Nuptial Sulma - Wedding dress

Nuptial Sulma - Wedding dress 

The annual school picnic was always a frivolous affair. Our planning used to start a month ago. Primarily the subject of discussion was use to who will constitute the picnic group, what menu will consist for lunch. Badminton rackets, cardboard games, playing cards and yes a music box. Bollywood cassettes and sometimes western pop music. Michael Jackson , was a popular figure. Though I had no idea from where he was. His song "Beat it" was my favourite, even though I couldn’t understand a word from the lyrics.

Well on the d- day all dressed in casual clothes , faces all lit with beatitude I use to walk down till the town with my share of tuck to catch the bus. Venue was at a beautiful river side with plenty of trees , hard to find in a cold desert. So after settling down at the picnic venue. We want for a brisk walk, to snoop around the tents.

There I saw a sylph in a sulma , beneath a tree in front of a small brook. My inquisitive mind confronted to me go ahead, and see who she is. When I came close, and pretended to just walk by, I got know it was her. Those slender fingers which I was very familiar from the occasional glance at morning prayers, were attending to her hairs. She had made pigtail from her tightly woven hair and was wearing a beautiful silk sulma. And yes of course she was smiling. This was no ordinary sulma. It was a wedding sulma and she was getting ready to click some photographs. This was a usual affair among the girls, to carry multiple dresses either to click photographs on picnic or to change clothes. There were other girls in the group and I really don’t remember, who were they or what dress they were wearing. The only thing missing now was a rows of turquoise with a golden kau  (a hexagonal jewel box) in the centre to form the lovely peyrak. The eternal headdress of the women folk. It should be flanked by the two ear flaps, like a two little wings of an angel. On top of peyrak a long katak (a while silk scarf) would look wonderful. 

I didn’t wait till the sulma was captured in the film , as I might have drawn some attention. My that picnic experience was sublime bliss not because we had danced to the tune of Michael Jackson or played cards. It was neither  the swimming in the cool stream with all clothes nor the cardboard games. 

It just because I had sighted my Holy Grail.  

The winds of ochre desert and the glare of sun in the school alley had always kept my hopes unshaken and aspiration alive. Little they knew,that my mendacious dreams will cause those little invisible tears will roll down and drop to the ground.

What a wonderful words form Steven Taylor :-

“While youre far away dreaming

I could spend my life in this sweet surrender

I could stay lost in this moment forever”

A wasted dream

A wasted dream

Yes we live in a cynical world, wherein aesthetic matters a lot. Be it choosing a potential mate or the fate of a flick all depends on looks. Susan Boyle has gone against this principle, but I am sure glamour will touch her. She is just one example, and we know exceptions do occur. Her internet video has now clocked 42 million hits. 

So does this show there are millions of people whose dreams had been wasted?

Check out video here 

This wonderful composition from Les Mis, the French musical, has become my instant favourite, as the little tiger has already turned my dreams to shame.

I dreamed a dream - Les Misérables

I dreamed a dream in time gone by 

When hope was high, 

And life worth living 

I dreamed that love would never die 

I dreamed that God would be forgiving. 

Then I was young and unafraid 

When dreams were made and used, 

And wasted 

There was no ransom to be paid 

No song unsung, 

No wine untasted. 

But the tigers come at night 

With their voices soft as thunder 

As they tear your hopes apart 

As they turn your dreams to shame. 

And still I dream he'll come to me 

And we will live our lives together 

But there are dreams that cannot be 

And there are storms 

We cannot weather... 

I had a dream my life would be 

So different from this hell I'm living 

So different now from what it seems 

Now life has killed 

The dream I dreamed.

Glimpse in Cold.

Glimpse in Cold. 

It was winter, and at my place, winters are harsh. At an altitude of 3600 meters above sea level in winters even the day temperatures barely cross the freezing point. There is a joke popular there, that goes like that we can easily fool a person who is not from my place into believing that at my place "spit freezes before it hit the ground" in those winter periods.

It is routine there to heat up the engine of a vehicle, else it won’t start. My routine also consisted of taking kerosene stove near our vehicle and our driver use to shove it inside under the engine of our gypsy. Fifteen minutes of flame and only then the gypsy would hum.

The reward for this exercise was driving lessons from Acho (brother), for a kid who has not reached his legal driving age. I could hardly reach for the accelerator and manage to see from the windshield simultaneously. But I wasn’t a bad driver at all. Even on ice, while the rear wheels would skid, I use to manage the vehicle. 

So it was another cold night, but I was looking forward. She was coming for supper with her parents and sister.The presence of her were always a beatitude, but how do I overcome the adrenaline rush, that was always a troublesome issue. My only antidote for that was to enjoy the fascinating smile from a distance.  

It seems she had no idea, that I was espying at her and enjoying the pleasant gleam and glow. She was flipping pages of our old album, but for me it seems the moment has frozen as the pictures in that album. 

But the moment was short lived and after dinner they started to head back home. And there we were outside, waving them goodbye and a good thing happened. Their car didn’t start. :-) It meant another few moments with her. I thanked the God for jamming her car's engine.

So it was decided we push the car. While I was pushing the car, I prayed. Don’t start! But this time my lady luck was sleeping. 

The car didn’t need my push as the engine was running.