1000

A thousand entries and close to three years. Blip has been an important part of my life. It allows me to share two of my passions, writing and photography with the world. It allows me to record memories, sometimes only their beginnings, which make browsing my own blips quite a pleasure. Blip in all its simplicity begins with taking a photograph each day. It is a transforming experience. We look at the everyday, the mundane in everyday through the eyes of a photographer, we begin to study light, understand it, see if we can coax it to do out bidding. We search for beauty in the little things, simplicity begins to inspire us and our childlike joy becomes contagious. It rubs off on the keen who observe our journal, and the patient who care enough to read our words. What we learn from the simple process of blipping stays with us as our companion all through our lives.

Many thanks of course to my friends here from all over the globe, who take an interest to see what farside has been up to. Friends who want to leave a thought, join me in my conversations, ask a question... sometimes the connections forged are deeper than that and lead to many meaningful exchanges. To make all this possible, Blipcentral need to be thanked. They need to be thanked for creating this beautiful, clean website, allowing us to be a part of it, for creating a forum though which we can interact. When I joined blip, we could almost tell which entry belonged to whom from the thumbnail and given how small it was back then, the community feel of it was different. Now blip has grown and changed otherwise as well. I am very curious to know where we are headed and how things will evolve.




Now for the day. After a lunch at TGIF yesterday and three eggs for dinner, I was in reasonably good stead for today's excursions. But my sleep at night was fitful with mosquitoes having more than their fill. Even had a talk with the organizer of our rides who had clearly sensed I wasn't particularly impressed with his approach to cycling which he had decided to thrust upon us. His concept of "riding as a group" was severely constricted and primitive since he didn't have ambitions of becoming Lance Armstrong! There is great ignorance in the black and white approach, but the poor fellow had succumbed to it, blinded to the multitude of possibility between these two extremes. Restrained thought like this is adventure's and indeed freedom's enemy. So at our destination with this group, I had organized to meet a smaller group of like-minded adventurists and head off on a ride of our own.

We rode to the India gate, mellow under a blanket of warm mist. We rode through the most beautiful tree-lined streets of Delhi, all spruced up for the Commonwealth games, tidy to the smallest detail. The morning light, though pale and wan was infused with optimism. There were children skating, adults jogging and running, people playing football and cricket on dew covered grass, few tourists clicking the random photograph. A very large group of cyclists gradually accumulated around India Gate, people riding as individuals and parts of smaller groups had coincidentally decided to converge upon this monument on Gandhi Jayanti. There was this one moment when a slim young lady in a sky blue vest and shorts came running towards us, her long hair waving while she tried tying it without pausing on her jog. All eyes, almost in unison turned towards her and conversations became quieter for a moment. There is a timeless quality to this moment, a funny kind of bond. Unfortunately, there aren't enough ladies cycling in Delhi. Met a lot of keen riders. But when the team left for some fried breakfast, I decided to skip it and waited for the other group and arrive.

A couple of guys in the group were from the army and one of them invited us to his place for brunch. The residences of the military personnel are usually in the most beautiful locations hardly identifiable with the city they are in. Once you're on those neat shaded lanes, tuning in to the chirping of the birds, the butterflies' prancing and above all the silence, you're happily breathing in lungfuls of smokeless air. Our friend Colonel A had a house run over by animals, birds and even children. It was a happy chaos all around, dogs jumping on to couches, children onto tyre-swings upon trees, us discussing travel and adventure... it's not that Delhi doesn't have its share of fascinating people, just that they're not always easy to find.

After this, we started the coolest part of our ride, trespassing through the forested bits of the army area. There was hardly a road to speak of and plants tumbling over from excess rainfall gave us scratches all over our arms and legs. I was surprised I managed to trample all over the trees without getting a puncture though I did have a quiet little fall. Then of course there were short stretches of crazy uphills and downhills and we had no clue where we were going. The three of us were equally keen, similarly skilled and quite thrilled with our little adventure. As I was returning, I felt that I could go on all day. Little else mattered.

The fatigue from our long ride hadn't caught up with me when I returned almost after lunchtime, but now I feel its effects. A nap will be good.

Larger.