Magpie Part - II

Continued from part I ...

Seven years later, standing here now in my own ice rink I was overwhelmed by nostalgia. All these years of persistence by both of us had paid off. Looking back, the struggle was like a jigsaw puzzle; rummaging around for our pieces of dream and putting them together. Soon after we got married, we came to Dubai for 6 months to know how the whole concept works. While I took a crash course in ice skating, Aish went around meeting important people, making useful contacts in this business and securing agreements for future assistance. We presented our business plan to a few interested parties and it eventually resulted in a tie-up with a group involved deeply into this.

Things weren’t easy after that for the ice rink in the mall concept hadn’t seen daylight back home. This was where some our precious contacts came to use. We were lucky to get a place in the upcoming theme park in the capital. We got the loan but had to wait for a year for the theme park to complete and start attracting people. So another year of patience and things began to look up.

All this while we had been giving numerous presentations and had infinite discussions with the top builders interested in erecting malls in the city. Delhi and Gurgaon were beating themselves in the contest for more and more malls. With luck on our side, in the December of 2012, we got the DLF properties interested in this concept. They planned for two state of the art ice rinks, one each in west and central Delhi. We got the contract of operating those ice rinks. So for two more years we had to hold on.

All this while, our ice rink in the theme park had generated immense thrill among the visitors. A lot pf people had expressed their desire to have more of it. I now had a team of 4 super trainers as we called ourselves in the company. It was more of a friendship as we shared the same passion for this sport. Clubs were formed. Some major shows were organized. Delhi now had its own ice skating culture.

On April14, 2014 Delhi got its first Ice Rink in one of the biggest malls of the city. The ice rink was now a major tourist attraction in the capital. We put in all our efforts to create active participation by the shoppers. Few classes were also started for those very keen about pursuing this sport. We encouraged and invited the experienced skaters to take up part time coaching here while also improving their skills. This proved to be a big hit during the school and college vacations.

As I was thinking this I could see Aish at the entrance directing the students of our ice skating academy for the rehearsals. Tomorrow is going to be a big day for all of us. With sponsorships from a lot of sources, we have invited the finest of the coaches to choreograph and train our students for an ice skating performance that promises to leave each and every soul present there, breathless. The last ticket I was holding – Presenting an extravaganza “The Magpie” … 31st December 2017, 10 pm at “The Capital Mall” ….

Magpie - Part I

It was a Sunday morning. But for me it was not much different from any other day. Seven years year ago I had decided not to be a part of this so called corporate world, leaving my family in a slight quandary. All this while, they had tried their best to give me a direction in life. I was put in a good school, prepared for a top engineering college and had then landed up with decent job. And then the direction changed.

The year I had spent during an MBA course was more like a contemplation camp. Away from my family once again, thinking what and whom to value most, I had acquired enough peradventures about the right way of living a life. The proclivity towards risks has subsided early on. What were left were the memories; some painful recollections of the once vivacious and vibrant dreams. Like a magpie, I had stashed lots of them within me, believing all of them will be true one day.

While most people in the college knew what they wanted next, I simply watched the time go by. It became an unusually favorite pastime; watching the sun set from the hostel’s balcony and hoping for a revelation to strike at some odd afternoon setting the course of my life. The effort to hold on to the dreams had taken its toll. All paths would bring me back to where I started from. Things which made sense one day lost their meaning the very next day. Mere thought of them was repugnant. It became increasingly difficult to believe in something and above all myself. I had chosen to follow a different direction but I didn’t know what it would be.

They say that if you really want to know your passion then look back at your childhood. The thing which excited you most then would be ‘it’. And I knew it all along. The desire surfaced so many times. Each time accompanied with hope and anguish. But I never had the nerve to hold it up against the squall. Each time I turned away from it towards the assigned direction, my faith in self would fade some more.

This went on until a mundane visit to a mall, The Dubai Mall. There, the Ice Rink. And therein, The three performers. What they performed in unison was simply breathtaking. Many people stood by to watch and admire. No acrobats, just simple movements of hand and body stirred by the cadence. It was dance no doubt but that was ancillary, what was primary was the free spirit. And that was what which riveted me to the spot for a long time. I could see in them an open sky; feel an unlimited expanse of emerald green grass, breath a fresh a whiff of extremely pure air … It was so liberating. I was as if staring at my soul. The direction changed that very moment. The signpost of my life now had a destination. My own ice rink and an ice skating academy...

.....contd in part II

B-School Assignment

A New Dawn

Oh listen! all the kings of this land
Let’s give our dreams a single chance

Yes we can change our destiny for the better
With roads, hospitals, electricity and water

Schools for our children to learn and achieve
The future beckons for a change we can believe

Let us break the chains of misery and poverty
And protect this light of hope and prosperity

The cuckoo on the mango tree, singing to call
Come! Let’s welcome the new dawn, one and all

P.S. : This was for my assignment :)

Backdrop:- A village has seen riots and there have been serious fatalities on the news of an industry being set up. So we act as consultants to sort out the situation and give them a ray of hope.

Before long ...

Then they just left their sand castle on the beach
And set off towards the sea, hands within reach
.
.
.

Before long, the sand beneath will thaw and relent
And draw them close, amidst stirred warm current

Before long, the waves will gush to those rocks
And reach out to a faraway island for an idle talk

Before long, a gentle wind will tangle those curls
And entwine their breaths with subdued myrrh!!

Before long, the full moon will set foot on water
And walk over to them, without trace of murmur

Before long, a heart will lose itself to another
And a story will begin, to be retold forever!!!

A Nondescript Bridge

The place was too small to be called a village. Snuggled near the foot of a mountain like a baby wrapped in a blanket it seemed oblivious to time. Way behind in the race for development; still in no hurry at all to catch up with it. It lived with its people, reveling in their joys and mourning in their times of grief. The trees around seem to have conspired to keep this village out of sight lest some gifted soul sets his eye upon it and tries to change it.

… that day I stood there just as a part of the universe. A part assigned to me even before I was born. A fact I had never denied but rarely felt. ‘Coz even before I gained enough sense to create my own definition of this universe, I was handed a script and assigned a place on the great stage we call “world”. Putting down my camera, I took off my CNBC-Asia I-card and walked towards the bridge leaving my pick up jeep behind. I could see the mountains at some distance silhouetted against the rich blue sky dotted with some bright stars.

Trudging along a beaten path I reached one end of the bridge. It looked so different from what it looked during the day. Still and quiet! Like a stone-cutter in deep slumber after a long long day, not in a mood to be disturbed.

Walking with light, surrendered steps I came to the middle of the bridge. I leaned slowly against its paling, hands folded near to me, eyes closed. The wind kissed my cheeks and ruffled my hair. I took a deep breath to absorb all I could in it. The rustic air filled with lullaby gushed to fill up my senses and I could not help feeling like a kid being stroked on his head by his mom.

The stillness made space for me step in. I belonged to this place as much as the place belonged to me or so it felt. With an inexplicable joy I opened my eyes to a lighter shade of horizon. The dew drops had moistened my hair giving them a quaint smell. There was still some time for the sun to cast his spell but those few clouds seemed to be stretching themselves for the day ahead. Thoughtlessly I looked at them strolling towards the moon. Every breath I took was like completing a journey long due. As I was taking in the sights from one end of the bridge to another my eyes rested upon the pager I had left on the dashboard. It was blinking….. the virtually real world was calling!

growing illiterate...

With each passing day I am getting more and more illiterate...

Each class I attend adds a few more areas to my list of ignorance.

It is something like listening or reading to know what all you do not know rather than to know the subject themselves.

As stacks of books breathe their last before my eyes, I realize how much I owed to them. They took away with them a world of their own. And I know that I will not be able to see them again no matter how much ever I wish too.

I sit before my study table with the feeling of separation. But even before I can lament upon their loss another set meets the same fate.

It’s funny!

I think I was more literate as a child, knowing all what was taught to me. I knew about all the birds and animals in my book and about all the tables and addition and subtraction my teacher told me about.

I knew about colors and I knew about the rainbow. And I still had the time to look at the sky and play in my garden.

Life has moved since then to a different stage altogether from school to graduation to here in a management school.

At the end of each term what one retains is an index and a summary. What is in between is to be gone through as and when the need arises.

...aaah ... time to say good bye to yet another book "with a tear in the corner of my eye and a lump in my throat"

bye all ...

Masala bhaat

Mumbai, 2007

Masala bhaat

Bhaiya, ek aalo kitne ka hai? I ask the vendor sitting in the roadside vegetable market on one of the bylanes of the Eksar road, near Borivali station.

The market has braced itself up for its consumers (most of them coming back from office). While the experienced sellers have their places booked along the road already, the novices were trying to adjust in between with their baskets of bananas, coriander, chikoo, beans etc.

Here I am, banking on my innocent expressions and damsel-in-distress kinda dialogue delivery. And I have already shooed Tenzin away, who was quite skeptical of my technique initially.

He looks up at me; I repeat my request for that ‘Mother India’effect.

And voila, it worked! He has given it to me for free. I repeat that with another potato seller. We now have 2 healthy potatoes. Enough for the dinner.

By this time tenzin, convinced that it works, has joined me for further veggie-shopping. The outcome was one onion, two chilies and three beans. I kept putting all of them in my bag, trying to avoid taking a polythene bag and getting that split second look from the bhajiwala. But even in the pre-recession era, not everything’s for free. For tomatoes and lemons we had to shell out five rupees from our common kitty, coz they are expensive.

Never mind; five rupees for masala bhaat isn’t much. Ever since a colleague at our office had shared the recipe, it had virtually become our staple diet.

Back home, it's time to get started. Heat oil in a cooker, and put some jeera. And I can already hear Tenzin in the back ground. “You always have to put jeera in virtually anything you make, woman!’.

You know that right! , I replied.

Even as we barter those words, the jeera had already spluttered, so we can’t do anything about it except smile.

Tenzin had been our unofficial master chef from the beginning. Every now and then, I tried to learn from her the art of cutting onions the way chefs do, without even lifting the king sized knife.

Cooking together, we have traded whatever culinary skills we had. In the process, I discovered quite a few things. I always used to wash the onions after peeling and cutting them. But not after these girls convinced me that peeling two layers off the onion is equivalent to washing it. And I gulped down the idea of squashing the tomatoes in the pan itself with your hands rather than dicing them and then putting them.

Coming back to the masala bhaat. We had already got a whiff of how it would come out to be from the steam coming out. …….

Few more minutes and we had it on our plates.

No sooner had we taken a mouthful, when Tenzin realized something.

She put down her plate and went into the kitchen. A few noises of bottles being brushed aside and she appeared again.

And I didn’t even have to guess. Living together (literally from the word go) for more than six months, we had acquired each others’ sense and perception towards any situation.

‘and you always have to pepperise any food you take, isn’t it; so what, if it is masala bhaat!! ’

‘You like it too this way, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do!’

‘’

ki aag hai mujh mein kahin………..

We are born, we play, we study, we study more, even more, we get a job, and we get a family…. We look after them, are looked after by them … ultimately we complete the carbon-cycle.

We are an employee and a consumer … and will remain so!

So in case we bump into someone who says ‘Let’s take the other road, the one less travelled.', he’ll listen to these …
Oh! You got to be kidding …. What do you think of yourself? Why are you talking as if you are a trend setter? … et all

After all, one doesn’t wear music or eat with a paint brush! At least think about your future generation?

Future generation! The question smells of pity and irony.

As we grow up, we listen to our older generation and by the time everybody is convinced that you’re a grown-up brimming with reasoning, you realize that the time has come to think about future generation.

So you better bridle your imagination, stack away your ideas or rather donate them to some mundane chore. But hey cheer up, for there is still hope; you always have the course of living your dreams through your children.
(Another future generation at risk!)

The world it seems has given us all the excuses possible to give to our heart, the moment we find it deviating from its usual work of pumping life.
.
.
And I have run out of my imagination to answer all these excuses.

Just a prayer:
Dhuaan chhatey khuley gagan mera

nayi dagar ho, naya Safar mera

jo ban sake tu hamsafar mera

kadam mila zara