Looking to Mohali

Ok. It’s a World Cup semi final against Pakistan. It’s not f’n war! It’s not about history or Prime Ministers or soldiers or bureaucrats.

Having said that, it’s a WORLD CUP SEMI FINAL. Against PAKISTAN.

Some points that I don’t quite know why I am trying to make:

1. To self: it’s going to be tense. Deal with it.


2. To team and fate: PLEASE, please bat first.


3. Talk rationally. Or emotionally. Or both. But don’t joke. Nothing’s funny on Wednesday, I can tell you that right now. No, not even Munaf Patel.


4. I understand that booing is part of sport. I don’t agree with it but I accept it. I cringed a few times when Ponting was booed. But that was Ricky. To Mohali: Please don’t boo the Big Green Men on Wednesday. That will not be cool.


5. I can’t watch it in a pub. Scars from 2003 remain. Also, I don’t want to watch it in a pub.


6. Don’t expect ANY work to get done.


7. I am struggling to think about the match. What is at stake and potential after-effects derail any normal thought processes that begin.


8. To Mohali: back the team. Cheer when it’s tough, not only for runs and wickets. Focus on the game.


9. Don’t. Give Up.


10. To everyone: Don’t get tense. Ignore me in point #1.

Indiaaaaah, Indiaa!

Just got back from a live cricket game. That's right, not just any live game.

I'm still a bit spaced.

Unknown Ahoy

I just walked out of home with a backpack on my, er, back; and a day backpack on my,um, front. I'm off for about 10days. It's the kind of trip some have assumed I have done before, just not for some time. Others are surprised-at times happily, at times befuddled- that I am doing it at all.
And all it is, is a trip alone.

I have a flight out to Delhi late at night. After some more woozy and erratic sleep (the world cup is over but normal sleep remains elusive) I shall be on a bus tomorrow evening. Overnight and in about 16 hours, it shall get me to Manali.
I have never been to Manali, nor to Spiti that I plan to go on to from there.

Old country, new places; familiar approach, unfamiliar companion.

See you on the other side.

Tonight

Tonight, young one
you walk these fields again
expectant and wide eyed.
You wait,
looking toward the rain
and the thrill by your side.
You quiver
with the thrill of possibility,
excitement your bride.

Tonight, the air,
it sizzles with chance
that has pulsed all day.
This smile
at what has been, what is
all that yet may.
Tonight, is nothing
and everything,
its anything you say.

Tonight is tomorrow,
Tonight is now
Tonight is yesterday.

Waiting

You wait for the beep of thrill, the tone of desire, the reminder of hope. Your fingers tingle. They feel like they are delicate, shaking. They aren't. But they seem they are, the frisson of excitement has them bound; the tingle of memory and expectation courses through you.

The little sound will not be for you. Indeed, none of this is for you. Yet you want it to be. You want to be part of it. How easy it is, to see what you desire looming in front of you... while it hesitantly hovers for another.

Hope, though, is a strange thing. Enticing and powerful and exhilirating and fickle. Utterly deceptive.

Or is it just you? Just you being gullible? Choosing the transient buzz of possibility over the cool silence of improbability?

Yes, silence is all there is.

Alive

It starts to drizzle. Little drops of madness. The gentle pitter-patter of wanting. The breeze, content to play a bit-part thus far, fans the fires. His heart skips a beat, but the music matters little. The rhythm is altogether different, it comes from the drumming of impending doom. The beautiful, mesmerising kind of inevitability. This is the precarious yet terribly easy task of letting go. He doesn't resist, and realises he probably never meant to. This giving in, this delicious craziness, this thrill of succumbing... it feels alive.

And he likes feeling life thus.

journeying, a fragment

Its early morning. Too early for light, not early enough to feel like night. My fingers chafe against the straps, before I decide to hoick the bag onto my back, over the overcoat. My head is cold, my skin feels dry already. I hunch a little as I walk- to ease the burden, and also from the way the body tenses in the cold. Next to me, she pulls the woolly cap tighter over her head, notices me noticing it, and smiles. I smile back. Then I grin, and look ahead to the bus station we are approaching. I can feel the thrill running through both of us. We are on the move again.

The Great Blue

I can see a new me here, a new life. Today, it goes something like this.

Wake up. Gentle sunlight is starting to venture into my room, for I left the curtains at the big glass doors undrawn. If I listen hard, I can hear the gentle lapping of the waves. I wake up, sprightly, open the door and look out at the vast, brilliant blueness below and beyond me. Freshly squeezed apple juice. A run on the sand; my body still aches from the bushwalk two days ago. Today I am listening to Voices, which I haven’t heard since listening to it everyday for the first two weeks I was here.

Today, after 2 months of being here, I am supposed discover something for myself. No guidance, no suggestions. Two hours later, after diving into my pool at the Blue Pearl home, to clean it of that solitary leaf floating about, I am on the buggy. My backpack has my camera (not to self- please take less photos!), a handycam, the iPod, my notebook, and a liter of an isotonic drink and another big bottle of 50spf sunscreen. D has decided to stay back today, nursing a bruise from yesterday’s sailing experiment. Hamilton Island, here I come. What have you got for me today, that I can blog about for hundreds to read? I know the video diary from today, already- there is a tree I have been meaning to climb, that hangs out spectacularly over the Great Barrier Reef.

But I won’t tire myself out too much. Tomorrow, I have volunteered for the Aerial Postal Service. It will be a hard, gorgeous day in the skies and on different islands, but I am a committed worker.

I have possibly the best job in the world.. I am the Caretaker of the Islands, and my life is changing.

~
What a chance, and what a brilliant idea. Go make that cool resume for the coolest thing around.

Just before a trip

Lists. What to pack. What else to take along. Print that hotel email confirmation, scan the passports, check that visa again, print the budget and those maps. Questions. Which book do I take? Where the fug are the memory cards? Will I come back to chaos at work? Why is it taking so long to get to that flight? What should my FB status be? Do I still have that travel shaving foam? Will I overpack again? What pens to write with? Why are my limbs tingling again a few hours before the flight? It doesn’t matter, I like it. I love it. I can’t wait.

Sun, sand & sea… here I come.