Feel good hit of the monsoons

After the rain has fallen - Sting
I love the warmth of my green sweatshirt, after a work-out and a quick shower. It smells innately of home, of sweat and strain, of a concocted blend of Brut and Old Spice, of incense from myriad mornings, of sambar from a fresh stain. Some old smells, some new, some breathtaking, some not so much. And I especially like wearing it when I take a walk.

The rain had stopped, the streets were quiet and the air was balmy. I just felt like a walk. Ordinarily I'd go for a smoke, but I just felt like a walk. Walking works wonders for me when I feel down. But this walk had no agenda. It was just too beautiful outside not to take a walk. I love my city in the night. I love my locality in the night. In the day, you cannot imagine it can possibly be this quiet.

I didn't even want to think. You tend to think when you take a walk in the night alone. I just rode the wave. I didn't even know what direction I wanted to start. Like they say, when you don't know where you're going any road will take you there.

All the young dudes - Mott the Hoople
I just started walking along a road a couple of roads from home. G and I had run like hell down this road after we stole mangoes from a neighbour's backyard once. He was to become my accomplice in juvenile crime. We once had a blueprint of a major heist that entailed jumping down five feet from a lentil onto a compound, picking up a Pepsi bottle out of a crate from Choice bakery and jump down to a empty site, all in ten seconds. I think I need to speak with G about the time that we fell in love with the same girl once, and how she broke both our hearts by recently marrying a common enemy of ours. The bastard told on us when we were watching FTV.

Anyone for tennis - Cream
21st main. J's place! I think I've spent atleast a third of my childhood on this street alone. Wicket marked on the bark of a tree, rubber-ball cricket, broken glasses, 'lawn' tennis on the road with lines marked by bricks. Fights over wrapping paper and he-man labels. Conception of the library idea. Watching Powerzone on Cartoon Network, role-playing characters from the Centurions. Acne!

For what it's worth - Buffalo Springfield
If you live on the main road for as long as I have, you always keep wishing you lived someplace quieter. Some narrow little road, nicely tucked in a cosy-looking neighborhood where you can hear the strains of the Sitar from old Mr. Murthy's place five houses away. Far away from the noise, the pollution and in my case the smell of hot cooking oil, maida and vegetables screaming straight into the lungs earl-early in the morning. I walked in one such lane, and now more than ever before I either want to shift here or build a home in these kind of lanes at some point in life.

Better version of me - Fiona Apple
When you are small, you always look to make friends. I don't know if Seinfeld (being Seinfeld) has already observed this and made money out of it. But it really is easy to make new friends when you're growing up. You read Chacha Choudhari? You are my friend. You don't mind swapping your orange lolly with my yellow one? Come here, let's hug it out! Your mum and mine met at the grocery store. There's no way you can not be invited to my birthday now. Really, some of the best friends I have today are the ones I made on 12b ground playing cricket. I realized it while I passed by the ground today, and also how much bigger it used to be all those years ago. After a while, our friend-making pattern becomes decidedly more consistent. And infinitely more boring. Wilde was right. Consistency is the last refuge of the imaginative.

Take me somewhere nice - Mogwai
Do you ever think about putting off things for the future, and later dread not ever being able to do any of them? Like going up to that unbelievably cute girl who surfing CDs in the Rock section of a music store, and launching into a conversation about Esoteric, a vague doom metal band from Birmingham? Like learning to make that wicked chocolate mousse, that you and your friend will wreck the kitchen preparing? Like learning to strum the rhythm section of one song that has given you endless joy over the years? Like experimenting with glossy latex paint on your gypsum wallboard with that summery yellow finish that you can only see in your day dreams? Like just meeting long-lost friends whom you shared moments with that still make you smile? Most of us are like turtles. Turtles live a hundred years because they are well-protected by their shells, but they do not move forward until they stick their head out.

For sentimental times - Nat King Cole
It is time. To re-build broken bridges and build back up plans. To realize that we live by the choices we make, but to unsubscribe from the fiction that the world holds an advantage over us. To be able to deal with being out of control. To push out of the envelope and go ahead being mad at times. To realize that in time, our moral compasses will be sufficiently well developed to keep let alone our bikes, but also ourselves out of the swimming pool.

I think it is perfectly okay to take off from work, smack dap in the middle of a hectic work week with a deadline breathing down your neck. Provided you take a walk, that is. Take a walk at night, feel young.