If ecstasy be thy name

Today, as of this minute, this second, this minute flutter of the tick, I am ecstatic.

I love summers. I love the spirit of vacation that floats around in the warm breeze and then ossifies on your finger tips and in the hollows of your collar bones and your ankles. Making you smile and idle awhile.

Last night, I drove home from Colaba at midnight. It was, is, and will remain one of my purest experiences of joy and bliss. After I crossed Afghan Church, it felt as if I wasn't driving the car, but that it was taking me off somewhere..a place where jugs of moonlight and cups of sapphire lay waiting on a table bevelled with constellations. A distant, glittering land of magnficence.

As we drove past Marine Drive and went over the Peddar Road highway, my car had become this little, weighless mote of light that seamlessly floated along some greater channel of energy. The Hanging Gardens to my left, the Porsche showroom to my right, the beautiful expanse of the road ahead of me, and a stunning, black sea somewhere around.

I have a vision of God in my heart. It's a child, someone like Huckleberry Finn. It's not very smart but it's very loving. It's temperamental, and does whatever it has to for a tight, warm hug. And when you're sad or angry, it will not leave you alone. It will poke you until you get up and play. And in its complete unselfish rambunctious joy, it will throw open its arms and pull you into a sloppy, loving embrace. I have always felt that way about God. Years ago, my neighbor had summed up this sentiment perfectly when, on hearing her daughter's aspirations to become a model, had claimed 'Insha Allah!'

It is the most emphatic and the truest translation of what I feel when I think of Bombay. It's the city with roads that, at certain points in time, will tug you in, swathe you in its expansiveness, and infuse that hearty potent fervour of a promise into empty words.

Sometimes, not out of joy, but out of something stronger and quieter, like acknowledgement of honor perhaps, one can't help but salute the road...even if one is lost; especially when one is lost.
Because until one reaches home, until one finds one's way, at least there is this.

Insha Allah.