Bylanes Of Quotes

Why are people okay with not walking? Does Father not miss his daily walks to the shrine and his shop? What about Mother and her long walk to her parents' home? Does Bobeh not get bored now that she can't kill time watching people walk on the streets? What happened to my sister who lived her life outside; going to college with her friends, walking long distances to make umpteen visits to her tailor? I miss playing hopscotch on the streets. I miss walking in the courtyards and the run to buy kyencza. Why can't I play hide-and-seek in with Mogli's daughter in our courtyard again? Who walks in the by-lanes, on the bridges, outside the school? Who can walk to the bakeries? These are not built for walking.

The most common cycle used is the sixteen beat cycle, called teentaal or tritaal. Dha dhin dhin dha. Dha dhin dhin dha. Dha tin tin ta. Ta dhin dhin dha…sixteen beats divided neatly into four times four. The sixteen-beat cycle starts and ends and stars and ends, creating a repetitive circularity; the melody has to accommodate itself within its scaffolding; it has to negotiate with the parameters to find a happy balance between freedom and responsibility, rights and duties, exhilaration and restraint. There is scope for risk-taking, within reason, as long as one came back to the line of control in time, and hit sama, the drum stroke where one cycle ended and the new one began; a point of arrival and of departure. This is a musical metaphor for life as it should be lived. Truly great musicians can swerve into unchartered bylanes, but still find their way back to the destination. On time

I had, by now, travelled about half the breadth and almost the entire length of the country. If I were to join with a pencil the places I visited during the past few weeks, I would be drawing a crude ‘S’ on the map of India. These are places that don’t mean a thing to you because you never get down there, but at the same time they mean the world to you because no train journey is complete without them. They are irrelevant, yet they are a ritual. Next time when my train halts at any of these junctions, my mind would be racing back to the lanes and bylanes of these towns, which I know now like the back of my hand. But since I have been there and done that, I would, in all probability, be standing at the door of my coach and looking out for the man calling, ‘Chai, chai!