Sunday Sentiments
Today is Sunday. What’s amazing is that today, it even feels like a Sunday. While the former does make an appearance every seven days or so, the latter is an idea evades me more often than not. And hence, to make the most of it I am back at my often ignored space on the World Wide Web.
As I sit with my feet up on a chair in the balcony of my apartment slowly, I slowly turn the pages of the Sunday Hindustan Times. An occasional vehicle passes on the road; the sound of its horn comes softened through the layer of trees in front, and sounds mildly pleasing to the ear. This quintessential Indian morning road sound is my only connection and relation with the existence of a world outside my balcony today.
For the last few months, I have had the pleasure of living on Mall Road in Delhi (not New Delhi, this is the original “Delhi”). It’s not like living on Mall Road is like owning a bungalow on Aurangzeb Road (moreover, I only share an apartment here with my batchmates), but still the ostensible relation of the “Mall Road” of any city with something significant, historical or otherwise does make me feel a little privileged.
Mall Road stands at the interface of a historical past and a vibrant future. While the first is substantiated with the presence of umpteen little monuments from the Raj era in and around Mall Road, the swanky metro station right under my apartment block is a cogent reminder of all that is fabulous about a modern city. It’s a rare luxury to be able to catch a rickshaw and a metro from virtually the same point anywhere in the world I think.
A large proportion of the people who live around here are academicians or retired government officers and contribute to a general air of sobriety and calm. It’s not hard to find Fabindia clad people thronging this place either which is a very heart-warming site for me, coming from the background that I come from. I’ve also come to know that Rahul Ram (from Indian Ocean Band) stays somewhere here though I am yet to pester him for free passes of his next concert.
Some of the other fabulous things about Mall Road are Chacha’s Chhole Bhature, Vaishno Chaat Bhandar and Bille di Hatti, places at an arm’s throw distance from here which for decades now have welcomed generations of indulgent Delhiites in sumptuous meals. In a while I am going to step downstairs and visit the little tea shop right outside the colony gate which makes the most fabulous coffee and bread pakoras in the world, which are best enjoyed in our balcony blessed with glorious winter sunshine and a gentle breeze.
Well maybe I am making too much of a deal out of this lovely Sunday afternoon and mulling over things which may sound rather insignificant to you, but the point is that it’s on little occasions like these that you realise that it takes very little to make one actually happy and peaceful with life. One begins to understand that there’s a lot more about life than what can be accommodated on a two-page CV. And finally, that it’s true when they say that some of the best things in life actually do come free.
Ironically enough, I will go to an MBA lecture tomorrow so that someday I earn enough to be able to afford all this.
