around December we (i.e. my family and i) went on a trip to a tourist spot - to Aurangabad. the idea was to do the fashionable sites of Ajanta and Ellora.

there was a lot of medieval history on the way. all that i had read about the Mughals, in musty books, seemed to melt away while standing in sight of Aurangzeb's grave. that's the marvel of ruins.

and we went over the hills of Ajanta and Ellora - through dark caves, chiselled, shattered, carved, chipped away generations ago by a people blinded (or illumined) by a belief. and a desperate need to live and do beyond the immediate.

while i browsed the dim interiors for just the right photographs to grace these pages with, the irony of my quest never really hit me until much later. most tourists reach this place on their own quests (except for the many young who were being dragged by their parents or wards). but why do people go to places like these? were they, like me, just looking for a way to vacate their minds of a humdrum job and life. or were they, like the original sculptors and painters of these hills, looking for something beyond the immediate? indeed, was the quest of the original painters and sculptors more important than mine?

in general, am i wasting my time living through modern day life - stuck like guilt to the perennial schedule of my job, and other appurtenances of modern life? or were they wasting their time cutting into volcanic rock amidst deep forests, seeking to leave a trace of passion in the Deccan plateau? or am i asking silly rhetorical questions, just to amuse my gentle reader?

i'll never know...

it's Holi. up at my office they had arranged a Holi bash. there was colour on demand, a very large music generator, heavy bass music, and water was being pumped up out of a water tanker through a series of showers.
this was in our parking lot. while driving out of the lot, just outside the gate, i saw four or five young men. their bodies were covered with some kind of white dust - they had probably been white washing something. each of them was dusting their body with some rags. probably on their way home...

there was that Holi and this.