In New Delhi, a few kilometers away from the Parliament House, two roads cross each other at right angles – Shanti Marg and Satya Marg.
I wonder if that’s always true in life.
The road to truth has to cut away from the road to peace?

Bombay would be...

Do cities also have desires and ambitions?
A sense of destiny, dreams troubled by visions?
Does a city say, when I grow up,
I will be so gross, that people will want to throw up
(kolkata)

A city that feels that discipline is all that the world needs
A straight jacket to fit all human greeds
For licentiousness too a license
Rules! Yes rules! whether or not they make sense
Walk the line
Else pay the fine
(Singapore)

Pining for the unrequited love of that imagined beauty divine
Chewing on words
And spitting out verse
the colour of heartbreak and wine
Does a city want nothing but a poet’s life
Never mind the spit marks, and the querulous wife
(lucknow)

ever ready with a clap-on-the-back or a slap-on-the-face
wearing idiocy without disgrace
swinging between “Saale ke do thappad maar”
and “Kee farak painda hai yaar”
a loud guffaw
an eternal faux pas
The democracy of fun, food and boisterous..err....sex…ahem..
the world laughing with them, for them, and at them
A city that will grow up to be a joker,
And so absolutely hopeless at poker
(chandigarh, punjab)

An elegant, extravagant beauty
Loved and hurt
Desired and burnt
A smile trampled to bits
Lovely, long, wet, downcast lashes
As little men fight over the ashes
Of this burning phoenix

Free from being coveted…Free from being owned…..FREE!!!!
A beautiful lady who just wants to be.
Queenhood she doesn’t want,
she pines not for a king’s stares
Her dream, is simply
to be free of nightmares
(Srinagar, Kashmir)

Does a city want to grow up to be a historian (Delh)
Or just a coarse mouthed ruffian (Haryana)
A delighter of senses, a belly dancer (Goa)
A worshipper of death – a necromancer????? (Kabul)

If cities can dream, if cities can desire
to make it big, or in peace retire
If a city can choose between
steady love and a passionate fling
Then Bombay is the mad genius
that wants to be everything.

What an irony – Hinduism’s colour is orange, just a shade away from the red of blood.
This for perhaps the only major religion in the world to advise non-violence towards all living beings.
And Islam’s colour is green, a peaceful, content, agrarian green - for a religion that has had to fight every step of its way to definition and determination.

(P.S. - this is not to imply that Islam is a militant religion or anything. Remember that a lot of Indians embraced Islam because they found it to be more humanitarian than the caste-ridden shackles of Hinduism)

Disappointment is always measured in cms of expectation.

A lot of people when they say “I love you” actually want to say “I want you to love me”.

Sometimes I feel Life is a big Hoax.

They make you run around, as if caught in a big moment, where every decision you make could mean the difference between life and death. At the end of it, you realize it was all for nothing.
There was no bomb.

It was just somebody’s idea of fun.
God’s?

In a soft voice, leaning a little close to her I said,

Every night, I think of you before going to sleep ........
(she smiled)

........ It takes something really boring to put me to sleep ...
(I couldn’t help smiling)

Why did you marry him?
Oh, for his wealth.

Why did you marry her?
The first time I saw her, I was like, this is the woman of my dreams. I was completely lost in the blue of her eyes. I saw the turgid pale pink of her lips and felt a parched thirst I have never known before.

She was beautiful man, amazingly, breathtakingly beautiful.

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Is marrying for looks any better than marrying for money?

If I fall in love with a women because she looks so lovely, or angel-like, or amazingly cute, would I be any better than a woman who falls in love with a man because he is oh-so-rich?

Actually, that woman would be better than me. Because she has fallen for something which speaks something about the man’s will, desire, his character and his ability to achieve,

whilst I desire her for something for which she is not even responsible.

A man’s ego is like his shadow. Its size has got less to do with the man himself, and determined more by the time of the day (or life).

Rain in Mumbai is like an assassin’s hit – a few brief seconds of life-shattering intensity in a busy street.