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Pic: Diya Lall, Kolkata 2009.

Happily, trips are still cool things to do. Fortunately, 19 hours pass without event or desperation when you know there is a plan waiting for you. The grim toilets on highways, the dug-out non-roads, the knot on your back – all of it, is a part of a grand surprise, and a story for later.
Unfortunately, the romance of this trip is pretty only on paper. The surprise is wonderful – but not yet solved in my head. It’s a sweet I’ll have on a lonely day. For now, it’s an event that came and went, rushed and splendid, like a wet dream – but not quite understood.
Today, I imagined myself making a video. I imagined adjusting the focal length, the shutter speed and the aperture, and changing the focus as my subject came closer to the camera. It was a pretty awesome shot of a kid running towards the edge of a small cliff into a dark pool of water. Many angles till the final leap, and then the splash caught in brilliant slow motion, the drops of water crystal clear and almost tangible.
Then I imagined scolding someone at a job - not firing him, but punishing him by making him stay. And then I fired a girl who was like me. A little slow, and in need of a shock - a very obvious, certain rejection.
Right now, there’s a power cut at work. I’m sitting in my corner, using my laptop, pretending like I don’t exist, and everyone else is also pretending the same. But funnily, I’m writing to tell myself, you are real, and this is happening – and it matters to just punch keys and freewheel. I’m here. Just don’t walk through me yet.