Dilli!!!!

I am quintessential MBA types.......MBA kiya sur sabun tel ke pyaar mein chal pade bbay ki taraf......so I am part of the many million single independent women in Mumbai. The city is exhilarating ...it lives in your skin and after spending some months here you almost forget that you are not an inherent part of the city but actually more like a money plant which has been snapped from somewhere and just put in some water in a pretty decorative pot.......

And then after a few months I pack my bags with some basic things - light packing is what i call it. Though something about my packing for home always baffles me. I am usually a very meticulous traveler  I know precisely what i would need and pack accordingly. However, my packing for home is clumsy, inadequate and looks like a tornado has hit my bag. I have never figured it out. I think my mum looking at my suitcase and sighing with disgust has become an integral part of being back home. I cant think of any other reason. For my mum - her project Anupriya starts with looking at my bag and continues till the end of my trip......the crux of the project is - i need to organize her life for her - somehow clean ironed clothes, 3 home cooked meals, well organised cupboard are in her mind the golden key to an organised and sorted life

And home for me is the city called Delhi......or as i like calling it - Dilli. Delhi somehow doesn't have the heart in it - literally of course! And for me coming home is as much about the city as it is about home.......


the entire experience starts with watching the plane land......the first glimpse of the city is an ever comforting feeling.......looking for the familiar buildings and places and roads and tracking them on the plane window with my fingers is now a routine. So on my flight to Delhi I always take the left side seats (a, b or c) because the view from the left side is better - am gonna say why in a bit. So much so that i am cranky and irritated if i have to sit on the other side.


So landing in Delhi is a well orchestrated routine. The plane bends slightly while taking the turn and i get my first faint glimpse of the city lights....this is my cue to sit up straight, push my specs closer to the eyes, press my nose to the window and wait for the plane to turn completely and go ahead for 1 min - for my first familiar building - JNU library.....it is a 6 storied building and tallest in quite a large radius owing to JNU being surrounded by wilderness.......and while the plane is heading for the airport - i spend 5 mins trying to locate the other part of JNU - PSR (which was right behind the library), SPE, stadium all of it to live 1 yr in 5 mins......by this time we are almost touching down and we land with a thud......

And this is how my rendeavouz with meri dilli starts.....its now been 5 years n its just the same.....


Once here one cant help but compare one's life in the 2 cities and what would be different and what would be liked and what would be acceptable and what wouldn't be.....and i have reached a conclusion - i want to stay in mumbai n not shift to delhi (am using delhi here and not dilli coz one cant make a choice b/w the heart and a physical space)


Phir bhi once am here, dilli does something to me......its an intense and draining experience and a little disturbing too......its almost like i am living the experience and yet i am experiencing it as an outsider and a spectator.....the girl who is living it is someone i don't even recognize at times. She floats through her time here half living in reality aka present and half in a fantasy world which i don't even know if existed or could exist.

So dilli infuses this nervous, on the edge and impatient energy in me......my eyes widen with curiousity and ears open to absorbing the daily hustle bustle of a city i have known for over 15 yrs now. This is the city which saw the transformation of a schoolgirl into an independent opinionated discerning woman. And yet i absorb the city like its my first and last day here.......

Dilli also makes me break down the past 18 years into smaller time periods and see them through a microscope to find those tiny cluster of moments which i can carry back with me to a city i now call home and spread them in my house there to add some heart and soul to it. And its funny how i dig through the 18 years every time to find the exact same moments and memories - detailed to the last T in exactly the same manner and length. And at the end of it i wonder what do i actually intend to carry back with me - the rummaging through the rubble of 18 years or the actual memories.

But it is a ritual of sorts for me.....a dilli trip without this is incomplete and leaves me feeling agitated, incomplete and inadequate. I find my house in mumbai cold and dreary otherwise......


Dilli - the city where amidst all the madness i find the quietest n the most peaceful corner of my heart.......where everything except myself is a blur and stays like hat- never once threatening to become clear!

the feeling of letting things go......

I have been struggling with saying what i am going to say for almost 3 years now.....i just didn't know how to put it into words which made sense. But then i guess one sometimes needs to just get down at it and take it up as a "to do" and hope to finish it...

I sometimes wonder what people mean when they say - one needs to let go or one needs to move on. I personally find both these expressions immensely amusing. Every time i hear one of them I have a speech bubble in my head with the following scene running in them

One needs to let go - Popeye holding Pluto by his neck after popping a can of spinach and Pluto saying Let me go - Popeye one needs to let go!!!

One needs to move on - Charlie Chaplin's movie (i keep forgetting the name) where he is in a prison and the person ahead of him is fighting with the server for food and Chaplin just points to him and says one needs to move on - move it - move it!!!!

And when people say it to me they possibly see this blank expression in my eyes b'coz i am trying very hard to look concerned and agree with them but then all i can manage is not laugh uncontrollably.

For me holding on to things and events is not such a bad thing. I personally think we as people are a sum total of all the experiences we have had and our character is a like a mosaic - which is an ever evolving thing with every chip or experience that you put into it. So if this is true then i don't know where letting things go fits into the equation.

Let's take an example. Say a person gets fired from his first job. Now in his head he did everything he could to be a success and he also thought that he was very good. But then someone whose opinion mattered did not. And undoubtedly to his impressionable mind it was unacceptable and he couldn't stop wallowing about he doesn't understand why and how it could happen to him. Say this was 2 yrs ago n let's fast forward to today. This person would have had 2 choices - to let things go and to hold them in some corner of his heart and let the pain or humiliation hit him in small doses sometimes.

I think if he chose the first route he would have been happier in the short term and possibly regained confidence sooner and would have attacked the job market with a vengeance. But in this process he would have made 2 cardinal mistakes - he would have moved on from this incident believing that life had been unfair to him and  would never question his own ability. On the other hand if he wallows in what happened for a linger time and carries this incident as an important event of his life with him forever then he will think about it so many times that he will eventually know precisely what went wrong. And most importantly what to watch out for in the future.

Needless to say i prefer the second route as long as it doesn't become self destructive. I think good or bad incidents in life must be treated like a holiday. The small moments within them should be sorted through, clicked n then pasted on to an album for keepsake. And someday while you listen to your favourite music and sip a cup of tea or something stronger as you wish - you should turn the pages of these albums n laugh, cry and sometimes hate yourself ......but do always remember that you are a sum total of all those pictures put together.