manmarziyaan ~ part II

तेरे रंग  विच  रंग जवां 
मैं अब अभी 
तेरे संग संग बह जवां 
मैं अब अभी 
सुनु मैं तू जो फरमाए 
जैसी तेरी मर्ज़ी 
जिस पासे ले जाएँ 
जैसी तेरी मर्ज़ी 
सपने वही दिखाए 
 जैसी तेरी मर्ज़ी 
मन से जो तू चाहे 
जैसी  तेरी मर्ज़ी 


Manmarizyaan
Shellee & Amit Trivedi

Kaveri woke up with a start at 5:30 AM to the sound of her alarm blaring - the high ceiling of the room worsened the echo. It was immensely painful to wake up to a useless alarm during your holidays - but there was also an unexplainable joy in switching it off and shutting your eyes again - sighing deeply with contentment as you let sleep engulf you once more.

When she finally felt sleep drifting away from her, she stirred under her sheet and reluctantly opened her eyes and saw day light creeping in from the corner of the windows, the heavy curtains hadn't been drawn completely.The part covered only by the sheer curtains were telling it was time to get moving - she reached for her watch kept on the bedside table and saw it was 8:30AM. She stretched, said her short prayers and swung her legs to the side to sit up. She walked to the windows opened the curtains and looked at the brilliance of the day - the morning sun spreading across the big lush lawn, not too faint, not too strong - she knew exactly how the outside must feel right now. A wave of nostalgia hit her - she remembered waking up to Delhi winters, looking outside her windows to see how strong the sun is - what she saw today was a comfortable warm sun that you wanted to be in. For if you were out and not in the sun, you'll most probably be a bit too cold.

Kaveri turned away from the windows and the splendour of the room hit her once more - she had entered at night and it had already looked very regal then but in the day it was even more so. She noticed every tiny little detail in the interiors of the room and the washroom. She favourite part of the room was a window seat with a superbly comfy cushion looking out. This superbly cosy sun-filled space was so inviting she wanted to spend the rest of her day on it.  She had bought along three books and knew if she let herself do it, she could spend the day reading - sometimes indoors & sometimes outdoors.  Bliss. This is what her definition of bliss would be. She smiled to herself in the mirror while brushing her teeth thinking of how she planned to spend her days in Jaipur.

She took a quick shower and stepped out for breakfast. In the winters, they set up chairs and tables outside in the lawn as well and the guests had an option to have their breakfast in the sun - it never got super hot anyway. She leisurely buttered her toast, then spread a thin layer of orange marmalade on it and bit into that crispy goodness - toast with butter and jam is the second best breakfast after aalo parantha. She loved her idli / dosa but aalo ke paranthe were just unbeatable and had retained that # 1 slot for very long in her life.  But, there was another delight at the breakfast spread that she had reserved for the end of the meal- pyaaz kachori. She was debating whether or not to indulge herself considering she had been a lazy ass this morning and not worked out or even gone for a walk and had instead come straight from bed to breakfast.

But who can say no to a kachori, that too in Rajasthan - she will hold her plank for a minute more in the evening. After gorging on that food, when the server poured her a cup of chai, she sank a little lower in her cane chair and closed her eyes, let the sun warm them with its magic a little bit and smiled. This slow living was what she craved. She craved sitting down and having a lazy breakfast listening to the sounds in the nature - not worried about her tasks for the day. She enjoyed her life in Singapore, but she couldn't recall the last time she hadn't rushed through her morning, rushed to catch the morning train to the gym, rushed through her workout, rushed to the shower at the gym, rushed to the train to work, rushed through work, and rushed home afterwards to cook herself a meal and rushed to sleep so she could repeat the cycle all over again the next day. The only respite being the weekend - and even then she sometimes found herself rushing from on one errand to another or one commitment to another. She could not remember the last time she had the entire day spread out in front of her - with her only agenda being reading (and maybe some more tea and maybe a nap too). She thanked her gods for allowing her this luxury, figuratively and literally.

Sipping on her tea, she jotted down a few lines about how she felt this morning, in her  journal. As she was writing, an elderly couple asked her if they could join her table, she invited them, quickly finished what she was writing and shut her journal. They got talking and she discovered that this was their 10th time in Jaipur and they were repeat guests of the hotel - always coming back at this time of the year. Lily & Martin, lived in Scotland and the weather there was pretty crap in the winter, so they found their refuge here. They pretty much had the same agenda as her - a long lazy breakfast followed by a cup of tea or two and quality time with their books before lunch time. As the server poured her a second cup of tea, she spoke to them about what she does and her life and about the book she was reading, what Jaipur meant to her, her dreams. It was always so easy to just naturally let your conversations glide when you were with strangers, knowing you wouldn't be judged or that if they did, it didn't really matter anyway. They shared about their lives as well - speaking about about their family,  their lives in Scotland, how they had stumbled upon Jaipur many years back and had fallen in love with it, and knew they needed to keep coming back. They asked her if she wanted to join them to watch the light and sound show at Amer - she had it on her agenda anyway so she agreed to go with them this weekend.

After Lily and Martin were done with breakfast, they all got up and left to go spend the rest of their lazy day reading. Kaveri walked to her room to collect her book. She had decided to sit out in the porch of the tea lounge - they had cosy looking lazy chairs & of course, easy access to tea. She was reading Forty Rules of Love - she really thought she would finish the book halfway during the flight - but she slept through the flight and didn't get past page 1. So she opened the book and began to read from the very beginning again. She had heard so much about this book - her expectations were sky high - always a dangerous thing when it comes to books and movies - every person views them with a different lens and finds in them different things. She hated it when books and movies did not live up to her expectations, so when she started to reread Forty Rules, she told herself to tone down her hopes and take it as it comes and enjoy the book instead of judging it or wishing it to be another away. Yes, she took her reading very seriously.

She spent over an hour reading in that very comfortable chair, only pausing to order herself a pot of tea, and shift her position to make herself cosier than she already was. It was a book that needed pausing in between though, small thoughtful pauses to let the words sink in and flow with the stream of her own consciousness. And also pauses to go over certain sentences or passages again so that their beauty was etched in the mind & heart a little more deeply. It was turning out to be a gorgeous book so far and a great one to have brought along on this vacation.

After about two hours, she felt like journaling - she picked up her journal and pen and started to write without a break, to let everything that she was feeling as a consequence of reading the book, and her being in Jaipur, flow. She always carried her journal with her - you never know when something strikes and you need to put your pen to paper. Yes you could always take out your phone and note it down on Google Keep or Notes, but there was an old school charm about actually writing it down using a pen. She paused after writing a couple of pages and kept her journal away, closed her eyes and leaned back on the chair. She wanted to just be. Usually when these moments of " I want to just be and not do anything" hit her, there were always demands for her attention and on her time. And she never gave in to the desire to stop and hit puase. But today she could, and she did.

Often people asked her whether she was a city girl or a village/quiet place girl - and as much as city life excited her, she was a quiet place girl. She could easily spend days like this and go out into the city only a few times a month. Solitude did not bother her or scare her, she craved it. So here, her being so far away from her life in Singapore, from the city bustle of touristy Jaipur, from the need to do stuff, she was at home and hence at peace. Yes, she was definitely a village/small town girl. She could live her in places like these - well, not the Oberoi Villas, but this far out village. 

Little did Kaveri know, that as she thought those words, someone in the Universe said "and so be it.." It was all going to change very soon - that little re-marketing Scoot ad on her laptop that had made her book this ticket to Jaipur had made sure of that. But she was blissfully unaware, as she sat on this lounge chair, with Forty Rules of Love on her lap, reaching out to her cup of tea that strange things were about to unfold. Her next sentence on the book read -

"Beyond wildest dreams, strange things happened to people when they are ready for the unusual and the unexpected." ~ Elif Shafak, Forty Rules of Love