Skip to main content

Rambled


I'm not exactly the kind who prefers the bland taste of reality. The unimaginable paradigms of the unknown, the unexplored when blended into day-to-day life are a much more relevant palate. I am glad also to assure you here that I am not into living with hallucinations, have no imaginary friends (barring the visiting presence of spirits who for some reason truly enjoy my kitchen shelf, but they are neither friends nor are they imaginary) and maintain a clear divide between fact and fiction. I prefer saturating my soul every once in a while in the glory of a setting sun or in the eyes of a tired bird, perched to rest. That's my reality.

And so, when I ended up at the stairs leading to the Taj Mahal... I felt at peace. The Taj Mahal is perhaps the best example of my idea of sanity (or insanity). A mausoleum built in pure white marble as a reflection of Noor Jehan's beauty built after her death (when he could have just told her how lovely she looked instead of having her bear 14 children with him and die of childbirth) by artisans who were the best in the business (and suffered a well-known fate after building this masterpiece). All for a desecrating remains of a once beautiful woman, who served no purpose except being an object of desire for a bored king. Yes, the unmistakable insanity about the Taj shocks my mind to silence... and perhaps that is why I wish to return to it yet again to see it from yet another perspective and discover more about myself and the world I live in. Decipher yet again, the fact from fiction and try and figure which one is stranger.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction to the Journalism Pathway

My career in journalism started out with an internship at India's prestigious Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. The office, which took me well over an hour to commute to, was even then, a formidable force in journalism in India. Still an wide-eyed undergraduate with a theoretical grasp of the field, my first and only project over 2 weeks for the organisation, left a huge impact on my career.  The idea of going into journalism came from my English teacher, Mrs Moss. One day, close to the completion of my 12th grade, she was suggesting career options for some of us to explore. She looked at me and said, "Given your love for talking, you should consider a career path in law or in media." To put this into context, I was a student with good grades in an English medium school in one of the most backward states of India, Bihar. Any further educational aspirations would take me outside the town that I had grown up in, as was the case for all my classmates. Most of my peers w
Post a Comment
Read more

The Meaning of Love

Late in the night, I was sitting at my computer yet again (yes, production woes continue)when I see an ex-colleague online. We start having a mundane conversation and he asks me somewhere towards the end, "What is love? How is one supposed to feel when they are in love?" I couldn't give him an answer in complete honesty (he wasn't interested anyways) but I went back to re-feeling, if there is any such possibility, the feeling of being in love. The first time I actually felt love as a woman was on my first Valentine's Day with my husband. Since we spent most of our waking hours together, we had a pretty clear understanding of what we liked or disliked. Despite it being almost a year later, it was difficult to surprise each other. And yet, when he walked in through the door of the flat I used to live it, cake in one hand, flowers in another and a shy, reluctant smile on his face to let me know how bothersome the whole ordeal had been... I felt very special. He sat d
3 comments
Read more

Age of Innocence

Lost (as always) by the window seat on the bus ride to office, I felt a little tug on my shoulder. Kids!! There's always those days when a screeching child is being fiddled over by the mother who is making a more sincere effort towards making it all look very appealing to the irritated fellow passengers than calming the apple of her eye. My flow of anguish was met by a pair of solemn eyes next to me belonging to a little girl no more than six years of age who muttered a very quiet 'Sorry' under her breath as she looked away. Her mother seemed unwell and had taken the only remaining vacant seat in the bus and her father stood protectively beside her. The little girl looked tired but knew better than asking for some space to sit down next to her mother. She had found a little space to squeeze into between her mother's knees and was trying very hard not to express her discomfit. It was not hard to see that she had learnt to adjust her requirements to the needs of those aro
3 comments
Read more