Pilgrimage...

Pilgrim, how you journey
On the road you chose
To find out why the winds die
And where the stories go.

All days come from one day
That much you must know,
You cannot change what's over
But only where you go.

One way leads to diamonds,
One way leads to gold,
Another leads you only
To everything you're told.

In your heart you wonder
Which of these is true;
The road that leads to nowhere,
The road that leads to you.

Will you find the answer
In all you say and do?
Will you find the answer
In you?

Each heart is a pilgrim,
Each one wants to know
The reason why the winds die
And where the stories go.

Pilgrim, in your journey
You may travel far,
For pilgrim it's a long way
To find out who you are...

Pilgrim, it's a long way
To find out who you are...

Pilgrim, it's a long way
To find out who you are...

Haunting words coming back to me as I started a last silent, lonely round around NID Paldi campus….biding my farewells…

to the walkway from the main gate remembering when I had first come here with Papa to check out NID….

to the ruins in the garden…where I and Sappu sat on my first day here…

to the Foyer where we spent countless evenings, waiting, chatting, presenting…

to the Amphitheater where I had posed as a dancer for animation…

to the BMW with its stone benches and charged up conversations….

to the KMC….where many a hot afternoons were spent lazily reading Tufte in the cool AC comfort…

to the BBC and that unforgettable night of ice-breaking…

to the Audi with its vibrant rainbow of movies and presentations watched within…

to the…

to the…

to the…

Can the weak crutches of words really provide support to a heavy heart?

I will my legs to move slower and slower….in the misguided hope that somehow time gets slower…..trying to look at everything as if for the first time….trying to get rid of the indifference which creeps in as a result of a long time spent amidst familiarity…

I enter the small stationary shop bursting to the seams with a designer’s tools…

“Do you want something?” I saw the stationer looking at me strangely…and I realized I had been standing stock still for quite some time…

“Err….ya, I was looking for a few colored sheets of paper….” I mumbled vaguely and stumbled out..

( I don’t even know the guy’s name….so much for the attachment to this place….)

My untimely presence at the mess….where I had cut my fingers cooking dinner for 30 people and serving it in shit pots during Niels Peter Flints course...sweet, sweet Ajay….eating and dancing with the slum dwellers next door…aaah….crazy days and crazier nights…. the trauma of monotony threatens to engulf…

The names have already become difficult to recall… conversations beginning to fade away….the mind has been crowded with too many people in the last 2 years…competing for space, attention, memory….

And that is the reason for me making this feeble attempt to make feelings a prisoner of words…the feelings for this place being too precious to allow them to escape….

The infamous backfields….where I had hoped I would be spending some beautiful moments with someone special….I laugh mirthlessly…the NID garba did make it almost worthwhile though…

The imposing Speaking Tree....working for days and nights to make it happen….Rajan and that turning point…

DCC….Primary Education….schools and slums and NGOs…..working throughout the night….

The magical Dating weeks….the romance and the tingling anticipation….

Aaah…..the list could go on and on…..each word apologetically trying to do justice to the memory it represents…this place a testimonial to probably the only decision in my life so far which was not a compromise…and that’s why its so close to the heart….because it is completely, unapologetically, irrevocably, MINE…

Probably I’ll come back, probably I never will..
The memories will warm the heart still
And when I’ll look back on these years
The eyes will only brim with joyful tears…