Life's Onward Journey...

  Yet again, sleep eluded me. Once I was done acknowledging the presence my daily visitors, the thoughts that come and go unabashedly, I remembered the walnut cake lying in the refrigerator.  The detachment that I faked when I left it unfinished must have crushed its hopes. Feeling guilty, I stepped into the kitchen to check on it. But something stopped me on the way. The bright yellowness of a streetlight not so far trickled through the condensate settled on the kitchen window.  "You will have to cry yourself to sleep tonight", I whispered to the walnut cake and crouched on the floor. The canvas of a moisture-laden curtain was ready to be scribbled upon.  A rose bud, a cup of steaming hot coffee, a spool of tangled up thread or just simple chaos... Staring at them fade and disappear, I nudged sleep, which had finally sneaked in and was sitting close to me.  "Shall we go now?"

It's been 17 years. Seventeen years since I walked out of the railway station and embraced you, Mumbai. From that cozy room in the hostel to a tiny house in a far corner of the city. From having just one friend in the city to building some mighty friendships over the years. From being surrounded by those friends, to bidding each one of them goodbye, one by one. While they all moved on, I stayed back. Not by choice, but probably by fate. Thrice I tried to leave you, uprooted myself from here, said my goodbyes, turned back and wept, believing that I would never see you again. "There's still some time before you move on", you seemed to say to me, every single time I stepped away. Like a clingy lover, you pulled me back, hugged me tight, and whispered in my ears, "Not letting you go." Oh Mumbai! I am tired of trying to move away from you. For now, I will just rest my head on your shoulders and doze off a bit. I know you are watching over me, like you have been f

" Well, in our country ," said Alice, still panting a little, " you'd generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing ." " A slow sort of country! " said the Queen. " Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! " -Lewis Carrol, Through the Looking-Glass One of the chapters of Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of all Maladies begins with this very apt quote that describes the pursuit of hundreds of clinicians and researchers worldwide to know more about and overpower this deadly disease that we call cancer. Do we know of a time before cancer came to existence? Probably not. If we do not have proofs of its existence since the beginning of life, it is only because no records are available or we may not have come across (or understood) them. What we do know is that this monster

Ek kamre ka woh kona Kuch kitaben, meri diary aur qalam Saamne ki khidki se andar aati kuch baarish ki boonden Hawa ke saath naachte huye parde Ek aadh pyaali chai Aur sukoon.

It's been a while, since the day it slowed down and halted. This train had been moving from one destination to another, year after year. It has never taken this long a pause before. Something must be seriously wrong this time. Waiting for the engine to roar back to life, I sit beside my window seat,  looking at the static scenery and feeling the occasional whiff of fresh air, missing the illusion of moving ahead and leaving the world behind.

She sat on the window ledge ready to take the plunge, and fly into the unknown. Her wings were eager to face the wind, and she wasn't worried about the clouds or the rain. She had painted her wings in the colour of the sky. An attempt to merge in it, the day she decides to fly.  The moment had arrived. She closed her eyes, spread her wings, and let go of everything that was holding her back. She flew. The wind held her hand and took her away. She flapped her wings, tumbled down, and glided through the narrow alley. She had flown far from where she had started. The rains were stronger here. Little droplets were replaced by giant splashes of water. Soon her wings started to ache and she gasped for air. She looked around for shelter and flew down. Perched on the stone pavement, she looked at her reflection in a tiny puddle. Her wings were torn. And the colours had run into each other. Whatever remained resembled muddy gray blotches with scanty streaks of blue and orange. Lost were the