Dilli Delirium

Crossing past the India Gate, lit up like a bride. Late at night. Time to kill.. for the first time ever.

Stepping out of a car and actually going near the monument after sundown. When I was running through the picture in the car, drowsy and content.. with my father right next to me, lost in his own ruminations of life. And I, not a care in the world, but still as worrysome, little lines furrowed my forehead, but meant nothing more than simple everyday observance from the window. Ah, windows. What is life without them. Just where it’s nice.. not out there and not inside.

 Those precious moments of dependence. Of being taken care of. The slightly warm breeze lulled me into a broken sleep. Passing by lamp-post after lamp-post and one huge bungalow after another. The soft light from the streetlamps were a favourite kind of lighting for my screenplayed dreams.

And my mind hurried to a guy running the length of one empty road after another, rid of people, skidding on turns and crossing roads. While dogs wandering along lonely roads turned towards him and stared wonderingly with their huge puppy dog eyes.

The scene was being played in my mind without loop, unending. Vivid and lucid. The guy running down an empty road. Panting and sweating, he needed to get somewhere as soon as possible. He looked about nineteen.  Beethoven played amazingly in the background and the rustle of the trees, it sang a song of longing.

And he crosses the distance, reaches India Gate and in utter loneliness falls to his knees. And he looks up, I see his back dark, contrasted against the magnificent golden bokeh of the great monument. No reason of rhyme can I see in this expect the sheer poetry.

And I am awoken by screeches and car noises. These beasts of metal and rubber. I sigh and feel the dull pain in my neck which I’m so used to, sleeping there awkwardly. What was I thinking. Oh, yes, of course.

And we get there and park a long way away. Nizamuddin’s not far. A walk around the Gate and we’ll be on our way home. I step out and turn to look. And the place is populated like it was a month of Sundays and holidays packed into one night.

Those little people look devilish from out here. Wait, devilish? My mind is still in the Secret Dreams mode. But they are there. Devil’s horns alight on almost every head. Well, look at that. I’ve seen these before but not so many. Not at night. Not in public. Grown men wandered along the place. Did they not see it? It must be fun. Of course. What do I know about fun.

They were in a place where  the glowing redness defines them all. Alarm and absurdity. It was comical and .. Crustacean, somehow.  Or how it ends up that every sentence I type is a fragment worth revising. The scene was a reality worth revising. What was the almighty doing. Buying one of these? Why can’t I be the one with the horns AND a pointy tail to boot. Muhahahaing between all those people while they ignore me with their merrymaking. Busy and bustled into one huge mess called life.

Little parachute men being propelled into air and then caught into the hands of human helicopters who are their base on ground. Do they fly with these little men? Engrossed in some twisted mechanics of a twisted business?

I don’t stay long but the walk around it is peaceful. But the presence of the human race is always a little disturbing, specially when my Dream protagonist is kneeling there alone. Walking past the ice cream and the kulfi stands, all crowded, we get back in the car.

Passing some out-of-the-world graffiti on the way, which probably would mean something if I could stand there are see it. Street art museums.

There’s  a man with a wooden leg. Hobbling away, a fictional pirate lost in the murky waters of New Delhi? All of them can be turned into different stories of their own but somehow they get stuck in one.

The Railway station is also a year of smelly Sundays. All those lives put into one big boiling pot of breath and blood, slowly stirring on its own.  Somehow it’s always hard imagining a white ghostlike mighty hand turning it over. And causing it to boil to the brink just for the fun of it.

It’s always a prayer that the Man in the sky is a good chef, or we are all cooked. Badly.