Long Walk to Freedom.

15th August, 2006. As India entered into its 60th year of freedom, I found myself standing behind a two year old girl, her little fingers inside her mouth and staring at the big grey platform down below.

She was calculating in her little head, whether she would actually have to risk falling down from the train or whether she could safely alight. And as I had expected, it was a little too much for her little head to calculate, as her little fingers went from her mouth to scratching her head.

It would have been around sixty seconds since I had been standing behind that one and a half feet grown girl. The line behind me was expectedly getting a bit impatient, numb to the agony of the little girl ahead of me. Just as I thought that I personally would have to help her get down, her mother came, much to the delight of others behind me, and helped her off the train.

Now that the girl was safely on the platform, her small little eyes, with big pupils went straight to her mom. She was hoping that her mom would lift her up and would save her from the agony of walking the length of the platform in the early morning. Her mom who was busy with her dad counting the bags, unfortunately wasn’t paying any attention. She tried to pull her dress too, but to no avail.

To her utter disappointment her mother only stretched out her hands, meaning that she would have to walk, with only her mothers fingers for guidance. She reluctantly took her right hand and began to walk.

Her small, little, foggy brain, just being deprived of good sleep, was thinking how could she have been put to such a huge task, which demanded extreme physical labour. She was also wondering where had all the sympathy gone, which comes for granted when you are barely able to reach you mothers’ toes!

As her foggy brain was still trying to come to terms with the disgrace and utter coldness of the outside world, around came a staircase. Now again she looked up to her mom, with the same little eyes and the same big pupils, which had constricted themselves even further. She now was pretty confident that her torture had come to an end and surely she will not climb the staircase on her own.

But her hopes were brutally dashed.

Her mother, with her outstretched hands, literally lifted her first, and put her over the first tread of the staircase. Now the little foggy brained girl with big eyes and big pupils was desperately clinging to her mothers’ fingers, trying to keep up with her mothers' pace as she briskly ascended the staircase. The foggy brained girl was still trying to come to terms with the rude shock. She was praying that this agony would end, if not for her then at least for the sake of her new dress, which she was sure would tear to pieces.

She was pretty confident that her small legs were at an unnatural angle while she was climbing the staircase. She momentarily thought that if she made through this she would surely become a gymnast one day, with the amount of stretching she was having to do.

I sat on my auto and it was time for me to leave.

The last time I saw that foggy brained girl, she was still walking.

Just the first of her many long walks to freedom.

Happy Independence Day.

The smell of Phenyl

Before you think it is a hugely abstract article, I suggest you better stay with me till the end.

Yes, I am alive and well. Since the day I started working, I feel this is the first public holiday that I have encountered. Rest assured that I may NOT be able to find time in the future soon.

Well so much for me and my blogging.

Poetry and Prose alike, a lot of people have written on smell. Rudimentary stuff like smell of flowers to highly sensual stuff like the smell (or scent !) of a woman. A lot of writing on smell exists around the world.

Well today is 'Raksha Bandhan', a very important festival in our country. People get up in the morning, have a bath to get squeaky clean and then dress their best for the occasion. Girls in bright yellow to deep red and guys mostly in White Kurtas and their other colors are either blue or black.....

And here I was, 9:30 a.m, at my place, just out of bed in my residence. My hair style loosely resembled that of Einstein, hair standing on its ends, giving me a look as if I had just been electrocuted. Well, there I stood along with my pathetic looks and my toothbrush in my mouth and stared down at the basin. Here is what I saw..

Normally one would expect water to be clogged in the basin. But along with that there were other assorted items like chillies, capsicum, cabbage. On close inspection I could also find some cough and sputum floating around the already clogged water (Yuck!). On closer inspection still, I also found that traces of fungus were beginning to appear right at the basin board and just when I thought that I had seen it all I found mosquito larvae floating merrily in the clogged basin (now a drain!) along with some cockroaches in the dry periphery.

Damn! I thought, first of all we bachelors are happy messing around the place and when the time comes to clean up I am all alone! Momentarily it crossed my mind,maybe I should sneak outside and spit my toothpaste in the neighbours porch. But I thought otherwise and decided to do one good thing until now and decided to clean up the place.

So here I was with my toothbrush still in my mouth and I started rumagging in my store room and finally found myself a cleaning brush. At least it remotely resembeled a cleaning brush. Then I started with first clearing the clogging and then washing it with some good ol' detergent powder. All the clogged material had to be cleared personally by me and then finally I cleared my throat in the basin before the time came to vomit it out along with my last nights food content.

I then opened the tap and let it stay for a while and finally...

And finally I managed to get hold of some phenyl (imagine I am making it sound heavenly for additional effect) I turned off the tap and sprinkled it generously over my wash basin and then finally looked at it. I could see the original stainless steel of the wash basin.

But the most satisfiying thing was the smell of phenyl. How good it smelled. Maybe the smell of flower or the smell of a woman is better. But at this moment nothing, absolutely nothing could compare the smell of phenyl. To me now it resembled bliss, ecstacy all rolled into one...

The smell of phenyl never felt so good. NEVER EVER so good.

So much in a days work.