Hazaaroon khwaishen aisi…

That’s one long-standing entry ticked off my wish list. I took a never-ending ride in a Giant wheel and I was the sole occupant! I have no clue why it made it to the list in the first place; I have no head for heights and practically no stomach for anything. I suspect it might have something to do with numerous romantic Hollywood images of the protagonist riding poignantly alone at dusk in a desolate amusement park that had perhaps bustled all day and now is forlornly empty. In those, the person involved is always gloriously alone, sitting artistically lopsided on the swaying perch, staring into space working out life’s problems or having an epiphany or two. Now I can’t be certain, but it is possible that all this led me to believe that as far as spiritual stimulants go a lonely Ferris wheel ride is matchless.
All in all, if someone had decided to film me on my ride they would have had some interestingly different footage. What they would have got is a person sitting rigidly upright, in the precise centre of a cage-like contraption, with her arms braced like steel against its walls. Also (because she happened to be on her way back from a particularly boring government meeting) between her knees would be vigorously clutched a folder full of papers. Her eyes screwed tightly shut, only opening each time as she passes the glowering operator.
Coming to think of it – who operates those wheels in Hollywood?
Anyway, after the first ten rounds I actually opened my eyes at the top, and Secunderabad was quite lovely, really. By the twentieth, I felt a strange kinship with the person in top floor of the building across the road who was drying his clothes. By the thirtieth, I began to suspect that I might be having my spiritual moment after all, but I could not be sure if it was my Kundalini or the contents of my stomach that was rising.
Anyway, around this time the operator must have decide that he had had his fun, because he brought me to an unspectacular halt.
How is it, I ask you, that when they have a wheel full of laughing, screaming happy people they don’t give them more than ten rounds, and then they have a single green-around-the-gills occupant they are suddenly so generous? Perverse I tell you.

What was it he said…? “…ke har khwaish pe dam nikle.”
Indeed.

The person I choose not to be; dies.
Every moment as the sceptre of choice brings to life a new me
The person I could have been is already in her grave
Among those dead, are there those that I might admire, envy, disdain or resent…?
In every case they are dead and I am not.
Would they have been a finer me, I wonder
Did they have a better right to life?
Perhaps, but I am glad the choice was not mine
And now I will go through the motions of my script
With the best will I can muster and as much heart as I can spare
And when that moment of choice arrives I will be strong and secure
In the knowledge that however I choose, I will not live to regret.