Hyderabad was gracefully peaceful. And immensely unsatisfying. I lined up in a crowd of a million people waiting to earn a little extra to be able to eat at least once, twice or thrice a week in a spotlessly clean restaurant, served by English speaking waiters and people huming the lines 'I become comfortably numb'. This side of the page has notoriously spaced-up malls and imitations and hearts of wooden mirror walking in empty streets.
The Charminar reminds me of Feluda's preferred brand of cigarette which he invariably used to smoke to discover any new twists in the trick. I wish Feluda lived on, just as we haplessly live and play merry-go-round. This was my first experience with the name Charminar. On the contrary, Charminar lives on as aura less grey iron pillars amid no insect's life with the name Hitex. It was incredible how both could co-exist knowingly it is flip-flopping. It has big roads and streets and flyovers with no meddling to take you to your little chalets faster. A matter of convenience undoubtedly. Too many sumptuous and seemingly happy preoccupations. The sky ends somewhere behind the spaced-up large fort-alike houses, and tall ambitions; you and I barely had a chance to view the horizon.
Sitting on the grasses, received the first splash of green drizzles, over cups of Lucknow was amusing while the parrots continued reading your future. Waking up to dreams of togetherness and those I experientially lived last night and this moment lying on his torso, I realise this is what I wish in my heart and can live so possibly. He has grown to a delicacy in my eyes.
I am a lonely soul, not deserted, not secluded. The bitter sounds and desperation of not being them, of not being able to play guitar, of not being you perturbs my consciousness as I walk down the streets in six, and seven sometimes.
The people who take a ride of merry-go-round with you, the wide, empty roads and the lanes with white and pink houses lined up, the little potions of love you are fortunate to drink in every fading moment of your stay, too many numbers of unrestrained freedom and despair, this is not yet the place to become untamed.
P.S. I will come back again and again to fill up my insatiable hunger, for peace.
A disclaimer. These are the odd fragments from my story called Hyderabad. Might not be akin to yours. Someday you and I, and them will sip coffee over manifold hyderabad.
9 comments:
I have just gone through the piece carrying the statutory (and titular) warning that it isn't to be read. So I sailed the unchartable. The phosphorescence of diction riding the turbulent waves of expressions tossed me up and threw me down. My senses were battered to leave me enamoured by the beauty of incomprehensible existentialism. Is it diaspora deconstructed in Nizamesque languor? Kolkata is still predictable in its predicaments myriad, and madness. Kudos lady !
what would i say darling! ..what would i 'comment' on your past continuous slices ?! .. the unseen city just became ny room neighbour..the mushroomed charminars with their grey & psychedelic lights switching in time on & off (or are they co-existing in the reluctantly non-existent time ?) . . . your expression has chosen the confidence & assertiveness that delights your old friend .. there were times i lived along with you your 'lucknow cups' .. & the cup-full of aroma like that of cognac' fumes seemed encrypted on my computer screen - lovingly germinated in your pink ovaries ..
a big hug for the moon drop in rain blanket :-) love u
@ Velupillai
This is something where words abandon me always; yes, it might be diaspora deconstructed in Nizamesque languor as you said, my deepest dreams and fears walk together, and sometimes the soft tyranny of madness stab me. If you can draw the mystifying curtain for some moments a bouquet of sunlight can brighten up someone's day. I would love to know your name.
@ saoni
Sometimes I wonder how many years of thrills, madness and deaths of life we have relished together. I often wish to take you in my caravan and watch you procreating each syllable of your thoughts gracefully.
Velupillai Pirabhakaran yields place to Baitullah Mehsud. For queer reasons the profiles of systematic perpetrators large-scale crimes against humanity tend to fascinate me. (Oh yes, the imperialist powers, the capitalist war mongers did commit carnages of much greater scale. But so long as they are not tried and convicted in any special tribunal they are exempt from being despised!). May be my timidity and non-descript real-life identity compels me to hop from one such chilling, horrifying and loathsome alias to another in virtual life in search of fantasy adventure. It is romanticism gone awry.
Platitudes apart, I belong to Kolkata. Neither a poet, nor an esaayist, or a keen student of English literature – I am sort of a pretender, merchant of mediocrities much in the line of CARGO CULT. I have located you in an Orkut community “poets and lyricists”. Your profile prompted me to your blog site. On going through your blogs I just could not resist commenting upon. Does it suffice for the time being?
Lady, I am both amused and perplexed to see your love and hate relation with a city. Hyderabad is a city of stones. It is no bank of Ganges...no flowers, no trees! It is a rocky desert where a few high rise proudly proclaim it as the city of the tramps! People are homeless here.. sleeping on the traffic islands or in the high rises! They know fully that they don't belong there. It is no lake district... there is no place for a romantic cry... not for the dwellers of this city.
What perplexes me is your longing to search peace in such an arid place! Do these unknown dwellers allure you to this city which will never yield? (fear of romantic emptiness ahead) Or is it a modernist's attempt to embrace a post-modern chaos? (and a subsequent failure to embrace a tarnished peace that is soaked in mundane and drab reality)
The search is on for both you and me...
@ Baitullah
I would like to see the veil through which you will read my next blog.Hopefully.
@ Aonymous
A series of walks together by the Hussain Sagar lake in the first droplets of sunlight, and night strawls in the lanes and by lanes might help us to live at peace with the chaos!
you should continue writing.
I like it.
First time I am reading your writing...brilliant is the word! an awesome piece of writing which makes me look at the City of Pearls from a deeper perspective!
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