A breeze carrying the whiff of a divine fragrance passes by. You stop, hoping to recapture the feeling, the aroma, the high of a fleeting pleasure. Yet the moment is a shot, intoxicating in its abruptness. Drifting by, all that’s left is the wisp of a memory introducing you to a hidden part of yourself, a part you never knew existed or had just forgotten all about. A whiff…

She sat across the aisle, just one seat ahead. Maybe it was providence, maybe it was a sub-conscious desire, but when I happened across an empty seat and decided to place my posterior on it, ’twas the best seat on the train. Glancing at my left, I had the majestic beauty of the Sierra Nevada and the Utah mountains, with the raging Colorado river passing by and when I’d look in, there she sat, alone and wistful, pensive and quiet.

It took me a while to muster up the courage. The adrenaline high of being on an adventure had taken over, an intense desire to keep my eyes and ears open, observe every tiny detail and soak it all in. Would sit by strangers and start a conversation, learning more about people till the time they were strangers no more. Father and son, train enthusiasts, a German couple taking a break from RV-ing across America, a Mechanical Engineer who’d cycled from Seattle to San Francisco, two girls who also cycled along the same pathways from Portland to San Francisco, a photographer touring with a rock-band, a Ph.D student from Berkley studying Ethnic Conflict, school-students jamming on the guitar, a cheery train attendant who would have looked more at home selling surf-boards on Venice beach than cup noodles on a staid Amtrak wagon, an ex-’circus-hula-hooper’ practising her ukulele and finally the object of my attention, a mural artist from Michigan meeting her snow-boarding brother and travelling about; these chance encounters were the passing wind shaping and moulding me with their talks, laughs and deftly tendered whispers.

A pretext, an opening, I waited to find the right words. I couldn’t risk her on a “Hello”. Passing another sidelong glance, I noticed a book peering out of the seat’s pouch. I could discern the author, Tom Robbins, who had earlier caught my attention with his intriguingly titled children’s book for adults (and vice versa), “B is for Beer”. I took a deep breath, reassured myself that it shouldn’t be too hard, leaned across and asked, “Excuse me, but could I have a look at that book you have?”. She had a spare for herself and I borrowed the former book and quickly discovered it to be fascinating to say the least. A tale of a princess and a woodpecker, a love story of multiple dimensions, Tommy was coaxing you to think and playing with the words like a skilled conjurer.

The ice was broken. Mr. Robbins had also given me some clues. I knew from her tastes that she’d be the kind of girl I wanted to sit and engage in a conversation. From then on it was a series of discoveries that led me to find her more and more intriguing, every chat leading to the uncovering of another fascinating aspect to her personality. Art, photography, literature, gymnastics, adventures, music, cinema; her tastes were delightful and to sweeten the deal she was smart, funny and pretty, all in one lovely package.

Passing by craggy edifices, stark mesas (mesae?), incongruous golf courses, swollen rivers tumbling with adrenaline junkies (the majority, in their most friendliest manner, mooning us) tossing about in their rafts, canyons and cliffs, salt flats, log cabins, covered bridges (in Madison County, no less), windmills and waterwheels; time flew by as we talked or just sat by each other left to our own devices and thoughts.

Even the halts served their purpose, she’d get off the train for her cigarette breaks and I would give her company, on the pretext of stretching my legs and experimenting with my new camera. Tired of capturing stark landscapes, it was a delight to have a subject to frame my picture around. Her visage was accentuated by the sunlight veering off the subtle angles and curves, shrouding her in a halo of angelic innocence.

She smiled for the camera, her countenance making for an ideal subject, and yet that wasn’t the only emotion visible on her face. Tired from two days of travelling, the end of a holiday and a train that seemed dogged by misfortune (an engine failed on the first day and the tracks got flooded on the next), her mood got gloomier with every delay. I, on the other hand, was at my cheeriest, glad to have the extra time to finish her book and spend in her company. I also had a party in Chicago to look forward to while she had a bus waiting to prolong her agony, taking her to East Lansing, Michigan. Trying my best to cheer her up, I fell short, and even though I thought it might help, I just couldn’t pluck up the courage to ask to hold her hand. So I unearthed a bookmark of mine, wrote a little message for her, left it in her book and receded to the background affording her the solitude which I thought she desired at the time.

The train rumbled along and soon we entered Illinois, sauntering into the Chicago Union Station four hours late. Farewells approached and the heart grew heavier. All set to say goodbye, I started walking her down to her bus. A tender moment was imminent, and what I couldn’t convey over the past two days was planned to be eloquently conveyed in a warm, verbose and lingering hug. My host in Chicago suddenly made his appearance at the station and all my best laid plans went ‘gang-aft agley’-ing on me.

Having to part ways, we thanked each other for the company, she apologised for her cantankerous (her exact choice of words) demeanor, asked me to find her on Facebook and we summed it up in a quick hug. I cast a last sidelong longing glance to see a solitary figure briskly walking away. Tired and weary she walked along, looking forward to the end of her journey and being back in her own car driving the last hundred odd miles back home; the music, the open road and the wind giving her the company which a 26 year old backpacker from India could no longer offer.

Nature tossed a spirited boat.

Kafkaesque in its misery,

It barely managed to float.

Thrashing about it sent a plea,

A prayer to find a port.

Keeling over in its plight,

Hungered, they searched a sign.

A beacon suddenly came in sight.

Now they could follow its line.

Needs of love like that light,

Answered by a friend of mine.

n. 1. a. The act or process of deluding.

b. The state of being deluded.

2.   A false belief or opinion.

3. Psychiatry. A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence, especially as a symptom of mental illness.

Reading Richard Dawkins and his “The God Delusion” and I wonder about Love & Romance. I see no reason to not dismiss them, in the same vein, as delusions as well.

Love seems to be a delusion manifested due to our evolutionary needs to procreate. The rush of emotions associated with “love” and the corresponding chemicals and hormones are designed to attract us to suitable, fertile mates and further the human race. In fact, using love as a basis for a lasting monogamous relationship (a marriage, for example) seems to be an accident waiting to happen. Rather, compatibility and rational justification for co-habitation seem the way to go for making a choice of this magnitude. Despite this obvious rationality, why are humans so convinced in their delusions?

Conditioning, almost Pavlovian in its essence, has coloured our thinking. On one hand we have the social conditioning of religion and its dogmatic principles. On the other we have the Byronic conditioning by the Romantics, imbued in us through Literature, Poetry, Music and Cinema. In effect, deluded into believing in ideals other than pure reason. Societal evolution occurs as a process of convincing individuals about the need for collective good. Whether societal ideals of honesty and honour are delusions guiding us away from our self-interests is a thought for another day.

So if we accept that the emotions surrounding “love” are delusional because they’re a manifestation of our genetic pre-disposition to find mates and it’s the chemicals doing it, then we also have to factor that all our “feelings” are based on similar electrical impulses and electro-chemical processes. If we define ourselves by our sensations, then do we nullify the existence of one who’s shorn of these senses. Our a priori assumption is, after all, “I am” and we aren’t ‘thinking away‘ our sensations of pain, heat, hunger in an attempt to isolate the self from its corporeal state.

With that we return to the acceptance of the feelings of “love” and the desire to unite with the rest of humanity by believing in an entity that tried to explain the inexplicable and reassure those who doubt, in other words, “religion”.

Returning to the definition, “a false belief held in spite of invalidating evidence”; the validity of the evidence and the falsehood of the belief not having been proven, it is premature to dismiss the two as ‘delusions‘. On the other hand, if these are to be accepted as so, then in the words of Krishna (from the Bhagavada Gita), “what is this world but a Maya, an illusion?”

FADE TO BLACK…

My heart believed, believed in romance,
Twin souls, another who hoped and cared.
The world’s sorrows, the sordid marshes,
One waded through to reach paradise.

Blissful walks, talks and moments,
Cheerful birds, joyous flowers, all alive,
Relishing the eternal spring,
Us together, together forever & evermore.

The world wondered about this ignorance.
Shook us, tried to wake us up,
The blasts, the shouts to open our eyes,
We blinked, caught sight of the world and smiled.

What appear as bright are the closest
The faint often fade to obscurity
The heart doth pine for the one
That takes its place in the eyes and the soul.

For that matter, birthdays are a different issue ‘coz that’s your day and what with reminders on every social networking site, someone or the other does make the effort. Wonder if the formality was done away with, would solitude be all I would be left with. The kind of solitude which I experience when everyone is busy in his or her celebrations and every forwarded sms just irks you a little more.

Not to say that the solitude isn’t comforting. There’s something about it that comforts the self, boosts the ego and strengthens the existential quest. Practising transcendence, I smile, make jokes to myself and laugh silently. It is something that I rather take pride in, the manner in which I have cut myself off and have learnt to love myself.

At times, doubt does creep in and these are those little twitches which try to depress me but my faith in myself, my goodness, my sincerity (my vanity?) shakes them off and here I am.

So Happy New Year dear reader (20 times out of 29, it was me!) and here’s to a brighter odyssey!

Okay so happiness is:

• Feeling the wind on your face on a warm, sunny day biking on a rural, though smooth, road.
• Listening to music and the sweet sounds of nature on a warm day, reading by a secluded lake.
• Flying at 3 kms, looking at the sun play its kaleidoscopic tricks on the Himalayan peaks, clouds, lakes and rivers.
• Sitting at the balcony back home (on leave) with a soft breeze blowing, chatting with the family.
• A weekend get-away with the family, with long drives in the day and long Pictionary filled evenings.
• Reading a Wodehouse (anytime, anyplace).
• Candle-lit session of guitaring with friends singing along.
• Getting dead tired at the end of a basketball (badminton/squash) game where one has managed to bother the scorekeeper.
• Wild robust dance sessions (DancingUI, obviously).
• The clink of the driver when the ball soars straight and far.
• Zooming by tourists at the beach watching them imitate the sea (ref. waves).
• etc. etc.

Contrary to the expected lexicon of a Fg Offr, the article does refer to the avian variety! Here are the ramblings of an observant aviator.

It’s fascinating how we’ve taken over the skies with birds being the aerial pedestrians, which must stick to their footpaths, the lower levels, to avoid ‘hit-and-fly’s’ (which we refer to as bird-strikes).

Our runways are peppered with bird scarers, shooters and such like ensuring flight safety (for us lucky evolved ‘not meant to fly or we’d have wings’ homo sapiens). It does sound cynical and contrarian but being a hypocrite, in such matters, is understandable.

However, we heartless souls too have our own bond with birds. My unit has a whole flock of geese (or are they plain old ugly ducks – don’t really know the difference for sure) cackling away in the premises. The irony is not totally lost on me, a unit that flies with birds that don’t.

Our stations too house a whole menagerie which includes peacocks and jays in addition to the run-of-the-mill cranes, pigeons, crows and sparrows.

While flying, though, the eagles do try their best to exact revenge, scaring us with their kamikaze attacks on our windscreens, fortunately ducking (no pun intended) at the last moment, gleefully revelling at having seen our scared pale faces. But, at times, one may happen to glance at some lake or a field and see a whole slew of cranes flying in formation looking like scattered specks of powdered sugar.

Having save for the last, is the sorry tale of this kingfisher which had fallen in love with (or appeared to) with our behemoth of a helicopter. Maybe it had a thing for big tails, but anyway, all it resulted in was a repeated attempt to come closer to our whirlybird, sit next to it and then fly away. We, on the other hand, had no love lost for the pitiful creature, worried that it’d damage our blades if it came too close. Love would’ve claimed another casualty.

- AOA (An Observant Aviator)

There was a girl from Leipzig,

In the mud she’d squelch and dig,

She had a cute nose,

The tip of which rose,

I always thought her more of a pig.