Have you ever felt at total peace with yourself but something's still been amiss, something you can’t put your finger on? I don’t know where to find the answers coz I don’t know what questions to ask? There are too many memories that tumble one over the other out of my mind like torrents in a stream rushing over each other to get to the river and eventually to the sea. Only in this case I can’t see my river and there is no sea to speak of. These memories come in post card pictures sometimes, the closest anything gets to that is perhaps my latest orkut album. I remember not the road I took, the journey, the people kind enough to make it a trip; all I remember is sitting on the porch of a yellow house under a bridge hiding from the sultry sun and ravishing a mirchibada. Try as I may, I’m not able to fit this picture into any of my journeys. I walk down the stairs of VGSOM and somehow know that I’ll remember these staircases four years down the line; I won’t remember the classes, I won’t remember whatever we talked about; I’ll just remember walking down these green-grey stairs one after the other.

This can’t be a bad feeling coz I’m completely relaxed, no anxiety and absolutely sober. There is still this restlessness that I can’t explain. The same restlessness I felt on that bicycle trip to Jam to get somewhere indefinable (I never reached that somewhere); the same restlessness that demands I get out of this place and visit that café in France with dim lights and wooden interiors, with small tables and upright chairs to sit on – just to savour the taste of fresh coffee beans with my eyes closed; the same restlessness that wants me to walk ever so quietly on the banks of the canal in Punjab on a cool winter evening and take in all the green of the water, blue of the sky and yellow of the fields that will make this life bearable; the same restlessness that I’ll feel when I next drive my Civic to Delhi on those beautiful dusty asphalt roads – juggling between the hustle of passing towns and the loneliness of James Blunt playing on the stereo. The restlessness water in the stream would feel to reach the sea and finally drown in its vastness...