Seasons in the sun

"I don't remember the last time I saw flowers on the road..."

Said D last evening while I drove through a quite and shaded road that leads to the seaside golf club near my home.

Laburnum trees lining either side of the road were in full bloom and a slow gentle drizzle of petals had collected into a carpet of yellow on the ground...

The afternoon was really, really hot and humid, and nothing stirred. Every living thing seemed to have retired into their cool nests to enjoy a blissful Sunday siesta.

There's never any traffic on that road anyway, and yesterday it was even more deserted than it is usually. R sat next to me with his seatbelt secured (he doesn't trust my driving a bit!!) as he looked out of the window and said nothing.

Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it was D's comment that made us silentlly reflect on the truth if it... but whatever it was, it made the three of us unusually quiet.

I don't know what went on in their minds, but I felt saddened that such simple joys should be vanishing from our lives without us even realizing it.

If you read some of my earlier posts you'd know that R & D live in the queen of the suburbs, Bandra. It's the hippest junction in town where all the action and the hottest parties are...

And yet, it's not a pretty place...

Like most of this city, it's a place not many would find sight for sore eyes...

Bandra, just like the rest of Bombay, has no parks for the kids to play in, nor benches for moms and dads to sit on...

It's a place, where not even a handful have known the experience of watering a lawn or pruning rose bushes...

A place where the streets and beaches are safe but dirty...

A place with no place for lovers to go to for a few moments of privacy...

A place with a golden heart, but degenrating body

And so, much as I love Bombay, its vibrant energy, its never-say-die and devil may care attitude, its mish-mash street lingo and raste-ka-khana, its bars full (in fact, too full) of familiar faces, noisy convesations, loud laughter, good music and chilled beer, and it's eccentric foreigners at Colaba Causeway buying worthless dholkis for a small fortune, it pains me to realize everyday that this is not where I want to spend my life...

D's comment, just made me re-realize all of it in the flash of a moment...

This is not where i want to belong...

Yes sadly, but very surely... not here. This place where I spent so many years, where I grew up and went to college, where i went away from and returned to, where i fell in (and later out of) love...is not the place for me...

The afternoon was beautiful, and for some reason that bend in the road with D's comment in the background got imprinted on my mind, perhaps forever.

But the picture is a melancholy one, and will always remind me that sometimes all it takes to carve out a life you want, is to cut off the ties that bind you to your past...

And so I know i must leave this place...

...this place where flowers on the road are a rare sight...