Two lives

In about 24 hours I witnessed a temperature drop of about 25 Celsius degrees, I saw a radical improvement in air quality and noise pollution disappeared. The cars on the road changed, and they all drove on the "wrong" side of the road. A key driving strategy changed - honking at cars at red lights when they take more than a nano second to move when the red light starts blinking - and life, as I knew it, radically changed. For 50 days. And after that it will flip again. Living one life while finding peace in another is a tough act. Life moves from one boarding pass to another, and the key anxiety is whether the complimentary upgrade to a "lie-flat-seat" will happen or not. Drifting from one business-class lounge to the next, checking out the best single malt available, and scoping out the smoking areas in airports all over the World becomes a way of life. And all this because there are work demands, but more importantly because of a strong belief that "statis is death." There is a class of people for whom another research publication is not enough, another hustled buck is not enough, another accolade is not enough, because they know there is more to come. Because there is always another book to be written (happy to state that there is a contract with a publisher), another sale to be completed, and another uttarayaon (a formal affair where an expensive piece of fabric is offered to a person of importance in the process of felicitating the person) to be worn, and in general another "another" to be experienced. And on this journey, there are always many co-travelers. The ones who continue to demonstrate their worries about your wellbeing, and those who make sure that your wellbeing is good. Both are vital. Without the worriers one tends to get complacent making mistakes, and with those who ensure one’s wellbeing there is always a sandwich packed in the backpack. This is a new World where movement defines the very essence of being alive, where the constant change is the only indicator that everything is normal. This is only for some people who wake after a few hours of sleep and open up the laptop and start writing because time has no meaning and place is where one can get the slumber - anywhere - a bench at a railway station or a cozy bed in a Bed and Breakfast in the backwoods of Tennessee. This is the post-modernity that is taught in austere classrooms across academia - this is the "down and dirty" of constant regression of meaning. Everything is relative - the swanky apartment in Toshkent, UZ to the sleazy motel in Petersburg, VA. Fortunately, in the last forty-one years I have seen a lot of it. From the delicate cheese tray with the Pinot at seven pm 32,000 feet over the Atlantic to the stale coffee and old doughnut at a dive outside the bus station in St. Louis. That is where these chronicles are heading now. The stories, many of you have heard them over a smoke and a drink, and now to put them down on paper. The nervous receptionist at the hotel in Beograd - who exchanged a carton of Marlboro in 1985 for the ability to escape from a weeklong purgatory in Yugoslavia to the bewildered officer at the Mexican Embassy in Chicago handing over a check to me. There is no statis, there is no place, there is no time. There are only memories to be made until the ashes meet the water. And the worriers and the walkers are the ones who make all this possible for those who are doing what Aerosmith says in their frenetic video, "living on the edge."