[responsivevoice_button voice=”UK English Female” buttontext=”Listen to this Post”]
While I was in Dharamkot (in the Dharamshala district of Himachal Pradesh), I met a monk whose job was to pluck the medicinal herbs to make the Tibetan medicines. He told me how little Dalai Lama escaped the Chinese and secretly came to India in the fifties. Our first prime minister Pt. Nehru gave him and several other Tibetan refugees the district of Dharamshala to live.
Little did I know that there’s yet another country that our government has allowed passage for. This country doesn’t have a fix area. It is like an amoeba; it changes its shape and size to accommodate people with dancing hearts. The PM of this country doesn’t ask for any legal proofs, or documents to prove that you are a legit human with no murders on your head. You need to have a happy, a jumping, colourful heart and an open mind, or you won’t get the citizenship. That’s the rule. They call this country Ishqestan or United States of Love.
That day, I was returning from visiting a doctor who tried his best to explain why I suffered an anxiety attack at a time when I was actually living my dream. (I was writing my first book then.) The doctor told me to talk to people often, go running instead of doing yoga. The doctor’s advice confused me even more.
As I walked up the hill towards my home, I found a unique piece of writing on the door of a toilet outside a cafe and stopped to snap a picture. Few people were sitting on the stairs outside a music shop on the other side of the narrow street. Turns out I was treading on the borders of this funny country, Ishqestan. The PM of this country, Dev asked me if I was a Gujrati. I have been asked if I was a South Indian or a Bengali, but never a Gujrati. “Marathi”, I said.
The man has a head full of black and white hair, and he ruled his country in a funky t-shirt and shorts. He had a ukulele in his hand and he sung parodies. Parodies about the world outside this little country where everything is painfully yet ironically funny. He sung of the neighboring prime minister, he sung about parents and their parenting, and about people being afraid to love and live. He even made a song for me.
Some five or six of us random people sat down talking, listening to the parodies. Slow and steady, more people started joining us. Each of us who crammed up on the stairs picked a musical instrument from the shop. A bit later, beers and Spanish cigarettes made their way in our spare hands. We all looked like beggars sitting on the side of the road, jamming to parodies, to old songs from 60’s and 70’s, and even to the Marathi prayers I knew.
People were passing, pausing, applauding the crude uke songs. Had we held a hat upside down and asked for pennies, we would have been a strong competition to the Adanis and the Ambanis.
That day, late at night after jamming for 6-7 hours, finishing all the beers from the little store, and meeting the most amazing people who surprisingly had a great voice, knew all the lyrics to the songs and had the most open hearts, I went home.
After a week’s struggle with insomnia, after being held as a prisoner for a month by the stories in my head, that night I slept like a baby.
