Late Goodbye

This cold is amazing. Mumbai for a change is actually freezing. I know the reason is something to do with environmental imbalance but I am too happy and can use some overlooking of facts for sometime.

The weather is especially chilly in the last part of the night. 4-5 in the night. The lowest it has gone down to is 10 degress C. I dont like calling this part as morning cause it is NOT morning for me. Well, anyways... as I was saying.... people find heaven in the strangest of places... I found one on the roads of Mumbai at 4 in the night.

My work (these days) is something I would have never known if I hadnt decided to take this detour. Human Factory is what I call my workplace. I love the place. I am able to survive there only because I know it will not last long. Yet I am having a time of my life. Difficult to explain...

But my heaven is not the workplace... its the time I spend travelling back home. At 4 in the night with the chill air all around and the car speeding at 90-100 kmph or is it at the speed of light? I dunno...

The only time before that I have travelled on the Mumbai roads this late and at such high speeds is when I have been intoxicated. Today when I see the street lights streaming above like a sparkling gold chain... and me actually sane enough to see it, I wonder why didnt I do this before. What a dizzy high it is to see a thumping corporation come to a grinding halt.

They say that Mumbai never sleeps. Agreed. Even at that time you will find people & vehicles on the road. But I say Mumbai stands still at this hour of time. I feel this time is created just for me. This time of nothingness is just for me. This time is stolen from somewhere inbetween the past and future, just for me...

The head is buzzing with the inhuman work being subjected for hours. The eyes are stubborn and will not budge to sleep. They want to see. They want to see nothing. Around there are bodies just like mine and thankfully they make no attempt to make small conversations (though there are exceptions of your friendly lech, angry young man, confused lost damsel in distress, talky good friend, dumb workmate.... and a few more). And then the journey begins...

Ears blocked to any interference with headfones and the world just sweeps by like it is the blowing wind itself. The buildings that are meant to be buzzing with activity are somehow as quiet as ghost mansions. Vacant parked cars, silent atmosphere, huge empty roads, occasional sleeping dogs in small lanes (initially they are the ones that follow cars at late nights, but i guess this time they also go and rest). This is pretty much what you will see on the journey. I can never get enough of it.

I close my eyes and breathe the cold air and my hands shiver. Damn even a shawl isnt enough for this cold? Can you imagine this is Mumbai?

Poets of the Fall croon in my head.

It's all a game, avoiding failure, when true colors will bleed

All in the name of misbehavior and the things we don't need

I lust for after no disaster can touch, touch us anymore

And more than ever, I hope to never fall, where enough is not the same it was before

Where do i go from here, i wonder. I do not wish this car to stop ever. I do not wish to go home. Do not wish to tear myself apart from the canvas I now feel a part of. The canvas on which is drawn this long pause in time. The music, the road, the cold and me all are one part, flying somewhere. And everything around is just blur.

Poets of the Fall sing again

Do you breathe the name of your saviour in your hour of need,

And taste the blame if the flavor should remind you of greed?

Of implication, insinuation and ill will, 'til you cannot lie still,

In all this turmoil, before red cape and foil come closing in for a kill

And before I know I am back home, from where I started off today evening. Suddenly the body gives way and all i can think of is sleep. I wonder whether all these feelings were a play of my tired mind? Whether this 'soaring high' feeling is just a ramble of an exhausted brain. Probably. But even if it is so, i can say that I am the happiest when I am on my way back home, listening to Poets of the Fall and enjoying the climate and the speed. I just love this new found time in heaven that I have found that forms an everyday part of my life.

Goodnight!