Sometimes you diverge from predefined path. You have in mind consequences of such divergence. But what turns out of that change of decision is something you had wished to experience, but remained unaccomplished.
So it is about morning, it is about realization of a poem which is part of hidden corners of heart and it is rare concurrence with sense of beauty. I had planned to get down at dadar. I had sufficient amount of baggage with me to keep me worrying throughout the time I was in local train. The crowd at the door of local training, waiting with practiced eagerness to get down at dadar, confirmed my fear. I could have easily got down with crowd, but then shapes and sizes of food items I had would have became drastically different from what they used to be. So I did some tome management calculations in mind, estimated the risk of being caught by ticket checker at station and decided to get down at next station. And with some surprise, after 10 minutes of this decision, I found myself out of Bhyakhala station, safe with my belongings and unchecked for ticketless travel. So I had some time in hand and an Irani restaurant in front of my eyes. I sat on those age old wooden chairs, ordered brun maska and tea. That tea fulfilled my sugar requirement for the whole day. I sat in the taxi and said, ‘Mumbai Central Station’.
As soon as I looked out of taxi window, I sensed the morning. Though it is not freezing winter in Mumbai, it is strange mix of chill of passing night and warmth of arriving day. so I sensed spell of nature, compounded by presence of some old British structures and slowly awakening city. I watched restaurants gearing up for daily work, taxis enjoying short-lived spaciousness of roads and people breathing a scarce low-noise walk through the heart of Mumbai. This ambience revived poem which I learnt in the school and from that day, it has settled in mind, in tunes and in walks I had through this city. I chanted those lines and felt that right now, I am part of the picture which has long been solidified in those lines.
(Then it was scribbling in the pages, trying to translate words in marathi to English and at the end, realizing inability of my words and distinct beauty that each language caries.)
So, now morning has lost into the pool of people in the local. Yet, through limited canvas of window, I feel, golden, warm rays of sun, just arrived on daily duty. I sense structures, modern and age old, yawning as they are awaking. My eyes holds image of old sturdy church, which once used to be tallest in the surroundings, trying to spell its holy spirit on flux of life around it. My nostrils keep smell of early morning, mixed with soft sea breeze and mid-work talks of tea and milk vendors. In ears, I preserve songs of birds, dissolved in horns and cries and fading into emerging chaos. I live all this; I feel it is passing through me. At the same time, I grasp sense of joy, silence and sorrow for this time, which is merging into faceless, huge and dry tide of crowd.
I am storing in my words, I am storing it in my senses and I am passing on my feelings through this city, that this morning should get imprinted on the palms of new born baby and some of its uncaptured dimensions will get life through those hands, in which future still sleeps.
