Current affairs...

Perspectives.....

Chandni Chowk....Or life??

I have had the occasion to galavander around the streets or rather lanes of Chandni chowk these past few weeks. For those who are not familiar with the capital of India, Chandni chowk is one of the oldest residential settlement that remains even today.

To be honest I was trying really hard to find a way to express the enigma that is Chandni Chowk in words. But I found my pen, or rather in this case, the keyboard running dry every single time that I tried. Until, I found a most remarkable metaphor for the place or I may say that I found the lanes of Chandni Chowk to be an amazing metaphor for something we are all too familiar with....Life!

Life is in every way nearly like Chandni Chowk. It is complicated, unplanned no matter how hard you try to set a course to it. And it is vibrant and scintillating. Every moment that you walk down the lanes, you are dodging, side stepping, tripping, balancing and all this while moving along with a well drawn map in your hand. Yet you have no idea where the next turn will lead to or if there is a surprise waiting for you just around the corner. It defies all calculations, disobeys all rules, except time and survival. And at the most unexpected places you find a treasure trove of the most beautiful experiences. We wish to travel down left out streets and turn into the missed out turns but would it really have taken us to a different place? Perhaps, perhaps not...would it have been any easier, perhaps, perhaps not, the only way to find out is to walk through all the lanes till you have seen them all...but that will take many trips , many lives.

Every one tries to knock you down in their hurry to get ahead, yet when you step back and look, you see that its nothing but a rat's race with no one really going anywhere. Curious eyes look at you when you step into strange domains...quickly and surely picking out the ones who do not belong and after having interrogated you let you pass with doubtful and suspiscious eyes burning holes through your backs. Ever been in a profession where you feel you do not belong. It feels just about the same.

Glittering red capes for the bride, books and stationary for the studious mind, food for the kings, you will find everything here. It is all here yet you have to find it among the narrowest lanes where every single one is squirming for space. Palaces have become huts and what were huts have become a modern day castle. And then, when you find that the walls are closing in on you...Suddenly you are in a open breather where the blue sky shines down on you through the twinkling shades of an enormous tree and you suddenly feel that there are powers beyond. And sure enough you hear bells ringing as a Pujari in his 1ft by 1ft little shrine offers prayers or somewhere a Mullah calls out to the faithful to join him in prayer.

Time is the sole thing that is constant in ths ever-changing canvas. The lanes of Chandni Chowk keep meandering and life goes on.....