If you know where I work, I will say a lot of us are feeling betrayed. Since the news has been out at 6 AM, people have been calling. I say it is not such a big deal. I try to brush it off. I go for a relaxed lunch with colleagues, but we are worried. And we should be. At 2 AM yesterday, I was happily walking down Mont Blanc with Jesus after having a beer with Andrea after the rest of the gang went home. And at 6 AM my boss calls. His voice is shaken as well. Have you heard the news?, he asks. My eyes are still welded shut from lack of sleep.
I had to make many serious practical decisions today. About work and life. But this is not the place for them.
But in the end, these things don't worry me. Not yet, anyway. Life has a way of finding the right balance.
Earlier tonight, I was tired. I left the party at 11 PM and walked back through the narrow lanes of Paquis. Dark shadows had fallen across the sidewalks. Broadway cafe still remained open with no patrons inside. I saw the waitress sitting at the bar eating her meal. The streets had already gone to sleep except for someone hurriedly walking away into the darkness on their way to or from loneliness. It is a warm day and I am dressed warmly. Style over substance.
Now in my bed, I sit silently and listen to Parveen Sultana singing Raag Puriya Dhanashree as I write this. Payaliya Jhankar is the Drut bandish in tintal. I don't want to look back at the way I behaved in the last two months. I am just shocked. I don't know what it was. Life always moves forward.
I love her voice as it rises and falls through the myriad folds of the raaga, filling my ears. It takes me back to a JanFest in Bombay long before it became Mumbai, where I first saw her perform. I sat by the corridors of the library with a friend and listened to her sing. Both our eyes were closed and I could forget everyone around us and then be one with the music. The stage was under the chapel and the moon lit the silhouette of the building behind the stage. It was beautiful. At 3 AM, Bhimsen Joshi started to sing. It might have been late, but I didn't feel tired. I felt the tiredness only at 6 AM when I fell asleep on the train and missed my station.
Those were also crazy times. The day before that, the Prime Minister was suppossed to address the crowds at Chowpatty. We went walking there at 2 AM, twenty young boys and girls and decided to climb the podium. Predictably, the police showed up and chased us down from there. We ended up at the (most aweful) 24-hour coffee shop at the Ambassador. At three, we descended on Oberoi looking utterly unpresentable and tried to convince RB's sister who worked there as a manager to let us in to the disco without a cover charge. Predictably, the plan didn't work and we ended up leaving from there in ONE car and I still don't know know that many people got inside that car.
I remember it tonight because, like during JanFest, I am operating without much sleep and being out every night. Unlike then, this is very foolish. This whole time is foolish. I ought to do something more "age appropriate". So this weekend I am going to italy, to Turin and do some serious things such as buy some pasta:-) And listen to Verdi as I drive.
Right now I wish I would fall asleep listening to this.
Everything else will just work itself out.
