Phantom

You promised me you would meet me at the station but you wouldn’t. I undertook a journey of hundreds of miles for you. But you wouldn’t show. You were a secret i shared only with myself. So who would i cry to? I sulked for hours after  boarding the train. I didn’t have a reserved ticket. Making room in the general compartment, i sat and imagined if you had asked me to come or i had imagined it all. Then my mind further slipped and wondered whether you yourself were a phantom, altogether. Unreal, but too huge to ignore. There right beside but untouchable. My thoughts meandered up and about too much, i positively asked myself to shut up. Probably people were staring at me. Their glares grew hotter. My stomach burned but i wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t thirsty but someone offered me water. I ignored and looked away. I felt everyone was converging into me, like a centrifuge. The train was hurtling through jungles. Dacoit infested. Gun wielding.  No dearth of petty thieves either. Everyone clutch on to your bags. Everyone clutch on to your dear lives. Someone said there were seats in the sleeper compartment. Those who were suffocating should get down at the next station and move to the sleeper. I couldn’t breathe. My chest forgot how to swell up and squeeze out. My throat felt slightly tight. The yellow light made everything difficult. It was hot and cold at the same time. Sweating and shivering, i stood up straight, on my heels and got down to the platform. The train came to a halt with a whimper. Someone pointed in a direction towards the sleeper. Where there is room, less odour and lighter light. I held my fist on my chest and ran towards it. But I couldn’t find anything. Bougie after bougie, jam packed. I had been betrayed. I saw the train jerk into motion and I froze. If abandoned here, amidst dacoits and jungles, how would i meet you at the station. I knew you weren’t gonna show but i knew i would meet you. I floated between contradictory truths while the wheels caught speed. I was falling behind. I could feel my temples sweat, my heart pound. I caught hold of a handle and stepped back up. My eyes were closed the entire time. When i opened them, i swear i saw you. Standing on the platform. Or slowly walking towards me and falling behind. Soft smile captured in your cheeks. Hair neatly parted, mustard yellow shirt buttoned less the top two. Tattered jeans. You expanded in the wind and it seemed like you would catch up soon. I couldn’t look any longer and rushed inside.

. 

Circling back

Inside our thin apartment walls, shared

Potted plants, outside, yellowed browned

Containing our many sicknesses

Of bodies and minds

Love made,

Meals cooked,

Soups poured,

Breaths taken.

Delicate lives

Soft shallow sighs

Our quiet failures

And deep deep regrets

Our stories, and secrets 

Journeys taken everyday 

And our voyage back home

Drawing complete circles

But somedays, some do not return

Someone dies

And the circle is cut off.

Time compression

You know what time compression is, dontcha?

When you live hundreds of similar days, buried in routine, the brain stops forming distinct memories. Because everyday is same as the next. 

I was, basically, time compressing, for many many years. For my love for sameness. For my fear of changes. I have been running up and down corridors, in and out of elevators, catching rickety autorickshaws, waiting, resenting traffic, gobbling down food, typing away, working away, hiding, mindlessly chomping sit-coms to sleep, and such. 

And then you happen.

In some random corner, where two streets meet, we run into each other at the most unexpected of moments. I know, we are too old for this shit, I know. Too old, too tired, too fat, too bereft, too rugged. But we did.

And there is that expression on your face. Shy mischievous smile, embedded in your eyes. Like you would tell me things, if you could. Like you would stand beside me and say things, if it was allowed, if I listened. We would hang around, steady, for a minute or three, at that specific corner and submerge in soft laughs. Those laughs would wash away age, heartbreak, exhaustion and retrieve nice things. Many many nice things. Only you wouldn’t and I wouldn’t. Would we?

For a moment there, my hippocampus would jerk into motion because I shocked her out of time compressing and hurriedly make a memory or two.

Only you wouldn’t and I wouldn’t. Would we?

Jujube

This year, it will not rain. Everybody had been telling so. In the gloom of impending drought, many were simply letting go. As early as March - summer had just begun. The air was thick with flavour of mango flowers. Humid afternoons made homes impossible to stay in. Languid and sweaty, we, the children, wandered from home to home, garden to garden, played kit-kit on sleepy streets and wondered- what drought would be like. 

Cousins of all kind, city cousins, village cousins, cousins once removed, nephews and nieces in relation, neighbours, school-mates - nobody left behind. We wandered in herds. And found a jujube tree, leaning over a dried pond, bustling with fruit, maroon, plump, the sour odour hanging heavy in the air for yards around. Only when one ate, one knew it could be sweet too. This was in the front-yard of one of very own - Little. Little was one of two sisters, and a reliable member of our gang, always eager to participate in our little plans. She brought along her baby sister who she guarded like a hawk. 

The pond was so dry, that the bottom had cracked open in near craters. The wild weeds that grew and the water lilies, had withered and pasted against the walls long ago. Only the jujube tree, remained, verdant, oblivious of the indignant monsoon, and full of thorns, that made it impossible to climb. Else, any lithe child would climb up and shake a bough or three while the rest of us caught the falling fruit in our skirts held spread out. Alas, that wasn’t the case.

So Little went inside and got their flower plucker. An ergonomic contraption of sorts, a long bamboo stick with a V shaped claw at the very end, used as a tool against neighbours who wake up earlier than you and boost their flower harvest by stealing from other’s gardens.With that stick- the tallest amongst us, an older city cousin who had the finest pink slippers, closed his eyes and began stringing down random boughs, and shaking them. 

Within minutes, our palms filled and our skirts filled and heaps were made on the barren belly of the pond. We the children, giggled endlessly because nobody had imagined a harvest of this magnitude. Whether to chew the plums and throw out seeds, they tasted the most judicious mix of sweet and sour, or to run home and get sacks to gather those berries into - we were joyfully confused. 

Just then, we heard a thud. A very loud and a distinct thud. Like something heavy hit the floor. It came from the house. Little ran home while her sister rushed behind her. Turned out, their grandmother had fallen. Fainted while sitting in the verandah, out of nowhere like the life had been sucked out of her. This grandmother was fair and thin and wrapped in a tattered white sari, her hair silvery, tied into untidy braids. 

There were screams and shouts and the people at home were running about, not knowing what to do. Thanks to a pacemaker, she lived many more years. But that afternoon, i had to leave my jujube heap to the jackals - that I couldn’t forget.

Inspired by : Anita Desai (Clear Light of Day)

Home-sick Stranger

In those days

When everything felt, foreign

The paint never peeled off walls,

And the roads weren’t filled with familiar snacks

In a city that moved much faster than me

Struggling with quiet discomforts 

That come with pace of these kinds

Tall blue facades of endless office buildings 

And one too many, manicured gardens

Lawns much greener than my home’s rusty grass

I was shy to confess, how much I missed

The peeled paint and the slow streets

But you knew.

You came, nevertheless, to see me.

And walk me through those unfamiliar lanes

To reassure, to comfort 

That I had the company of at least one other - homesick stranger

And that it was okay.

And that it was going to be okay.

Back Home

When I moved away from home for freedom and such

I hadn’t fully fathomed all that it will beget

While I didn’t get freedom, any

I have built worlds inside worlds

And I survive in the inner-most, of those

Never venturing out into even the penultimate

Shrinking smaller, every month, every day

Is that not the opposite of freedom

It is, I believe, time to think about home again

Familiar towns, that haven’t ceased to be 

Although changes have overwhelmed home as well

Its soul would be incorruptible, so I assume

Back home, I can yearn for freedom too

Unfettered by fears of never being free

Can wallow in honesty, in defeat, in poverty and in failure

Because why fail in a foreign land

When I can fail within the intimate boundaries of home

Thinking of summer sand dunes

Endless rain, slush streets

Scents of early November blossoms

Sparkling toe rings in salty rivers

Dancing shadows of needy children, feeble traffic 

Floating poems, sinking earthen idols

Smitten in nostalgia, drenched in memories 

In a home devoid of ladders, I could just be. 

Lounge

When I travel alone, and I normally don't, I think of you. 

It has something to do with my mind experiencing a void between errands. Not in cabs, of course. Cabs make me nauseous. But when I take the train alone I think of you. 

It's startling, how, after so many moons, you still effortlessly waft back into my thoughts. You perhaps are waiting on the fringes. Forever. I haven't been able to sequester you. Train of thought is surprisingly continuous as well. 

The same happens when I fly alone. Airports that run endless and I end up walking kilometres within. Escalator after escalator. Wide corridors, advertising too bright for my eyes, strangers everywhere. It seems, upon throwing one glance at me, that I am walking with great purpose and urgency. But that's furthest from the truth.

I am all undone from within. My fabric of existence has become threadbare and your memories have penetrated and dishevelled any pretense of order, there was. After walking and walking, I glimpse at screens to course correct, if at all. But I am completely robotic and lost and operating at your disposal.

And then finally when I reach the lounge, the airport lounge that is shelter to lonesome travellers like me, I imagine, I would have you waiting there. My long lost lover.