These Days...

He doesn't write much these days. His stories have stagnated somewhere. It is a static life, days full of doing nothing, mind brimming with stray thoughts, and ennui eating away the will to do anything. Very much like the white drums floating on the lake, tied by a weight below, they hardly move from their place. Waves blow around them, but they just bob up and down.

At evenings he walks around the lake. Ambles, more correctly. Drifts, to be precise. On the Mall Road, amongst the hordes of tourists that look with wide eyes at this lake sorrounded by the mountains, he loses himself. Sometimes to break the monotony of the walk, he settles down on the stone banisters at the edge of the lake. Though there are wrought iron and wood benches, he purposedly leaves them, wanting to watch those that will take these spots. Trying to find in their lives, the fragments he misses in his own.

Yesterday there were two girls sitting on one of the older stone benches. One dressed in pink and one in blue, they both shared a lime green packet of potato chips. One of those 'no one can eat just one' flavors. They were speaking but he could not hear any word of the exchange. Sometimes a stray word drifting with the breeze did reach him but it was like a dandelion tuft, enticing but of no practical use. He puts his own words in their mouths. He tried to weave a story around them. But the yarn ran thin, and then its the sudden nowhere. He kept watching them, till they finished the packet. they they got up to throw it in the dustbin on the road. At the dustbin they parted ways and started walking to the opposite ends of the mall. Another story torn apart.

The girl in blue walked towards the old temple on the right side of the lake. Just as you get inside the temple is the sapphron statue of Hanuman, giant and gentle, his stone eyes seemingly encase a divine fluidity. Every tuesday humdreds of devotees come to offer Besan and Boondi Laddoos, sweetmeat made from gram flour and sugar for which the Lord is supposed to have a special liking. Offerings and prayers and saffron tilaks later, the same people go on with their lives with the added surity of a divine support to their endeavors. It is tuesday, and he knows that soon the man in beige pants and a grey and black chequered shirt will be there at the temple. The right arm of his shirt rolled over to a little below his shoulder and a little above his would have been elbow, had the arm not been amputated; makes his other wise ignorable presence quite conspicuous in the crowd. With the knowledge that he us not supposed to touch the prasad with his impure left hand, he'll ask someone to put a few chunks of the laddoo in his open mouth. We all need blessings to camouflage as faith. Then with the dispersing crowd, he too shall disappear and not be seen for a week. But then there would be another tuesday, and some other hand obliging the same waiting mouth, hungry for the proof of his communion with the Lord of Courage and Might. Maybe those granules of gram flour possess enough gumption to last another battle of 7 days, till tuesday comes.

When people pray, their faces show diverse emotions. While some force their eyes to remain shut while their noses and mouths twitch; some do seem to possess that elusive tranquility that prayer is supposed to bring. But most of the time it's just folded hands and bowed heads with lips murmuring prayers memorized since childhood. And then there are the unsuppressable yawns, those that seem to spread like a contagion. Once one begins, then its everyones turn. He will watch these harmless little yawns, while in his mind he thinks of the driver in the taxi he took yesterday.

It was an afternoon and he was steering this 10 seater which was packed to contain 14, down the serpentine roads in these himalayan ranges, , along the vexing convex andthe caving concave contours. As they started he watched the driver lip sync with the syrup-coated songs of lost love and prlonged longing, while the rest of the 12 people slowly dozed off in the increasing heat and the apparent crassness of the melodious lull. Then with time he watched the driver's lips quieten and his brows curve upwards as he strained to keep his tired eyes awake. After 8 hours of driving up and down; these roads turn into a banal monotony by the sheer repetition of the effort. He watched as his hands seemed to caress the steering instead of gripping it, he watched the crammed taxi, swerve in gentle waves. He looked to his left at the drop the road presented. He imagined how much damage will be done when they fall down. And he watched the other 12 in their siesta of oblivion. His reverie of death was broken by a mighty honk from a lorry that for a moment had swerved right in front of them. As all of them shaked up along with the driver, he was immured in the vapid comfort of nothingness. For a moment he had wondered about the reason for the driver's songs. And he had imagined about how she'd react when she came to know the 'would have been mishap' to the chauffeur of songs. But then these thoughts too had retreated to their neverlands. The Peter Pan had vanished while he returned to his book, that had seemed to read the same words over and over to him again. the sun had set and it was getting hard to read, so he closed the book and glared at the sun set over the bare stony mounts.

Here it was all ripples of gold, like the confetti scattered from the hanging whirls of a Just Married cutout fixed on the tail end of a wedding wagon. The sleeping Sun let its reflections settle in ribbons of softening light on the placid lake surface. It is getting colder and he will have to wlk back to his room. There he'll talk with silence before he gets something to eat and then perhaps he'll go to sleep. His notebook and pen will lie in protracted estrangement, the cream pages with blue lines will have to wait for their first ink stains.

They too seem to know. He doesnt write much these days...