Itchy Feet

Jalandhar is a small town in many ways - nice friendly people who want to know everyting about you and invite you home for garam khaana (hot food) right after the first meeting...

And small enough for people to commute by cycle rickshaw... Five rupees can take you a long way in this city. And people bargaining with the rickshaw puller - paanch rupaiye kyon? paas hi to jaana hai - teen rupaiye le lo (why five rupees for such a short distance - take three rupees)

I guiltily think about how little five rupees means to me. I wave away the rickshaws who stop near me and start walking...

What is worse - to ride on one of them, with another human being pulling you? or walking away and depriving him of this opportunity to earn his living? I never know...

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Another thing is the number of travel agents and ads for airlines - in the half kilometere stretch that I walked between my hotel to my work place, I counted nine travel agents, one one side of the road, that is... Japan Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Slovakia Airlines, Gulf Air. You name it.

Ad most of these travel agents offer an additional service too - filling up of visa forms. One of them says that they make a lot of money this way, apart from the regular service of procuring the visa for their customers...

And many old people who say that families spend between a lakh to three lakhs on this business of sending a young relative abroad year after year. Families which cannot afford it but manage it somehow...

Each family has one or two young people abroad - among whom many of them have disappeared - there is no news of or from them... for many years now.

Yet people want to go... and keep going. And many never come back...

Just got back from a couple of days in Delhi - as usual, happy to be back in Bombay. Just being in Bombay makes me feel that all is well with the world (ok, here I push the Worli image and other such disturbing thoughts from my mind, just for a moment, ok). Good to be back home.

And now this post from Annie about what the Delhi drizzle means to her -

Besides, the weather's too delicious to allow critiques. Or angst.

All you can do is walk in the monsoon drizzle. All you can feel is the damp edges of your skirt brush your toes. All you can think of is that breeze in the balcony. The morning papers are almost an intrusion into an otherwise harmless world...

....

Delhi rains are. Stilling.
Like you want to be very still. Like the world might stop, and gawk at it's own reflection in a puddle, and brood about how happy it is.

The weather in Delhi is stilling... This is a picture I got back from Delhi - I cannot think of a better word to describe it..



Annie also says, Funny, how it was never like this in Bombay.

Bombay - the rains are lashing.
They bind you, they confine you, they swamp you, they confront you, they rise up in sheets and walls and are nearly an assault on the skin, but they don't stop you. Strangely, Bombay rains are not 'stilling'.

True, the rains in Bombay are not stilling. Or relaxing. To me, they are about life and movement and destruction. All at the same time. Like the huge waves crashing on the rocks at Marine Drive.

Somewhat like Bombay itself...

What does the Bombay monsoon mean to you?