{Of all lies, art is the least untrue - Flaubert}



Thursday, May 19, 2005

Summer Trip

This visit to home will be unique because I didn't go home but went lots of places where I felt home at. I almost thought of staying there at times but as always a bit of rational thinking ruled out the entire idea. I also thought that if I want to write anything substantial I need to be at any of these places to do so but again rational thinking spoiled the romance.

In short I went to two places, Hill and Desert. If it had been a movie by Antonioni, he must have used them as a backdrops for my mental picture but life is no movie, it is far more bland. First, I went to a place called Naahan (HP), near Chandigarh (Haryana/Punjab). It is the occasion of marriage of two of my friends, Divya and Chaitanya, and I attended a marriage after a long time. And I need to tell people that I am not a Telugu but a north Indian, don't know it is compliment or otherwise. I was seeing 'real' hills after a long time and I sort of traveled back to my fun-loving self till I found out an autobiography by Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo. I really found it intriguing. All the external peace went away and I again turned to the something internal. I was not able to complete it but is surely in the hit list. Apart for this I went for trekking to a fort in Naahan; it was really a nice experience as we (I and my friend Kiran) took the most adventurous route through the hills and risked our life at least twice. Risking life is a fantastic experience when seen in perspective. After we came from the trek, I and Kiran were talking and we found out the biggest fear we both had while doing this adventure, the fear that what will we tell back at Naahan, if the other person dies. It's a quite profound finding that we care at the time of risk too.

The next destination was Bahal where my sister lives; it is small place near Bhiwani (Haryana). It's near Rajasthan and looks like a desert. It's a difficult destination. From Naahan, I went to Shahabad, Shahabad to Panipat, Panipat to Rohtak, Rohtak to Bhiwaani, and Bhiwani to Bahal, took almost 10 hrs of journey by bus to reach there and this experience was compounded by the youthful sun of north. When I met my sister, there were long rounds of stupid discussions, and we told all sort of told and untold trivia to each other, as usual. I stayed in Bahal for 3 days. My sisters' house had a small balcony where I wrote this post, there were some 2 peacocks dancing and cheering me up. I again thought that this is the place you can write freely and nature can entertain you at times.

Going to home and coming back to work seems to give a good perspective on what crap you do and what crap other do. I usually don't like this idea of change (from Hyderabad to Home and back) but once I do it, I really like to think about it in several different ways and try to draw some more knowledge about how am I changing!

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