Homeward bound

There is a ribbon of pain running down from my neck to my forearm. It's from pulling my suitcase off the overhead shelf; another little thing I'll remember from my train journey yesterday.

There was also the tomato soup in a paper cup that looked like it had a little beetroot in it. There was the man next to me who sneezed a lot, blaming it on the pepper in the soup. There were children who grinned at us from between blue foam seats. They wore sweaters to battle the train cold. There was the couple who opened up a jar of pickle and ate it with a spoon; the smell of oil and lemons taking over the train for an hour or more.

I will remember the conversation I had, while eating vanilla ice-cream with a wooden spoon. I'll remember trying to sleep with my scarf covering my face.

As the train drew into Mumbai and familiar stations started passing us by, it started pouring outside. I will remember looking distorted in the dark glass; tired faces against rained out window panes.

Slowly, my things will fold themselves into neat stacks and will scurry around till they form a tight little circle on the bed.

My socks and the sweatshirt that smells of hay will dart out of the wooden cupboard. The soap jar with its interesting blue bubbles and the bag of toothpaste and sunscreen will edge towards each other.

While I sleep in the middle of white blankets, my things will murmur about their past week away from home. They'll move away from new places, which had begun to grow on them, to the comfort of familiarity.

Tomorrow morning I'll wake up and go, taking my neatly packed things with me. The room will be left behind, bearing no traces of my time there.

She wears scarves with little bells at the edges. A small silver bird, wide winged and intricate, hangs around her neck. Men offer her their coats very often, when the cold becomes more than just pleasant. She takes them with a nod of acknowledgement but her expression has no gratitude. She doesn’t thank people for things she didn’t request for.

In crowded rooms, she is still on her own although there’s a tan muscular arm around her waist. Her eyes don’t move when he whispers into her ear about how beautiful she is. She has a small smile when he asks her if she wants to have dinner again sometime. She always tells him she’ll let him know. Later, when she's alone in her room, she makes a list in her head-she looks at the pros and cons. Usually it's the same. He's nice but he smothers her with attention.

There is something about how she carries herself. There is something striking about her indifference. She's a little condescending, in a very deliberate fashion. It draws men to her like children in toy stores. The toy you want the most, is the one you can't have.

At night she falls asleep, after she brushes her teeth and the bathroom mirror is speckled with water and and errant blobs of toothpaste. Her phone rings more often than not, but she rarely answers. There will however come a day, she tells herself, when she will answer the phone. She, like everyone else, knows that you need someone to be by yourself with. She also knows that, that person will not be the kind who'll call her in the nights.

And the circle will be proverbially vicious.

There are warm white towels all lined up in the closet. The room smells of lemons and flowers.

The clothes are ironed and left on the table, crisp and in brown paper bags.

There's a ash tray on the table, with a match box and a stubby candle. It's quite the nifty little package. In the dark powerless room, people smoke cigarettes and light candles to make shadow animals on the wall.

There's always a sound in quiet rooms, like that of a faraway train. It doesn't intrude into your thoughts. It just melts away into the background of your space, watching you just be. It speaks only when spoken to.

The marble floor sees an upside down version of my day. It looks at me walk back and forth; first a little gingerly because of the cold tiles and then more confidently. It watches me look happier and shinier than I might be feeling. It's probably from the glow of the yellow lights. Either way it isn't a bad thing.

Feet

Through small white shoes,  her red toe peeps. The red is a little too bright and the nail paint looks patchy in places, but there is something very attractive about the whole thing.

Some days, she wears toe rings that shine. They sparkle when she puts her feet up, at the end of the day. Some are plain silver bands, while some have little fishes on one side.

The bottom of her feet are a confusing colour. Orange but with a little pink; like the evening sky on days you'd want to remember forever.

On many days, her feet are hidden. Kept away from everyone, in closed monsoon shoes or white and blue socks.

They are just another pair of feet, in just another crowd. Yet, there is something noteworthy about them.

The trees whisper, their leaves telling quiet stories. It doesn't rain. It hasn't rained for a few days now. When we walk at night, while the people around sleep or settle in the front of their televisions, it's balmy but not unpleasant.

Back in our rooms, we talk about our days and thoughts; the smoke rings watch us from a height. I realize how some things always remind you of certain people, even if they're miles away.

Later, as I sink into the bed, I fall asleep thinking of you and wondering what you're doing. I fall asleep quickly, dreaming of failed cases and broken files, but atleast I don't wake up unhappy.

They serve carrot and lettuce sandwiches and buttery cookies that leave grease stains everywhere.

Everyone eats them quickly, irrespective whether they like it or not.

The conference room has glass walls. It overlooks a fountain and a road lined with palm trees. We sit with our backs to all this and punch away, making notes and presentations on our laptops, not quite sure where this is taking us.

We rush around preparing to impress people who we've never met. The printer hasn't stopped making whirring sounds since morning. It obediently spews out paper after paper.

At the end of the day I feel lightheaded. I realise I have been holding my breath a lot.

I try to sleep but fail, my disconnected dreams are plagued with excel sheets and freshly printed documents. In my dreams, not quite unlike reality, I am visibly scared and there's no escaping it.

White washed hotel rooms that make no sound except for the dull hum of the air conditioning.

Last night, I woke up and the room was freezing. I jumped around for a while trying to figure out the AC control and the fan switches. It's a cruel hotel room trick when the switch of the fan is hidden behind the TV. I woke up this morning and realized that there was a swan shaped towel at the foot of the bed that I hadn't noticed before. The head of the swan appeared dislocated.

I lie under the multi coloured blankets for a while, willing myself to get up and face the day. I bury my face deeper into a sea of pillows and ignore the alarm that dutifully makes the bed quake.

There is a hush outside even though it isn't very early, and I look out and see a few children going to school; girls with oiled plaits and checked skirts. They link their arms through each other's and chirp loudly. If I was in a cheesy TV show, I would have waved at them and they would have grinned and cheered and waved back. They'd also be rosy cheeked and this would be Sikkim, but it isn't.

I sit on my bed and collect my thoughts but as of this minute they are all blurred because of sleep and the idea of a trying day.

The alarm goes off for the third time and the towel swan stirs in an uneasy quiver.

Sly

We sit around a round wooden table, punching away at our laptops. We wear serious looks and thick glasses. We nod at each other and make office small talk. “The invoice copies look fine.” “The printer never works”

Behind our screens, we walk through our own worlds, comfort zones in frigid emotionless rooms.
We stop and look at short stories and music forums. We make lists. I doodle online, words and disconnected sentences. There is something cathartic about writing things without wondering where it’s going.

Someone comes with a jug of iced water and tea. The tea is set on little lacy coasters in cups with golden rims. People resume making small talk over tea. We enquire about the files and excel sheets. We sympathise about technology failing us.

After the tea is consumed, we go back to our worlds, pretending that we are doing extremely important office work, of course.

Next to me, I feel someone smiling into their laptops. I look from the corner of my eye and see a page on Thomas Moore’s poetry open.

The day comes to an end and we all wrap up our things. We bid each other good-bye, hands raised solemnly. A productive day, we say, a productive day.

There are serpentine lines of car, all of which cut through other lines, like some kind of petrol-guzzling, multi coloured octopus.

It is an almost typical Wednesday morning. The cab driver makes small, exasperated sounds and tells me that it's going to take atleast an hour. I nod and watch the people in the bus alongside. Some of them are fanning themselves with newspapers, while others are craning their necks, hoping to see an open road even if it's at a distance.

People in important looking cars are reading cream coloured newspapers, their expressions grim. Some look into their phones, brows furrowed, tight lipped. I wonder if they've noticed the traffic, clearly bigger things are bothering them.

Pedestrians cross the street happily; the look-left-look-right crossing rule now redundant, thanks to the stationary traffic. They twist and turn and bend, an inadvertent dance to make sure they don't hit an auto or get their shirt sleeves caught in bike handles.

Beggars tap at car windows, promising His blessings and good fortune all for tworupees. They cite hunger for three days, wounded children and general despair. No one gives in, none of the slightly tinted windows roll down.

The tipping point is when finally one window comes down and the bespectacled man asks the beggar for change for a fifty. The beggar laughs, says it's only the start of his business, he doesn't have any change. The man nods and rolls up his window.

The beggar walks away, his apparently injured leg, suddenly repaired. He calls out to his friends, telling them about how a bigwig in a car asked HIM for change.

The jaded city collectively sighs as the traffic begins to crawl.

I had a dream last night where we playing life size Scrabble. I pushed Scrabble tiles, each the size of a small blackboard. ‘Wreck’, that’s the word I made.

It got me a lot of points but you made fun of me for being out of shape. You threw your head back and said, “Weak person!” I remember being mad at you and saying, “Why don’t we see you move some tiles around, if you’re so strong.” And you did, with enviable ease. I don’t remember what word you made, but knowing you, it was probably worth a hundred points.

I woke up, my mind was still caught somewhere between the large scrabble tiles.

I thought of how we’d play Scrabble online; a monsoon three years ago. I remember how much fun I had playing, even though you always won. That was a first, up until then I was annoyingly competitive and enjoyed a game only if I won. You always amazed me with how well you played; an extra letter somewhere, a fifty extra points and a whole lot of awe.

Some things will remain unchanged. Even a decade later, if we sit down and play a game, you’ll still win. And for a long long time to come, if some says Scrabble, my thoughts will instantly find you.

Preachy.

Write about death if you’re good at it. Write about emotions you can describe well.

If your best works are about decapitated heads and dying children, by all means write about it.

Describe the pain of a war widow or the deep hollow inside of the mother whose five year old died of cancer. Spell out the biting indifference you’ve witnessed; people who get over death even before the coffin is lowered or those who don’t base their happiness on anything materialistic. Write about it so I can feel your confusion which is lined with envy. Involve me in your tales, so that I may be able to tell that while you detest the indifference but you also desire it secretly.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that you’ll be as good at writing about happy things, especially when they don’t come to you as strongly. You’ll falter when the sunshine hits you in your chest, you’ll cringe as the calculated happiness leaks out of you. Don’t try and narrate your cheerful anecdotes to me.

I will not relate to it and I will not feel for you. I will be able to tell that your words are just words.

Write about it only if you really feel for it. Don’t write about because people chide you for writing too much about death. The chances are your story of your favourite football club winning a game will come out sounding way more honest than your story about India’s independence.

Don’t worry about all your stories sounding the same. The best stories, like we all know, are the ones you want to go back to and read again, even if they’re familiar.

Write about what matters to you.

Write about what moves you if you go back and read it.

Write.
Write.
Write.

And another monsoon post.

Rain - humid smoky Bombay rain.

We watch it bring down the blue plastic sheets on autos; furtive couples breathe while the unkind city looks the other way for a while.

Water streams across the streets. Tea coloured water with pieces of rubbish floating in it.
A bearded man sells peanuts in newspaper cones. He holds it out to passers-by, calling out the price. Nobody stops.

A child stands at the side of the road and pretends to be an aeroplane. Children do that, arms stretched wide and guttural sounds is all that it takes. His mother begs him to come under the umbrella.

The black umbrellas bob against the beige buildings. The garish ones scream for attention. Neither keep you from getting drenched.

Lazy Sunday afternoon rain. We watch the scene from behind dark windows with our hands wrapped around ceramic coffee mugs.

The thoughts all blur into each other - the reckless children on rainy afternoons, the people, the smells. There is a sense of deja-vu.
The days now all roll into one big burly monsoon. 

Bah

There are few things more dreadful than a working Saturday. One of them is coming into a dark, empty office at 8 am on one such day, while your friends are asleep.

It smells of stale air-conditioned air; the fancy counterpart of musty old-room smells. Atleast the latter has character.

I eat cornflakes from a disposable glass, because the only bowl that they have has a crack. My laptop is frozen; a painfully blue screen saver is the brightest thing in my morning.

I can’t even tell right now, whether it’s ‘ in my morning’ or ‘of my morning’

Saturday morning preposition fail.  Going by my track record, it'll be one of the many glitches of the day, amidst paper cuts and technological collapses.

Window woman.

The big stone building has a broken window pane.

The cracks form a web and glint in the harsh afternoon sun. Behind the ruptured glass, stands a woman with the brightest red lips. One sees only her face, the rest of her is hidden.

She runs her finger carefully along the eye of the quake; the centre of the snaking cracks. She flicks off the little shards that have come loose, then blows lightly on the void- age old comfort for unfair wounds.

In the that moment of glassy smoke outside her window, I see her blood red lips form what could be a smile.

The sun then pours in through her window, into whatever mystical world lies on the other side.
Whether it fills up the place with a delicious golden light or it burns an insignificant hole in her wooden flooring, it doesn't matter; she has the same half smile.

I don’t know how you died, but you did, because when I last looked you were gone.
The windows of your house were shut and the red and white curtain that usually fluttered wasn’t there. I waited for a few minutes. Perhaps, you were in the shower or maybe you overslept. I soon realized that it wasn’t true. In the 2 years that I have walked by and waved you at you, there wasn’t a single day when your window was shut.

The first few times when we hesitantly nodded at each other, I wondered what you thought of me. I wondered how, of all the people passing by, it was you and I who noticed each other.

You, with your wrinkled hands clutching the window sill, raised one hand in acknowledgment after a few days. I remember the day clearly. I remember waving at you, wondering, creating several possible scenarios in my head about your life. Maybe you lived with your ailing wife, who slept the whole day. I wondered, if you lived alone, your children living in a different country. Children, who remembered you only on birthdays and festivals or maybe children who you Skyped with everyday, telling them about your day in halting but clear sentences.

That was my only form of interaction with you. Everyday, at nine, when I left for work, I’d walk past your building and you’d be there, waiting to wave at your friend. Day after day, we’d wave and smile, without bothering to take it further. I didn’t know your name and I don’t think you’d care for mine. We preferred it that way.

There was a certain simplistic charm to what we shared. It wasn’t complicated with the banality of the  details of our lives and who hurt us and who let us down.

I knew you were gone; I could tell the minute your window was shut this morning. I tried to ask your neighbours about you, for the first time ever. A few shrugged and said the ambulance came late at night and took you.

I didn’t press for details; did any relative come or did you lie alone? And if you did, was that how you wanted it?

I felt strange; not grief just the feeling of something amiss. I am not sure what I would have done differently had I known you were dying.

Then it came to me. You didn’t want things to be different. You didn’t want me to come over and offer you soup. Perhaps the morning of the day you died, you waved at me, shut the window and drifted off into a deep sleep. I know that maybe things went differently; but this is how I’ll choose to believe it happened. It seems only fitting.

Stationery woes.

Find a pretty notebook of handmade paper.

It could be a bright blue, the colour of peacocks. It could be green and gold and majestic with tassels. Some tie across the front with a little ribbon, some button up neatly at the side, the hard cover falling perfectly into place. Smell the pages. They smell delicious; the smell of paper and glue and writing. The hand made paper is coarse and warm. It reminds you of scrolls and missives and other old world things that you wish still existed.

Fill your pen with ink; a deep royal blue or a dark shade of green. Watch the drops fall out of the pipette into the body of your pen. Wash the ink stains of your hands, the basin water turning blue.
Open your box of erasers, stiff and tan coloured, soft and pastel. Ink erasers never work too well, pens are for the more careful section of the people, those who know what to say and will not go back on what they’ve said.

Rub the lead off your hands, after you finish sharpening your 2B pencil. Touch the sharp pencil point gingerly. Throw away the pencil shavings, tapping the sharpener against the side of the bin to get the last of the waste out.

Lay everything on a glass top table; the pretty notebook, the pencil and erasers and the smooth ink pen.

It is now that you realize that, like how you worry that your writing will never be as sincere as you mean it be, there is nothing beautiful enough to be written in pretty notebook.

You lock it away in your desk and look at it from time to time. You wait for the day when your earnest thoughts are worthy of being carved on this delectable paper.

And we seek our stories.

There is a playground where the swings creak a little and the metal see-saw heats up too much for children to use it. The benches miss a leg here, a back there. Children run around shrieking, pulling, hurting. By sundown however, the park is almost empty.

On dark monsoon evenings, I see a man there. He carries a navy-blue bottle. The opacity of the bottle hides the contents. Alcohol is an obvious guess. Other guesses, which aren’t as dramatic, include protein shake, coffee or even plain water. I have nothing against plain water but you see, I can’t weave an interesting plan around a water bottle. Then again, even alcohol might lead to a poor plot. Long story short, it doesn’t matter.

He wears a dark coat and sits on a bench, with his head hanging low. He talks to no one. Also, there is no one to talk to. He carries a fruit in his pocket. He eat it whole, uncut. I would have liked him to do it in a savage fashion, but he eats in meekly, like a squirrel. I pass him by, walking slowly, to observe his face. It’s clean shaven with taut cheekbones. His eyes don’t look like they could have ever been bloodshot.

I walk towards a swing disappointed. The man sits there, oblivious to my presence, staring at the empty playground. The whole lacklustre event leaves me a tad bitter. He must be a regular playground-goer, with a mundane job and a nagging wife. The bottle probably has sour buttermilk.
The man gets up and walks towards the gate. From the gate, he turns around and looks at me, unblinking, a surprising amount of hatred seeping out of his gaze. Truth is, maybe he is angry at me for observing him without subtlety.

I, however, hold my breath, hoping that there is some deep dark pool of lunacy swimming in him. He could of course a normal person, but normalcy got no one anywhere. Atleast no where interesting.

The amateur's painting

Hold the paintbrush at an angle, so that the watery blue looks thicker, more pronounced if you will.
Cobalt blue; is that really the colour of water? The 12 bottle poster colour kit definitely thinks so, because the other blue is the colour of ink. Then again blue waters are a magical, mythical thing. Just like how little girls colour the people in their pictures with a chalky pink. No one is pink really. Nothing is pink.

The sky looks a little patchy but so does the sky outside so I guess it isn’t a complete miss. The clouds have a shade of grey that is far too realistic for a painting. I wait for them to rain all over the picture. Little children always ruin pictures. Either their limbs look too awkward or their raincoat sticks out at an odd angle or their faces look far too happy. The landscape stands a better chance of looking picturesque without the scrawny human figures.

Making V shaped birds is alright till about the fourth grade. Beyond that, there is nothing clever about making crows fly around your sky in this manner. There is a branch swaying on the left; the leaves aren’t all the same shade of green. Some are a dark spinach coloured mass, the others are a more amiable green – the colour of parrots.

There are a few rocks at the foot of the tree, round and even, all a smooth brown that looks like a clever amount of white was mixed in it. The trick is to mix in a little ochre. The greater trick is to mix in any number of colours because if you do see a blue-green rock in reality, I am sure you won’t question Nature about its colour.

The piece of art is left to dry, under a fan, held down with a talcum powder bottle and a old chocolate tin. These items, when picked up after some time, leave a wet ring on the page where they once stood. You shrug and say it merges with the picture anyway.

All rained out.

It's raining; black murky toxic rain.

Children with transparent raincoats and dirty fingernails splash puddle water on each other, lacking both the playful edge and the childish spite.
People look out of their windows, their expressions reflect both relief and dread.

Our cab whizzes past, spraying dirt and water on unsuspecting pedestrians. They curse and shake their umbrellas in our direction, angrily.

The traffic clogs at a bend in the road and the honking cars create the harshest sound you can imagine.

It continues to rain; dark drops from an angry sky.

The rains have arrived, whipping up a blend of all the possible monsoon cliches.
A time where we all sigh and say how great a book and coffee would be, but we still go out in the muck and complain till our voices die out. 

The last time my living room had so many people, was the day I left for America.
Today as I look around I see the same familiar faces. Some are sitting on the couch and laughing; their hands wrapped firmly around their wine glasses. Some walk around and stop to make conversation with Baba. A woman who works with Ma is standing at the window and smoking a short narrow cigar. “It’s a cigarillo.” She quips when she catches me staring. I nod politely and move away from her. My house is a confusing blur of colours and people and swirling emotions. 

Soon enough, Baba taps his glass with a spoon and the voices die down. He clears his throat and says, “I must thank you all for being here. We moved into this house 25 years ago. My wife and I, painstakingly, put this house together- where we learnt to be grateful for the small things. This is where my daughter was born- and this is where I became friends with her. My mother mastered her famous egg roast here and it’s almost as though its delectable smell has seeped into its walls. It’s hard to give up on our life here- but that’s what we decided is best for us. All I will say is that all of you are the closest friends we made over all those years. And- I have lived in various cities in the world, but the truth is I haven’t met anyone who is even half as wonderful as all of you. All of you will be missed terribly.”

Our house is the only white house on Labernum road. The one with the broken window pane. I broke it when I was four while playing catch. Baba said he’d fix it, but that never happened. Even to this day, it stands there as if in testimony to my childhood. By Bombay standards, it’s a big house. The ground floor has a study and a dining room. 

The Study is Baba’s favourite room. It has a big desk and so many books that one can spend a week there without getting bored. The dining room is purely my mothers’ domain. We don’t really go there, outside of our meal times. Ma doesn’t trust us to keep it tidy.

 A flight of quaint white stairs lead to our bedrooms on the floor above. I have always loved those stairs. They have been witness to several important things. I sat there and painted as a kid. I have walked down those stairs in my pink dress on the night of my college farewell as my mother took a hundred pictures. I sat there and cried into the night- about things, that only in retrospect, seem inconsequential.

My parents’ bedroom gives the feeling of being in an old time inn. It has a wooden floor and is done up shades of beige. One wall, however, is a bright orange. It has half a dozen photo frames of different sizes. My mother likes to think that it is her wall of memories. My father, the more practical one, thinks that it is a pity if you have to rely on pictures for your memories. Secretly, I am sure he likes the orange wall. Sometimes, when he thinks no one is looking- he smiles at the pictures up there.

My room is frozen in time. It’s been three years since I left home and went abroad but my room looks the way it did when I was 18. The books on the shelves are untouched. The softboards are a garish display of my years in school and college. There is a picture of me with a few friends in an amusement park. An exam time-table with several corrections in red. A bunch of sticky notes. One is in Baba’s handwriting. It says- Take  deep breath, it’s only Maths. I think he put that up before my Class 12 exams. The bedsheet is a pale blue one. The room still smells vaguely of chocolate. I am sure if I put my hand under my bed, I will find a stray candy wrapper.

Sometime last year- my parents made that significant call. They had been mulling over it for a while- and finally they took a decision. It was a particularly cruel winter evening in America- when they called me. My father, in his brisk no-nonsense manner, told me that they were selling the house. They had always planned to move into a small house in Pune, once they retired. Worried that I would get terribly upset- my mother began to explain. She said, with me gone, the house was too big for the two of them. It was difficult to take care of and expensive too, now that they weren’t working. I didn’t really say much to her. I knew they liked the house a lot more than I did. I knew it meant way more to them. Despite my anger and disbelief that my precious house would be sold, I knew I had no right to get mad at them. In the weeks that followed, I tried to talk them out of it a couple of times, but they had made up their mind.

The last party was scheduled for July, primarily because that was when I would be in India. My mother had decided that the packing would begin only after that. She didn’t want to entertain her best friends in an empty house. My father and I agreed. On another level, I knew Ma wanted me to be around when she began to pack. It would be too emotionally trying for her to do it alone.

The party was a success. Unlike, the others in the past, it didn’t end with my mother saying, “You guys must come over again. I will that strawberry cheesecake I have been practising.” .It ended in a solemn fashion, with my parents hugging their friends, the emotions rising palpably. I said my goodbyes and excused myself. As I walked up the stairs, I hoped that our new house in Pune would do justice to the hundreds of memories that we would carry there. Some neatly labeled and sealed in brown cardboard boxes. Some just tucked away wherever there was space.

Wrapped in a white polythene bag at the back of a cupboard, I found small rectangular notepads with crumbling yellow paper. They were filled with things my grandfather wrote when he was my age. His handwriting scrawled across the page, the loopy y and the hesitant punctuation. He had written things that he must have read somewhere and liked enough to document; things that he wanted to tell someone but had no one who’d understand. The writing was progressive and the thoughts travelled way ahead of his time.

There are some things that I immediately and unknowingly associate with him. Brown sweater vests, ochre coloured walking sticks that make a clacking sound, coconut ice-cream in a small glass bowl.
My grandfather told us, on more than one occasion, that long fingers indicated an artistic bent of mind. I couldn’t even colour inside the lines in school and I decided at age 8 that my long fingers weren’t taking me anywhere. He then told me, in a rather cryptic fashion, that being an artist doesn’t restrict itself to painting. I didn’t really understand it.

I started noticing people’s hands to check for fingers. Without realizing it, I started remembering people by their hands. I remember telling him this and he laughed a clear laugh that I still hear sometimes at night. Those are the nights I read his powerful thoughts with vehemence.

He wanted us to become doctors. My sister did become one. I notice hands and write a little bit. He’d have been proud.

It’s been exactly 12 years since he passed away. If he had been alive, he’d have been 100 this year.
He’s still around, though, in our writing and our interest in poetry. Every time, we read a good book and discuss it, I imagine him sitting on his bed, a copy of A Tale of Two cities covered in newspaper resting on his lap.

The boy on the train

I first met Mushraq on a Churchgate-bound fast train. It was a Saturday and the train was relatively empty. I had just plugged in my earphones when I felt someone tapping my knee. I looked up and all I saw was the bright eyes. They glittered with innumerable stories to tell. He chanted something while balancing the pile of books he hoped I’d buy. I took off my earphones and realized that it wasn’t a chant. It was the nine times table. He belted out multiples of 9 with the enthusiasm of a choir singer. He stopped to breathe and I asked him his name. “Mushraq Ahmed. Class 3 A. Roll no. 22. Ismail Yusuf School.” He said, answering all the questions I hadn’t asked. “Book lega?” he asked. I laughed at the child-like aggression. He noticed I hadn’t answered him. He pointed at my I-Pod and said – Gaana nahi sun-ne ka. Books padhneka. School jan-ne ka.” I bought a couple of books from him. Books that I’d already read. Somehow, that didn’t really matter.

I met Mushraq several times after that. He was on the same train every day. I was the irregular one. Sometimes I’d see him reading some book himself. Moving his finger slowly on the page, he’d string words together. Once, he had it figured, he’d proudly say the sentence out loud. Sometimes he’d sit on an empty train seat and count his money. He’d neatly arrange the tens together and then the fifties. He’d neatly fold the hundred rupee note, sometimes two of them, and put it in his shirt pocket. He’d stuff the coins in his shorts’ pockets; they’d make a jingling sound when he ran around. Sometimes, he’d gently chastise yet another college- goer for choosing music over books. And yet another person would become his loyal customer.

Often, I’d catch him eyeing the fruit that some women ate in the train. However, he’d never accept any food that any of us offered him. Once I offered him a chocolate. He shook his head and quickly moved to the other side of the compartment. I had tried to ask him about his family but he didn’t volunteer any information. I didn’t dig further, worried that I would stumble upon some painful story which I would eventually regret asking. He didn’t seem uncared for, though. His hair was always combed and his face always looked scrubbed. His clothes were old, but not unclean. He didn’t seem malnourished. He didn’t seem sad, either. Evidently selling books made him happy. He didn’t update his stock of books to often; but that didn’t cause his clientele to dwindle. The fact that he sold so many books had more to do with his endearing nature than the books.

Eventually, I switched jobs and I took the train at a different time. I didn’t see Mushraq at all. Sometimes, I would think of him if I saw another book seller; but it was left at that. So imagine my surprise when I heard someone shout – “Didi!” as I stood near the Andheri Bridge to cross the road. It was Mushraq, of course. He was flanked by a miniature version of himself. “Yeh- Salim” he said, introducing me to his younger brother. I smiled at both of them and asked him how he was. He tugged at my hand and kept smiling. I asked him if he lived close by. He nodded and at a distance I saw a number of make shift huts. The empty space under the flyover served as a settlement of sorts. As I looked around under the bridge, I realized it housed several families. Women bustled around the space as if it had been their home for a long time. Children slept in hammocks made out of old saris. A few men were crowded together, a foul smell and silver smoke forming a haze around their huddle. I stood there and many thoughts suddenly crowded my head. Had they always been this poor? Had they moved to Bombay abandoning their slightly bigger
houses elsewhere to earn more money? Were they happy?

I met Mushraq’s parents. They sold flowers at the Dadar flower market. After meeting them I realized, much to my relief, that there was no obvious painful story. His mother smiled when he said, “Ammi- yeh train wali Didi hai.” His father nodded and moved away. His mother told me how he was a smart boy and had now gone to class 4. “Bahut padhayenge isko.” She assured me and ruffled his hair. I smiled. I briefly enquired about his school, his books. He told me that more people bought books now. I told him his scolding them had worked. He missed the joke and nodded solemnly. I said goodbye to Mushraq and his family and went my way.

The thoughts that remained with me that day weren’t of Mushraq alone. They were thoughts of this dimension of Bombay that is much talked about. The poverty and the people. But it wasn’t the poverty that remained with me that day, long after I had gone home. It was the fact that Bombay somehow brings out such strong emotions in people that their faith in the city is unshakeable. The pack their lives into boxes and come to Bombay bright eyed, like Mushraq. It is their faith that lets them believe that something brilliant will happen for them, even if it means living under a bridge in the mean time.

Pre-monsoon thoughts.

The weather mellowed down a little today; my sepia toned world took on shades of grey. I ambled along inside of my head, examining a stray thought on a whim, as the cars zipped past in blurs of expensive reds and blacks.

In the suburban by lanes, last year, I ate raw mango wrapped in newspaper. Behind me, a storm was brewing, and the evening light changed from golden to a menacing black by the time by the time the last mango piece was eaten. I remember reaching home and writing by the window. It didn’t rain however, just stayed like that until night came.

I remember walking on the cobbled streets at Fountain, looking through all the delicious looking books that smell of another time covered with translucent plastic in preparation for the rains, your big blue umbrella doubling as a walking stick while you haggled with ease. I remember walking away, books tucked under your arm; the world around us walking along an edge, where the monsoons would soon storm in, like thieves in an old woman’s house.

There is a salty smell I associate with this time; when the sky loses its cruel summer edge and the cloudy edges soften, allowing only thin glimmers of the sun; the few early June days when the monsoon hasn’t quite arrived but another summer has passed us by.

I sit back and take this smell in, and it fills me up with a dull sense of wonder. I am not a big fan of the rains, but the build up always delights me greatly.

Typical.

The teacher has a kind demeanour. She wears a summery dress that has butterflies printed on it. Her eyes dart around the classroom while she teaches grammar.

On the rather dusty blackboard, John eats a mango. A few lines below, John is eating a mango. Dangerously close to the edge of the board, in cramped handwriting, John has eaten a mango.

The children don’t care. They colour pencil shavings with wax crayons. They squeal for no apparent reason. They stand up and say, “Teacherwaterteachertoilet.” The teacher ignores them and calls on one tired looking boy to write out answers on the blackboard. He walks up to the front of the class, stopping on the way to thwack another child’s head. The class laughs manically. The teacher doesn’t look particularly kind anymore.

The boy stands near the blackboard, playing with the chalk, making geometric shapes with his finger. The teacher, in a calculated sweet voice, asks him to write out the sentences in the past tense. The boy turns to his classmates for help. They stick out their tongues at him. The boy who he earlier hit has a triumphant look and is raising his hand chanting “Iknowthenaswer”

The teacher gives up and sends him back to his seat. She has already taught them tenses thrice in the past week. She sits in her chair and looks defeated. One child stands up and holds up a picture of a mango he drew and coloured when he was supposed to be studying grammar.

The teacher sighs, turns her back to the class and starts erasing her writing.

By the time the bell rings, the children are throwing pieces of chalk at each other. John, his preferred fruit and the teacher grudgingly make their way to another classroom.

There is a rather annoying game- where people play hard to get.

I don’t see the charm in pretending like you don’t care, when you actually care enough to pretend. How is it endearing to not return calls from people for a few days to make sure they don’t think of you as too available? If I get a call, I answer it on the basis of whether I want to talk to the person concerned or not. I can assure you my thought process isn’t, “Hm, I really want to talk to this person, but well you know, I don’t want him to know I want to talk to him. So let me miss this call and call him back next week.”

If I call someone who I have met only a couple of times, because I want to see where it goes with them, and they pull childish moves like pretending to be busy, I’ll stop bothering almost immediately. There is no pride in trying to pursue someone who appears to be disinterested. Especially when you don’t know even know their last name yet.

I am not advocating that you jump up and down with glee and answer everyone phone call with a high pitched Helloo and creep the other person out with your questionable enthusiasm, but I am also strongly against making people jump through hoops to test their interest in you.

I know a lot of people who “play it cool” I get that. What I don’t however get, is how people take this and run with it to a level where the other person is convinced that they don’t care and back off. This might work if you want the other people to take it down a notch, but if you don’t, you now have a situation on your hands where you’ve made your indifferent bed and now you’re going to have to lie in it.

“For well you know that it's a fool, Who plays it cool, By making his world, A little colder.”

Even the Beatles are making my case.

Restricted.

In a place where the lines aren't so clearly defined, they meet, unlocking rusty doors.

Their nails will always remain chipped, their throats will remain parched; a reminder of a day when the sun set behind them and the room looked jaundiced. 

Hair pins don't open locks. Stones do.

The walls are a sickly shade of green, the bricks hidden under years of dirt and moss. The backs of their shirts are powdered with dust; the fronts of their shirts are all creased.

They speak of things they don't dare speak of otherwise. Love that is found in their coded text messages and their furtive glances across crowded places. The kind that will tear them apart, in several pieces, should anyone find out about it.

Silence and the occasional snuffle. Silence and ragged breath and small sounds that are nervously happy. Silence.

Under the fragmented sky, that they can see from between the concrete, they look at kites that are lost, fluttering red specks against the clouds, far away from where they are.

As the golden brown evening light melts away into inky blue evenings, they pick themselves up and walk away. Separately together.

Innumerable stories. So many people with their feelings locked away in rooms. So many people with moss stained clothes. So many.

Fine dining.

There are long weeks that feel like many days just blurring into one endless time span. My week has been like that. We’re here again on a working Saturday – words that strike fear in many otherwise relaxed minds.

If I had to chalk out an ideal Saturday night plan for tonight it would include dinner and consumption of interesting liquids but without pushing the mind off the edge.

When I imagine interesting plans, in my head I see the same people, sitting around a teak wood table, laughing and telling anecdotes. I always imagine red wine, though we hardly ever drink it, and I always imagine leaving the place bubbling with emotions of the positive variety. In my head, at the end of the day, I am dozing off in the cab or the train, weaving in and out of sleep.

Things don’t pan out exactly like that. Sometimes, people are quiet. They don’t have anything to say. Sometimes, they’d rather be elsewhere or doing something else. Sometimes, people snap and say something snide without reason and then everything just gets uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Regret is our special for tonight, you can have it with a side serving of garlic bread.

We’d probably be happier off if we could all be happy by ourselves, and if our happiness didn’t have anything to do with other people. I am definitely not like that as of this moment, and to be honest I don’t see myself being absolutely at peace just being by myself.

My mental picture of dinner plans, where the yellow lighting makes everyone glow and the wine makes people friendlier, if you take away my people from the table, the evening automatically becomes redundant. Then the lights just hurt your eyes and the wine is an unnecessary expense.

Balmy.

Here’s what you must do on a typical summer day. You must wear a crisp white kurta, so you’re summery but in a stately fashion. You must then tie you hair up in a big bun, so that the curls look nice without reminding one of a bee hive.

I recently found a pair of sunglasses that make my life all sepia and old school. You can wear sunglasses so that no one can really see your eyes. Works best after a late night consisting of alcohol and/or tears. If you haven’t been leading a life as dramatic, you can eliminate the shades.
It’s amazing what kohl can do to your eyes.

One minute you look sleepy and unwell and the next, your eyes are lined with a 6B pencil making them look dreamy and full of carbon charm.

In the end, carry a big picnic basket and eat some egg and cheese sandwiches while watching the world go by. A pitcher of iced lemonade and a blue-and-white umbrella and you could be living THE life.

None of this works if you have a job, but well you know, I can live vicariously through those of you who are blessed with summer holidays.