CHERISH with HARISH

In an effort to fly higher in the sky, little did the crow realise that it is going farther than the ground!

5th July'19, Mumbai. The Journey has been an amazing one. The fun-journey had started long ago when as a 17 year old, with an 'Engineering' seat and a 'Dental' seat, I took this interesting decision to follow my heart. The families then, were pretty new to this idea. I had very few reference points as I had no role models for myself, who had come from my level. I guess that was the beginning and I loved the road I took. A road less travelled, a road which gave me interesting challenges and somewhere midway, I fell in love with the whole idea of challenges! Today about a decade later I stand here, fully in love with the whole idea of challenges. After writing and directing theatre (Viz. Kamaan), after writing a book ('Gokul')... after taking numerous road journeys, I am back to the city which triggered the creativity in me. After my first brief stint with the city,  the lovely journey enters its second phase and I am all set, dreaming the impossi...

ABOVE ALL' The clouds covered me, made everything depressing, killed my thoughts, N made me sleepy. And then, fighting the clouds, Emerged the sun. The fire ball, had lots of messages for me, Lots of energetic rays. Giving me hope, It said that the negativity is closer to d ground, But positivity is above all. It said that the clouds, are closer to d ground, and the sun is, above all, above all, above all... - KHS July'19

NID, A-Hostel. Today, it is 50 years of the LGBT movement. It was July 2009. We had just had our dinner. We used to go to the hostel terrace for our post-dinner discussions. These used to be easy and laid-back. These post discussions used to be like the night breeze. There were no deadlines, no tensions, just the victorious feeling of the breeze entering your hair. There would be no questions , only answers. I used to love this part of the post-dinner conversations. We were a group of 3-4 young men and we had just started getting to know each other, through these discussions. We did not know that these conversations would make us the men we would be after ten years. It was one of those nights, and it seemed everyone was busy in the studios. Not many people had come back. It was just a friend of mine who had come to the terrace for the breeze. We continued talking and out of nowhere, he said that he is gay! I was shocked because I did not know hoe to react. I was straight and ...

It was a decade old guilt. Every night after my rehearsal at NID's theatre group,'Khel', I used to sit at the institute foyer, with this somewhat senior, Saheb. I liked him in the first few glances, because he would be busy doing his work, which has always been a positive for me. He never acted as if he had lots of work, he seemed to 'enjoy' it. I have always the company of such people. We started conversing and our late night conversations traveled from theatre to arts to ghosts and civilisations. These were interested topics for me and as soon as my rehearsal would get over at 12:30 or 1 at night, I would look for Saheb's company, and we would continue the chat. Our discussions started taking a new tangent and we did not realise about the rural-urban gap in the country or n opportunity for us NIDians to work on it. I got to know that Saheb was a 'Santhal', a tribe in the East of my country. In the mornings, we would just pass a smile or a formal ...

Bajju, Februrary 2019 I was in my hut. I had been in this strange thought process that I should go on a lonely voyage, cutting off from the world. I had started enjoying the loneliness too. I was not watching TV for a long time, not in touch with the print media and most importantly, I was not in touch with friends. I had stopped watching movies, as travelling to Bikaner was an affair. I had started enjoying rural travel. But things changed when I analysed my life. All of a sudden, I realised that I was all alone in this world. That was scary. I was talking only to my parents once or twice a day, which I guess was good enough. I realised that I had colleagues at my work-place, but no friends. Suddenly, I was short of friends. All my friends were getting married or busy with their work. It is here that I made friends with nature. I planted a tree right outside my hut. I named it 'PAED' (Hindi/ Urdu for a plant!) I started meditating and started writing my old friend, my...

I had breakfast at my brilliant workstation-village, Bajju, Rajasthan... then my lunch at the lovely town of Bikaner...and my dinner at Delhi-NCR. This village to town to city and back to village in such a short span has been opening windows to the fact that people are all the same, everywhere. This space-time trip is what happenened with me this Holi and I am back to where I started... all refreshed! Happy Holi...