He will have to reaccquaint myself to these silences at night as they have become somewhat unfamiliar, like the voice of a friend whom you haven't conversed with in a while. But till some such familiarity happens, he will have to revert back to using the tricks he had learnt from a novel on how to cleave himself into her, you and I.

...

So I am listening to a recording of a Nitin Sawhney's live performance here. I have at various points of time sung praises of Mr. Sawhney's music, and he is worth listening to again and again, and worth discovering (MusicIndiaOnline has all of his albums here!) if not already discovered by the unelightened masses. Why you ask? In return I ask, tell me of one contemprorary musician who has made immigration, identities, apartheid/ racism, impact of technology on human life, nuclear weapons, love songs etc the central concerns of his or her music?

...

She. Who is she? Who was she? Which 'she' will she become? You ponder on these questions, as if you are supposed to move a chessman in a game of chess where the opponent's pieces not only are allowed to change form (i.e., a rook can become a queen and a queen a lowly pawn) but also color. Before you began playing did you wonder how many moves will you have to make to check-mate, if ever?

...

This was a part of the world that you passed through about a decade ago. The purpose of your visit was persumably to learn a computer language (Fortran 77 was it?) so that you can have an easier time in the coming semester. You got on a bus heading in that direction, a bus which followed a route that lay in the Naxal belt. So in the middle of the night in the middle of nowehere, a couple of heavily armed policemen got on the bus, and stayed with the driver for the next couple of hours.

You were woken up when the bus reached the next state, and was stopped for no reason on the highway. One or the other political party had declared a state wide bandh, i.e., strike. And so this bus couldn't travel any further. And no, nor could it turn and go back across the state borders. You, who were getting schooled in the art of patience, had several adventures and finally reached the place you were supposed to reach.

Once there you didn't do any programming but rode a bicycle all around the town, and to this village down the road with a temple on a hill. At that point you were yet to encounter Jejuri in the dank literarture section of the large engineering library (fondly called CL by the natives) that you were to haunt in the coming days. You were miserable then, and for many subsequent months. Happiness is something that you never made a pact with after you were expelled from paradise.

And now, after many years, when you read of despair that has not been manufactured, and the consequent suicides, you feel very foolish, and very greatful for the much that you have been given.