Linea Nigra

I've been waiting
For months now
For my feet to swell up
And go all varicose

Guess, it's not the time yet
We're along the way
Stringing along
Yesterday to tomorrow, with today

Each day, limbs grow
Every night, blood flows
The calendar leaps by bounds
Suddenly then, it lazes down

A protrusion of life has occurred
The Linea Nigra
Should be darker than this
The kicks should be oftener than this, oh

The future feels akin to a dream
A chunk of one, carved out, outside
Life, topsy-turvy
Chaos, perhaps, will be our new currency

And a bit of love too
A little bit, yes
Sure
Why not

January

These are remnants of a very cold winter day. I was studying someplace far from home and getting there took me almost two whole days in train and a longish cab ride afterward. Surprisingly, the thing about traveling alone is that it doesn't tire me. Because I do everything at my own pace and avoid anything that might seem unnecessary. For instance I would get down from my upper berth in the train only twice a day to go pee. And that would be my social interaction for the day.

Anyway, my two day train journey ended on the morning of the third day and when I got out of the railway station, I remember the January cold squeezing me dry. So much so that I remember taking out an extra sweater from the bag to stay warm. Sitting on one of the station benches, I unpacked the third packet of food from home.

I decided I would eat whatever I could for breakfast and throw out the rest before heading out. Mother had packed food, one each for every day of the journey. She of course knew best. But I would agree to take the food only after a prolonged protest. What if it got bad? What if the friends I was traveling with decided to buy food? My bag wasn't getting any lighter, anyway. Deep inside, I tore up seeing the home cooked food so far from home and it just made me rethink the whole purpose of it all. Hence the protests. But couldn't do much about it.

I rolled up the fried potatoes in puris and ate up. Cleaned my hands, drank some water and purposefully dragged my bags out to hail a cab for the long three hour journey ahead, through the mountains and valleys.

The thing about the cab journey was, it was expensive and also rather unsafe to be hiring an entire cab for oneself. Who would trust their lives alone with the driver? So a system was in play. People pooled in to hire a big taxi, like an SUV that could carry seven or eight people. It made it much cheaper and safer as well.

At the station, I found a cab driver vigorously trying to form his own pool of people, and negotiating the fare. I quickly joined them and started asking the fares. After loading my bags and having been seated, I noticed in there a familiar face.

A boy from my class. A quiet one. The break had been for a mere two weeks but suddenly it felt longer. It felt as if we were meeting after a longer interval. We were seated at two ends of the seat so couldn't talk much. But I said Hi and he acknowledged. Speaking took an effort, for some reason. I had been so muted on the train. My thoughts had coagulated inside my head and everything felt choked.

I clung to my seat, chomping from my bag of potato wafers which I offered to share and he politely refused saying he had just eaten. The wafers were to avoid nausea. You see I suffer from road sickness. And the twists and turns of the mountains made it bad . To worsen it, it began drizzling and we had to roll up the windows. I shut my eyes and tried to sleep. But the time I had spent at home kept coming back in glimpses. The prints on the bed sheets. The wall hangings we had purchased in the handicrafts exhibition. The pots in the kitchen. The glare of the TV at midnight. So many things. I felt my chest squeeze.

The boy offered me his coca cola from which I took a sip. The sugar rush helped me regain some control. I dabbed some talcum powder on my handkerchief and snorted it hoping it would help with my vomiting. It did, somewhat. Then in an hour or so, the driver stopped the vehicle for lunch.

It was about half past twelve. I wasn't hungry but everyone ate, so I ordered a plate of aloo parathas for myself. The boy joined me at my table. The trick was to eat very light on these journies because too much food would curdle up and make one puke. I licked the tiny piece of mango pickle that had accompanied the parathas and asked the waiter for some more.

Soon, we were back on the road. This time, I dozed off. The memories had stopped perturbing me. My fears of puking had subsided. I woke up when we had nearly reached. From the cab stand, me and the boy, we split another cab to the hostel.

At the end of it, I heaved a sigh of relief. But it felt like a ghost house. It seemed we had arrived a day earlier. Everyone was reaching the next day. Having heard this from the security guard, I immediately headed for my room. I don't know where the boy went.

I remember taking a really freezing shower as the damned geyser wouldn't work. My toes nearly froze on the bathroom floor and I got inside the blankets straight out of the bathroom. There was no in between. I had left two gerberas in a glass of water on my table, before leaving for home. Those flowers were still alive, and totally fresh after two weeks. It was as if, absolutely no time had passed. It felt unreal.

I remember taking a long nap and waking up in the evening in want of tea. The hostel kitchen wasn't working yet. I collected myself in jackets and socks and mufflers and headed to the nearest grocery store from where I bought noodles. On the way back, I noticed light in one of the windows in the boy's hostel. I assumed that solitary light was the quiet boy. I wondered what he would eat for dinner.

Back in my room, I heated some water in the electric kettle and soaked the noodles in it till it softened. I slurped it neatly, made sure twice that my door was locked and went back to trying to sleep. Owing to the cold, I must have fallen asleep sometime.

But I woke up again, close to dawn and felt the dozens of empty hostel rooms around me like an incurable vacuum. It wasn't fear. It was just overwhelming solitude. Being in the mountains, in the middle of a pine forest. I imagined the boy sleeping on his bed, hoping to draw some warmth telepathically. Telling myself I wasn't completely alone and there was someone at least, and even if this companion was not immediate, but nevertheless.

Excerpt

..

When Devesh Kumar, at a younger and trimmer age studied masters in political science at the university, he had an ageing professor. The professor was a rather old one and continued to stay on the campus even after retiring. The professor had a daughter who Devesh Kumar had seen on and off, learning to drive her scooter in the varsity campus streets or dry her hair on the terrace by squeezing it out of the towel and hitting it softly as droplets of water from it turned into quiet mist around her. But he was never in love with her. Because of the very same reason that he was not in love with anyone else at that age.

Campus politics had kept him busy and having lost the elections for student body president, two times in row had made him a venerable opposition to whoever the incumbent president was. But despite the chaos and much running about, he had come to know that her name was Ipsa and that she was studying literature somewhere in the city. Ipsa visited her father on the weekends or on fortnights. In their house on campus, the professor who now acted as a visiting one, lived on with a middle aged house maid who had been there his entire life.

Devesh Kumar graduated without any further liaisons with the professor’s nubile daughter and started looking for a job after spending several sobering weeks with his family. After several months of appearing for interviews after encircling job openings from newspapers, he was lucky enough to get an entry level gig at the directorate of industries. With a degree that meant nothing to him behind him and with a job he knew nothing about ahead of him, Devesh Kumar bore the quiet assurance of a twenty three year old man who kept telling himself he would get through it.

And get through he did, more than good, he, with his social skills seamlessly connected to people and charmed them with his words and actions. In two years, he had become the boss’s darling and a go to person in the directorate if you needed anything done. It was also understood that he got some kickbacks and passed on to people their due share without delay. And hence the extra outpouring of love from co-workers.

His parents had also happier with their son’s achievements and that he had been helping out at home by contributing some to his deaf and mute brother’s upkeep. He also had another sister, the youngest one who would soon be marriageable, back then. Amidst all this, Devesh Kumar was invited by his college professor to help a bit in arranging his daughter’s wedding. Devesh Kumar was not astonished with this invite. He was aware the professor didn’t have any relatives to help about and his ex-students were his only family, besides his daughter.

So Devesh had hastily applied for a few days of casual leave and rushed off to his old campus, where a couple of his old friends awaited him. Together they ran about and spoke to caterers and negotiated with tent houses, wholesale flower dealers, travel agents, booked hotel rooms for the bridegroom’s party, the whole deal. Exhausted after long days of work when he lay on the mattress in the hall, sometimes he would catch a glimpse of the bride-to-be, Ipsa, roaming around in her pajamas and loafers, hands died in henna, hair tied in a bun. While erecting bamboo poles to hang tents and setting up shamianas with the bride’s and groom’s names, sometimes he would catch another glimpse of her smoking or talking on the phone. But that was it.

In those several moments, it wasn’t that their eyes never met. Ipsa caught his eyes in hers and remembered that this was the boy who she had seen ambling in her father’s chambers years ago, this was the boy who lost all these elections that her father had mentioned, and this was the boy whose eyebrows were thick enough to make it seem that they had a separate identity altogether. But that was it. She never took it any further. She was excited and happy that she won’t have to deal with her old life anymore because her brand new settled in Germany aerospace engineer husband was going to get her a brand new life of shiny expensive things in Western Europe.

Things ambled their way to the wedding night when Ipsa sat in all her wedding finery and took gift envelopes from guests and Devesh Kumar guided them to and away from her to the dining hall. Then he saw her again and wondered what it will be like for her old father with his only child thousands of miles away and looked away in pity.

After the bridge-groom arrived he heard some disagreements going on between the professor and the groom’s mother. Something about a four-wheeler or a patch of land in the city that he had promised them. The cheque for the four-wheeler had bounced because the fixed deposits the professor had pre-closed to pay for it hadn’t been closed on time. The groom’s mother felt betrayed and also wasn’t very amenable to wait for the title of the land to be changed after the wedding. After that cheque had bounced, how could she ever trust him again?

The professor called Devesh Kumar in and asked him to fetch the bank manager from his residence at that very moment. After all, this should get sorted before the garlands are exchanged. Devesh Kumar returned empty handed as the bank manager seemed to be out of town. Hapless and too old to prove his point, the professor sat down on the floor clutching his chest and sighing loudly. This scared young Devesh Kumar a bit and he quickly ran to the bride after giving him a glass of water.

He knocked on the door of the bride’s room and she opened draped midway in a simple yellow sari, hair untucked and a jasmine string hanging from it. This was the first time they spoke after having observed each other from respectable distances and having formed one-sided shy opinions. The bride then hid in Devesh Kumar’s shadow and ran to be at her father’s side.

The professor in sobs said he didn’t know what to do. The groom and his family were all set to return and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. Ipsa ran her hands on her father’s forehead and told him that it was going to be okay and that he needed to be strong and healthy. He would leave this campus and move to her rented place in the city where she worked. She could still cancel her resignation and get back the job she had quit for the marriage. Everyone would understand dowry harassment.

Seeing the two of them huddled that way in mutual consolation, something very hard struck Devesh Kumar’s heart. He walked up to the bed and held the professor’s hand and offered to marry his daughter. Ipsa was too vulnerable to speak, let alone refuse. The names were taken off from the shamiana and Devesh Kumar married Ipsa that very night. Instead of a thousand miles to Germany, she was headed a few dozen kilometers to Devesh Kumar’s parents’ house in the city.

It was such a shocking surprise for his family, they could barely speak. Except for murmurs in the kitchen and whispers in the living room. Only the deaf and mute younger brother sat by his sister in law and gave comfort with his timely smiles.

..

A considerate excerpt from a rather longish short story. Because you wouldn't read the whole of it, anyway. Because it never mattered enough that I wrote it. Because it wouldn't matter either if I hadn't written it. At least, I have an amateur litterateur's inconsequence. What-have-you 

Memories from the Eucalyptus

The first memory of you I have is from kindergarten. Both of us were about four, I guess. It wasn't a formal school is all I remember. And more than the school, I have a lucid memory of returning from school. And of being neighbors. In that uncomplicated phase of childhood. You didn't live next door. Our houses were not adjacent of course, like apartments these days. You lived with your maternal grandparents for the summer, or probably the whole year. Your house was three storied, hidden aptly behind the ample foliage of coconut and mango trees. My house was a little further. We had our trees in the backyard, and our house was pretty much exposed, except for a sole eucalyptus near our front door.

This eucalyptus tree was the cynosure of my life back then. I would sight it from a distance from the wooden lorry that drove us home from school and feel happy. I got down at the eucalyptus tree. Sometimes you got down with me. Your grandparents lived alone and didn't talk much to anyone, let alone my family. Only somehow we had procured their landline number to call and tell them you were with me. And we would play house. Probably we were too young to play anything else.

The wind blew seeds and hid them in the crevices of the eucalyptus tree. In the rain, these seeds would shoot into saplings and burst out into small plants. With leaves very different from that of the eucalyptus, their host. Some saplings lived to grow tall and strong. All this made the tree appear very composite. Several trees within itself, like a thriving plural phantom from my dreams.

But they chopped down that tree one day. It was so sudden and immediate that I just found the tree gone when I got back from school. My landmark, my cynosure was no more. I mourned in my own quiet way but you found out and shared my loss. Then onward till the end, we played at your house. Until, I switched schools to a proper one and you left your grandparents alone for good. 

Agoraphobia

The tiny room near the stairs had been rented by a teacher. She lived in it with her eight year old son. The kid was bed ridden. Had been born that way, it seemed. The teacher's husband had abandoned them and taken a new wife. The teacher's school was nearby. She left her son lying on a mattress in the corridor near the stairs for the day, she came home during lunch break and whenever she could make time between her classes; to check on him. To make sure he was fed and watered and cleaned.

It felt apathetic to cross the boy lying that way on the floor every time any one took the stairs. The landlord had talked to the teacher about this. But she couldn't leave the boy in the room where there was nothing to see. From the corridor the boy could at least look at the betel nut trees sway in the backyard. Or listen to the landlord's TV in the other room.

The landlord and his wife occupied the rest of the house downstairs. They had two rooms, each slept in one. There was another small room where they kept the idols of their deities, in which the wife worshipped incessantly for hours every morning and evening. Then there was a corridor like living room which had a shelf. That shelf, in its several racks housed prizes, medals and cups the landlord's children had won over the years. Debate competitions and annual sporting events and dance competitions. The landlord had a son, but before that his wife had birthed three daughters. Not one, not two.

The son, studious from the crib, worked as a professor in some far off university. The daughters who had started off as librarians and stenographers had eventually had children and stayed home. They visited their parents very rarely. The house began to feel too big and too empty to the ageing couple and they started renting out chunks of it, after setting aside for themselves only what they absolutely needed.

The house now had two such chunks which were locked and waiting for tenants. The teacher rented the room downstairs in the summer. Then I took the room upstairs with the balcony, in the last month of monsoon. I didn't have a kitchen and cooked on a hot plate, which I shoved under the single bed once done with. I had very few utensils, not many clothes. The room was enough for me. Whenever I felt like I sat in the balcony. If I leaned well, I could see the temple at the end of the street. Sometimes people walking down the street stared up at me, particularly the boys playing or girls returning from school. But mostly they leave me be.

I had an arrangement with the landlord's servant who came in once a day. She got me a few groceries whenever I ran out. I also walked up to the book shelf in the living room of the landlord and borrowed a book now and then. But that was that. I never stepped out.

Hiding

I am living in hiding.
Pretending;
That everything's fine,
With my many untruths and half truths

My axis, although is twisted
I am always losing balance
Because my chest is heavy with weight
And my legs are light with fear

This lying business
Is anything but easy
My nights are comatose
But if I wake up, can't ever get back to sleep

Dawn brings in an unwanted reminder
Of all my lies
And the cracks in my life
Face dug in a pillow, wanna sleep forever

My unsolvable problems
Which are because of no fault of mine
I am guileless, please listen
Just can't anymore, I can't

Hiraeth

Summers are harsh. Sometimes, unbearably so.  Hence, a plan was duly chalked out. Nayana's parents' were woefully concerned about her education. Particularly, her father. So when Nayana told him that she couldn't stand the summer heat during the intervals between her multiple tuition sessions during the day, her father had to immediately put on his problem solver pants and get down to action.

March had only just ended and already the sun beat down relentlessly. Colleges and schools had closed down for a generous three month summer vacation. But the tuition classes decided this was an opportunity to finish half the syllabus and increased the frequency of classes. Nayana lived far from the city and took the bus, to and fro. In the intervals between, say tuition classes of Physics and Biology, she didn't have a roof to be under.

Nayana did not have many friends. It was right about that age that she had stopped making friends. The ones in school had gone to separate colleges and had lost touch. The new class mates remained just acquaintances, laboratory partners, bench-mates but were never promoted to friends, probably because of the lack of prolonged one-to-one exposure.

Problem solving pants wearer father, in the meantime found out an old relative in the city, bang at the median point of all of Nayana's tuition locations. It was an old lady, a cousin or an aunt, once or twice removed. She lived alone in a duplex house with a garden and a backyard. Such opulence, Nayana thought when they visited her for the first time to make acquaintance and ask for shelter from the summer. The aunt was delighted. Nayana and her father were relieved.

The old lady didn't have much of immediate family to boast of. Her son was married to a white woman and settled abroad, probably divorced, with three children. Her daughter was also married off, to someone in the merchant navy. The aunt's husband had died long ago. She basically spent entire days tending to gardens, going to temples and cooking a small meal for herself.

Nayana didn't strike a friendship right away, she never does. But with time, there grew a quiet camaraderie between them, they had over half a century between themselves in age, notwithstanding. Nayana would arrive dutifully at about half past ten in the morning, when her classes began as early as eight. Then both of them would savor a lunch together on the aunt's mosaic-top dining table, which would usually be adorned with an ornate vase of fresh flowers from the garden. As the aunt went back to her siesta, or to flip through a magazine, Nayana would leave at around one and be back at three. Nayana took to the aunt's habit of tea and salted biscuits in the afternoon, sitting with her in her netted garden chair and be off for a final class at five from where should would directly head home.

Nayana would be treated by the aunt with glasses of lime juice or lassi to ward off dehydration. Sometimes, Nayana's mother would send packets of sweets through Nayana to thank the aunt. But soon they realized that the aunt was a diabetic and all the sweets were getting back to Nayana's lunch plate.

Some days, the classes would get cancelled, or Nayana would just bunk them saying it was too hot to go out. Together they would lay on the bed, in the moist air of the air cooler and flip through magazines, or watch matinee TV before drifting off to sleep. Though it surprised her parents, on some nights Nayana would just call home to say she would spend the night at the aunt's and go home the next day. Dinners would be special with some fish or prawns. Nayana would read the aunt's Woman's Era magazines till late in the night. Some of them had fiction. Stories about women, young and old, their problems, lives, solutions, joys and sorrows.

Nayana juxtaposed her future with the lives of those characters. At that time and age, nothing was definite, nothing was decided about the future. It never is. But back then, she felt this certain amount of control or say she had and felt that she could mold her life the way she wanted. Her life was definitely not going to be like this aunt's, married off at eighteen, twice a mother at twenty three. But the aunt's life suddenly didn't seem bad at all, with oodles of leisure, magazines and a garden.

Nayana sometimes stayed an entire Sunday or two and helped tend to the garden, loosen the soil in the potted plants, add manure, water them. She plucked drumsticks and papaya, by just standing on the roof. There were bananas too, but those took too long to ripen. There was a once a big jackfruit that ripened and it was too big to eat for just two people. So both of them walked from neighbor to neighbor distributing jackfruit as a gesture of goodwill. Nayana was surprised everyone knew the aunt, despite the fact that she didn't venture out much.

The three months of summer were over in a whoosh. Once college reopened, Nayana couldn't once go back to visit her aunt. Something mysterious stopped her. Probably, she didn't know what she would say now that their time together was a choice and not a compulsion. Probably, she wanted to keep those months of summer untarnished in her memory without any interventions from any other time in the future. That summer, a bounded stretch of lapsed time, she could travel back to from time to time and gape at with glorious wonder.

Ghost

We the children had been asked to come over for a lunch feast on the river bank, on the other side. There were six or seven of us, me being the eldest, including cousins and some neighbors. It was winter, days were short. We had taken baths, gotten dressed and walked in the mild sun crossing the kilometre or so long bridge on the swollen river to the other bank. The fires had been lit, the cooking had started. Some of us helped chop tomatoes and coriander. Some of us went to the backyard of our host and uprooted some pineapple shrubs. The pineapples were then peeled and served on leaf plates with black salt as a pre lunch snack of sorts.

It was already afternoon by then. Soon the sun would set and it would get chilly. Someone lit a fire and the children sat around it and sang songs. Somehow the lunch was getting delayed further and further. Nobody knew why though. Either some spice would go amiss and someone had to be sent to the market to buy it. Somebody would spill the rice on the mud. Stuff like that. Totally random. But all working in tandem to keep us hungry longer. Soon the children got irate. Also we ran out of songs, silly games and gossip. 

From time to time someone would come and tell us that it won't take much time now. It was almost done. There weren't many people anyway. Including the children, there would be about a couple more than a dozen. The river meandered by swiftly under the bridge. Someone suggested the children go and see the cabbage and tomato fields, just to pass the time. So we went to inspect the cabbage and tomato plants. It felt eerie. The host was a friend of our father. His house was the only house for miles around it seemed. Or may be the trees covered everything so well, it was difficult to figure if you were alone or there were houses nearby. But there was not much noise. Only a blanket of tremendous silence and solitude. 

When we returned from our sojourn, the cooking had finally been concluded. We sat down in rows like a disciplined lot and ate rice and curried chicken with lots of potatoes off banana leaves. The curry had a strong flavour of coriander leaves. The flavour of the coriander mingled with the dry odor of winter and created a concoction that time cannot erase.

It was dark out by the time we finished eating. We began walking home. The water shimmered in the moonlight from atop the bridge, the children strayed and started leaning on the bannister to stare at it. They returned only after stern warnings. After we walked out from the bridge and started walking on the bank of the river, home wasn't that far away. I breathed some relief. But for something instinctive inside me, my feet won't let me slow down. I held the hands of the youngest kids in the group and asked the rest to stay together. 

Then suddenly something really strange happened. I must have turned back to talk to someone or shout out to someone who was lagging behind. Suddenly a breeze got caught in my hair. I felt a cold gust on my face and when I opened my eyes, there was an old man whizzing past us on a cycle. Now it feels even comical. But then I froze. I am not sure if the others saw him or if it was just me. But his face was white, his teeth protruding. He said something to me while laughing, almost gaffawing. Probably something about the feast, or if I was  afraid of getting home late, or simply just how I was doing. I don't really remember. I can't actually hold a memory that long, it has been decades. But I remember his eyes, so bright in that moonlight, so brazenly unafraid, that ghost. 

My first impulse was to scream bloody hell and run. And that's what I did. I left all the hands I was holding and ran. Ran like I never would again with eyes closed. Thank goodness nobody fell into the river and everyone stayed on the road. I reached home sweating and panting with my cousins intact, only assuming that the neighbour's children reached their homes too. Realised the next afternoon that they did when all of them came out to play. 

Hydrangea

I had to travel, suddenly. Usually all my trips are planned before hand. That way I stay calmer. But this trip, sudden and unexpected, I simply couldn't get out of. It was November. The beginning of winter.

My return flight landed at 1 in the morning. I decided it would be safer to sleep at the airport instead of taking a cab home in the middle of the night. I would rather take one of those buses in the wee hours of the morning. So I tied all my luggage to my hands with my scarf and slept on one of those uncomfortable airport chairs in the arrival hall.

It was a strange night. Each time some flights landed and the conveyor belts started running, there would be a crowd and I would wake up. I would check if my bags were alright and try to sleep again. There was nothing precious in the bags except some cards and some cash. But they were all I had so I was obligated to stay alert.

Also I wasn't the only person sleeping on those chairs. There were like a dozen other people. But each time I woke up that night, the set of people would have changed completely. It was like waking up in a new place.

Anyway, it struck 5 and I assumed it was then okay to venture out. I took a bus which moved unusually fast because there was no traffic. There was no one else, just us. A bunch of strangers, waiting to be home.

The bus dropped me near the lake which is about a mile from my place. So I took an auto. On the way, I saw the nursery owner opening shop. It was about 6:30 but still not totally lighted outside. The nursery owner was arranging a rack of potted blue hydrangeas on the outside. That image stayed with me. The hydrangeas looked like hundreds of tiny blue birds captured in a glass ball.

I got home and slept some more. Woke up around 10 and decided to take the day off. The trip had taken its toll and I wanted a personal day. I made noodles and coffee, sat on the patio and ate it all.

Then I went to the nursery and bought a potted blue hydrangea. I usually stay away from instant gratification. If I get used to it, it may get chaotic. But this time I took a chance and got myself just what I wanted and immediately.

It changed my mood totally. I was overjoyed to have it along with my other house plants. I had read about these flowers in a ghost story as a kid. Blood red hydrangeas in the middle of a damp forest, infested with a ghoul. And I had ever since been fascinated with them. Hydrangeas seemed mythical and magical and I had one of my own.

I just couldn't gather that truth inside my chest.

Friend

As a twelve year old, sometimes I got down from the school bus at her place. She got down some half an hour before me. On days when there was no homework, I would while away my time with her. Her house was like a palace. We would listen to songs on the roof, where she would occasionally dance. Or just hang out in her room. Her room was beautiful with a dozen stuffed toys, framed photographs, strings of artificial flowers and a nice fluffy queen size bed with ample number of pillows. Her mother served us lunch, which used to be quite simple, rice, dal, paneer or some vegetables with pickle. After that the maid would bring glasses of juice with ice cubes to her room. Sometimes there was cake too. It was always fun. Life wasn't this complicated, back then. Or so I am tempted to believe in afterthought.

At school of course, everyone knew us as best friends. Somehow we had become a jointed entity. It was comforting to know someone had my back. I think I had hers too. We grew up, too fast. Then, as is the usual case, things fell apart. Grew apart, more so.

Four or five years later, when I was cramming something in my engineering dorm room far away, I got a call from a common friend. Erstwhile best friend's mother had died. Death wasn't such a common phenomena then, it never is. Utterly shocked I dialed the landline number of hers that I had. Her father answered and in a sorrowful tone explained to me what had happened. I did not know what to say so I listened quietly.

I met her at a temple over the summer vacations when I was home next. I don't know who  picked the temple. There was a cafe right infront of it. Yet neither of us thought of sitting there and chatting. We chose the temple and its ample courtyard with guava trees all around. It all felt densely sepulchral.

She had moist eyes when we spoke. Yet there something inside her that had gone absolutely cold. I could never fathom that. I repulsed.

Years went by. Then I got her wedding invite. It was an email perhaps. Or a facebook invite, can't remember. But my mother who had been asking about her from time to time was overjoyed and  asked me to get in touch again. Hence I congratulated her. She asked me to come over.

Recalling now, that was some phase in my life as well. I needed some getting away. I had already decided to be somewhere else on the Sunday she was getting married. And nothing could be done about that. So before taking the train on Friday night, I squeezed in sometime in lunch hour to visit her house again. I drove to the gift shop and bought perfumes: His and Hers. I can even recall the brand, perhaps Nike. Then since I was already due back at work and had a terrible whoreface boss, I sped to her home just to handover the gifts and return.

But she kept me. We sat on the same dining table we did as kids. She had henna on her hands and hair tied in a bun like she had no more fucks to give. She was very perturbed that day due to all the wedding related stress. Yet she smiled and drank coconut water as I ate lunch, rice and dal and something else. A bowl of mango pickle sat in the middle of the table. And then ten minutes after there was juice with ice cubes.

Tomorrow

Sitting here after a score of years, on the terrace of my current house, trying to gather the courage to take on tomorrow, I remembered suddenly, something.

A picnic we had had on the roof as children. It was our ancestral house. Not much of it remains now. But back then, it had quite a glory. It was summer night. Moonlight had spread across the roof from corner to corner. Half of it was covered by a champak tree. The other half was lined with summer flowers, rosemallows and lilies and jasmine. Fragrance from a distant rangoon creeper filled the cool air.

Summer days back then weren't as tough as they are now. Nevertheless they were tough. Being at home for long vacations, on hot mattresses with ceiling fans not doing their jobs enough was difficult for a gang of cousins. So when afternoon came nothing could stop us.

That week in the vacation was different though and we had to be on our best behavior. Because some more cousins from the city were going to spend time in the country with us. Fish in the pond, bathe in the river, pluck flowers in the morning, things like that. I was afraid we wouldn't get along well. I was the eldest amongst the ones at home. The visiting ones were all older than me.

First cousins, second cousins, half cousins, step cousins, if you know what I mean. Hands of friendship and bonhomie had to be extended from both sides by multiple set of parents. We all ate lunches and dinners sitting on the courtyard floor, as if it was a daily feast or something. At nights, we washed the roof and slept under the stars listening to some cousin or the other reciting a story about ghosts or theives. On one such night, someone suggested we have a feast the next day.

Since it would be cumbersome to clean a patch in the jungle nearby and dig a hearth there, and risky too because of a wild animal or two, we decided to have it on the roof. Someone from the kitchen below lent us a kerosene stove and someone fixed a light bulb on the TV antenna because moonlight would clearly not be enough for cooking.

There were almost a dozen of us washing and chopping and a few of us cooking. After a long wait, the tangy chickpea curry fashioned as a chaat and the omelettes were ready and we were served on steel plates and not on banana leaves for a change. We scattered all over the roof to our favorite places and chomped off the meal feeling extremely content.

After that I never met any of those cousins. Funny, how fast we grow up. Ridiculous, how fast time passes and yet how excruciatingly slow it mostly feels. But the craziest of all things is how these memories resurface mostly in the nick of time to give you the random courage to face. You know. Tomorrow.

Rebirth

It hasn't been that long, has it
If I try now, fiddle my toes in sand
I will find the bottom below the slush, won't I
This ain't bottomless, a thing, is it

I am willing to see colors again
And smell happy vibes in the air
I am ready to believe again
In stories that I have been told so long

I gather it's never too late
But do they mean it enough
When they say it this way
Can I undo some and truly choose to begin again

Flying Lessons

The other day, I walked around in the flea market, a lot. Several kilometers. My feet began to ache above the soles of my flat shoes. The road got to them. I was trying to shed some loneliness that day, wanted to get home late at night and then sleep.

On a long stretch of such walking, I entered a by-lane and crossed several soothsayers. None of them oozed clairvoyance. In fact, they looked like business women, down to business. Sitting on their haunches, with a photo of a beautiful goddess adorned in roses and a cloth spread out and some loose change sprung on it. A couple of young girls were having their palms read. I had some curiosities too, thought I should ask. Unforsaken wishes. A plump and pink baby, a spunky little breezy apartment, flight to a distant land, a bit of success, and so on. So I paused, but the soothsayer spoke an alien language and there would be the dearth of a translator, among the dearth of other things. So I didn't pause any longer.

Came back home to find that a pigeon won't budge from the pot that housed my hibiscus house plant. Turns out that was a hot breeding spot for pigeons. She had built quite a nest with twigs and leaves. If you've noticed, I've written quite a bit about these pigeons, how much I have tried to help them nest. And just when I thought they were an infertile clan, she laid a pair of eggs under my favorite plant.

I thought I would keep the eggs outside the pot, on the floor, the moment the bird left, and she would come back and carry them away, to wherever. But she didn't budge. For days, never left sight of the eggs. Warmed them endlessly. I waited for her to give up. I knew she would. Those eggs never hatched, I've seen before.

Whenever I watered my plant, the mamma pigeon would scowl at me, flutter her wings and scare me away. Suddenly on a Saturday, I sensed movement under the mamma. The eggs had hatched and the baby birds with their eyes shut were there, like dollops of flesh with tiny hair and eyes shut. I was overawed and quite happy to their family. The father visited diligently.

Over the next week, I saw the parents, alter and sit on the baby birds to keep them warm and feed them mouth to mouth. I sprinkled left over rice and water. The baby birds grew quickly, swelled up. Their hair slowly grew thicker, their tough black beaks became prominent. I was afraid they would poke me in the eye.

I kept giving them rice and they kept growing. Their parents visited less often. The two babies took up most of the pot, there was not much space for the mamma anymore. Given, it is the monsoon, it rained on several nights, throughout. One night I woke up at 4 am to the sound of thunder and went to the balcony to see if the birds were doing okay. I pulled the pot further inside, where the rain couldn't reach and covered it with an umbrella. The mamma who was there, thought I had caged them all and fluttered like a mad woman. And escaped, leaving her children in my peril.

But they returned in a few. To reach the baby birds how to fly. The babies thought I was hostile, probably. Because I would sit by the pot and talk incessantly and softly to them. Clap my hands and make them stand up and sit down to my claps. Whenever I watered my plant, they would flutter their new wings and try to scare me away. Nevertheless I sat with them, waiting for their parents to return, with food of their kind, and more stories of the world, dreams, perhaps, a few.

The babies had grown very big and they had covered my pot with shit. I googled the lifespan of pigeons to find out when they were flying and vacating my space. I am to leave for a break in a week or two and if they birds didn't fly away by then, it would be a problem, because I am planning to give the plants to a neighbor who would water them when I am gone and I clearly can't give it to them with the birds in it.

The papa bird gave them flying lessons, sitting on the ledge of my balcony. Soon enough, one of the baby birds, flew away, to the glee of her parents and of me, and of her brother. I waited for her to return at night, I was worried she was so new, she might fall off the branch of a tree or something. I have seen pigeons sleep on telephone wires, and let me tell you, precarious! But she didn't return. I am hoping she's alive and well. But her brother, the other baby bird, who is the bigger one, fatter one, hasn't been able to fly.

And I cannot fathom why. Perhaps, he had heard a scary story or two. Because I've checked, his legs and feathers look normal to me. He's just afraid I am hoping. The parents come sometimes now, counsel the bird, who is almost a fully grown pigeon now. But to no avail. All he does is stand up and sit down. And flutter his wings when I water the plant or throw some food on him to make him try to fly away. But nothing works.

I think this one is a homing pigeon and has found its way home. 

Thirty-one

The other day, I was reading through the Wikipedia page on Winston Churchill. Not quite reading as much as looking for quirks. Tiny  little things worth remembering. I went on to the pages of his children and grandchildren. Several spouses of theirs. And children again. All perished. Some of disease. Some of misery. Some of boredom. But all dead and by gone. Erased in history, except their black and white pictures.

A man who was powerful enough to stop a war or cause a famine, he is gone, obliterated. And his progeny much the same.

It gave me some perspective. I am going through a limbo. When was I not? But this is also one of the several limbos I have been through. I think when I die, my life would have been a series of such limbos conjugated back to back, with a very washable glue of memories.

I am thirty one. I was quite depressed (not because of that, personally I think, ageing is fun) because of the goings-on. I am beginning to imagine I am prone to certain things. Like biochemically. Like some of those women whose Wikipedia pages I've visited, someone's (third) wife, someone's (illegitimate) daughter, mentioned in passing, who were prone to depression.

I know for a fact, that I am slightly bi-polar, if I may. And prone to a few things that make me less capable of controlling how I feel. That transpires into a lot of aspects of how I live and generally, be. But my mood swings are violent and totally out of control. Since, I am a very inward person, with very few outlets, these things are beginning to crush me in a very novel way, like none of my past limbos have done. There is quite a bit of curdling and swirling and crying and screaming going on, inside my head.

Nevertheless, Winston Churchill died, vanished from the face of the earth, without a trace. So will I. One day. Sooner rather than later.

Happy thirty-one!

Grandmother

Grandmother rushes in at midnight to the river front to stand and watch a bridegroom’s passing procession. The lights and the crackers and the trumpeters and four bearers carrying his palanquin. A stream of lights passing by the river front could be sighted from our rooftop as well. But their reflections on the black water, and the grim blue-grey sky would be experienced firsthand only if woken by the firecrackers, you grab your slippers and walk briskly and reach the river front about time. And grandmother would clearly be the one woke and running. Along with a bevy of grandchildren. 

At half past two on school day afternoons, grandmother would sit in the courtyard in the shade of the gigantic red hibiscus and from a plate of jaded silver, feed lunch to the same bevy of grandchildren. Grandchildren of all shapes and sizes, even the ones who are barely weaned from their mother’s milk would sit, cross-legged, quietly, even though in their hearts fluttered a dozen alibis for skipping siesta. Grandmother would make spherical morsels and keep them on the rather bigly plate. Each morsel would have mashed rice and dals and curries and veggies and with a touch of pickle on top for easing the swallowing. Each morsel would have a name on it,  one for the father, one for the mother, one for each brother or sister, one for a fairy, one for the moon and so on, till the plate was wiped clean. Each belly fed to full after grandmother’s hand went about clockwise in circles, several times.

Then in siesta time, came the stories. Of moon-faced monsters and old demonesses that lived on champak trees, having kidnapped the souls of young and pretty princesses. Grandmother’s eyes snapped asleep sometime in the middle of those fairy tales, her voice whirred and the grandchildren knew, this was their cue to get up, one by one though, and quietly tiptoe to the playground outside. 

Grandmother was also the takecarer of the oft recurring midnight hunger pangs of the grandchildren. She was the one who rolled in somewhat-semi-sweet-semi-creamy milk-powder out of the can, in left over rotis. Rolls that fed hungry children who shared their grandmother’s ancient antique empress size bed, rolling from its edge to edge, several feet, drenched in Disney world dreams, and slept behind clay walls, under thatched roofs.

Grandmother, when septuagenarian or octogenarian, when semi paralyzed with senility, slow fried egg plants, walked to the living room and sat on the sofa, half-watching TV, half daydreaming, waiting for one side to cook, fry, char, until she walked into the kitchen and flipped them over. 

Grandmother, this, grandmother that. 

Coffee

Here,
Drink some more coffee
You over-caffeinated zombie
To sit up and keep eyes wide shut

Because,
Life is full of problems
and then,
Life ends

Abruptly,
Perhaps, as most ones say
You wake up one day
And find nothing

Not the quintessential nothing of daily depression
But actual nothing, 
A forever-void for real
That's the end, no tunnels, no lights, no nothing

Until then,
Hang on to coffee
Short on sleep, short on peace
And overflowing, almost bursting with regrets; wait;

Hang on 

Saturn

Did you know
That Saturn
Has an aurora borealis too
Just like ours, I mean
Who woulda thought

Also, did you know
The coconut tree in my backyard
Stunned me bad, last night
It cast this huge shadow, on my neighbour's wall
And I thought was that a ghost

When I spotted it,
Inching closer to my kitchen window
I stood staring at the shadow's leaves, sway
Below a half moon
And rushed to the bedroom to check the real tree

In the years I've lived here
Never seen this shadow
Not once, and suddenly tonite
Am rushing back and forth, kitchen, bedroom
To and fro

And alternately glancing at Saturn's aurora borealis
Looking so damn photoshopped this
But it's real, shot by a passing Cassini or
A Voyager, or something
It's like a million square miles

Can u imagine living in it
Under it, and gazing up
Tonite, suspended between shadow and light
I imagine I do.
Somewhere under Saturn's North Pole and submerged in its orange aura.

Phase

An effective way to get past a phase, any phase, is to let it run its course. Just bear it for a certain amount of time, instead of constantly fighting it. And the phase, will begin to feel that you are soft, mouldable, yet somewhat indestructible and it will leave you alone. So it's up to you to now decide what is a respectable amount of time you must spend bearing the said phase. Is it a week, or a month? Sometimes a phase goes on for years, to be honest. It becomes so inbuilt in your life that you cannot separate, like, draw a distinct line, which characteristics are yours, which are the phase's. In that case, perhaps, you have lost. Or the phase has. Or it's just a tie. Like in any kind of competition.

But the most wicked kind of phase is the one that keeps coming back. It never completely leaves you. First few times it catches you, you fight it. Then you bear it, then ignore it. But it keeps coming back. You simply lose out on all methods and don't know what to do anymore. It leaves you in peace for a month or two and then down a week or so you realise you got it again. It's merciless. It wrings you of all your potency. It's basically a slow but persistent process of self decay.

For instance, you remember how I baked silly cakes on every Sunday afternoon for over a year and a half. No matter how far from decent the cakes were, or how many containers I broke, or how I had no eggs left for Monday ever. Nothing could get me rid of it.

Then, do you remember smoking. Nicotine has been my closest accomplice. In many many of the acts I have participated in, it has stood by me. When everything else stood me up, I had it. So that's a phase, that keeps coming back. It keeps away the blues with its greys. It does a good job of giving me the short lived illusion that I am as calm as I could humanly be.

Then there were times when I would embroider, till my eyes hurt. I would learn new stitches and make them. And screw up old dresses with new thread. Other times, I would do origami and play around with glitter. Paper flowers with gold borders. Also I invested in real plants, like real alive plants. They were like my pets, my friends, and when they flowered, I felt like I had children. And when they died, my world came crashing down.

Then, again, do you remember lulls. I mean, I keep having these lull phases. They are like a limbo. Nothing is practically still, for the sake of all that is holy. Everything is moving and fast. I am chasing cabs, and climbing stairs and ordering groceries, doing my daily walks, talking on the phone, behaving all normal, drinking two cups of coffee at work, daily. There is this facade of normalcy. But inside, I am extremely quiet. As in there is a vacuum inside my entire body. And a mellow realisation that almost everything of value has been lost. And no amount of love, or time, or rest could even begin to help me fill myself back up. And in phases of these lulls. I would lose my mind for brief instances and scream and cry. Like really loudly, biting into pillows and stuff. So when I'm doing this, am I running the phase out, or am I fighting it with all I have got? I couldn't tell you. 

Leaving

“You have gone insane, haven’t you?” She asked me from the between the curls of hair that fell on her face. 

Her irises appeared darker than before, literally like bottomless twin pools. That I could drown in and not surface from. I had doubts if I would even try to hold on to the hands of a rescuer whilst I drowned in her eyes or any other pool in general. I had begun feeling like an ascetic from the past few days.

She reiterated the question, had I gone crazy. Her words felt like wisps of air escaping her brown lips, which were otherwise tightly pursed, awaiting an affirmative answer from me. I had begun wearing sunglasses in the house to keep out the excessive day light. She pulled them out from my face and I shut my eyes into darkness.

When I opened them again, in the clear afternoon light she appeared feral. Exasperated with my muteness she stood up and began pacing up and down the room. She hadn't evolved much in the last six or seven months that I hadn't seen her. I had imagined she would be unrecognizable. But why would she even alter at all?

I told her. “You haven’t changed much. You haven’t changed at all.”

She approached my chair and placed her left palm on my right knee and sighed deeply.

“You have to move on”

“I have. I mean clearly I have”

“You have gone insane, is what you have done”

“You make it seem like I had a choice”

“Oh don’t be silly. We had talked about this. So many times, over and over again”

“Well clearly, now that you've seen the aftermath, you must conclude, I am not the one for the talking”, I said hoping she would calm down with my ridiculous retorts.

“Honestly, I don’t have time for this. I have to get back, I can’t be gone for such long. You take care and, and just get your shit together”

“Yeah sure, get my shit together I will” This was more disgusting than expected. 

“You should go.” I paused. “Because if you stayed any longer, you never know, what I might do.”

That didn't slow her gait but she turned and looked at me. “What does that even mean?”

“I’m kidding. I’m joking. You of all people should know that”

“Can we just talk for five minutes, before I leave?”

She came closer and sat on the floor, with her legs crossed, instantly persuading me to climb down from my chair.

On the floor, she held my hand in hers and began speaking in slow wisps again.

“This is the last time you’re seeing me. I am not coming back. Never again. I want you to know this.”

I stayed mum, feeling rough in my throat, having nothing to say.

She spoke again. “I want you to tell me that you know you are not going to see me again”

“You sound like you are the one that needs some convincing”

“Shut up. Do you want my husband to explain it to you, how all this works?”

The mention of him crashed me back into reality. For a stretch of the hour I had imagined she was here for my sake and my sake only.

“Say it!”

“I know, I know you’re not coming back”

“I strongly urge you get a life. Listen to me, see someone else”

“Why don’t you fix me up with one of your single friends?”

“I can’t stay involved. But there are lots of women. I am told there are some dating apps and some real nice young things. You've always been lecherous, you would know everything”

“Serious accusation alert!”

“C’mon we know each other. We don’t have to wear facades.”

I broke her off in the middle. “If we know each other, why the fuck did you even leave me? Why did you abandon me? Why did you break my heart so irreversibly?”

Before I realized, I was screaming at her. She put her hand on my mouth to quieten me I guess but nothing worked.

And the next minute she was gone.

She had vanished so neatly, it was almost as if she had never been here. That’s exactly how people go. People who have made up their minds to go, they just leave so immaculately, the one left behind often is seen trying to grab on to the air that rushed in to fill the vacuum of sudden absence.

Flight

We hadn't ever flown together. But this flight, we were taking together. So together. But we hadn't planned it much. He was an adhoc kind of man. He texted to check if I had reached the airport. I hadn't. I wasn't running late at all, in fact I was ahead of time. And he was further ahead of me. When I was in the washroom peeing, he called, where had I been? Clearly he was bored and wanted some company, even if it was mine. I calmly went about things and found him in the exact place he'd told me he'd be at. So far we were doing ok.

He looked different. Not very different. But not exactly the same either. There were strips of difference. His face had a rugged 9 am charm. He looked like a man who was about to tell me a story. Usually, he would appear extremely taciturn, always carefully choosing his words. But not this morning. He asked me if I wanted to eat. Nope, I was gonna have a brunch in the air.

Quietly, we began the endless walk in the airport, through longish isles, taking escalators down and up and then vice versa. Looking into stores, clothes and toys and other travel memorabilia that people liked to pick up at twice the price. But we just looked at and passed them non chalantly, while making mildly awkward yet conscious small talk. I kept smiling hoping that would break some of the  ice, and he responded too, not smiling as much, but a little bit here and there.

When we reached the departure gate, we had over an hour to kill, oh an hour. Why did I even have to wake up that early, I was going to have to simply strangle this extra hour to death and drink its blood. There were hardly any empty chairs. We found an empty half row in the distance. He sat down and I didn't sit on the adjacent chair, thinking that would be too close. I placed my bag in the chair in the middle and he followed suit. This proximity was bearable.

I was afraid the silence was gonna get haunting. I kept looking away as if waiting for my entourage to join me, but no one was coming. We both knew. This time, he invented chit chat topics. We got up at adequate intervals to drink water and pee. We guarded each other's stuff like obliging copassengers. Talked quite much before we boarded.

In the flight, the stewardess wore zing nail paint and her fingers looked delicious. I was gonna have to spend the two odd hours staring at them, I composed myself. He was seated next to me, but on the other side of the aisle. I noticed his shirt had tiny flowers, flowers really. I was wearing black, I cannot recall why. After we took off, we talked in signs across the aisle and sometimes bent over to hear the other person. It felt close and comforting. In an aircraft of a hundred people, a stranger who was less strange than the other ninety nine, yes it did feel sweet.

He has always been sweet, his sweetness can be utterly disarming so I had to tread on thin ice around him. I did not want to fall for him. I knew I wasn't capable of falling anymore, but I was not ready to tempt fate yet. I bought noodles. He ate a pack of nuts, but barely. He had a coffee, I had a Diet Coke.  Later, when we were above the sea, and flew over ships that appeared and disappeared between thick nimbus clouds I expected some turbulence.

Even when everything is going normal or sub normal, I have this slightly irresistible temptation to jump off. But the flight was smooth. When we landed, he waited for me by the conveyor belt since my bag, as usual, came out the last, the very ultimate fucking last, I kid you not.