mera kuchch saaman

it started with something as serendipitous as a beautiful blog entry i chanced upon.

it reminded me of a ... ghazal? sher? nazm? for some reason, i decided on begum akhtar. now where was the collection of her ghazals? or was it gulzar? yes, yes... pukhraj. did i bring pukhraj with me? drawers flew open, books... papers... slip-sliding onto my lap like autumn leaves. no. no pukhraj. will the web have any of his poems? a furious, anxious keyboard yielded many hits, but not the right one.

darn. where was my pukhraj? "locked away in storage, 9117 miles away, with all your other books." Human Mind answered. how desperate.

maybe it is the milestone that's doing it. maybe just age. with me, it doesnt take much to send a passing thought into a cascade that trips over itself, multiplies and proliferates, barges into the realm of intense emotions and eventually metamorphoses into quiet philosophical musings.

and so it was with not finding my pukhraj with me. at that instance, i knew what i missed. no, not "books" or "libraries" -- no, it was nothing quantifiable.

i missed the trail of my life. collected carefully, sometimes randomly, mostly impulsively over years. like a bee adding to its hive, it all amounted to something. or so i liked to think. small incidences and instances that had come home in the form of random inhabitants... not looked at after that, maybe, but still there somewhere close... when one suddenly rummaged for them.

i missed those breadcrumbs. that symbol of continuity.

but no sooner did i feel that, than did Human-Mind-in-philosophical-mode slide noiselessly under my skin. like silk satin slipping over glass. like white on white. frictionless, almost.

"what breadcrumbs?" Human Mind queried impatiently.

"what trail are you looking for? continuity is a myth. what was, is only what you remember of it. your interpretations. shared memories. imposed influences. and what 'is' is but shimmering shapes on the horizon - adaptable, malleable, effervescent. go make of them what you will."

and so saying, Human Mind moved on... picking her way thru this and that. treading lightly, leaving no traces.

except for one musing nomad...