Of course the rest of nature doesn’t like to be left behind, so it comes together to provide a backdrop to the leaves — impeccable blue skies, vibrant green pine trees, orchard grounds dotted with bushels of shiny red apples, chrysanthemums of a dozen colors blooming at every corner, and farms with hundreds of roly-poly cheerful pumpkins piled high, all waiting to happily tumble-tumble down.

But fall isn’t about color alone. It announces its arrival with a myriad of sounds, as well. Babbling brooks that tinkle at the first signs of frost. Rustling branches trying to shed the last of their leaves. Fallen leaves whooshing around in mini-tornadoes. The creak of the metal of an abandoned railroad track, one of the first to recognize the arrival of the cold. The rhythmic thuds of apples in a quiet orchard. The crunch of dried leaves under your feet as you walk on a cobblestone path. The squelch of old leaves in a puddle, as you step into it off the curb. Every single sound an instrument in the symphony of the season.

Fall is about touch too. The soft feel of a carpet of freshly fallen leaves. The kind that cover the ground so completely that you cannot tell what’s below. Bare ground, green grass, grey stone and charcoal pavement all painted over with reds and oranges, making everything seem equally friendly, equally warm and welcoming. Or a rough bale of hay beneath you during a hayride. Or the hard bumps of orphaned pine cones against your fingers as you collect them from beneath trees that have unthinkingly rejected them. Or the squishy feel of the insides of a pumpkin as you sit with your hands buried to your elbows in one, while a giggling three-year old makes you carve it.

And what is fall without the cornucopia of familiar smells and tastes? Of hot cider with a hint of cinnamon, nutmeg, orange and cloves. Of the smell of butter and sugar from freshly baked tarts, tempting you into the local bakery. Of the crunch of piping-hot cooked apples basted in brown sugar, waiting to go into a pie. Of memories of golden maple syrup as you drive by a sugar bush. Of the smell of fresh carved pumpkins greeting you at people’s doorsteps. Of the lingering smell of pine trees in the air, even when you cannot see any nearby. Of Halloween candy that leaves you on a permanent sugar high. Of moist earth as layers of leaves are raked away. Of leaves slowly growing old.

It’s the season of change, when the skirts get longer, jackets are pulled around tighter, and walking becomes more purposeful as people hurry indoors. When cheeks turn pink as familiar faces burst into smiles. A season of lingering tight hugs, of quick kisses shared on park benches, of hands held a little longer. Of sipping on big mugs of coffee clasped tightly with both hands. Of watching your breath fog up and making pretend smoke puffs. Of sneaking up on a squirrel while it ruminates on what berry to eat, and having it look up and pose for you as you gleefully click.

Fiery yet melancholic, bold yet tender, quiet like an aging monarch, romantic like a new lover, sprightly like a child .. fall has many a persona, playing many a role. And as it concludes its performance, takes a bow and exits gracefully, it seems the perfect time to applaud the season. A season that makes your senses come alive. A season that makes your senses dance.

There’s something very warm and friendly about old typewriters. Like a friend you sit down with and unburden your heart to, safe with the knowledge that he’ll take it to his grave. The steady clackety-clack reassuring you that he is listening. Each tching of the carriage-return, comforting you, making you lighter.

Then again, they’re like old men you meet near park benches. Weatherbeaten yet full of spunk. Packed with stories waiting to be told and retold. Of love, of valor, of sadness and of hope. And just when you thought you’d heard them all, a new one’s pulled out of the bag.

And sometimes they’re artists. Taking your disjointed thoughts and putting words around them. Making sense of your nonsense. Finding images within your incoherence and painting them for you. Giving you a chance to take a step back and look at your thoughts from the outside. Reintroducing yourself to you.

Some letters clean and precise. Others blackened and worn. Warm rusted metal and cool flashy chrome. The familiar smell of ink, like an old pal’s cigar. And the odd sharp edge that lurks around, nicking you when you least expect it. Little wonder that they make such good friends.

Like a jhalak dikhlaajaa from Himesh’s nose,
While Pancham’s music gently flows.

Like a thorn that pricks while sniffing at a rose, (Token cliché firmly in place)
Or a funky dream that ruins your doze.

Like my attempting poetry instead of prose,
Life has interrupted, and rudely soes. (Okay, so that’s not a word. But it rhymes!)

But I’ll be back soon to annoy you, thoughs.
To generate nonsense, and increase your woes.

But now, I goes.

Apollo-Gs for the lack of updates. Enjoy the break while it lasts.

Everyone said he was very smart. One day, maybe, you will also go to IIT, they used to tell to her. She couldn’t wait to grow up and be like him. Ravi was her favorite cousin. Always brought her chocolates. Cadbury Eclairs. And took her on piggy-back rides and made her giggle. And when mum wasn’t around, he would sneak her off to get ice cream. Butterscotch.

She sat next to him on the edge of the bed, feet dangling and swinging, and showed him her new painting. I won the second prize for it, she said, her face beaming with pride. That’s very nice. You know, those flowers on your dress are very nice too, he said, as he started to trace their outlines. His fingers slowly ran up her thigh.

She did not want to grow up and be like him. She did not want to grow up.

I feel its presence around me always. Sometimes as it sweeps me up into a storm, leaving me breathless and gasping for more .. and at other times, as it slows down to softly set me back on the ground, before resuming its unstoppable happy little dance. And yet when I try to hold it and describe it, it plays hide-and-seek with me. Thumbs its nose at me playfully, as it hops and skips away, leaving me smiling to myself, wondering why I even tried. I gaze at it dreamily, as it gives words and form to emotions I always felt, but was never aware of. An unknown force writing new pages of my journal.

I hum the song, languidly caressing each note and reluctantly moving on to the next one .. but the notes tug at me, wanting me to touch them one more time .. and I find myself singing them over and over again. Till they becomes a part of me, permeating my smile, my hopes, my desires .. till I am one with them. Till I am complete.

Some melodies are like some people .. they come into your life, washing over your senses like the waves, while you carefully try to preserve the ocean you’ve just discovered, in the palm of your hand. You could spend a lifetime trying to put into words how they make you feel, but you know you never can.

And even while you try, you fall deeper and deeper in love. Such are the melodies of your heart.

• The ones trying to share the warm-and-fuzzies —

  “Oooh, looky at the houses and trees so full of lights! The world is happy and bright all around! I am toasting chestnuts over the fire even as I write this. Wheeee!”

• The ones retrospective and contemplative about the year gone by —

  “Another year passes us by and what have we learnt from it? Let us ponder for a moment on how we can make this world a better place ..” *solemn nod of head*

• The ones grumpy and detesting all humanity —

  “Ugh. I hate the holidays. Lovey-dovey couples under the mistletoe. Bleh. I want to strangle Santa with his fuzzy hat. I wish they’d all drown themselves in eggnog. Gaah!”

• The ones who just returned from watching Bluffmaster (2005) —

  “It rocks! Such awesome one-liners! AB looks soooo hot. Nana Patekar rules. And that song Right Here Right Now is so very cool. I can’t stop singing it!” *drool, sigh and other assorted expressions*

Anyhoo, as you can see, we’d be pretty lousy at these types of posts. Although that’s never stopped us from trying our hand at things, we won’t go there today. Instead we are sticking to what we do best. So here goes. A poem, slightly drunk on the holiday spirit that is around us. At least that’s our excuse for why it is so bad, so hush.

By the way, curious koschan. Is it Kasam Paida Karne Waale Ki, as in ‘I swear on the one that gave birth‘, or Kasam Paida Karne Waale Ki, as in the ‘belongs to the one who gave birth to Kasam‘? If it is the latter, then who is this Kasam and why the sense of belonging? Oops, gotta go. I spot an alien.

*exits dancing in shiny silver tights singing in Salma Agha’s voice*

Ye raat mein jo mazaa hai <toink toink>
Mazaa ye kuchh nayaa nayaa hai <toink toink>
Ki tumko aaj kyaa huaa hai <toink toink>
Ki jhoomta hi jaa raha hai ..
Jhoom jhoom jhoom baba~aaaa ..
Jhoom jhoom jhoom baba~aaaa ..
Jhoom jhoom jhoom babaaaaa~aaa aaaaaaaaa ooooo!

The inbound and outbound trains whooshed in onto the platforms from opposite sides.

(Written as part of the 55-word story tag from Rajesh. As this is my moment of sweet revenge, I pass it on to past tag-inflicters — Dharmendra, Kaashyapeya and Anshul as well as other bakras who I think will enjoy this — Sagnik, gvenum and Anurag. If you’d like to play this game of tag, holler and I’ll do the needful.)

Potter Potter everywhere, but not a kid to shrink
Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

I woke up every morning of last week muttering to myself that I would not write a post on Harry Potter ‘cos everyone, their uncle and their uncle’s dog has written about it. And yet here I am. Comments ranging from ‘I am so swept up by Rowling’s world of magic‘ to ‘I don’t know what the big deal was, it was a pretty pedestrian book‘ to ‘I refuse to read anything that is so hyped‘ to ‘woof woof‘ have peppered the blogosphere. But whichever way the wind blows, Potter has found his way into a post on pretty much every blog.

And at the risk of getting publicly lynched by Rowling fans, I still maintain what I said after I finished Book Three — that Rowling’s stories (not necessarily her writing style) are simply put — Lord Of The Rings meets Enid Blyton. A parallel magical world set in a dorm. Tolkien and Blyton fans, please to not kill me. I am oversimplifying just for example’s sake. This is not to say I won’t read Rowling. Yes, the deed has been done. The ubiquitous book has been read, the person who had to die, died, the Half-Blood Prince has been discovered and other such earth-shattering trivialities have been dealt with. And I am also mighty pleased that my guesses about both were on target. And yes, I have a theory about where the seventh Horcrux is. Much joy.

On an unrelated and more serious note — In the aftermath of the Mumbai rains and floods, there are a couple of new collablogs that have sprung into action. Please go visit them and if you can, help. Here’s what one of the blog creators, Peter Griffin (also the person behind the TsunamiHelp blog) has to say —

Almost a thousand people dead in Maharashtra, about half of them from Bombay. Transport screwed, no electricity, no running water, some areas STILL under water a week later.

They haven’t even begun figuring out how many people were injured. Or what the tolls might increase to if the epidemics we all fear do happen. (And that’s likely, if you have sewage mixed with rain water standing thirteen feet deep in some places) They have’t even begun estimating what the losses of property are going to be like. So many have lost everything.

Bombay needs help folks. We can analyse what went wrong later. We can figure out what to do about it later. Right now, Bombay needs help. Bombay’s bloggers (and some friends – the net doesn’t worry about borders) are trying to do their bit, by making sure information is easy to find. Information was one more thing we all didn’t have enough of last week. Not that it’s much better now.

http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/ is an effort to put online such critical “for emergencies” information as we can find. We hope to turn this into a permanent site that will act as a Bombay disaster portal.

http://cloudburstmumbai.blogspot.com/ is a collection of news, both from the media as well as stories sent in via email and blog links.

Link to us if you run a site, pass these links around to your friends, send us information, send us stories Cloudburst@googlegroups.com.

Pass the word, people. It’s a small gesture, considering the enormity of what has happened, but we hope it will go a long way.

As they say, too much of anything can be bad — Potter or water.

So apparently, I give people the impression that I read. Total intellectual-wintellectual types. Ahem ahem. Okay, in their defense and to my credit, I have read. Please to notice the past tense. I was an avid reader as a kid, one of those ‘I will carry my book to the dinner table and read while I eat so I don’t have to look at that eggplant that mom is forcing me to eat‘ types. Substitute eggplant with karela on special occasions. But I was also a weird kid, when it came to what I read. I was a weird kid for several other reasons that are outside the context of this blog, so we won’t go there just yet.

A sample story goes thus — in my 8th grade we were given a book review assignment. A bunch of students wrote reviews of Sweet Valley High books. For those not in-the-know, SWH was a series about these blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfectly-tanned-in-the-Californian-sun twin sisters and their many boyfriends. These were the junior, less-steamy versions of Mills & Boon romances, so don’t get any wild ideas just ‘cos I mentioned blonde twins.

So — giggly schoolgirls wrote SWH and Nancy Drew reviews, not-so-giggly ones wrote reviews of The Secret Garden, A Little Princess and Anne of Green Gables. And then there was me. What did I pick? We, The People by Nani A Palkhivala. A brilliant man and an exceptional book. But Palkhivala in the 8th grade? Yes, I was definitely a strange kid. As if this was not bad enough, the book made such a big impact on me that I went on to read it four more times. I digress from the topic of this post to include an excerpt of his Vision for India speech, to give you a sample of the man’s writing —

When I was in the United States, I was often asked one question — How does India, with its great human potential and natural resources, manage to remain poor? The correct answer is very unflattering and hardly the type of answer which an ambassador of any country may be expected to give: We are not poor by nature but poor by policy. You would not be far wrong if you called India the world’s leading expert in the art of perpetuating poverty.

So as I was saying, I think book tags/memes are a rather difficult experience for me. A music tag, on the other hand, I’ll take any day. Illusions apart, I don’t read much, so I will naturally crib and whine about the whole exercise. This in turn, will make me look like an ungrateful wretch to the kind souls who tagged me. And then there’s the business of finding some unsuspecting goats to pass on the tag to. More wretchedness. All this, so people get to know what books I own, read and like, something I highly doubt people care to know in the first place. Sigh. Now for the drill —

• Total number of books I own:
  Approximately 400 + 200 at home in India. I haven’t read at least half the books I own, which apparently is typical of a book-lover, so looks like I’m on my way to becoming one. Much coolness. But I do intend to read them all soon. Honest.
• Last book I bought:
  Pre-ordered the sixth HP book — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Yep, I am one of those.
• Last book I read:
  Asterix at the Olympic Games. Yes Asterix comics count as books. Don’t even think about arguing with that. Not seeming so well-read anymore, are we now?
• Five books I love:
  I usually hate ranking things I love. So I shall pull my ‘it’s against my principles to objectively rank something that is inherently subjective‘ dialogue and chicken out of answering this one. But I must mention Enid Blyton. She is the reason I started to read, and my childhood and imagination are infinitely richer thanks to her. And Zorro! The swashbuckling hero was the primary reason I learnt to ride a horse. Pining for a masked man on a horse to sweep me off my feet was too passé. I wanted to be the flamboyant one *riding* the horse, fighting the baddies and whisking some man off *his* feet. Yes, I told you before — weird kid. Speaking of weird kid, add Calvin and Hobbes to the list. Truly, one of life’s great joys.
• Five people I shall tag (aka Five people who will refuse to visit my blog again):
  This is the fun part! I pass on this tag to —
  1. Rajesh (Unlike me, he actually reads. Expect a liberal sprinkling of Pratchett, Asimov and Douglas Adams in his responses)
  2. Sivani (I see she hasn’t been tagged yet, and if ever there is a blogger who is the very epitome of being well-read, it is her)
  3. aNTi (He got music-tagged but not book-tagged, and he shouldn’t miss out on the simple pleasures of life)
  4. Sriram (He has an opinion on everything and loves to express it, so here’s his chance to put that talent to some good use, for a change)
  5. Deepak (Another avid reader who has been music-tagged. What is this? Everyone gets music-tagged except me. No fair!)
  6. gvenum (He reads even less than I do, and I’d love to see how he deals with this. Hee haw!)
  7. iii (He hasn’t blogged in six months, so am hoping this will wake him up?)

All done. Seven bakras .. er, I mean book-lovers. Yes, I went beyond the stipulated five. I’m so generous no? And if any of you readers would like to answer these questions, just consider yourself tagged and use my commentspace to spread the joy. No, seriously, please do so. It’ll be fun!

Since no post of mine is complete without at least one Bollywood reference — talk of Zorro reminded me of Shahrukh Khan dressed all Zorro-like in the title song of Baazigar (1993) — a most unintentionally howlarious moment in a relatively serious film. Which in turn reminded me of another song from the same movie that seemed appropriate for this post. So for your listening pleasure, I conclude with singing —

*pam pam pam pam papampam pam pam pam pam papampam*
kitaabein bahut sii padhii hongii tumne
magar koii chehraa bhii tumne padhaa hai ..

You may have read many a book, but have you ever read a face? One can find deep fundas in the most unexpected places in Hindi films if one looks closely enough, no? *pam pam pam pam papampam .. *