The Son of 'Bor Nodi' (the mighty river)

“ Kosur pater jol jemon re
Jibon tol mol tol mol kore
oi moton norer deha
kun din dholiya pora jai re……”
(Life is like a drop of water on a leaf, the day it falls, it is all over…..)

It was a mesmerizingly stunning vista from the riverside. Sunset is slowly creeping down and was opulently fusing with the ‘moving’ waters of the Bor Nodi (the mighty Brahmaputra). It was a rich splash of orange and the lines emanating from the ‘randhoni beli’ (setting sun) was becoming more profuse and pronounced. It was as if one could scale the lines of orange in subsequence. Bisu hung in a trance at this ostentatious display of orange, the sun, the black silhouettes of the boats in the distance and the fishing nets hanging stubbornly down, the humongous sounds of the fishermen hurrying back home for the festivities and most of all the hypnotizing waters of the Brahmaputra, mysteriously playing at the foot of the soporific Hulukando hills across the river. The last chimes of the bells from the Dadan mandir came wafting down and it got suspended in this expanse. Sitting in a secluded alcove between too huge stones on the riverbank, Bisu had been hearing this since the time his father, the impregnable Hariya Mandal, the progenitor of the Koch kings, in lower Assam, brought him here when he was just a child. His brother Sisu was still in the womb of his ‘half mother’ and it was to him that his father bequeathed the legacy of the Koch tribe with a promise still nascent in his mind then. Back then he could not gauge the magnitude of his legacy, he was rather entrenched in the stories that his father narrated about the ‘bor nodi’, the hulukando and the sri tukreswari hills, his village Chikangram and his ancestors. Often a tinge of melancholy could be detected in his father’s voice and this perplexed him for he could never comprehend it.

But today it was different. There was a huge lump in his throat. His eyes look dazed and the stories ran like the lapping waters of the river in his mind. There was a breeze blowing down, but he was too impassive to let the wind tantalize through his body as it did earlier whenever he came here with Jirai or after a conquest. He looked down at this vista and knew that he was the master of this land but could never be the owner of it.

Little did his people know that this undaunted Koch king, Bisva Singh or Bisu, who washed apart all adversaries to establish the Koch hegemony over the Goalpara region of lower Assam by 1535, defeating the indigenous chiefs of Phulguri, Bijni and the imposing Bhuiyas of Ugir and Luki, building an empire extending from Karatoya in the west and Bor Nodi in the east, was a man of meager dispositions. He was a man tormented by his own demons, a man never humbled by any conquest, who was a passionate lover and the one who hated his ‘dah’. Insomnia invaded him and it was only in the niche of Bor Nodi that he could seek a ‘disparaged solace’. Jirai assailed his mind and his mother Hira perennially confronted his psyche. Only his mother knew the truth that he killed Jirai, the woman he loved he loved profusely, suspecting her of infidelity. A mother could not take this sin of her son and the ferocity of the truth was too voluminous for her and she too passed away after a few days. His father was long gone and his brother Sisu, who was never his close confidante was now far away in the Koch capital of Coochbehar. He was never the same man again. The roots of devastation gnawed inside him, his political expeditions had become indomitable but the cracks inside him had become too wide to hold it further and it was only a matter of ‘when’.

Nonchalantly he shook the sand off his feet, the dokhuwa lightly tied around his waist, was fluttering at the hem and his vest of a fine spun cotton was tightly pressed to his chest. He could hear the distant boisterous sounds of the youths dancing the ‘kharatal’ to the beats of the drum. When he was young he danced to the beats with Jirai- eyes interlocked, thighs brushing against each other and the smell of sweat flowing into each other. Everybody galled at their love. But who could have imagined their ominous fate of their love and their tribe then. The festivities of ‘Bisua’, the festival heralding the onset of spring continued with its usual fervor but yet the subdued atmosphere was too palpable to ignore. Probably the Koches now awaited their destiny of submission to the mighty Ahoms, who were now finally trespassing their way gallantly into Goalpara from north, the kingdom of Bisva Singh and would soon consume their village Chikangram, the mother of their destiny and the sanctum of their tribe. Their messiah, Bisu had crumbled and the metamorphosis had already taken place inside- he could not defend his people. Just like his tribesmen, he too became the destiny’s child and seeing his power dissipating from his body, waited for Fate to overpower him. The vendetta had taken root long ago and the Ahoms were now marching with rapacious hue. Bisu stayed away from the festivities of the village but decided to go later to set forth the rituals before the food was served.

The food was almost ready and everyone desperately waited for the king to come and preside over the rituals. Bheya, his friend and closest aide, sensing his absence among the cornucopia of faces, stealthily made his way down to the river bank where he knew Bisu would be sitting. It was dark and the only source of illumination was from the lamp that he carried and the brilliant glitter of moonlight on the river. He caught the shadow of Bisu reclining on the stone and quickly trudged his way through a motley of low bushes, stones and sand. Seeing Bheya approaching, Bisu stirred and he knew that it was time to go. Winter was far behind their back and spring slowly skulking towards them but the chill of the night still lingered. The laughter burst dimly from the courtyard mingled with the smell of ‘mati dal’ boiling over the earthen stoves. Bheya was taken aback by Bisu’s face. It was not the frothing face of a youth dappled with victory and pride. It was the pale face of an apparition of Bisu’s form. The ‘apparition’ smiled at him and mumbled something inaudibly. Bheya could not gauge anything of it. Suddenly he saw Bisu’s dah lying down on the sand and this was strange for he never let his dah lay on the sand. He knelt down to pick it up but when he got up there was no one. Bisu was not there. He called his name but there was no reply. He frantically looked around but Bisu was nowhere. He was too stunned to utter or shout for anyone to search for Bisu, their indomitable ‘king’.


The moonlight penetrated into the surface of the water. A footprint on the sand caught his attention. He lowered his lamp and saw that it was a trail and following it, he found that the footprints disappeared into the water, the Bor Nodi, the river of spirits. The wind blew again and it sent a tantalizing sensation through Bheya’s body.

Assam to allot 847 crore for rural development - Assam to allot 847 crore for rural development... | www.developmentchannel.org

Assam to allot 847 crore for rural development - Assam to allot 847 crore for rural development... | www.developmentchannel.org

Turkish Diaries- Part III

Sometimes it was the lazy drizzle, sometimes it was the light snow flakes and sometimes it was the gluttonous misty river. But it was always the grandiose mountains hidden among the clouds that marred Turkey’s landscape. Basking in its galore, we snaked through the dark mountains. Now and then a vegetable truck or a van would lumber by and everyone would turn their heads to see it move past until it was out of sight. Istanbul was now a far cry and we drove through huge magniloquent coffee and grape plantations rolling down the mountains.

Everyone inside the bus was as tranquil as a church as if frozen in a void between time and reality. Even the bus was soundless and moved like the purring cat on a carpet. What stupefied everyone, I couldn’t decipher. What made me soporific, I couldn’t tell. Probably it was the ostentatious metamorphosis of nature that unfurled outside our windows that kept us in a spell or probably it was just the Turkish magic.

It was about 6 in the evening when we reached the Bursa bus terminal. The last rays of the sun threw itself on the parapet of the building roof and the shadows became long and dark. Scantily crowded, an old man with tufts of white hair sticking out from his ear lobes, hobbled over the platform selling napkins on a cart. The piercing cold seemed to have had no effect on his crippling bones and he moved from one person to another only to be coldly slighted. I quickly went in. A brightly illuminated building with counters of different bus companies ‘vortexed’ around a huge hall. A multitude of humanity milled around the place and the buses continued to ply at clean regular intervals, always making sure that not too many people crowded the platforms. The coffee here was the most intoxicating and it could pull you towards it, no matter how far you are. Several coffee shops, money exchange counters, phone booths lined on the other side of the building.

After sometime, while I was busy squinting at the place around, Deren Yagcir, a vivacious girl of 20 cantered towards me gleefully in a bright red jacket, hugged me tight and exchanging a few pleasantries, we went out into the cold towards the city. We chatted for a while and after sometime I entered into a kind of loop of fading and coming back to reality. The stunning skyline was mesmerizing and the city glowed like fireflies. Glowing in all colors, the tall minarets of the mosques looked like the evangelists of the city. After about an hour of driving through a bustling traffic, we reached Timurtazzpasa, the home of the AIESEC office. It was about half past 7 in the evening and the AIESEC’ers are gradually milling out of the office.

I was introduced to the few present inside the office and the names just brushed across my head. This does not go without saying that they had difficulty in grappling with my name too. Some kept struggling, some rolled their tongues and some just postponed to learn it later. These confrontations always amazed me when there’s a clash of two spatially polarized cultures. However it was a happy encounter and they were excited to see someone new in their country.

Soon Deren told me I would be staying in Gorukle, a student township of the Uludag Universitesi (university) and that it was half an hour drive from the office. My host would be waiting there and Burak Acagoluo, another AIESEC’er would help me get there. I felt a bit lost but she assured me. It started drizzling by the time we left and the prospect of climbing down 85 steps from the office with two huge bags was a scary affair. We finally managed to get down and reached Gorukle in about 40 minutes. Perched peacefully on a low hill just beside the University, Gorukle looked like the lamp of an old man on a dark night. However entering gorukle took me off ground. It was like entering a night club. A posh suburban township designed exclusively for students, its growing into a thriving city, complete with just its youth population. Its night life is just waking up. Music blazed from every corner, lights dazzled, giggling girls in high boots, boisterous boys in tight jeans, open air hookah bars, the roof tops bars just drawing its first mongers, sedans and cars whizzed past like sweeping eagles, the late research workers quickly squirming back home from the university to catch the last round of beer with his friends, coffee shops crowded to its hilt, buildings rising up and the late fruit vendors just wrapping up. It was a township that was soon taking the colors of a city night – bright, illuminant and vibrant.

Selen Sakar, my to-be host, guardian, companion and sister waited for me near the petrol offisi (petrol pump) eagerly. Burak dropped me there, introduced me to her and went off to his home, further down the road. We felt a bit awkward initially, but the folds creased down between us very soon. She could not speak much of English and we majorly conversed in signs, which was difficult but we got used to it very soon. And by the time we reached home, I knew it my heart that I met someone in my life, whose company, love and care I would cherish forever.

Drizzle, brilliant city lights, 85 steps, gorukle, happy-faces-with-strange-names, Turkish coffee marked my first day in Bursa. It had already slipped from my mind that I was one continent and two seas apart from home, though the thought of home gave a tug in my heart.

The CHAI story

Its blooming luxuriously in faraway Assam, Bengal and the Deccan and brewing in every nondescript household and being sipped by billions of lips around the world. Penetrating deep into everyone’s lives, stories had woven around wisps of smoke that curled from the cups f tea. Oblivious of its significance , the cup of tea, the ‘adda’ in the corner of the street, the peals of laughter, the camaraderie or in terse intense discussions- no matter where, the red liquid spills magic in everyone’s lives.

And in this paraphernalia of tea’s magic, I met a man of the other world. He frantically stirs a thick brown liquid behind a blanket of smoke and grime. In a slew of rapid hand ‘gesticulations’, reaching everywhere over the place, he looks like an avatar of the Durga goddess. And in sync with his ‘gesticulations’ was a bootlicking army of young boys darting from the master to the audience. Their rubber chappals almost eroded away, their feet already chipped and cracked, nails grown long and dirty, hair disheveled, eyes confused, dreams twisted and souls drained of all imaginations. An army of ghosts sapped and squeezed by the master and their destiny. The master who stands tall over them, stirring the liquid and the army looks at him in angst, shaking at the drop of his eyelids and the turn of his chin. Their parched hands transports stories- the story of the master, the stories of their stunted lives and the stories of the audience. And in all this the liquid flows- the ‘chai’ or the ‘sah’.

And on a dull evening after a hard day’s work if you wish to stop by to have a cup of tea behind the corner shop down the road near a stinking public toilet among a sea of humanity, this is the picture that would greet you. The place would be choked with squatting auto driver, beggars, rickshaw pullers, students who hails Hitler yet condemns Lenin, frustrated salesmen who could not sell more than ten herbal products in the day and vagabonds scattered like pigeon’s droppings over the corner. Then there are the regular audience of marijuana induced Bob Marley fans who would come and fire a dash of English, talk about politics, a lot about music aspirations, cigarettes sticking out between their fingers, gulps down tea and lumbers by leaving everyone on the stage gaping at them. You would not see much of the X- chromosomes stopping by at this play. They would rather sit on a plush sofa in an air- conditioned coffee shop, blushing when the boy over the next table stares at her legs and drinking tea ten times more dearer to the pocket than the tea drank by the squatters at the corner tea shop.

It was in the midst of all this hullaballoo that one of the boy in the army caught my attention. He usually sat away from the master and the rest of the boys. Although secluding himself for too long would inevitably grant him the brunt of the master.

One Thursday evening it was the usual din, the usual filing of auto- drivers, rickshaw pullers and the usual business of cheap perfume, urinal stench and plastered smiles. He marooned himself from the rest of the world and withdrew into his own shell. The eyes were dazed and lost, staring into nothingness. The light from the street lamp shone on his hair. Someone shouted his name, but the voice never penetrated inside his ears. Someone nudged him again, but he didn’t budge. After sometime, the clock inside him started ticking again, he shook his head with a slight jerk, stretched his legs a bit, straddled up and joined his army only to be received by a vicious glare from the master who was already sweating under the heat. His indifference was infectious. In his nonchalance and innocence there was a clandestine that revolved around him. With a slight gait, he walked without a care in the world and the sun falling back on his shoulders. As usual his hands got busy carrying the magical liquid, the harbinger of stories. In between his eyes caught my attention and quickly looked away in shyness and with a mild surprise wondered of a female onlooker on his nondescript existence in a place which had no history. Observing him through the rim of my tea glass, with smoke curling up from the hot surface, I contemplated of confronting him. My curiosity heightened to a voluminous decibel and I wanted to unravel the mystery that surrounds this little boy.

I waved at him to come over. Sheepishly he slogged with a slight slapping of his eroded chappals on the floor towards me and as the obedient member of the army, he asked me if I wanted a refill of my tea glass. I nodded a no. He lingered on by asking for anything more. Again I nodded a no. I bought him a cup of tea and a cheap biscuit available in the tea shop. I gestured him to sit down on the bench. I have never seen such shock and confusion in anyone’s eyes. Unsure and precarious, he didn’t know what to do. Scared that he would be ridiculed by his master, he mumbled something in defense. But eventually sat down edgily, frequently throwing furtive glances here and there. At this strange confrontation of sitting on the bench, holding the magical liquid, he looked visibly scared. His band had already thrown him fiery glances and seeing the consternation on his face, I asked him not to worry and gave a reassuring look.

I saw his hands shake as he nervously sipped the tea. Somehow the shift in the picture of being the receiver of the magical liquid from being the usual transporter, didn’t fit quite well in his mind. There seems to be a battle raging inside him. He caught my anxious eyes. Eventually after several rounds of sipping and pondering, I asked his name. Promptly with a smile he replied,
“Don Yadav.”

I think I detected a jingle in his eyes. Then I went on to ask him who kept his name. He didn’t reply. He just looked away to see if someone was watching him. Again the consternation seething back to his face. However he did not protest his anxiety this time. He simply said no one. Surprised by this abruptness, I asked him,
“ then how did you get your name?”
He was staring back into his glass of tea, holding it more comfortably between his hands. He smiled sheepishly and reminisced it gloomily,
“ back in village, we used to watch movies on our school courtyard. And our school peon would bring movies from a nearby town. That used to be the happiest time for us. We used to watch ‘Aandhi toofan’, ‘Don’, ‘Sholay’, ‘Mr.Natwarlal, ‘Coolie’…….. My favorite was ’Don’ and I want to be like him when I grow up. After the movie was over, my friends and I would enact the scenes again and gave it our own different ending.”

I laughed out loud by this guile innocence and boyish camaraderie. For the first time I saw the child inside him got rekindled. The smile sparkled and the eyes belonged to the kid who clambered on rocks and walls back in the village.

“My parents called me ‘chotu’ as I was the youngest and the most notorious in the family. But I didn’t like the name and so I called myself ‘don’ after I left village.”

I smiled back at him. There were questions bombarding in my mind that I wanted to ask, but restrained myself thinking next time. The tea had grown cold in my hands. I gulped down the rest of the liquid. He too apologetically got up, collected my glass and clambered back to join his army and his high arch- browed master who was looking at us curiously. I got up to pay the money and giving a reassuring look at him, I walked away.

For several days I kept on lingering between the thought of going and not going, of unraveling it too quickly or to keep it camouflaged. But human beings are not proficient enough in patience. However several things of my own immediate life kept me from going there. And it was only after twelve days of my ‘funny-strange’ encounter with the ‘chai’ and the young boy that I could go again.

After several rounds of tea and several conflicting emotions of timidity and happiness, the master was reassured that I posed no serious danger to his business whenever he saw ‘don’ contently cantering towards me. Over time he was no longer the snail withdrawn into his own shell, the marooned child. He became the ‘don’ of the village who would enact the scenes from a movie with his comrades after the Sunday movie shows.

February was drawing its close and March just round the corner. Writers, painters and photographers are busy grappling with their tools to capture nature’s changing looks. Sauntering back again to that corner on a late evening, I too basked in the purple hazed sky. The wheezing metro above my head, the din of the evening rush hour, the exaltation of pigeons in the sky, the lazy rickshaw pullers under the tree, the temple bells and the cow dung, everything seeped inside me like a sponge. I was elated yet something gripped me from inside and I could not place it.

As I reached the corner, I knew what was amiss. I could not find his face in the crowd. I sat for a while surveying the place, thinking that the little ‘don’ would jump out from somewhere. But he was nowhere to be seen.I went up to the master who was as usual busy stirring the brown liquid, sweat dripping down his forehead and asked him about the little boy. He gave me a blank look and shrugged his shoulders. The rest of the army too looked equally indecisive and didn’t know his whereabouts. I got alarmed. And yes, I almost missed a new face in the army.

‘Don’ is gone.

It was devastation that hit me and a strange consternation gripped me unarmed. Hopes got scattered with the dust. I had no way to find him. Little did I know that I would never see him again in my life. Just like the slow settling down of ashes after a fire, I left the place and slowly trudged back with a gloomy head. The dusk had given way to a dark cloudless night. Neon lights flooded the streets. Cars, buses, cycles, trucks, human feet snaking each other furiously to some strange destination. The usual pouring of humans and dogs on the streets, the usual honking and the usual dilemma of humans. I kept on wondering about the little boy, whose eyes though lost and dazed, shone from some blissful corner.

And then I realized he was never meant to be in that tea shop. Barely into his teens and absconding from his home to chase pipedreams in a big dark city was no mean feat. Probably I am in no position to fathom what he must have gone through or what forced him to do so. But children are more ‘blindly’ obstinate than adults. Because only children can believe their fantasies. One thing that struck me always was he despised talking about his family and whatever it takes he would never return back to his family and his village. Never showing me the greyer shades of his life, he was always excited talking about what he liked doing and what he aspired to become. It was resolutely ‘Amitabh Bachchan’ of ‘Don’. Usually he would imitate the dialogues from movies and that used to be the most hilarious dialogues ever delivered. I just could not stop laughing. I saw something in him that I never saw earlier when he used to sit alone-it was the quest for innumerable happiness. He wanted to see the world. He was a buccaneer, adventurous by spirit and soul. Somehow he knew it, his rustic life would melt away.

And that day, after he was gone, from some strange corner I was happy. I knew, only children could actually chase pipedreams. I never went out to look for him, knowing that wherever he may have gone, he was on the quest of happiness.

Turkish Diaries- Part II

12 pm. 10th December,2010. After crossing one continent, two seas and a leap of time and space, I finally walked on the land of Ottomans, braving the cold Istanbul wind biting into my bones. On slippery grounds both politically and mentally, an inevitable pinch of fear and consternation gripped me. However excitement was overpowering fear. And armed all alone in this unknown land, curiosity became my wings.
Getting off the flight, I looked at the landscape around. A dark grey morning with a huge expanse of land around dotted with red-tiled sloping, green and yellow buildings. Hit by the cold wind, I huddled myself closer and quickly filed into the shuttle bus, along with the others all groggy with sleep and some with hangover. It was already packed and I had to squeeze inside. The bus laboriously circled the tarmac towards the arrival wing. Slowly the skyline came into view and I could make out the bold reverse letters of Ataturk International Airport protruding towards the sky. By the time we reached the terminal, two French women smiled at me profusely and struck up an efficacious conversation. Surprised after I told that I was an Indian, they rambled on saying that now in their heyday, they are on a supposed world tour and enticed by Turkish swings, they are here to enjoy the hamam and the hashish. They waved a bon voyage and fused into the crowd. After clearing my customs, finally my entry got stamped into Turkey.
A language beyond my comprehension and a culture even more enigmatic, I was muddled and still didnt know how to go about, let alone call back home that i reached. But sometimes miracles do happen and Samaritans do come along the way and in that moment it came in the form of a person called Yalacin Suphi Akhyol, a Turkish man just back home from Delhi after a year of his research work at Jawaharlal Nehru University. We met while waiting for our bags. With his help I got the currency exchanged, bought a calling card and finally dialed back home. It was the biggest consolation to hear the familiar voices of the people close to you, even though over a wire spanning thousands of kilometers. He dropped me till the metro express line and told the fellow passengers to help me get down in the Otoger station, the bus terminal. So much for courtesy and hospitality! I still had another leg of the journey pending to Bursa, a long precarious five hour drive by road from Istanbul. Waving him a goodbye through the tinted rain- splattered window, my train hushed out noisily out of the station and he too walked off towards the other line waiting for his train.
Just after I settled down, the man opposite me gave a reassuring smile and instantly turned to look outside. Clad in a tweed jacket, his shoulders hung loosely on the lapels of his jacket. Somehow his eyes betrayed the strained expression of his face. Forking his two fingers across his chin, he seemed to have abstracted in celluloid of space and time. His only sojourn to reality was when he saw me placing the bags and then he withdrew into a recluse. He emanated an impression of being a prodigal son. Just beside us was a loquacious, gormandizing bustling family of four,probably back home from a vacation. The pot- bellied father roared across the phone but somehow the network signal did not assist him much in his ramblings. The mother and the two adolescent daughters, ignorant of everything around continued to chortle and cackle in their private little jokes and goggled over their new bric-a brac that they must have picked up during the trip. Three seats apart, two Chinese with two Olympus cameras slung over their necks, sat as stoic as tombstone without even battling their eyelids. They seemed to be closely guarding the vow of silence.
Slowly the train got filled by a multitude of humanity. Three stations later, an old fat woman after furious jostling through the crowd, strapped in a haggard brown boots came and sat beside me. She looked at me curiously and tried to say something. But the words seemed to have got stuck in between and the lines deepening around her eyes, she looked quite baffled. After a while she uttered something in Turkish. To this I just uttered with an ethereal smile.
"India. Hindistan."
It was as if I poked the sleeping dragon. To this she roared with such deep unconceivable happiness that her cheeks became a high auburn and slapping boisterously on my hand, I could sense a slight regret in her eyes of not being able to speak English. However this did not deter her from speaking . I was simply nonplussed and didnt know what to say. I just kept smiling. But by the time someone could come to our rescue and make our words comprehensible to each other, the loudspeaker buzzed "Otoger metro station" and I told her,
"Bursa"
Braving all odds against her advancing years, she willfully got up and helped me to get down from the train. She hugged me tight and the warmth i felt in that embrace in that cold grey morning in an unknown station in an unknown land was beyond my exposition. I was gravely overwhelmed. Helpless I didnt know how to thank her or even show my gratitude. The train was already hissing, she quickly got in and the doors shut between us. The train moved out of the station and pasting her face on the glass door, she waved me goodbye. I waved her back with a lump in my throat.
Just above the metro station was the colossal bus terminal,Otoger. When i got up, I was at sea. It was a huge circus of buses, cars, gigantic buildings, taxis and their roaring drivers, people scurrying here and there. From some unseen corner the smell of roasted chicken came wafting fused with a peculiar smell of coffee. I thought this must be the famous Turkish coffee the world brags about. Seeing me, a swarm of taxi drivers came running and shouted over each other, probably where I wanted to go. I shouted back,
"No taxi. Nilufer bus."
I looked around frantically for a sign of the Nilufer hoarding or a board, but to no avail. Nilufer was a major bus services company in Turkey and penetrated into every nook and corner of the country. The hoard of taxi drivers looked like the tormentors of gallows. One of them could speak a bit of English. He came forward and asked me where I wanted to go.
"Bursa. No taxi. Nilufer bus."
He looked quite calm and polite. He pointed me towards a grey red-tiled building and I spotted the red lettered 'Nilufer' etched on a huge illuminated blue board. He told me buses run every half an hour and the ticket counter is on the ground floor. I thanked him and walked towards the building.
I got my ticket, tucked my huge black bag in the luggage cabin of the bus already waiting like the gallant elephant, made a call to my supposed friends Deren Yagcir, Sezgi Akdivit and Arda Celik, members of AIESEC in Bursa and who had been facilitating me in every step before the commencement of the internship and told them I would be reaching Bursa around 5.30 pm. They said one of them would be there to pick me up from the Bursa bus terminal, but I still didnt know whom I'll be seeing for the first time.
Finally i got into the bus and was mildly surprised to see the driver strapped in a three piece suit already sitting on his seat. It was a richly decked luxurious bus and the 'bus stewards' were already busy serving the passengers. Seeing me one of them said,
"Merhaba", and in a broken English continued,
"Wel-come, madam, your seat number?"
I said, "7A."
He showed me my seat, which was thankfully by the window, and placed my heavy laptop bag on the space above my seat. The small tv screen in front of me was already flashing some weird Turkish detergent commercial. I thanked him and asked for a hot coffee and relaxing back I waited for the bus to leave and eagerly anticipated the journey ahead.....

Turkish Diaries- Part I

Was it a tryst with destiny or a ripe dream falling upon my lap like the Newton's apple, i still cant decipher. Probably a confluence of both. Probably a swish of bubble and smoke from the sorcerer's ball!
It all began in a hot sultry Sunday afternoon, sometime in late July of 2010 when i got recruited into the world's largest student run organisation AIESEC after a long strenuous process of selection and much jostling to wake up in the middle of Sunday mornings to rush for group discussions and interviews. Finally after snaking my way into this cave of humanity and grappling with new pseudonyms of the organization and the "code of laws", i entered their den. it was like walking down a busy street in Delhi flushed by new faces, smells, sights, voices, activities and a surprising dollop of veritable camaraderie among the AIESEC'ers.
However as i meandered through the following event-less months, disillusionment seeped in unconsciously until Turkey came knocking on my doors. till then turkey was only a faraway (though closely guarded) dream at the back of my mind conjured by Orhan pamuk's 'Black Book'. he could have never imagined the magic it created in my mind by opening a pandora box of dreams to bask in the wet night air by the Bosphorous while the sea gulls screamed above the head, early morning wisps of Turkish coffee and cay, the Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi looming arrogantly into the azure sky and the smell of thousand spices. All these came in the form of an amazing internship opportunity offered by AIESEC Bursa, turkey. instinctively, i jumped onto it without even throwing a second thought upon Malaysia, Poland and Indonesia, who too came to allure with their own different internship programs. after a series of interviews with AIESEC turkey, in late september my fate was finally signed, sealed and delivered at my Gmail inbox and the second phase of my journey starts. welcome letters, guidelines, internship details, travel bric-a-brac poured and suddenly life became a whirlwind of activities.

If anything that can be more vexing and painstaking than examinations are the hoard of grey headed persnickety government, visa consuls and medical officials. and delhi traffic too is not so far away in adding an extra ounce of trouble on your head and specially when you are already running late to meet a white capped 'babu' in a limestone washed office so that he does not slunk away for his every 15 min 'pee break'. procuring documents that proved me medically healthy to proving myself a resident of my own country is no easy task in this country of billion! one has to cross a colossal mountain of obstinate, supercilious lecherous 'paan-chewing' men and gold frenzied tittle-tattler women. and once you hold that piece of paper in your hand you have conquered the Everest. in the midst of all this hullabaloo, there's this sudden surge of solicitude that engulfs all family relatives when one of their brethren heads off to 'vilayat'. and i was not spared too. and mothers specially become possessed of hilarious unimaginable fears which could range from getting sick to getting kidnapped.
however things suddenly became awry in late November when Delhi university dropped a bomb of terror and disgust upon thousands of hearts by ruffling examination dates and the vacations henceforth. i was the worst victim. i ran late and got tangled in a mesh of dilemmas, with certain documents yet to see the light of the day and by late November Delhi university too joined the race of "who is the most harassing". after a fearsome 'battle' of my temperament , i got my tickets booked and was bound to leave.
nevertheless all these segments suffocated and also filled the days preceding my great exodus.
.......to be continued

The Conversation

Latis: Where have all the laughter gone?
Aeoles: It got frozen in the void between their faces.

Gaea: Where do their souls rest?
Hestia: Their souls never rest. There is a perennial quest for salvation and nirvana. Their eyes conspire of dreams far removed from reality and history....... And then they are the teller of stories.

The pharaoh: Who are they?

Latis,Hestia, Aeolos, Gaea (in a chorus) : they are mere mortals, blessed by the divinity in their love.

I want to go to a place......

I want to go to a place where I can hold the stars in my palms for long,

A place where I can lie under the blanket of the dark sky just to see the shadows shift on the moon’s surface,

Where the balmy breeze brushes across my face in soft ripples.

A sensation that runs through the soul that seeks no refuge.

I want to go to place where the land beneath my feet had been bequeathed with thousand legion stories,

Where the blood of civilizations is still frothing and warm,

A place as promiscuous as a magician’s legerdemain and where even the Orients have not set foot upon.

I want to go to a place where the vagaries of nature is as fiendish as a stepfather and as calm as a child’s slumber,

a place where i chase sunsets through the rolling waves and the rustling of leaves,

to open your eyes to the soft caress of rays on the face,

to open up your palms to feel the first drops of rain wheeling in a line and to smell the heat evaporating from the wet soil,

to see the cloud curl up furiously in a grey ball and the resolute shutting of light,

to see the petty souls scurrying for shelter,

somewhere the flash of hurried legs,

somewhere the gleam of green, blue and red of a saree,

somewhere the disappearing swish of a dog's tail in the receding distance....

I want to go to a place where the gods dont bend much,

where the benign souls stand tall.

The epitaphs long forgotten and erased from memories..

and where moments and days are clumped together into an eternity.

A place where time refuses to budge,

where the buccaneer in me knows no bounds,

and where i can see the land beneath my feet and the clouds above my head.

evening muses.....

A late February afternoon, two feisty souls braving the dark clouds hanging low over the sky, darted through the mud-splattered streets with sleep-drenched eyes, stained jeans and sling bags over the shoulders. We were lost in the galore of the exalt of pigeons over the sky, the drizzle over our eyelids, the water sprinkled flowers on the streets and the bench in the park where our thoughts got fused and meandered in that wide canvas of the blue sky.

Reminiscing that day though insignificant it may be, I wonder why did the sounds of that moment got frozen in my mind. It’s strange why some sounds, sights and smells get stuck to your mind and then as you move ahead in your life, these very same reverberations of the senses hit you back in the most unimaginable moments and times of your life. They keep lingering in some corner of your mind for some time and then disappearing again to resurface back in your mind. A sepia tinted nostalgia floats in your mind. Some smells and sounds come with a sweet pleasantness while with some you try to quickly dart it off.

As the sky changed to the inside of the mussel shell that evening, the deeply hued skyline reminded me of another evening somewhere across the seas and the frontiers of the continent.

…………The city was slowly coming back to life. Tucked in a quiet corner of the cold and the mountainous terrain of Turkey, the city of Bursa slowly glows like a firefly. There was a nip in the air, a slight chill and is just the perfect time for a walk around the ancient cobbled streets, with the Ottoman remains of the glorious past guarding the place like the evangelist.

Relishing the sights and sounds of the moment, there was a serene bliss that descended upon me. Thoughts and dreams spilled across the deeply hued sky, lights jingled, smells got fused with sights. Cars, buses, cycles whizzed past me as I stood there watching. People darted across the streets with a paced urgency. Smells of the Turkish coffee wafted across the air from a nearby Coffee joint. Life moved on like this everyday in this corner of the world, with that same sanguinity, the peace of living in unruffled waters of security and calmness. The young man at the bend in the street selling the same shoes day in and out, the lady across the street with her jazzy wedding gowns displayed upon the mannequins never changed and then the small boy who sells cigarettes and matchboxes in his small cart box that he hangs over his neck………..

Sometimes standing aside and seeing the smooth pace of life, it is difficult to gauge the magnitude of stories of every individual that struts down the streets. This has a different smell. It smells like the half read novel on a rainy day, when the smell of wet soil still lingers by. On that evening when the two feisty souls returned back to their abode, there were smells of hope and sights of dreams in their eyes, starry yet unflinching.