It is evening, early fall as I write this. I was incapacitated by a terrible sense of longing an hour or so ago, so much so that I couldn't make my fingers clutch a pen and write. This was till I dug up Mickey Hart's "Around the World For A Song", and went on a trip.

The beat took me in no particular order to rainforests and the dying music of Kauli tribe of Brazil, high mountain plateaus and the throat chanting of Tibet, the Gangetic plain of India with the madness Zakir Hussain can cox out of two drums, the Ojibway firecircle chants, the folk rythms of Sahara nomads, the massive wall of polyphonic rythm thrown up by a master drummer of Nigeria. What this music did was take me to that drum that beats within myself, and listen to it again closely.

Go listen to this album, and feel the rythm.

May the spring breeze blow, spilling colors onto flowers. You come too beloved, so that this garden may re-flower.

This cage and its melancholy; do say something to the breeze friends, So that it may return swirling with all those memories of the Friend.

Let the dawn descend from the corner of your lips. Let the night seep into the day from your dark hair tips.

This longing is enough for my heart’s famishment. Just as your name is enough to summon all your loyalists.

What had passed over me passed over me, but loneliness Was it my tears that compelled your fate to pan out so tonight?

The directions, Faiz, on the way we must have forgotten to examine For leaving the beloved’s street, we went straight to the death's platform!

A version of Faiz Ahmed Faiz's beautiful 'Gulon Main Rang Bhare', done as I was waiting for a April 'darshan'

Kind Readers,

(I know I might be adressing only myself!)

Moi dream company, McKinsey & Co, is interviewing me, and vice versa next week. So all of you 'kindly be' sending me all of your tremendous 'force' (if you are the praying type, prayers or wishes) as I do this Cirque De Soliel thing (swinging from a high rope with the tip of your nose is fun!), and go over to the dark side.

Ommmm. -S