Dilli comes from heart

It has been almost a year since I left Delhi.
The city I fell in love with, but could not love properly. There was a distance between us.
Not only the physical distance of kilometers, but also a gap of not-belogingness.
Often I wonder if it would be a bit different if I did live in Delhi itself, not in Gurgaon. Or maybe if I was braver to venture beyond the well-trodden touristic parts of the city. Did I need a local guy as a guide? Could I get one without being entangled in a dramtic love-story? Questions remain.
I know I will be back.
In the meantime, I discovered this amazing photo blog - The Delhi Walla - I love it!
Mayank Austen Soofi tells me stories of places undicovered, of stories unheard, of characters unmet.
And of course, one more proof that the Law of Attraction works - I started reading a book, called Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamzie. (A story of a Japanese girl that survives the nuclear bomb in Nagasaki, moves to Delhi at the time of the Independence and partitition.)
In the book, there is the separation of the Old Delhi (Mughal one) and the New Delhi (the British one).
Old Delhi is Dili, the city of heart. The lost home.
A part of my heart is also longing to come back to this secret, lost, out-of-time part of the city...As if, I had been there another time, in different circumstances.
You know the feeling, don't u?

a quote

"...she wanted words with the heft of stainless steel, sounds that have been boiled clean, like a surgeon's instruments, tools with nothing attached except meaning that could be looked up in a dictionary - empty of pain and memory and inwardness"
/ from The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh /

Love, poetry and origami

I recently found a present from a beloved friend.
A book with oriental love poems and beautiful origami.
Pure pleasure for the soul...



On a rainy Night to You Up North

You ask for a homecoming date but still there is no date,

on Mount Bashan the late night rain swells the autumn lake.

When will you and I trim a candle by the bedroom window again,

and chat about Mount Bashan and the late night rain?

/Li Shangyin, 813-58, China/



Then let us pledge a friendship

without human ties

And meet again at the

far end of the Milky Way

/Li Po, 701-62,China/



I have always regretted the shallowness of words

Compared with the depth of human hearts,

Today the two of us look at one another,

Silently, but with feelings a hundredfold.

/Liu Yu-hsi, 772-842, China/

home alone

home alone.
time to spoil myself with some nice things like...
hot, coffee flavoured bath
listening loud to Buena Vista Social Club on the gramophone
a glass of white wine
two-three spoonfulls of Nutella
and the latest translated in Bulgarian novel by Michael Cunningham - "Flesh and Blood"

sometimes it is good to be spoilt:)

On books...

If you could give one book as a present to a close friend... what would it be?
And why?