in an airport lounge in Bombay is excellent company - the absurdity of (or is it the great truth inherent in?) his adventures an excellent counterpoint for the trains of thought that run me back to another Bombay night like this when I set out to fulfill my own absurd version of the American Dream, again deduced mainly from books, even if they (e.g., Seth's "The Golden Gate") were less fantastical (or absurd?) than the tales of chivalry that infect Don Q's head.

Components of those dreams have come to pass (I am getting to travel, and pretend that I am expert in areas of abstruse business logic, i.e., common sense) but the dreams themselves, in all their fragmented and shattered glory, remain like the twirling windmills again which my addled head (and perhaps, heart) has to keep tilting against.

...I am playing Dhrupad - the idea is to assuage these portents of doom I have been experiencing in my mental landscape - the bomb blasts in Hyderabad that happened today didn't help any, given that one of the bloody infernos - Gokul Chaat - was were I used to eat desi junk food every so often when I used to live in that city.

Perhaps, I have no business brining such disasters into my brooding - re-reading Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" after a night of broken sleep didn't help any. Logically, I have no good reasons to return to India - except for family who still live there, I have no other emotional bonds - landscape laced with culture is too abstruse a thing to hold onto - even if I know that this raaga I am listening to might sound better if played as night falls after a hot summer day, as one is stretched out under a large banyan tree. Yet, I am going - on the bullock cart version of an airline, Air India - in less than 30 or so minutes - to figure out what?

Perhaps, Don Quixote (in the Edith Grossman's translation, purchased many months ago in Toronto, unopened until today) will provide a clue for a way out of this unease that I can't even exactly name.

It so happens that I end up playing the songs written by Gulzar usually when riding in cars or when I am in motion, in an airplane. I suppose this is because I subconsciously link motion to nostalgia. Anyway, tomorrow I am flying out to India from New York on a two week long break. And in a few minutes I am flying to New York from San Francisco. So it is only appropriate that I am playing this lovely Gulzar's song, "Barfaan", from the movie " The Blue Umbrella" as I wait to get on-board the flight.