Dreams—however small they might be – their fulfillment always makes us happy. The excitement that comes from longing for something is replaced by sheer joy and thrill of seeing it being fulfilled. I don’t know which one’s better though. Once you get what you dreamt about, the fulfillment becomes just a distinct, memory, etched in your mind. But it is all the time that you spent yearning for it to happen that remains with you.
It is only after you that I discovered that there was so much more I wanted from life. So much more I wanted to do, so much more I had to learn about life and myself, so much more I wanted to give myself, so much more I needed to explore, and so many little dreams I had to fulfill. I existed beyond the relationship. I knew it but never realised it. A cloud that wandered about looking for the perfect time to pour on the dry earth, never realizing that it was getting heavier by the day, denser by the moment and the moment to pour down was for the cloud to choose. And it all happened after you. And I began looking at life beyond you.
Friendship
I discovered a new role of an old friendship, the very next day of the split. A friendship I never gave a chance.
Touch
How i keep rediscovering the importance of touch! But this time it meant much more than ever before. A tender and loving hand on you makes a huge difference when you are lost or upset or sad or excited. And there is something about this touch. It makes me feel safe, secure and loved. It tells me that this world is not such a bad place after all. It’s a lovely place to be in. With it i have also discovered why every relationship can't be given a name. Some relationships are too different and too special to be given a tag.
Concert
Five days later, I witnessed the lights, music and a dream. I had been dying to attend a live rock concert and it happened. The Roger Waters concert! Everything was just perfect. Better than how I had imagined it would be.
Solapur
Within 15 days I left for my much needed break. Saw my Nani’s place after two-and-a-half years. I had been yearning to go there, the place I went every summer before I began working.
Bhaiyya chi gadi, our favourite bhelpuri wala near Maidan in Solapur. The place is our family haunt since my nana’s time. My mum and dad and uncles and aunts ate there when they were in school, and I have been eating there since I was a kid. His stuff is nothing close to the chats we get in Delhi or even Mumbai. They are unique. I have no eaten this kind of food anywhere else in world. His chutney bread, kachori, thanda pani puri (which has only onions as ad ons), chutney puri….yummmmmm. I miss bhaiyya chi gadi now! He is Solapur’s shaan I think.
And yes, can’t leave out Sudha Idli Gruha. The idli and wada’s out there are characteristic of the place. Again the taste and the style of cooking are completely different from all the other cities. They keep serving you as much chutney and as much sambhar you want for no extra charge plus they serve you nice home-made kind of butter to top your idli. And a chilli chutney that served with the food is Sudha’s best stuff. And above all else, these places are dirt cheap.
If you ever go to Solapur, which is next to impossible since the place has nothing that would draw you to it unless you have grown up there, you must eat at these two places. You’ll thank me for this.
They fed me like a pig. From chapatti sabzi, shrikhand to chips, dosas and pizzas, they fed me everything they could in a span of three days. I almost died by the time I left Solapur. I felt like a child there; felt protected being around family and my lovely little cousins.
Bangalore
Then I was on the train to Bangalore. A place I visited three years back. Reading Vikram Seth’s collected poems interspersed with listening to some Jim Morrison I reached Bangalore. There is no better way to discover a place than to go around on your own, alone. I got to do that after a long time. The last time I did that was when I had moved to Mumbai the first time.
I walked in to a pub alone, in a new city, sat at the bar and ordered a drink, chatted with the bartenders, making small conversations about newspapers and the deadlines in Bangalore. The feeling was liberating. To be able to claim your private space — as a woman — in a public place is liberating. And I enjoyed every bit of it. I did it in Bangalore which is not as cool as Mumbai is, for girls. You can hardly see any girls in pubs there on weekdays. Yes on weekends of course you can see women come in but almost always in a group with men for company.
I stayed at home watching movies I had been wanting to watch, getting out in the evenings, taking the local transport only on my 4th day in the city. Walking around and getting the essence of the city was so much fun.
Cauvery Art Emporium was my land mark for several days. If I got down from the auto here I could find my way easily. The place has some lovely stuff. Toys, book marks, show pieces, several hand made works and even a Rs 35 lakh worth sandalwood piece of artifact! Yes, it is over priced but you need to find stuff that you wouldn’t mind spending on.
Shobha took to me to India Coffee House for breakfast one day. After coffee and bread jam toast, the waiter got me two instead of one scrambled egg on toast. He urged to finish it and I did. The prices were so low at that place that I could have probably downed another two if I didn’t feel stuffed with what I had eaten. The uniforms resembled the ones worn by cooks during the British Raj.
The pubs
Legends of Rock and Le Rock are what I definitely miss in Mumbai. Spacious places, that play my favourite rock music, with big screens showing videos, cheap drinks and great ambience. I fell in love with them. I shall never forget the huge 600 ml pints served in huge glasses that looked like a tower. Shrav and I went crazy about them. Had great fun at both these places each time I went there.
We had to make a trip to B11. It was a ritual. That was the one time I missed our very own Rahul. The last time I went to Bangalore, Rahul played the perfect DJ at B11. He played all OUR songs. After all it is always great to have your friend as the DJ. But this time there was no Rahul at the DJ console and the place didn’t seem even an iota of what it was when we came there every single day of our five-day trip years ago. But the best part was I remembered every single spot I had seen so long back in Jayanagar. I was proud of myself and felt nostalgic.
Pikos—a Totos kinda place. But nowhere close to it. Yes, it is dingy, smoky, old and rusty but I can’t compare it with my favourite place in Mumbai, can I?
MG Road is a conglomeration of pubs. Loads of small and big pubs spread across and behind this street. Pikos, Guzzlers Inn, Le Rock, Sticks and several others. When I witnessed it myself I understood why the city is called a pub city. The saddest part especially if you are from Mumbai is that the pubs shut at 11.30 and autos charge you 1 ½ meter after as early as 9.30pm. You will have to bargain with Bangalore auto guys. That’s weird. It’s the law and order of Bangalore that needs to get in place not the people who want pubs to be open longer. The city is safer if the city is alive and kicking longer in to the night. I witnessed a really bad drunken driving accident in the few days of my stay. So is the 11.30 deadline of any use? Surely not!
Pondicherry
I travelled to Pondicherry with a guy I met after nine years. Another dream comes true—I go on a road trip to Pondy. The little Tamil Nadu villages, the forts and the pile- of-stones like mountains were what made my trip beautiful.
But apart from that the road was bumpy in parts and it took us nine hours to get there. Our butts were numb, we had to stand and sit down repeatedly to ease them. Legs were stiff. Getting off from the bike and getting on again was a task. When we finally reached, it was 9.30—the city shuts by 10.30— we had no place to stay. The only resort we had pinned our hopes on, ‘The Banyan Resort’, was shut for renovation that week. We somehow reached the Beach Road, it’s the mini Marine Drive, small, clean with little French architecture buildings along the stretch. I managed to spot a hotel and we finally got a room. My face was black with a layer of soot. I looked like a ghost. After a well awaited and well deserved bath, when I sat on the soft bed, I saw heaven!
Pondicherry has two parts, the French square and the Tamil Square. We had decided to explore the French Sqaure since its architecture and food places were something we had been looking forward to. First we stepped into the tourism office. When we entered the air conditioned office, a guy came up to us and asked us to take the seat. We asked for the map and he handed it over to us. He told us the places we should go to and a pamphlet of the hotels to live in. The tourism office’s booklet was too good! Informative and it served us well in the entire trip. We got out of there, walked down the beach road, which is lined up with all possible government offices of Pondy, from the Court to the Vidhan Sabha.
It was lovely walking down the tiny streets except that it was too hot! The sun burnt my skin, literally despite loads of sunscreen. The walk in the heat was followed by a relaxed brunch. We had French cuisine but don’t ask me the names. I don’t know French! The food accompanied by the beer was just right. When we walked out we decided to get into a cycle-rikshaw. The last time I sat in a cycle-rikshaw was incidentally in Pondy with my parents several years ago.
Soon we checked out from this hotel and headed for Auro beach and began hunting a new place to stay. We wanted to live in a shack on the beach but discovered that all of it was taken up by foreigners. Yes, it is here that we realised that this place was a firang magnet. There were firings all over the beach. In our bid to find a place on the beach we entered a firang-packed shack place where auro cookie, auro coffee and everything auro was being sold across the counter at the joint there. Obviously the place was full so we went back to our hunting.
Finally we found a place just behind this auro-hotel. The place had lovely trees with yellow flowers, shacks built ten-feet above the ground and a fantastic balcony. So we stayed in this bamboo house, played in the waves in the evening and took a long walk on the beach. Then we got some beer and sat down on the beach till late in the night. We spoke about a whole lot of things and finally had candle-lit dinner in our balcony. There were no sounds except for the sea waves and moving branches and no lights except for the candle in front of us. I was high and it felt peaceful.
Well, the next day was our last day there. We had our breakfast outside the shack. The little wooden tables and chairs under the shade of the tree were strewn with the yellow flowers bidding us good-bye. It was one of the most peaceful breakfast I’ve ever had. I felt relieved to have come to this place and fulfilled by the discovery of a place so removed from the world I’m so used to living in.
Before leaving for Bangalore we paid a visit to Auro Ville. A half-an-hour drive from the Auro Beach, we encountered several shops owned by foreigners. The coffee shop at Auro Ville looked fantastic, and though we were tired we made the walk to Matrimandir. It’s the golden dome being built at Auro Ville since 1974. The ten-minute walk turned out to be a half-an-hour one, but we were determined to see Matrimandir before setting out for Bangalore.
On our return our goal was set. Two hours to Maghumalai, Krishna Nagar in the next two hours and another two hours to get to Bangalore. Just three breaks this time round. It was a mission and we had to fulfill it. We reached Bangalore in six hours this time!
And last but not the least I sat in a flight for the first time, got a window seat and watched the desert of clouds all the way back to Mumbai.
Life has been exciting, after all the tears and shit!
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