, not for any specific purpose, but just because. And the weather heralded spring and possibly summer, not unbearably, but just enough to bring on this kind of melancholia. And I thought of other years that have passed before and the other seasons such as this, and Age made me think of the idiot that I was then. Because I had thought that there was something better waiting for me away from the tea shops, and field we all used to while away our lives then thinking that life hadn't started yet. Then I moved away, came to the city of endless skies, and moved into a different routine of sorts, tasted what could be Life. But I was still reticent to label it as such, because there was still the faint whiff of disappointment that would attach itself to my time here, and i didn't want Life to be anything other than sweet smelling. As I sat on the roof of my PG house and drank with whole new set of friends, feeling the set downs that this new life had wacked my ass with, I still refused to believe that I was living. Then suddenly, three years had passed, and I had lost almost a year in a black hole, from which I have emerged with barely any memory of a sense of self, and I still stubbornly want to hold on to the belief that Life, as I want it, hasn't started yet. But its a losing battle.
This is it, a nagging suspicion whispers. These endless skies, and the bus journeys, and the knowledge of the friends whom you have nothing to say to, and the changing aspects of life which will never be the same again. It will just go on and on, while people keep falling off the sides, and no rope will hold them back. The melancholia now isn't really about what I have lost anymore. The melancholy I am now left with is actually about how I have been reduced to not thinking at all, and just mindlessly going from one point of definite joy to other, with having nothing much to say to anyone anymore.
It can be set off by anything. A beautiful summer evening in Bangalore ( and the coming of twilight in Bangalore is truly a beautiful thing). Bangalore has beautiful skies. Expansive, and you wouldn't believe the colours if you saw it. The high rise buildings are so far and in between that it never interrupts the sky. When you look into the skies of Calcutta, you don't really look into it. You are interrupted by the trees and the street lights and the buildings, though they are not really tall, these buildings, but still, the skies of Bangalore seem to dominate. The highway from the city to the airport, where I have been living for the past three years, make the most use of the sky. When you pass the air force base on an airport Volvo, you are elevated enough to see the parked choppers on the base, beside the hangers, as if neatly laid out for a photo op for an ad. And I would buy everything the ad would want to sell, because the sky makes the scene truly incredible.
But its the feeling that comes along with it that is making me write this. I am usually alone when I am in the frame of mind to appreciate the skies of Bangalore. And more often than not, I am also in transit. A bus ride from where I lay my head to rest to where I go to drink my guts out is also the narrow gap in time where what I have lost, unnameable and indefinite, and my yearnings, even more unnameable and indistinct, hit me the hardest. And the Bangalore skies play an enormous role in that.
I look at the sky, and feel the evening, absorb the breeze and the weather, which is Bangalore's biggest blessing, and it reminds me of freedom.
Freedom that I have, yet which I forget to appreciate. I could be sitting somewhere at eleven thirty at night and drinking and have no one to answer to, but myself. I could be standing and waiting for a bus home at Mekhri Circle at 11.30 pm, and again, I would have no worries of someone waiting for me at home, worried sick. I do not complain about people worrying about me. I appreciate it, and I love them in return for loving me so much. But I am talking about the feeling I get when I see no buses other than gigantic Volvo buses leave for destinations such as Hyderabad, Chennai and Mysore. These buses, predictably enough, define infinite possibilities for me then. They are my versions of sailing ships in the night. They have no barriers, and the world is open and limitless to them. I get a feeling that jumping onto one of those buses would bring me as close to being truly unfettered as possible.
And the night. The night always feel truly timeless in my head. A day is short and the sun runs on a schedule. But the darkness of the night you cannot track across the sky. It remains constant from the time it falls across the sky to the time it has to lift itself to make way for the sun again. Its the seeming endlessness of it is whats so wonderful about it. And there is nothing more beautiful as the night in a city. You can own whole cities then. They are yours to walk, and peruse, and revel in. Time stops then, and the city is suspended along with it. You can pick up bits and pieces and examine them, wonder at it, and then put it back. Nights are really when the city you live in is truly yours.
Combine all this together, and its a potent mix. But it still lacks the finishing touch: Age.
I was going to the city yesterday, not for any specific purpose, but just because. And the weather heralded spring and possibly summer, not unbearably, but just enough to bring on this kind of melancholia. And I thought of other years that have passed before and the other seasons such as this, and Age made me think of the idiot that I was then. Because I had thought that there was something better waiting for me away from the tea shops, and field we all used to while away our lives then thinking that life hadn't started yet. Then I moved away, came to the city of endless skies, and moved into a different routine of sorts, tasted what could be Life. But I was still reticent to label it as such, because there was still the faint whiff of disappointment that would attach itself to my time here, and i didn't want Life to be anything other than sweet smelling. As I sat on the roof of my PG house and drank with whole new set of friends, feeling the set downs that this new life had wacked my ass with, I still refused to believe that I was living. Then suddenly, three years had passed, and I had lost almost a year in a black hole, from which I have emerged with barely any memory of a sense of self, and I still stubbornly want to hold on to the belief that Life, as I want it, hasn't started yet. But its a losing battle.
This is it, a nagging suspicion whispers. These endless skies, and the bus journeys, and the knowledge of the friends whom you have nothing to say to, and the changing aspects of life which will never be the same again. It will just go on and on, while people keep falling off the sides, and no rope will hold them back. The melancholia now isn't really about what I have lost anymore. The melancholy I am now left with is actually about how I have been reduced to not thinking at all, and just mindlessly going from one point of definite joy to other, with having nothing much to say to anyone anymore.
1 comment:
Very well written.
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