As I tentatively strolled into the open courtyard lined with stone pathways and young children holding up their quiet signs, I noticed a rectangular cynosure set in the middle of the grounds, topped with flowers and people touching their foreheads to the marble. A man asked me gently if I knew where I was going.
Author: Shabnam Aggarwal
stars in the sky
What I walk away with, as I pull my bags over my shoulder and embark upon a new idea, an immaterialized dream, is how drastically my life has changed. How deeply I have been moved. How seriously I have rediscovered my path in a short time. How much respect and awe I hold towards my new brothers and sisters who will change the world we live in today.
impermanence
In precious sweet memory of my little brother, Neil Lal. May you dance with reckless abandon in the skies above us now that you’ve found your peace within.
solace
What can I do to permanently fix the detrimental leaks in their lives? These amazing, energetic, begging to learn and pleading to grow little friends of mine. Money takes one only so far, and until now it held no meaning in our friendship. Even so, money runs out, money gets spent, money is material. To be educated though, cannot be taken from a child. It cannot run out and it cannot be stolen. But it can materialize in ways one could never imagine.
high
Your mind begins to wander and immediately you feel your body lift off the ground. The pain is gone, the problems subsided. You forget about your feet and your struggles. You drift into a place that no drug can take you, tasting air so fresh it could be from the Himalayas, seeing colors so bright they might not be real, dreaming dreams so tangible that you cant fathom why they haven’t come true. You hear the electric waves pass through the thick uninsulated wires above, watch the sun rays fall deeper and deeper into someone else’s morning run, you contemplate life as it is, here, now, unreal but all too real to be yours’ forever.
foolish
I realize now that I not only made it my mission to fool others, but to be as foolish as possible myself. I take all the roads less traveled, I seek out all the unsafe things to do, and I trust that my foolishness will get me in and likewise out of all the exhilarating unimaginably ridiculous and imperative parts of life. This is what I live for- and this is what they’ve taught me. I treasure them dearly and blame them entirely for it.
guest post: one down in the bribe tribe
Fortunately, one of the calls to the police had gone through and the swat team stormed in within two minutes although these were the longest 2 minutes of my life. Ironically, it was the concern and anxiety of a senior officer from the Lokayukt who was calling the team to monitor progress that was keeping the critical phone line busy!
Like trained commandos, every member of the crack team got busy in something — video-graphing evidence, detecting traces of the powder, searching the office for cash, removal of cameras from my body and analysis of the recordings. Two hours later Khan and the typist were formally under arrest being led out of the building into the waiting police van.