lounge-lizards dept.

Udayan Shinde has already found a mention on this blog. Publishing here, some very cryptic paragraphs I found in a text-file on his computer.

There is something subtly intoxicating about five-star hotel lounges. Yet when I find myself in one of them, being there sends me into an endless reverie. Maybe its the shiny gloss on the furniture, the people (important-looking, always) huddled in clusters talking in low, hushed tones. Or the pithy words on the coaster: "Culture is the attainment of perfection", and the like. Or the persistently floating, understated, yet inescapable aroma wafting around the hallways (in spite of all the cigarette smoke).

Maybe its a state of mind induced in a person of humble economic origins on confronting the ritualized life of those higher up in the economic pyramid. I think such an environment foists introspection on the thinking mind, while on others, it enforces a sense of general well-being, akin to an endless free-fall. Perhaps, using phrases like 'humble' and 'thinking mind' is only conceit -- after all, we are all sentient beings, and the environment into which we are born or led into is, arguably, predestined. It is, of course, quite possible that beneath the frothy layers of projected well-being, there is foment -- each pair of eyes, constantly scanning, evaluating, planning, understanding (or trying to understand).