Blur...

I could very well choose to quit; to not hold on to your silky laugh that filled the nights we spent together, and to let go of the memory that keeps fresh the lemon and thyme smell of your wet washed hair. You were wearing a crepe cotton chemise, and I tied on your neck the gunmetal pendant that I had bought to name the sunlight of your eyes. On your lips was the same song that we rehearsed for our first duet together. My notes and your voice, commingled in the symphony, trying to vanish within the other. And when our lips had met for the first time, I could swear I heard the same song playing silently in the recesses of my mind.

I could let go of all that, but I still have the watercolor that you painted, hanging in the living room. The early morning sunlight bathes it everyday and for the first few hours, it almost comes alive. And I have my charcoal sketch of you from the first time we made love. The creases on the crushed bedspread, the faint smell of our sweat infused with the rajnigandha outside the baywindow, and your unruly locks; all that elude the canvas but are trapped within the memories, I could leave behind that too.

But I wont. I would rather be the floaters in your eyes as they scan the skies on a clear sunny winter afternoon. Transparent, but there. In the blur of the promises that we made, and never could keep, I will exist. And maybe on one of the nights when he makes love to you, a draught of wind with traces of a redolent rajnigandha will drift into your bedroom, and perhaps remind you of me.

You see, hope is such a bitch!

Joker...

In the ring, he stands in dark solitude. Crowds have dispersed; the lions and elephants in their shed are being fed. Having made strangers laugh for 6 hours, it is time to go home where his children cry.

Later, looking at his tired reflection in the dressing-room mirror, he wonders, ‘who is the clown’?

A Short Story...

Sometimes randomly, a particular muse is born. Like telling a story in 55 words.

He's been brooding since morning. Of tales being told in 6 words, lies in even less. But short seems a Sisyphean task. He had tried once. Three words started his grandest story. Three again, had seen it end.

‘There’s someone else’.

Note: This post was catalysed by a random walk to Aria

Bus-Stop...

Dust, smoke, sweat, hustle-bustle and roar; that is the most of a summer Delhi evening. People walk listlessly from their desks to catch the slow buses back home. The rich in their cars drive sluggishly to find a way through the people crossing from anywhere they please, ducking the 2-wheelers that draw a serpentine track on the straight roads. And while so much is in motion, some people are always still. They wait for their chance to move, waiting patiently at the bus-stand.

He stands at one end of the bus-stand. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, and tie hangs loosely. She stands at the other end, dressed in a blue kameez with white churidaar pyjamas, and a brown bag clutched under her left shoulder. Her hair scattered and dry by the beat of the sun and the hot winds. All this while a Sunsilk sun control shampoo model covers two-thirds of the top panel of the bus-stand with her dark silken hair.

He looks at her. She looks away at the road and the people passing by or stuck. There is a woman, -somewhere in her 40's- wearing a gaudy synthetic Saree with big floral motifs that fight to compensate for the paucity of summer blooms, that has just moved in. A DTC bus is about to stop, and half of those standing have already started running in anticipation of the place it will actually halt. Some school children in blue shorts and now-brown-once-white-shirts get off. But he is oblivious to all that. He is trying to forget his day in her face. And she knows that, but she wont look at him.

The lady in the Saree starts to talk with her. While he waits for his own chance. Maybe her name, perhaps her number, who knows? Some faces have this power to dissolve the hardships of the day past, bringing you home. Hers was one of them. Not too beautiful, but comforting. He can hear some words of her voice, floating away over the ambient humdrum. Her voice sounds familiar, some girl he knew long ago perhaps. The lady in the Saree keeps up her conversation. He fidgets, looks at her, shifts his weight from one leg to another and then looks away in hope. But she stays inaccessible.

A bus groans to a stop just then. And the lady in the Saree nods her head. He smiles at his awaited chance and tries hard to think of something to say. Something nice, something that she would respond to.

And then in a flutter of blue and white, she boards the bus. The conductor taps the coin in his hand on the last glass windowpane in a piercing clack-clack, and the bus pulls away. The lady in the floral saree turns to another woman who has just arrived. Some conversations are steadfast with time, some die before they are born.

He watches her through the dusty back panes of the retreating bus. Her face fades away into the greying evening sky. There is a long evening ahead. And maybe a longer day tomorrow.

Call Divert

Though November Rain looks old, while it actually is not (was published on Dec 28). I, in the meanwhile, have also posted a small article here at THE STONELEAF, which happens to be an almost forgotten blog (because of my lack of commitment). So do read and let me know.

November Rain...

November is no different from other months. Not if you are in Mumbai. In this city of constant flux, there are two things that don't change much. One of them is the temperature; the other is its people. Anytime of the year, you'd never feel cold. Everywhere you go, you'd never escape the crowds. Mobs in motion, gallivanting for some esoteric reason. In Mumbai’s multitudinous abundance, it is solitude that is scarce while loneliness is aplenty.

For this seclusion, he travelled for hours from somewhere in Andheri to the Gateway of India. Having gone through the crushing rush of the local, and having evaded the importunate sellers on the way down from Flora Fountain to the Gateway, it was salvation for him when he finally faced the sea. And though it is always crowded, but the transition from the deflating squeeze of the local to the limitless illusion of space at the seaside is liberation in itself. To run from yourself, you need a lot of space; for the self has a strange knack of catching up with itself.

Leaning on the half wall that runs along the promenade in front of the Taj Palace, he would spend hours staring at the sea. Empty eyes looking into the emptiness of the skies, reflections in a sea of nothingness. Everything here moves with its own volition and somehow that rarity called leisure, makes its way inside the minds of people who pass by. Perhaps this is Bombay's only visible pause.

Time though slow, would pass by unnoticed. At half past eight a red Chevy would stop below the porch of the Taj. Before coming to halt, it will honk its horn three times, one long and two short bursts. This would be the time when he'll turn around and look at the opening door. Then she would get down. The Arabian Sea would get lost in the roaring waves inside his mind. And while she, in uniformed grace would disappear behind the high glass doors, he would watch stealing the last of her glances. Interstitial sightings through the gaps between the viscous traffic.

He had seen her on his very first visit to the Gateway. Standing at the monument of time, he found his own time coming to a sudden halt. Her sight was enough to steal speech and freeze words into silence. Something like Rushdie's Neela walking on the roads in flesh and blood. Only that no-one else seemed to see her the way he did. So no cars swerved onto the pavements, no walking-people bumped into the pillars, no bikes screeched to a halt and no painters painted the wrong walls red. Everything remained the same, but something in him changed.

He'd wait patiently everyday, for her to come out. Time would pass. The number of people at the gateway and the promenade will go down. Slow at first and faster later, leaving the cobbled floor beneath the gateway a lone collage of debris. And in a while the cleaners will come with long handled brooms and battered dustpans. But she would not. And then he'll give up, for in a while the last train will pull itself off from the Churchgate station carrying the last of the Mumbaikars.

He'll bear time by writing. Sitting on the sea-wall, with a sheaf of papers in his hands, he would see her face in the smudge of inky horizon and write of the color of her eyes that he has never seen, of the fragrance of her hair that he has never felt, the smoothness of her skin that he has not touched. He will write about the dreams that they'd dream together, and the nights that will have no mornings. And after every few lines, he'd raise his eyes just to see if she has, by chance come.

Everyday he will muster courage to go up the door and ask about her. Perhaps, her name. Something, anything that could bring him closer to her, even if in spirit. But then his thoughts would lose their way, his mind would draw a blank, and the only noise that would paint the background of his thumping heart would be white.

Thus many days will pass. The bundle of papers tied up by a string would grow thicker. But his knees would remain weak, his tongue still stiff. So he would wait, and watch, and wait again. In the meanwhile, within his mind he'll soar. Painting the graying skies with the vermillion of the setting sun, he would adorn the night with the scintillating twinkle of her eyes. He would wait, just for her. And then with the last of the ferries coming back, and the crowds coming out of the last show at Regal, he would trudge along the Victorian streets to catch the last train home.

But one day the car would come without her. He would not write anything that day, all through the night he will watch every car that would stop and everyone that would walk in. That night he would run towards the station, clutching his unsaid words in his hands. He would watch haplessly at the train pulling off. That night he would see the lone gateway as someone who shared his loneliness. There will be no sleep in his eyes and only the first train in the morning will take him home, a few hours before he sets off again to work, and then to wait for her.

That evening again she won’t turn up. This will go on for days and slowly his time of waiting will attenuate to the last of the trains. And then one day, 11 days from her absence, somehow the courage that always lost its way among the crowd would find its way to him. He would walk to the giant glass doors. The doorman there will look at him, once and then twice. But this night he won't flinch. He would ask about the girl who came everyday at half past eight, and the guard will tell him that she got married last week. Suddenly his world would grow dark, even as a car pulling up in the portico would shine its high beam onto his eyes.

And then he would walk towards the sea to throw the silent sheaf onto the choppy waters of the high tide. Sapped of all his energy, he would rest against the same stone wall. This time he will sit on the road, waiting for the night to end. From Café Mondegars, a group of young boys would come out ambling towards the sea, one of them singing November Rain. He would smile as AXL Rose would croon:

So if you take the time
To lay it on the line
I can rest my head
Just knowing that you were mine...
All mine.

The saltwater would devour the ink off his pages. That night again he’d be late but there'll be no hurry.

When time loses its meaning, how late is belated?

Note: Perhaps this is the last post for this year. Sometimes I think about this extraordinary thing; taking so much time to write these ordinary stories, and then waiting for you all to read. But then that is where these stories originate, from you who give these words their form. I have tried to be more regular but the flux in life has always unsteadied my resolves.

Wish you all a Happy New Year! and a belated Merry Christmas. I hope for you, time never loses its meaning. Salut!

Thursday, Dec 28, 2006.

Missing August...

Every evening he sits near the bay window of his apartment. He has a water bottle in his hands, a PET plastic water bottle. Framed by pale dusty blue curtains on either side, he sits in an old rocking chair. The guards at the gate always salute him when he goes by. The dog on the groundfloor -that belongs to no-one but the building- always wags his tail at him. The shopkeepers nod when he walks upto them. But I have rarely seen him say a word.

Twice I have stood face to face with him. Once while going upstairs in the rusty old elevator that has two doors; a normal wooden, another a grill-shutter. And the other time it was at the neighborhood chemist, where I had gone to buy a strip of nimesulide to stifle my terrible headache, and he had just paid for a bottle of calmpose. I looked at him, and he looked at me. But there was no apparent sense of recognition. I waited for the chemist to give back the change, by that time he had gone.

When I come back in the evening, he is always there. Just below the gulmohar tree at the corner where the road bends and starts its ascent, he leaves some chapatis that have dried in the day. While I go towards my apartment, he seemingly goes for his evening stroll. I have never followed him, perhaps someday I will.

He seems to have a collection of classical records. When I fiddle with the remote and flick the channels, I always hear random notes in the small silence that ensues between the program shuffles. Its like a series of arbit programs punctuated by dottted symphonies. Sometimes the music is so intense, that I switch off the TV just to listen. And I know he loves listening to the wail of the violas, and the lament of the cellos, for many a nights i have drifted away to sleep; comforted by the sounds of the dripping tap in the kitchen, and the music from his apartment.

There is a maid that comes to clean his flat and also perhaps cooks for him. He doesnt look much of a cook himself. Once in the evening there was some smoke that seeped out of his kitchen exhaust. It smelt like burnt toast. Perhaps the maid, didnt turn up that day.

The monsoon seems to be exhausted. The rain-fallen rhododendrons do not line the roads, and the yellow cannas have turned brown with the unwashed dust. The fresh smell of rain has become precious again. The valley of flowers in the mountains back home, would have started to wane. The only added beauty is the night, when the skies are once again clearer and one can see the stars weaving their own stories.

Tonight I sit with the guitar at my window, he is at his bay window again reading a thick book. Sometimes I feel as if he looked at me. But everytime I look up, I find his eyes poring over the pages, straining under the faint yellow light. His fingers move deftly over the pages, evidently a speed reading technique referred to in the How to Read Better and Faster.

I wave at him, but again there is no response. As always he doesnt see me.

~ ~ ~

We cross ways every evening near the Gulmohar tree. I recognise the tired footsteps even before he appears at my side of the bend. He walks with dragging feet that plop softly on the street, and then fade inside the block while I wait for the dogs with the uneaten chapatis prepared earlier in the morning.

I think he has tried to communicate with me. Of what the newsreaders keep referring these days as a connect between people, I think he makes a weak attempt at it. But I am not sure. He has a nice voice. The other day when I was at the pharmacy buying my prescription of Calmpose, I happened to hear him. His vowels are well rounded and his consonants clear, so he cannot be working in the BPO's that have mushroomed all over the place these days. His is an energetic voice, perky and vibrant. But then his footsteps gave away the fact that he was tired even before he uttered a word.

At times his TV is turned way too loud. And he doesn't even stick to one channel. The disruption in volume levels, sometimes becomes too jarring for the string quintets, that accompany me when I cook. But then youth brings with itself an impunity to the world and we assume little universes revolving around ourselves. An illusion which fades when we grow older and have to ask the cleaning maid to send someone to cook in the evening. And a delusion that grows, when the cook burns your chapatis and leaves them like that. But perhaps that is the way things are.

Today I broke my favorite record, The Four Seasons by Vivaldi , it just slipped off my hands. So I had to go through the horrid task of gathering, what I ironically think of as the fragments of a song. And then the only way to pass the late-monsoon eve, was to retire with a book. He is trying to play some tune on a guitar, his voice floats some words into the september air. Words that I dont remember, but am familiar with. The last of the monsoon breezes is up. The air, fresh and colder, perhaps because there are no clouds in the sky.

On a similar evening 5 years back, I was listening to the 3rd concerto in F major. Sitting on the same rocking chair, reading a book and waiting for the pasta to warm in the oven. The adagio was punctuated by a sudden piercing shriek from the oven. I don't remember clearly of what happened after the time I opened the oven door. But when I opened my eyes, I could hear the final notes of the concluding allegro, while my world faded away into oblivion. Doctors said that the microwave burst from the oven damaged my cornea. I am not too sure of what happened, i just lost my eyes.

I don't miss much of my earlier life. Not having any family helped in being independent. I still cook for myself. I still listen to Vivaldi. But I do miss the red rhododendrons that line the concrete roads in august monsoon showers, and I do miss the yellow canna blooms that once every morning greeted with monsoon dew on their fresh faces. I still sit with books, with music playing in the background. It's just that now my fingers do the reading.

You see, there is so much that can be taken from life, and there is so much that cannot be compensated. So everytime I listen to the 3rd Concerto, I know that there will be something that I can never have back. Something as common as the colors of the August blossoms which bloom only in memory. Or the pure joy of Vivaldi, which is now punctuated with a little hint of regret. But then life always goes on, as the seasons do change. And we become what we have to at the cost of what we are.

My neighbor in the meanwhile, tries to make his guitar sing. A song that perhaps, he himself does not know. His words are washed away by the breeze, but I know the timbre of his tune. I know there is an August for him to miss. Just like everyone of us.

Note: Started it long-long back. And it began with the title, which just drifted into my mind one september eve. The characters took shape in the ensuing time. And yesternight at the bay-window I saw the structure, I wanted. Everything else was born then, and all of it is here now.

Date of Posting: 31 October 2006.