Fir Wahi Raat Hai

Its one of those nights. Nights when even after everyone is asleep and your tired body is demanding sleep it badly needs, your mind refuses to. Or is it your heart that does not want to?

Nights when you feel that strange delicious melancholy that you do not want to let go of, nostalgia that you want to linger in for just a little bit more.

Nights when you want to listen to songs that make you feel warm and alive and lonely at the same time.

Nights that make you yearn for something unknown that you feel you lost. Yet, you know not what.

Nights when the heart unlocks its forgotten doors and entices you to take a walk down lanes whose memory was starting to grow hazy for you; and once you decide to take that tentative stroll it takes you down paths you once knew and comes up with memories you didn't know you had lost, like shiny-bright pennies on a foggy night.

One of those quiet nights when I think about and feel nostalgic for many such nights in the distant past, a past which sometimes seems like it was yesterday and like another lifetime - all at the same time. Like the one spent watching the rain-slick, yellow-lit Delhi mall road from my window. Or the summery one spent watching the stars as I lay on grass slick with dew and listened to distant sounds of life and laughter elsewhere. The one spent on an overnight train, sharing a shawl and life stories with someone. Oh, and that one, one of my favorites, on terraces of various houses and hostels - spent chatting with my sister and/or our friends. Listening to music. Always the music in the background.

A night which makes me think about people in my life, that are. Of those who were. Friends who belonged to me, or the ones I belonged to. People who touched my life and went past ... like the proverbial trains in the night. And the ones who made a place and stayed on. About old, rusted questions that I have answers to now and the ones which remain. Lending a little mystery and romance.

This night makes me gaze back for no reason and when I do, those distant days seem like small pods where we lived uncaring of the past and oblivious of the future. Even tonight, there is no joy or pain or fear or excitement in looking back; just a calm curiosity. Like wiping a window frosted with time to see what lies behind.

This night. These nights. They leave me with the dreaminess I need to go on. Go on till I will have another one of these trysts. Raat to roz dhalti hai magar, Kaun jaane fir kab aisi shab miley. Who knows when that will be.