Whispering Shadow

I woke up that morning. I opened the door to my room. In stead of the passageway of my house, I stepped on to a beach. I heard the sound of the waves. I saw a beautiful sun rise, but the breeze from the Arabian Sea didn’t allow my body to feel its warmth. It could have been one of my dreams, but this time it wasn’t. It was for real, the surroundings and my state of mind. Just before I had gone to sleep the previous night, I was sitting on the beach, alone, staring into the vast expanse of darkness that the ocean had become. Barring the sound of waves breaking on the shore and the hymn of the insects, it was silent. After a while, I could hear my heart beat too, as if it was playing along in harmony with the sounds of nature. I didn’t notice the blanket of stars that shrouded the ocean until I decide to lie down on my back. The stars were infinite in number, unmatched in their luminosity and set up a great contrast with the emptiness of the night. The sky itself felt like an endless b

I am jubilant. I have stayed away from the newspaper for a week. The feeling of nausea due to overconsumption of information has finally ceased. I have even stayed away from the many news channels that crowd the first 50 channels of my television box. So what if the world is slipping deeper into recession and India is anticipating two events (IPL and the Elections) which will see expenditure of 0.6% of our GDP in just over a month? Not much can change within a week. At least nothing that has any influence on me. Why the sudden aversion from current affairs one may ask. I was preparing for a b-school interview. The array of questions that they can ask you is insane. And as a result, even if you consider yourself to be generally well-read, you are never as ‘aware’ as your interviewers are of the world around you, at least you don’t interpret things they way they do. Hence to try to raise the bar, I was reading like never before, reading topics which I would conveniently skip otherwise,

41 degrees should be no big deal, especially for someone who has stayed in Dubai for half his life. It is easily around 6 degrees cooler than the average temperature in Dubai and only half as humid. But it has been sucking the life out me over the past few days. Mumbai is warm and humid like never before. And what makes life worse is the fact that you don't have the luxury of an air conditioner at most places you go to for everyday work, barring office, which is literally always 'chilled out'. And the temperatures have peaked at a time when I am celebrating my first weekend with no prior agenda in a long time. I knew I was going to face 'heat' in my interview but beyond that it should have been all cool. How wrong I was. It's possible the worst the weather in the city has ever felt. Being the outdoorsy person I am, I am quite stuck for options. Yes, I can go to a mall or catch up with a movie but it is never as satisfying as going to Marine Drive or sitting on t