Ever felt like you wanted to go back and do it all over again? Surely you cannot call yourself human if you haven't. I've been off the radar for a bit as I've been travelling. Strange places like a Mafia-ridden Moscow. And then suddenly, Hyderabad. I've been to Hyderabad before. About two decades ago when I didn't have political opinions. Or social opinions. Or too many opinions. At least that's what I'd like to think. All I remember from then is the Charminar and how frighteningly ugly the surroundings were. I'm in a different Hyderabad as I write this. A dichotomous one, as most large urban areas in India tend to be. But something happened here that made me want to go back and do it differently. I taught. I guest-lectured at a friend's educational institute. I'd never before been confronted by the rising hopes and aspirations of small town India, well-heeled India and confused India all inside one classroom. All looking at me as if I was the box that contained the three wishes. It was daunting for a minute. About ninety minutes later, I disconnected from my body and floated upwards. Probably in reality towards the window because of the heat. And I saw this one woman throwing out questions and giving out answers and this group of young students whose suddenly translucent skulls showed their rapidly expanding brains. It was like peeking into the elixir of youth, knowledge, hope and vitality, all rolled into one. I couldn't for the life of me believe that no cosmetic company had tried to harness the very air they breathed. At the end of three hours and three sweet vended coffees later, I paused. I had just knocked off ten years of tiredness and revisited realms of knowledge and half-lives and reworked my entire understanding of what students outside the cocoon of South Bombay are. And it was so very disconcerting that I didn't know if I should do it all over again to confirm that I hadn't been in a dream or if I should hop on to the next flight to Bombay. I did it again. I wasn't disconcerted this time. I was present. I was with them. I was inside their heads and they were knocking down the doors to mine. I thought for a moment, if I could go back to being a student, I would be this. This energy, this thirst, this humour, this challenge. I would abandon the armour of knowing, the gothic net of false perception, the non-chalance towards life and the taking it for granted.
As I returned to my disconnected, falsely calm gated community, I wondered. Does inspiration need hope? Or does hope need inspiration?
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