home and about

I loved how your monsoons silently wept under solemn streetlights, unintrusive and beautiful. I loved how your winters gladdened the eye with their green coolness. And I loved the stark yellow beauty of your summers too, how a hundred palash flowers shamelessly bloomed like miniature flames under the sun’s scalding wrath. I loved your streets, lighting up the sun-dried land with a thousand liquid mirages. I loved your open skies, under which we wandered as happy children, uninterrupted and free. To me, you were my world, the only one I’d ever known.
But soon, I grew up and your narrow gullies could no longer contain the size of my dreams. In search of greener pastures, I traded your land-locked comfort for the open-ended allure of the Sea-City. In this bustling Capital, the sea churns like a monster unheeded and humbled by the high-rise aspirations and dreams of a million people. They don’t know where you exist. You are a non-descript speck, a faceless name in the oblivion that lies beyond this City. Here, where the sky is smothered by the silhouettes of skyscrapers, they don’t know your clear, moonlit nights. Here, where the smell of human perspiration fills the air, they don’t know your khus-scented summers. In this City, where the rains lash on furiously, they don’t know the gentle romance of your monsoons. You, to them, are a dusty ‘small town’ from where hundreds like me come here in search of better opportunities. I’m just another migrant churned out from your factory.
Yet, I look them in the eye and defend you. I stretch myself to outgrow their prejudice and they slowly acknowledge my existence as a person whose destiny isn’t sealed by the boundaries of a small hometown. I find my feet in this Metropolis, but they take me back to you. I return after years to find you changed. You were young and green when I left you. Now you’re graying. I wander around, lost in the maze of ‘under construction’ flyovers and malls. I search for traces of familiar intimacy, but you elude me with a vengeance, punishing me for leaving you behind. But finally, it rains - the same, soft, whispering downpour that brings me into your fold. I sit under a stranded Neem tree and watch the rain fall through bottle green leaves. You’re the only home I had. The home I left behind. The home I will never have again.

the switzerland song

this is an incomplete account of my switzerland trip. just for those who've been asking me to write about it, here are a few broad impressions..


Switzerland. The word has seldom been uttered without the accompaniment of a dreamy sigh, born of watching reels after reels of escapist cinema shot in its other-worldly landscapes, while sitting in a land that has dystopia festering a stone’s throw away from islands of prosperity. To an eye that’s used to watching stark contrasts nestle side by side, Switzerland stuns with its consistent aesthetics. From the moment you land in the country, till you board your flight back, it’s an unbroken impression of immaculate beauty.
So there I am in the heart of Switzerland, in the lake city of Lucerne, walking down cobbled pathways as the smell of freshly brewed coffee and cigarette smoke mingles with the crisp June morning air. Your senses immediately open up to the sprightly newness of the place. On a sensory high, you make your way through a very disciplined traffic (cars halting politely to let you cross over, jolly passers-by navigating the pavements on skateboards and scooter- bikes, and some very fashion-conscious people) to reach Lake Lucerne. Once aboard a tourist ship, you get a better view of the town - its old architecture, the flower-laced Chapel Bridge (built in 1333 as a protection from outside attacks and which houses paintings depicting landmarks in the town’s history), the towering churches, the vintage clock-tower, the picture-perfect Swiss houses, the electric buses with their huge glass windows threading through clean-cut streets – all reeling over the bridge into the lake.
Sailing away from the town, the Alps now watch over the lake from behind thin mist and floating clouds. Look far and blue hills melt into the horizon. Look up and snow vapours from white-capped mountains touch cobalt skies. Look down and the lake is liquid emerald, sinking inverted pines in its deep green waters. You put an imaginary frame around any spectacle and it turns into a painting, what with the pigment-rich colours, neat contours and a distinct sense of harmony.
As you move beyond the town of leisure and luxury to the countryside, the landscape gets richer. Engelberg is a fairy-tale land made of wooden houses set against verdant hills, with windows often painted to strike a delicious contrast with the façade, underlined with multi-coloured flowers bursting out of dainty flower pods. The manicured grasslands, the cosy cogwheel trains cutting through lush expanses, Jersey cows grazing languorously, the music of their cowbells fading in the twilight and the perfect agreement between the human and natural world are enough to make you believe that you are witnessing utopia.

While Mount Titlis and Mount Rigi give you a 360-degree view of the natural prosperity of the Alps, so untouched by the perils of civilisation, cities like Lugano and Zurich flaunt its human equivalent. A round trip of Switzerland will also give you a taste of German, Italian and French cultures cuddled inside a country smaller than Maharashtra.

Cheese and chocolates, Alps and lakes, flowers and buildings, peace and beauty – Switzerland is really a glimpse of life at its best. You won’t need a mythical heaven to dream of after you’ve seen it.