My Innermost Sacred Space

It has been over a year that I could pen down my thoughts and post a blog. Well, actually, I have about 3 unfinished blogs since then, 2 unfinished stories and over a 100 gazillion plots in my mind that I had the urge to write about, but couldn't even start and are dying a slow painful death in my mind. But then I couldn't help it you see. All this while I was looking for some inspiration or driving force of motivation to keep me going with whatever has been happening, though in retrospect I always see it as worrying over petty issues, and in the interim losing out on doing things that I love the most, like writing, for one. And though I did have many inspirations but all of them lacked that driving force I think. Well I can say that is because I can feel the difference while I'm having another attempt at this new piece, about which I'm pretty sure will be completed as it is, because this is something that has been closest to my heart of anythings. It had been in me somewhere deep down to express from a very long time and hasn't at all diminished, but only grown.

On the 2nd of Sept, Friday, after visiting my doctor for normal routine checkup at Ashram Chowk, I decided to go over to Connaught Place to do some formal shopping for the oncoming placement season. The feeling of power one has with a few thousand bucks in hand and let free to shop is a feeling indescribable, though, I did make an attempt in my previous blog, hence, I will not go onto that again, as this is for some totally different feeling or emotion. Something that can be experienced only parallel to the materialistic world we live in. Emotions that we may not be aware of consciously, but realize only in retrospect, cherish them and then store them forever in the deep down core of our hearts, just so that we can recall them again and have a reason to smile even in the darkest of hours. I know I may forget the most beautiful story that I read maybe a 100 times, but never will I forget the slightest of details, observable to human eye, of those times or moments that truly count.

So as I was saying, this little unplanned act of going over to Connaught Place from Ashram Chowk, led me to walk down the good ol' parts of memory lane. It had been over a year as well since I followed this path, and this once would the first time I did it in reverse. After crossing the Nizammuddin Station and circling about the India Gate, my personal favorite part of New Delhi starts with taking a right turn to Kasturba Gandhi Marg. As I said I was travelling in reverse, the first to encounter was Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, a centre where I learnt French. A place, you'd know if you've been following my blogs dutifully, which has a beautiful history, a reason that almost acquires like half of me since my conscious awakening after school ended. Then follows the road, the KG Marg, that follows up till the Barakhamba Metro Station.

Those early weekend mornings of french classes, waking up at 5-30 to get ready and reach Tilak Nagar metro station by 6-30, an effort to make it to the class by 7 was in its own way a battle (for if you know me, you know the effort it takes me to relinquish my sleep and be somewhere on time), but it had a thrill at that time for which, surprisingly, I garnered so much energy that never missed me a single class. Though, reason behind it was definitely 'Love'.

Hold on! No! I obviously meant "love for the language"! Haven't you read my blog with the same title? "Amour pour la langue"? You should, it explains it all.

But, of course, I know! In the end, it does mention that therein lay a reason behind the love for the language, and of course, that reason was love as well. So yes, you were correct in assuming the same in the first place. I just thought I could distract you from the obvious, you know. After all, it does make me gush like a blushing bride in excitement to think of those past times, any and every time the topic is brought up. And this is exactly how I felt travelling through that part of Delhi, or rather the 'Heart of Delhi', where somewhere rests my own heart.

So, travelling down the road from Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan to Barakhamba MS, I almost relived the times when love blossomed, I got to learn one of the most finest languages in the world, that comes from the country that consists of the "City of Love"; the road where countless number of times me and my friends walked down after the class in hot n humid summers, and also the times when the same sun warmed our backs on wintry mornings. And slowly but steadily, it all helped me in growing as a personality that I am today, and I will take pride in that!!

But the journey just doesn't stop there! Ahead of Barakhamba MS, encloses within the outer and inner circles of Connaught Place, lies one place to with which I share a connection, or rather relation, that I will always fail in describing in words to the fullest of my satisfaction. And that place is Central Park, right in the middle of the heart of Delhi.

People ask me, why is it that I like the place so much?

Some go even further by outrageously calling the place as 'annoying'!!

And some are just so busy with other things, that they never gave it a chance to think about it.

Well I don't blame them, for I could have very well been in the same place. You see, since a small child I had been listening to my cousins or aunts or friends about their visit to Connaught Place, but never had such an opportunity myself. Hence, for me it was some place that people could never be tired of going to, like some mecca of weekend hangout/relaxation. I do have a faint recollection of going for some movie to some cinema in CP as a child, neither of which I remember. But if I really trust my memory, then it had to be the movie 'Roza', and now if I think about it, it had to be Regal Cinema, where me, my mom, cousins and aunt watched it. But that never had an impact, for as I said, I do not remember any details of it.

You see, everyone have their own version of CP. So, everyone else who visited it more often as a child, remembered their own version of visiting the place, like when my friend's grandfather could still ride a scooter and take her/him along. Over the years they grew accustomed to the place, and like other childhood memories, the impact of CP diminished as well I think.

But that wasn't for me. The first time, in my conscious awakening, I visited CP was on 1st Jan 2007, when a dear most friend Abhimanyu Mitra took me and Dinesh Singh, another dear friend, along with him. I can still recall it with every detail as one of the most beautiful evening we 3 spent. The first thing I noticed as we exited from the underground station was the wintry afternoon, with clouds all over and a cool wind blowing across my face, as if the place was conscious of its newest visitor and testing for any hostility. But just as soon the innocent me fell in love with the place, the place itself opened its arms wide open to welcome me only to never let go, because I can never go.

Promptly, we entered the Central Park, which was newly developed and was recently opened for visitors to sit, chat, spend their evening and what not. The first look one gets, after sitting onto those red stone steps of the amphitheater, is the 360 degrees view of the standard white buildings, outlined with green trees and meeting the gray sky over the horizon. I was lost! Not paying any attention to what the other 2 were talking. Though I remember Abhi was silent for a few minutes letting me sink in the vision and then promptly asking, isn't it beautiful. And with a lump forming in my throat with choked words, barely managed to say 'amazing' and nodded my head with the bestest of smiles that I must have smiled in a long time. Breathless!

And yet people ask, why do I love Central Park so much? And with a smile I just reply after a certain pause, if you sit somewhere in the middle of the steps of the amphitheater, its always a soul soothing effect to watch the sky, that meets the standard white buildings outlined with green trees at the horizon; change its color from light blue or cloudy gray in the evening, the deep fire orange near the sunset turn to yellow, to light purple then deep purple of the twilight, and slowly dark blue and finally all black of the nightfall all over the place. And once the night sets in, all the buildings with their shops turning on their lights, every evening is like a Diwali festival, with people hustling and bustling, laughing, chattering, but, at that certain spot of the central park sits a person for whom time just ceases to exist, the noise just quietens to pin drop silence and in all this fervor, that person finds inner peace; and that person is me!

People change, landscape change, situations change, preferences change, but this never ending magic of the great phenomena only makes me fall in love all over again!

So they reason, that they would have loved the place had it not been so crowded. And then can one believe the lovebirds that sit around the park? The couples don't have even a tad bit of decency!

Alas, I say, that it did become so about a year or so back. But then central park or rather CP is something like the planet Pandora from the movie 'Avatar' for me. Its like it is alive! And a few imperfections cannot affect or stop me from loving the place any less. Because you see, I was in love with the place even before I knew love existed; and when I was introduced to the Central Park was the time when it was new and still developing, exactly the time when I too was developing into a personality. The write Joseph Campbell once said, "Your sacred space is where you can find yourself time and again", and this place has exactly been that for me. After all, don't you see! This one chance meeting finally gave me the inspiration to successfully pen down my thoughts. Ah, the relieved man I am at present. :D

Before I end this, there is one more memory that I would like to share. As I mentioned earlier that it was Abhi who introduced me to CP the first time, there was one piece of information that I had which he did not. You see, Abhi is the one person in my circle who has always been good with the routes, no matter how much I fight to disagree with him, only to be proven wrong later on and every common friend of ours present at the scene berating me after! And at that time I was still a novice with Delhi's routes, so when I, for the first time and probably the only time, led him correctly to the "Keventer's" milk shake shop, which at those days served one of the best fruit shakes in Delhi; was like a major heart attack to Abhi's little ego of his showing off. (And I can't restrain myself anymore from putting a tongue out smiley at this :P :P :P). The knowledge of Keventer's location was the only knowledge that I had and the only knowledge that he did not, which let me bask in all the glory for that particular moment. Sir Abhimanyu Mitra, as close is Central Park to me, the place will always be incomplete without your presence alongside.

Whew! If you have reached this far in reading, I truly commend you for the patience that you have shown, dear reader. And as an ending note, I'd like to mention, that while writing this, even to this point I could not decide for a title to this blog. "Heart of the Heart", "My version of CP", "The most beautiful evening", etc were a few of the ones in my mind. But in the end I decided to go with the said title, "My innermost sacred space"!