Romance on wheels

Most of the time I have to travel by air. I go to the airport and catch a plane, I am hopping places. I reach my destination, attend meetings and then I am back at the base and that too in time.

As I have raced with time to keep pace I have wondered about trains...a huge coal engine chugging out of the station puffing black smoke and whistling. The locomotive wriggles out of the confines of the station, car shed and workshops...with an occasional passerby staring into its silhoutte....as it fades into the valley...

A journey by train is very different from travelling by road or air. It allows you to be one with nature for sometime...not the ones we use now in the comfrots of the AC coops....the train had the effect of setting the mind at rest ....completely at one with nature.....thoughts wander in and out of the open window as the electric posts and wires play a game of catch-me-if-you-can racing with the tracks that constantly shine and meet and then part ways and move on.... sights outside the window spur some past memory and activate a new set of hyperlinks that lead us on to some old sad tales of little unhappay things or sweet buds that you pluck from the maze of time and let it blossom at ease.

I have always been fascinated by the trains since I was a child. There is some magical quality about watching an engine pull a series of rakes so effortlessly...like a magician who would disaappear a handful of knives into his mouth and smile....I feel like sitting in the stomach of a huge serpent that noses through the valley, cuts through ravines, gorges through hills and criss crosses civilization with harmless ease. Long train journeys in my life have been rare, but the tramp has seen it all.

I had came across a parchment by Sandeep Silas on an old monk form India Mahatma Gandhi and his association with the Railways. It read :In 1901, Gandhi and Sir Pherozeshah Mehta travelled by the same train from Bombay to Calcutta. Gandhi had an opportunity to speak to him in the special saloon which was chartered for him. The kingly style of the Congress leader did not amuse him. The session at Calcutta, and his stay with Gokhale prompted him to tour the entire country in a third class compartment, to acquaint himself with the hardships of passengers. The first such journey was from Calcutta to Rajkot, with one day stopover each at Varanasi, Agra, Jaipur and Palanpur. Gandhi did not spend more than Rs 31 on his journey, including the train fare.

Third class travel, he thought, was the mirror to the plight of Indians. These journeys made him realise how India bled. His meagre travel kit comprised a metal tiffin-box, a canvas bag, a long coat, dhoti (loin cloth), towel, shirt, blanket and a water jug.The sight of a colossus seized by a few people, bound like Gulliver while the pygmies rejoiced, pained Gandhi. His experiences while travelling through India convinced him that swaraj (independence) was the only hope.

The Mahatma was born in a third class compartment of an Indian train. Gandhi preferred the ordinary train-life was closer to him this way. He has recorded vividly that the third class compartments were dirty and arrangements bad. He had an acrid experience of third class travelling on a journey from Lahore to Delhi in 1917. Twelve annas (75 paise) to a porter got him an entry into the overcrowded train through a window. He stood for two hours at night before ashamed passengers made room for him.

When we read about Gandhi, we realise that a lot of his philosophy emerged during the spare time he had while traveling. The train journeys gave Gandhi an opportunity to think and indulge in introspection.

I guess that is the magic of train journey. They help us make a connect with our own people. They also keep us a little removed from the world outside so that we get time to think....think and bring about revolutions....as we get into one of the ancient trains and whistle away into the darkness.

It's such a pity that as life gets faster, we move away from the trains to the the roads and get air borne. It takes away so much from a child and a dreamer like me...the cows, the endless pride of buffaloes...not herd...pride...the sudden conglomeration of trees before dispersing onto different corners of the paddy field, the water wheel that a girl paddles on as the glinting water pours into a field....it takes away the sun and moon in all its beauty, the hillside, the waving hands, the run-along children frolic, the tune of a bamboo flute of a shepherd and many more.

More importantly it takes away the fear and anguish of losing it all...the pain of not knowing it at all and the joy of having stacked up the experience in the heart as we move on.......only the rails look forever un-weary and ready for the next journey...

A Window on the Pointless

It happens sometimes. When the grey sky with droopy eyes makes the sun go to sleep… it happens. When you look out at the window pane and see one droplet collecting the other and the two knock on the next door brother…till they have gathered enough to roll down the pane and seep through the window sill into the lane…

In those uncertain moments I flicker like the last flash from a candle, before disappearing round the corner of my old street and stand right before my childhood. Those were the days when even a little rock-salt with green mango were laced with the most daring thrills of life. The run-downs to catch that yellow school bus… the wait-for-hours for the old ‘ektara’ seller to come to my lane on Sundays… the radio…Don McLean, Carpenters, ABBA, BoneyM…. Those old tunes… On lazy afternoons like this when the world goes past like a gushing pool of water and you stand at the doorstep not knowing which way the tide of life will take you….you think of these things sometimes.

I have creeper on my terrace…it has certainly grown a few inches in the last two weeks of rain…the fresh green leaves are filled with life…I touched and felt them like a parasite trying to feed off it…and then saw a quivering, withered yellow one hiding below the fresh tuft… my eyes welled up…pointless I know… but it happens sometimes.

A distant song filled the balmy air making it heavier. I know this song… When I hear this, I usually feel like humming it for sometime for it makes me happy, but today I looked up into the sky and slowly recited W H Auden…

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Pointless I know… but it happens sometimes on lazy afternoons.

Monsoon Moments

The moment a monsoon breeze blows, our lanes get flooded right up to the main road. The wayfarer’s shoes must carried over his head like his umbrella and it becomes clear that the inhabitants rank no higher in the struggle for existence than the amphibious beasts. I have grown grey watching the same sight from our balcony since my childhood….If I had written this or anyone else, it would have made no difference. But this was written none other than Rabindranath Tagore in “Kartar Ichchay Karma” in 1917. And the same story is very much true after 89 years. Kolkata is an old city, romantic and old.

Younger to many like Venice, but old in its ambience and philosophy. And old and reeking are its alleys and roads of North and South ends….they flood at the hint of monsoon and look like the Italian water-city when rain persists.

But Kolkata is changing, optimists say…bridges, highways, malls, complexes….actually it makes things even more complex for a complicated city structure that the metro has.

The city should have drained itself on the west and east sides, but that has been effectively blocked. The arterial cannal that curves through her like a waterline actually suffers from choking under a huge mash of waste. The wetlands are going dry and Kolkata holes up to take in monsoon.

When I was a boy I often let go paper boats from the balcony on the second floor that spun and danced about in the air as it drifted in the callow breeze to slowly settle on the water logged street below. Then a wait. One car…God please send one car…and God smiled sending a blue carrier that waved through the water and my boat set sail. Hurrah!!!

Ma…Ma…where are you? She is sleeping…and I slip down the stairs, those old ones, with bricks and morter peeping though the broken plaster, as you find in old homes in North Kolkata. I stand at the gate of the house, water lapping the final stair, a look up at the balcony…no one….Jump and for the next few minutes it was everything…rafting, kayaking, swimming and playing float ball with friends who have also escaped carefull eyes of their guardians. Nowadays, boys and girls don’t enjoy monsoon that often. Sad!!!

That girl...who came down to play with us one day....two plates and a yellow ribbons....blue skirt and blouse of the autumnal sky...she laughed like the breeze and flowed like the water....what is your name?....Varsha....she danced and sang as we all allowed the water to enter throiugh our pores....and then one day when monsoon was over...she went away in a big car...forever...wished the rains never stopped. Wish!!!!

Grown Up….all that changes…time becomes our tyrant tying us down to the post of duty… as you make a mad rush to reach office…jumping potholes, skipping driving cars, dodging through drains from umbrellas…red, blue, black, broken with one pane out and overturned….Jams, congestions, no police in sight and a madcity honks about in desperation…buses look like urban hell with bodies hinged form their seats melting in the hot humid condition as the windows shut down to avoid the downpour outside….monsoon is such a spoilsport… you think for a brief moment….God!!!

A cut back to the maidan in the evening….the lush green grass looking fresh and filled with life… a lamb skips about with his cousins and brother sisters as their mother looks on….two horses enjoy th drizzle muzzling into each other’s neck and tucking at each other’s hair….a rainbow appears all of a sudden as the billowy bossomed nimbus takes a leave after a smart shower…Wonderous Monsoon…thou art welcome in my pain!!!!

The Cogs in Chaos!!!


There is no reason to make things more complex than they are already. The heart of the matter is the red bastion is being stormed, stoned and pillaged by a different hue of the same red. The Maoists are storming the Red zones like Bastille. As the flames rise in Lalgarh and blood spill in Burdwan, one can’t help but look at the two people at the centre of it all.

The two are on two poles and have two synergies. They can never be in sync, for they don’t even speak in the same tongue. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the quintessential Bhadrolok Bangali of Kobi Sukanta lineage and princely charm oozing from a blend of Cuban history and Gabriel Marquiez, is set against Mamata Banerjee, of rustic elegance, careless etiquette, rogue arrogance and spitfire lingo.

It’s a battle between a classy Communist Babu and a pauperish Bourgeoisie Didi.
But what is it that makes Didi so charismatic though every other person I meet says, “Does she have any stability? God knows what she will do next. But you have to agree to one thing she is more honest than most of the politicians.” So is it the last part that is pulling her through. The people will be in the best position to answer it. As for me she was a woman of substance, who is now a myth.

Mamata Banerjee is as austere in her lifestyle, as profligate she is in her speeches. The modest setting of Harish Mukherjee Road and the not exactly salubrious road that leads to her house are ample proof of her lack of want.

Set this against Brand Buddha. Brought up in a sober Bengali middleclass family and trained to develop a taste for literature, he was widely seen as the “Un-corruptible” …”Lets do it Chief Minister”.

And after some hard-selling of a ‘New and Improved CPIM’, Bhattacharjee roared to power with an overwhelming majority in the last assembly election. And it is here that he lost the plot. Mistakes piled up like files in Writers’ Buildings and blunders were shield with the ego politics of “Amader and Oder” (Ours and Theirs).

Where Brand Buddha was being missiled to pieces, like the statue of the Lord that was torn down by the Talibans, Tranamool was collecting the chips to build block by block. Talibanism of industrial development helped the germination at the grassroots for that is what Trinamool means.

Now she has single handedly fought her way back in the Lok Sabha polls despite being reduced to a laughing stock in the last general elections. A Communist graffiti had read, “Ami Mamata Banerjee. Amar Kono Sakha Nei”. (I am Mamata Banerjee. I have no branches. Obviously referring to the one seat that Trinamool Congress had won)

As Bhattacharjee degenerated into helpless scion of intellectual depravation, Mamata rose like the proverbial phoenix. When Buddhadeb hangs on to Writes’ like an ageless ghost and spends the evenings in the cultural hub at Nandan like a eerie soul seeing master directors like Roman Polanski, Mamata uses her vocal calisthenics to prune out “Karar oi Lohua Kopat” on the highways of Singur and paints “Kash Phool” like Nero as the state gets engulfed into further anarchy. But where there was no plan in the calm of Nandan, there is a definite strategy in the chaos of the highways.

Election results have come out. The Communists have been further cornered, Trinamool’s grass-flowers are the blossoms of the season. The white cotton saree and rubber chappals have become synonymous with her call of “Ma Mati Manush”. As the sickle and hammer erodes from rural Bengal like a folklore dying with time, Mamata’s choric charm, people-to-people contact and ability to blend with the mass build her into a myth.

As I came out of my house for office, I saw a ragged red flag hanging precariously for dear life from a wire with a dashing breeze determined to sweep it away. Well it’s not Aila. For we know not when the winds of change come out of the lurking forests in our mind. And when the dust settles, it’s time for harvesting a new crop.

Supermen Cry

"Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don’t share power with mankind. I want to share power, but I want my cut"…Lex Luthor

I wonder…how difficult is it for Superman to cry? So what if he is superman… still like teeming millions of us he has to bare his heart to this heartless world and face his nemesis at uncertain bends and turns…if only we could see his tears roll down the cheeks, pause a while on the chisel of the chin and then plop into the ground. Its easy yet its so difficult…to cry and yet be the man.
I was seeing Superman on his return from Krypton (his planet)…and saw him changed…the man of steel had a heart of wax…it melted and burnt with such wonderful grace and radiated a warmth that made his heat rays go pale….the supermen are so fragile and so vulnerable….so human and so moist.
Lex Luthor managed to locate Superman’s Fortress of Solitude (a secret cavern in the Arctic tundra which is the repository of Kryptonian knowledge and technology). Jor-El (superman’s father) teaches the power of crystals to Luthor through a timeless art of magic. Using this Kryptonian technology, Luthor plans to seed entire continents on earth, destroying pre-existing landmasses in the process.
Like every other…superman again saves……Like every other supermen who try everyday to save their jobs, career, family, hearts and the matters of hearts…. Superman faltered and failed as a Kryptonian knife was jagged into his ribs….but he came up from ashes to save the earth and the malady of his heart.

If only we had the heart to lose everything at the pitch and toss of a coin and not mention a word about it, be spoken about and not speak about them, see everything we worked for all these years cave in and be lost in the abyss of time without a hint of them being ever with us…..If only we could wait for a lifetime and not be tired of waiting, run on forever filling every step with worth the distance and built a castle of dreams only to see it broken and work with broken tools and a sick heart all over again…..what supermen we could be.
And most importantly if we can cry….like him…saw his eyes fill as he took his love Lois Lane on a tour of the sky…a god in red cape…sharing his powers with all around….I saw him cry…the water though did not pour out of his eyes….it filled his heart, ebbed and flowed about like a sea of emotions rocking against the sinews of steel…he flew in air….Was that Superman crying or was it an illusion….just as I did when I felt our fingers part ways….I took a tour of the universe with hurricane in my heart…as I let her go….like the first breeze of spring, like the first rays of sunlight, like the soft touch of the mulberry bush …is love forever like a butterfly that flies away in all its beauty?
So I let you go like a superman…and like a butterfly you went….Now I am left to spin an endless uncut reel of stories about you, your presence and even your absence…like a butterfly you fly by my side and I fly like a superman…someday I will run out of words and then what will remain is the Kryptonian grave where I have to lie…wrapped in red cape…like a god so un-sharing, like a superman so human….(PS: THIS WAS WRITTEN SOMETIME BACK…WHEN I SAT LAST NIGHT I WANTED TO MAKE SOME CHANGES...BUT AS A THEME NOTHING HAS CHANGED)

Prisoner of my image

A boat lay moored to the silted steps of the dilapidated ghat. The sun was just about to go down…on the boat’s belly was a boatman…engaged in his evening prayer. The silent figure kneeling and bowing silhouetted against the fading glow of the Western sky looked like a fleeting image that will vanish with the sun mmersing into the river for the night. There were shadows of sunset all around. The unruffled surface of the river reflected the sunset in all its hues and intensity, even as the tired chariot of Sun God went for a final hurrah….the palest gold finally fade into the steely blue of darkness.

The ghat was meanwhile fighting a grim battle for existence trapped in the vice grip of two rival banyans…as they sunk their roots right through his stone and mortar…fissures run through the ghat like bastard channels of water rushing to the river….cracks, moss, two toothless lions, nose butted in, eyes blinded, sit stoically at the edge of the plastered sides looking out into the expanse…they are trapped like me too…For the first time I realized I too was a prisoner of my image…..A decript mansion nearby with broken windows, tumble down verandahs, looked down on the ghat, as a train line cut in between the two. The mansion looked like an old man who had just coloured his hair, though the skin on his face was loose and hanging--- the house looked odd with patches of colour and whitewash along the stone bearing, plasterless walls with minarets pointing to the heaven…. made it look sad…sad like me….trapped in the image of being the guy next-door, good, helpful, jovial and one who just wont say no to the world…..Yeeeeees!!!!

I will and have done so in the numerous sweat beads in the nightmares….through the loathe bottled up in my throat…when you went away…forever...I let you go…for I had to…. for you would leave

Rain started…first in pitter patter…then it turned into a steady drizzle….the breeze freshened…I ran towards the shelter under the now-i-fall balcony…and the forest that stood silent away from the mansion came alive and out of the shadows…as if they had rushed nearer…..great stir of leaves, nodding boughs and swaying branches. The whisper of unconscious life became stronger, speaking in incomprehensive voice….the forest was alive and my sorrow dumb…like the darkness surrounding me……I was so helpless when she blend into nothingness and the silk of her scarf remained in my hands….forever soft…forever her…And still I laugh …for I am meant to be someone who can catch the hail by the scruff and sink it to the ground…so wrong!!!!!!

Looked into the room….a few forlorn crickets…buzzed about in the darkness and a light-bug flew about carelessly…a lamp flickered inside…….the lamps with long throats and bulging-globe-like stomach of bright glass…there was no electricity….the flame flickered…the wick must have died out and was now languishing and burning in absence of any kerosene …Like me languishing and burning…even while moving on…… after you went….

The rain falling into the river, the river lapping the steps, the steps moving towards the mansion…and the minarets pointing to the heavens…all in a cycle….only the dilapidated lions and myself look the other way into the vast expanse of darkness…the boat has left its moorings and the boatman sings a tune far from the depths of the river…..as we remain trapped in our image forever…..away from the cycle of river and sky….!!!!!

MY LIFE: OR IS IT?

When I gave up my first job I dare say I gave up a lifetime of materialism. I broke the news to jaw-dropping disbelief from my peers and silent indignation from elders. But I did not care...I wanted to lead my life...no matter how frugal, how puny.

Standing at the cross-roads of my career was a world of advertising beckoning me with all its glam-sham; suave efficiency and cash-rich corporate destiny and another that had the madness of pursuing news, holes in the pocket and satisfaction of having done something great.

It was a battle between self-actualisation or else-actualisation. It was a tight decision...what was important my image or my reality? It was about the mask fitting so tight onto the face that the skin sizzles into the plastic and ceramic mix.

The way we live our lives is decided with the very first choice one makes as an adolescent. After the first board-exam we take up a stream that our teacher feels you are good at...our parents wanted to make a career out of it but could not...and finally what our neighbours and friends think would make us look smart in. The dye is already cast. Start living for the others, as they say.

Once education gets over...it's time to get a job. We will certainly not take up a job where your heart lies, that which acts like a magic potion and lends a spring to every step one takes towards office. Instead we end up taking up a job that increases our value in the marriage market. That helps our kins proclaim we are the Suitable Boy...Mr Eligible, so that the best horse trading can be brokered a few years later in the marriage bazar. What punditry…I must admit. It’s a job well done, both ways I mean. The heart may have slipped into a coma, but the head works overtime.

Then the house gets decorated in marigold and jasmine, sparklers and trip lights adorn the walls...the sehnai flutes out an ancient mellifluous note...We are getting married...tied to a post of compromise forever...for the girl we marry is someone who has all the qualities to be a good wife, a better daughter-in-law and best mother on earth on whom the children would shower..."Dekho Ami Barchi Mummy". So where is my life partner, my better half, my friend. It doesn't matter. So, and God forbid, we end up- marrying the wrong girl for all the wrong reasons. And the same goes for girls, ending up marrying the wrong guy for all the wrong reasons. And still call it our life or rather your marriage...Or rather our compromise. Now having written the last act of the first disaster...we turn in all our energy into the profession and like the 'Hawk" roosting in Auden's world. Having failed in the biggest war, we now want to be the boss of everything we survey and keep winning smaller battles.

Now we are ready to sacrifice, change, adapt and adopt...we are ready to plunge headlong into the dog-eat-dog rat race for biting the gold medallion. The image, the reflection, the picture, the portrait needs to be larger than life...so an instant makeover. We need ties that scream out "I am sexy", cufflings hanging about the sleeves covering the rippling muscles proclaim "I have arrived"...Oh! a metrosexual male in its totality. We long for and get a house with more rooms than we will ever live in...Our children shout "my daddy strongest" and wife flaunt me about like "neighbour's envy owner's pride"....but knock-knock and we are dead-wood inside. My Image is me.

In office we need to be excellent, any other adjective other than the superlative will not do...so pardon my weak repetition of epithet...best, the best employee, best boss, best colleague and role model. So we work harder, faster and better than the others. Do it every day, day after day...working late nights, getting back early, forgetting dates and personal appointments, weekends and holidays...and we rise the escalator...both kissing and kicking arse suiting my needs. The rise is a heartless illusion...an enticer that draws me to the top.. a very lonely top.

By now we have reached 40. Some say life begins at 40...they must have been great philosophers, for truly life begins yet again now. The cycle starts all over again. For suddenly we realise there are people younger and much better placed. Then you start cursing...the dice was always loaded against us...right from the beginning...i failed to see the mark on the wall...we were always trying to climb the windward slope.

Its then you start bending it like Beckham...bend rules, twist norms, jack-up our price and open a new safety vaults for storing the morality. We start getting jealous..envious of your neighbour's house, car, wife, puppy or i we have reached that neurotic stage ...we start to get envious even of his janitor.

And then the cycle begins again...again we start working hard...lie, connive, steal, con and sink in the muck...in our effort to further stretch the already larger-than-life reflection....get sucked into the vortex of being into nothingness.

The final chapter....one evening...when the sun has set into the horizon and the ruddy glow of muffled orange spread along the dark-blue of the evening...we sit in the verandah and ponder...whose life did we live? All that we have gone through our life to shine is gone... but where has the sheen gone...the sparkle of youth was lost...the mellowing gravity of middle-age drowned...the quiet sense of dignity and self-respect compromised...life has escaped our hands...

The point I am trying to make is that running the race to breast the tape has always been very important... going faster, higher and farther will always be there...But at what cost... the point of running in the jogger's park is not to lose weight...weight will be lost sooner or later...the point is to enjoy the morning breeze, the fresh blades of grass, the morning glory and the children laughing and playing about by themselves...fill in the lungs with a whiff of fresh air and heart with a genial smile that has laden the garden-path....my life means the road to the goal, the pebbles of memories that I fill my pockets with and not the goal only...fatal, enticing and cutting both ways.

Childhood Revisited

I was sitting at the bus terminus that would take me back to Kolkata far from this dreamy land of haze and sun. They look like twins that play hide-and-seek never tired of each other’s desire to outdo the other.This place where I have come to is a close door neighbour of the mountains. Mountains clad in green fur, with brown borders and jagged cliff holders. Streams run out and into the tall somber gray, asphalt and white hues with equal ease, like squirrels running in and out of their little posts inside the trunks.

I saw a little girl being led by her hand. The mother tripping about in a brisk pace and the child frolicking comforted in the secured clutch of her mother. As they went past me, I heard the girl parleying with her mom for a new video game she wanted. Far away a distant cloud remained hooked on to the sky like a huge silver fish floating about in the ocean, bottoms up.

I felt sad. I had a glimpse of the old life, a life that has been cast away like old soiled clothes.I could never come to terms with little boys and girls growing away, distanced from their soil. I had spent hours in the garden behind my house soiling myself all over, as I made mud puddles and tied strings on the hind legs of frogs and pulled them back every time they tried to escape into the wilderness. My elder cousin was the grand host. She smuggled out flour from the kitchen and made everything with it. It ranged from rice, dal to chicken and even tea. And I actually enjoyed the lunches and high teas and belched showing my culinary glands were whetted beyond doubt.We lived in a joint family and I have grown up shooting down green mangoes with my sling and later devouring them with salt along with three others in my gang and of course my cousin. With the sling on my shoulder I was the king of all I surveyed.

How those days were gone….do children muddle themselves on mother earth’s lap or lead a ‘dettol soap’ life….I wondered. The air had turned brooding olive, colouring my memory. A loud honk of a bus brought me back to meet myself today.My careless eyes wandered upon the little girl that went past me a few moments ago. She looked happy into the ground admiring a smile, matching hers, on the dust patch in one corner of the terminus. A small twig in her hand had acted as her brush. She had soil on her skirt and two distinct round mud-spot on her knees as her mother pulled her up and dusted her.I sat in the terminus peopled and throbbing, my face shining. It felt like I had finally let go of a lifetime of pain, anger and hurt. I knew I lived my life.My being felt healed, whole.

I had suddenly become aware of colours and sounds around. It was as if I was looking at the world through a new set of eyes. I wanted to dance, sing and celebrate, which was most unlikely at that moment.I realised that truth is like the cliff I was leaving forever today. Its golden yellow in the morning, ruddy in the afternoon, a purple haze in the evening and deep blue when night shrouds it over. It’s true every time you see it, and its different too. Truth is that we will forever be in love with our soil…the earthy smell of summer, the smoky vapours on parched land during the first showers of monsoon, the soft muddy touch of the wet months and the dry dead feel of winter.

Same soil and so different and so true, like the cliff high above.