"Well, I miss Delhi for the food. But I love Madras. This place is so vibrant, has such a peaceful energy about it."
I couldn't quite think of anything to say, so I nodded and cradled the mobile phone. (I'd like to have said 'receiver', but my mobile's about quarter the size of a receiver.)
Maybe it's because I saw a kathakali performance for the first time in my life. Maybe it's because two retards did a wannabe comic act right before, quite incongruously, and one of them called it masakalli, and the other explained the difference between Amitabh Bachchan's son and Anil Kapoor's daughter's pigeon dance, and an ancient dance form from Kerala. Maybe it's because I miss the stage and the audience and the pre-show panic, the pretended last minute rush that infuses lazy afternoons at the auditorium. Maybe it's because I feel things haven't changed for too long. Maybe I miss my kid brothers. Maybe I'm worried I'll hit 30 before I do a solo Bharatanatyam performance. Maybe I'm worried I'll never sing in public.
It's one of those things I do when I'm in a crisis of stagnation. I wait for things to change, and do my research while I wait. I went through this before I moved to London, and I couldn't believe I would get there till I actually did. I went through this before I ran into my future Editor-in-Chief and moved to Delhi. The location shifts weren't the most significant thing about those moves, though. Each of them signified a phase in my life. Every step of the way, I found myself getting closer to who I was in some respects, while moving further away in others.
Delhi was new, and I've often been vituperative in my criticism of its aggression, its laziness, its people, its language and its prejudices - prejudices that have affected me too, and sewn in biases in me that I didn't have earlier. But Delhi is special because it's the place where I found the one thing most significant to me, the one thing that is bringing me closer to who I really am, the one thing that's unlocking barriers inside me, the one thing that is too precious to risk. I've met people I know will stay in my lives forever, just like I did with London. There are corners I have fallen in love with like I did with London. I've not had the luxury of time to bond with the city and make it my own, but I know at some point, it can become mine.
So, I wonder what this restless edge in me wants now. If I decide to move away, I have a plan in mind. That's been my USP since I could think, pretty much. Always have a plan. Maybe that's the reason for my chequered career. Maybe that's how I've done freelancing, print, radio, web, TV, teaching and a tiny little spot of modelling that fortunately, didn't become public. Well, it wasn't exactly a Playboy spread, but filter coffee ads can be a little more embarrassing, I think. Anyway, back to the plan. I know I'll sing and dance and do theatre and write, write, write. Maybe I will even actually put my craving to teach in my old school, into practice. Everyone knew I would become a teacher when I was a kid. The other kids would play House with their dolls. I would play School. I insisted my dad buy me backboards and chalk every now and then - the chalks a little more often because most of them ended up lodged somewhere in my brother's foodpipe. My cousins knew pouring hot water and stamping on my blackboard to ruin it would destroy me, and it did several times over. But I would struggle to finish the portions in time for the exams., set the papers, correct them and give my toppers, medals.
No one thinks I could work for a fifth of what I do now...well, maybe it won't be a fifth, with all the freelancing I could do. But no one thought I would do my post-graduation after I started working, either. I don't know if this is the right time for a switch, and I don't know whether I want a switch. It's one of those times when you drift along, and feel a change in the air. You feel things happening to you, like they do to Haruki Murakami's Protagonist. You don't climb down dry wells or take off into strange woods or start talking to cats or meet a woman who keeps buying you clothes, maybe, but you begin to see a pattern that drives you somewhere.
Growing up near the sea, you learn that standing guard over your footprints won't keep them from being washed away, and having witnessed a tsunami, you realise staying a 'safe' distance from the waves won't always keep you dry. Sometimes, the ice cream is more important than the waves, and sometimes the smell of the brine on the sand is more important than the ice cream.
In Delhi, I found something that knit the patterns of my life into one cohesive whole. The scattered things I had done found some sort of order, where they seemed to bring me closer to my move to Delhi, and what I would come across here. Where everything I had ever liked and everything I had ever done, and the impact each one of those things had had on my personality, found a counterpoint. When you leave a footprint behind, do you turn back every now and then to look at it? Do you come back to find it filled with water? Do you come back to find it altered by the breeze? Do you come back to find it faded? Do you come back to find smooth wet sand where it once was? Do you make a fresh footprint? Do you find it, miraculously, intact? Was it never there? Or what if it was not as intangible as a footprint, and you let go by walking away?
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