Thursday, May 18, 2006

Join me!

How do you describe a place that is at the cusp of beauty and battle. It exudes oodles of charm and yet occassional booms scare the daylights out of you. Fish still swim in its tranquil waters. It brags the purest of airs. Yet a storm is always ready to form. Luckily, I live in a more affluent part of the paradise. We have occassional parakeets as guests, chirping at the top of their voices on pleasant spring mornings. Butterflies in a myriad hues waltz in my small garden. The roses cling tightly to our three-storey home, where only two people live. A lot of sparrows, a few white rabbits and old pictures also live in my home.

I am away from Kashmir, both in distance and time. I miss the sound of rain on my pane, the snow flakes, the radiant sun-downs, the cricketing days with old pals. I work, read, write, reflect and play cross-words these days. When I was a kid, mom would ask me to do sums, read poems aloud, eat my breakfast with a chartreuse-top table-spoon -- often to my great annoyance -- before I could go out and make my own snow-man. How time flies? Mom. I see her in childhood-type dreams and she still asks me to eat and read aloud. Ofcourse I don't obey her now. I don't eat much and instead of reading aloud, I prefer writing poems. For a dream of another kind. I've an electronic juicer in my kitchenette to make my breakfast, which I hardly care to touch. The green-headed tablespoon is still locked away in a tiny corner -- in my bedroom -- in Kashmir.

It used to be so much fun to go to the city suburbs. See the villagers take their flock to graze. Driving past the stunning lakes. I guess evenings in the Dal lake still rock. No amount of mall-lights in our big cities or the plunging necklines in the parties we go to can compare to the balmy evening breeze. The morning sparkle stretching acoss the Pungam lake or the old-world lighting by Srinagar Boulevard. Barbeque in the canoe. Ducks gliding by. A tender sky watching you over.
What are you thinking about? Camp-fires, hi-altitude fishing, heaven! Join me for the Kashmir vacation, will you?

Samy

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take me with you. I will pack my bags on drop of a hat. Kashmir, YUM.

Anjali

Anonymous said...

Hey thats a beautiful portrayal. I am floored. This is also a very distinct way of saying something.

Cheers
Mohit

Anonymous said...

Kashmir remains one of the few places in India, which retains the old-world charm we associate with romance.

Anonymous said...

You are so good at almost effortlessly being honest. your mom must be proud to have a bright kid like you.

Anonymous said...

You said, you don't listen to your mom anymore. That is bad. How can a sweet guy like you not listen to his mom.

Sameer Bhat said...

Emma,

Thats cos' my mom is no more. Though I still love her and she often comes in my dreamz and talks to me.

Love
Sam

Anonymous said...

You shrink the spaces between us. I can relate to you as if you right next to my home, which incidentally aslo saw the first rose-bushes cling onto out door recently.

Brilliant, boy.

Tim

Anonymous said...

The pictures are stunning. Kashmir, well, looks like a small heaven.

Mike

Sameer Bhat said...

I axed my name off Wikipedia. I guess it only leads to unnecc traffic and tasteless comments on ur blog.

Sam

Anonymous said...

KD Said

These picturs are tuching to heart, really kashmir is the Heaven in the earth. Thanx for showing beautifull picturs