Cruising

Hello and welcome to 2015.

Your social media timelines and pretty much everything that you may have read in the past week or so, would have been about the year gone by. Of resolutions, new year wishes, trends, the end of some things and the start of some other. Of the new year wishes, some would have been beautiful, some corny and trite, and some, even cynical. That’s a recent phenomenon, though — the cynical new year wishes.

On the first day of the year, I’d like to avoid any of the above.

* * *

It’s a beautiful road.

It’s neither like those lifeless multi-lane dual carriageways that suffer from a superiority complex, nor like the pot-holed dirt roads shamelessly pretending to be paved roads.

It’s just a beautiful road.

The traffic is sparse, and I can see the road clearly for miles, ahead, tempting me to roll-up the windows and speed up. For some reason however, it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. Maybe, it’s because, fatefully, Kris Kristofferson is singing This Old Road. It seems like a better idea to cruise. Speed becomes irrelevant when cruising. You could be going slow or fast. What matters is that you aren’t focussed on going slow or fast.

So I am cruising, alone in my car. Perhaps this is a good time for me to reflect on life and times. The weather is a perfect example of a wintry late morning on the plateau. There’s wind in my hair and the view is calming. The road’s lined with trees masquerading as one long canopy and fields of green, brown, and gold whiz past me. This experience is so transparent, nothing reflects. Kris’s song seems to be doing that for me, in a way. Reflection, doesn’t seem to be a good use of “this” time.  Some other day, some other experience may show me a mirror. That day, I may reflect.

For now, I am happy cruising.

The Moron Lane

“Which lane is he driving in,” I asked, extremely frustrated.

“The Moron lane,” she said, quickly looking up from her phone, and as quickly going back to whatever she was doing.

I’ve said it many times before, but since my blog isn’t as popular, people hardly ever get to know what I say. Those white dashed or solid lines in between two lanes of a road aren’t a guideline for you to drive, they are there to divide two lanes – and you have to choose one of those lanes. The idea is to have those painted stripes either on your left or your right. And since, we drive on the right here, you are better off in the leftmost lane, till you get this right. (By the way, for what it is worth, dashed lines mean that you are allowed to overtake (from the right, i.e.) and solid lines means that you should wait till you see a dashed line, before overtaking)

When I thought hard about the Moron lane, I also imagined, we’d need Moron tunnels. Especially the Expressway. We have folks using hazard lights in well-lit tunnels and then changing lanes in the tunnel. I am sure, they actually switch the turn indicator. You see, the left/right indicators do not function as desired when you have hazard lights on. But then, there is no logic of using hazard lights in a tunnel – switching on the car lights, lights up the tail lamps. That’s enough information for me, driving behind you, to know that you are in the tunnel. If you have to use hazard lights – please do not change lanes in a tunnel at speeds greater than 80kmph.

Many rants have been suppressed; people driving diagonally across the three lanes as they speak on the mobile phone, stopping on the blind side of a curve to relieve themselves in a temporary waterfall, and on the city streets, puking red goo; cars in India should come factory-fitted with spittoons, rather than ashtrays.

But there is one sight I love on the expressway: the Bright Yellow Tata Nano doing 45kmph in the first lane.

Priceless.

Crossroads of Time – II

The last time I wrote about the naughty nature of time when it stands us at an intersection, I was thinking two-dimensional. Along comes a comment from Citric Acid, that perhaps it was my folly — not considering the third plane. It gave rise to an interesting, though tangential discussion about choice, consciousness and such. It has been ages since there has been real conversation on any of my posts; I tend to travel the path that the tangent etches.

So be it. Sequels, as we all know, don’t do too well.

But, barrenness.

Often evokes images of sand dunes continuing their recursive sine-waves to the end of the horizon. Almost makes you thirsty. You, comfortable in your living room watching the TV while sipping iced-tea, notwithstanding. A desert is, however, not the epitome of barrenness. You have to see arable land in summer, deprived of irrigation to know barrenness.

My two-dimensional thinking stood wondering, on such a ground, perhaps, when I wrote that post. Parts of me scattered all over the intersection of the three dimensions — knowing only two. Therefore the question, perchance. How was I in situ in a time that hadn’t come? Why was I there when I wasn’t there, as yet? What trick of time was playing that I couldn’t decipher? What was it, that made my sight turn a little bit left, looking back? Citric’s comment was useful. I was, perhaps watching it from a depth (or a height) — the third dimension. The perspective was confounding. The experience was surreal. A plane equally barren.

I wrote a poem that was never inked.

I imagined that fork on the road. In the deepest recesses of my mind. The road was a brown blur, really. It was all barren land. Irregular honeycombs of dry and parched land could never constitute or define or direct paths. Infinite paths emerged from the point that I stood. Yet, diagonals and perpendiculars was all that could see and seek and choose. I missed the third dimension. Maybe, even the fourth. I could make 360deg turn and there would be barren emptiness pouring in my eyes. With each degree, one road was possible — almost one for everyday of my life. And in all those possible choices — I considered only the perpendicularly-geometric two.

Emptiness, I have therefore come to believe, is an oxymoron. Because somewhere in the crack of that irregular honeycomb, somewhere in the third, or the eleventh degree of a turn…