Month: December 2017

It was a wintry December morning as he stood outside in his balcony and watched the street below, still lit by the silvery white light of the solitary streetlamp and the leaves of the gulmohur yet to gain discernable colour. As was his practice (off late), he sipped on crisp, cool water that he poured into a whiskey glass. The water was cooled by leaving it outside in the balcony in a steel bottle which, he thought, allowed the water to cool ‘naturally’ without gaining the frigid texture of water that is left overnight inside the refrigerator. As he drank, he recalled that it had been a while since he recited out loud, “The Law of the Jungle” as Kipling had propounded it and listened to the isolated sounds of the early morning. The lazy protests of sleepy dogs awoken by the bored buzz of the paper-boy’s scooter, the soft even rhythm created by the brooms of the municipal workers who wore bright orange vests over their sarees, scratching dirt and muck off the surface of the tarred street leaving it broader in their wake, and the soft swish of clothed bodies that walked swiftly–arms and hips swinging as they walked in rapid circles around the parking lot of the building that the balcony overlooked, hardly breaking a sweat and barely having a clue as to what they needed to do. The maidservant’s little girl had once come up to his balcony while her mother did the dishes and wisely observed, “Bhaiya, they are not going to lose weight by running like this in circles. They need to stop eating. Then they will lose weight.”

The watchman of that building was walking the terrier pup of one of the residents. The pup was a new acquisition and an ebullient little fellow. He walked in bounds and ran in leaps. At least that was his way two weeks ago. Between then and now he had a rough time of which Rupert had seen a little. The pup was tied to a tree and every time he could see his master walk around in his pointless circle he would get up barking wanting to join his papa/mama on the pointless run and pup would be rewarded with a resounding whack. This was how it happened: man/woman (in expensive gymwear) would turn the corner and pup who had been sitting on his haunches softly whimpering with his head sunk deep into his chest would rise up on all fours. His tail high up in the air, whirring like chopper-rotors, he would begin to pine and then let out excited little yelps. The ‘pet-parent’ would slow their pace, glide off their imaginary track and land a resounding slap across the hapless animal’s face leaving it momentarily stunned. By the time he got back up, they were gone and he sat there alone and hurt wishing to be let off the leash. And they would turn that corner and the same excitement and ugliness played out unfailingly, quite literally, on loop. Today, pup was a different person. The watchman had taken off his leash and repeatedly rubbed his head and belly goading the little chap to go on and take a run around the lot, but pup just sat there at the feet of the watchman and both of them stood there in that silver-lit cold morning looking at one another not knowing what to do.

It was then he heard the sound of flip-flops floating through the morning air, and it was a surprise to him as he knew by instinct that it did not belong to that hour of the day. Still faint, it came from the darkened end of the street of which, except for the feeble night light of someone’s balcony, all else remained invisible. His suspicion that it was signal of some kind was confirmed when he noticed the figure of a man appear from behind his building and slip into the shade of the darkened tree. No sooner had he dissolved into the darkness, he turned on the flashlight of his phone and the slip-slap sound of slippers paused for a second and half. When the sound resumed, he could now make out the faint outline of a woman-she was wearing a thick sweater, and possibly a stole wrapped around her head like a bonnet. Walking in quick, small steps she walked a straight direct course for the tree. She dipped into its darkness and came out holding the man by his arm and placed him under the direct light of the solitary street lamp. Rupert recognised that man. It was the boy who worked the restaurant where he had his evening punnugulu and vada. His was an easy face to recognise. The boy was dark and had big buck teeth that stuck out a good foot from his face. Deeply tanned and maybe a few shades short of being black, he had a cheery disposition and a ready smile for just about everyone. He also seemed like one of the more popular lads in that eatery as he did just about everything that required to be done. Mixing chutneys, chopping onions, fetching fresh batter, packing parcels and counting the cash. He did everything and was never seen to complain. It also once occurred to him once that maybe the kid was always seen smiling because it required quite some effort for him to keep his lips pursed. Nonetheless, he was a hardworking lad and he never complained. All he did was smile and shrug when anyone acted out at his workplace.   

Now as he stood under that light the girl spoke to him softly and swiftly and through short hand gestures that clearly indicated an agitated state of mind. She was definitely angry. Rupert suddenly realised that he was the involuntary witness to a lovers’ tiff. He could only see the back of her bonneted head but the look of seriousness on the boys face told him all he needed to know. The boy had a slight frown and lips were pursed. His eyes were fixed on the girls face and he was looking for that pause where she would draw breath and he could begin speaking. When at length she did finally stop, she looked up at the boy and he looked down at her. It was now time for him to speak and he did what he did best. His big brown shoulders loosened and he flashed his famous smile and turned his palms upward indicating utter helplessness. The girl grew even more agitated at this and this was when he gave her a broader grin and shrugged his shoulders for good effect. This seemed to have an oddly calming influence on the girl and her taut back seemed to loosen and she now looked down at her feet. His hands now in his pockets he spoke cheerily to her and then indicated that he get back to work. She seemed reluctant to leave, but then slowly turned to walk away. The boy stood there for a moment, let out a chuckle, shook his head and walked back to his restaurant which was at the front of the building that Rupert lived in. The girl now walking slowly, seemed lost in thought as she dragged the heels of her now silent feet and then when she reached the edge of the light, she turned around. There was a slight movement on her face, which seeing that no words were being spoken, could only be a smile. She stood that way for a moment or two and then walked away towards the darkened end of the street. All was well.

Now sitting down in his chair and pouring himself his second glass of water that morning, it dawned upon him that time had indeed stretched on over the last five minutes. He always hoped to see nothing of interest when he woke up at that absurd hour and yet it now seemed to him that if there is time, and if there is life, there is always something happening. How foolish he had been to think otherwise.

 

_V. 12/12/2017

I remember being all of 8 years and staring out the window in the spare bedroom of the huge apartment we lived in, wondering why I had to be in that room staring out as I was. There are plenty of reasons to do what we do and over time you end up having no reason at all for doing what you do. I’ll take you a little further into my head now.

Sitting there in that corner atop a well worn spring mattress, I wondered what I looked like staring outside. Did my eyes take on a different colour? Did my features seem even more refined? Was I in that moment where I would have an epiphany and realise that I was nothing of consequence once you took into consideration the concepts of time and the artificiality of what we are taught to acknowledge as the real world? I was very worried but mostly about what I looked like if someone walked into the room and saw me staring out through the window lost in my thoughts. They’d probably scare me and then laugh about it and how I sat there in that room thinking that I was too good to get back into their midst.

I still stare a lot. Sitting at the table in my office where I do not have the luxury of a window, I stare at the tiny cup that holds my pencils. Any stationery is good target that way. Erasers and pencil sharpeners are preferable. I think I picked up the habit from father. I used to watch him sit in silence and look straight ahead for hours on end. Even when he was driving it sometimes felt like he was never there because he had found a way out. I don’t spend much time around him anymore, but I think he still might do that. When I was little he would call us over and look at our hands and make observations of the size of our palms and their creases and what they told him about our personalities. He didn’t have anything great to say about me. He told me I would be a spender and I would find it incredibly hard to save up any money. I don’t understand how he could be so accurate, because even to this day, I find it easier to spend than to save. The agony of money lying limp in an account kills me. But I must save. Even if it is only for myself.

The other thing he always said to me was that I had beautiful fingers as they were exceptionally long and delicate. He always let go of my hand with a final warning that I was never to pop my knuckles. But pop my knuckles, I did. It’s the other thing I didn’t pay heed to. I did a lot of it in great many places. In the exam halls, in the playground, in the office, at the gym and just about any other place you can think of. In fact, the first girl who really had a hold over me did this wonderful thing where she would place her thumbs at a point below the proximal phalanx of the thumb and apply gentle pressure until there was a pop. The relief that followed was similar to the rush of caffeine on a rainy morning.

I remember this one time we were driving down to Abu Dhabi from Ajman. That was a two hour drive or more. We made the trip every once a while. We would all be woken up early morning and hurried into the bathroom (there was only one that had no issues with the plumbing), and brushed, washed and dressed in great haste. We would then shovel breakfast into our mouths and chew faster than fast. This is probably why I now have a distinct preference for foods that are easy to chew. People think it’s because I am lazy, but it’s only because I am habituated to believe that I don’t really have the time to eat. We can talk later, but first let’s eat. When we were all dressed and fed we would all line up with bags and wait for father to lead the way to the parking lot. There would be a great deal of restlessness and loud chit-chat while we were still within city limits.

To get to Abu Dhabi, we would first pass through Sharjah, then Dubai and then there was an endless stretch of desert that went on and on until we reached Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi always struck me as a strange city. It was peculiar in a way that it seemed too perfect. The roads were clean and the buildings were tall and a bit too straight. Like one of those guards you’d see in London. So stiff and polished, that they had to be hiding something. And most strikingly, the tall buildings stood watch over roads that scarcely had any traffic. There was always something amiss about Abu Dhabi. It was like staring into space.

The drive only started once we left Dubai behind and the desert began. It was one straight road with the desert on either side. Inevitably we would all fall silent and get lost in our own private world. Outside bigger cars would whiz past us. Some of them had dogs, some others had one too many kids all quashed into the back like sardines. Once my brother and I insisted that we wanted to ride in the trunk but then we got too busy kicking at each other’s legs and so we were soon back in the backseat like we should have been in the first place. My sister once even spotted a car that had a tiger riding in the backseat. She got so excited by the sight that by the time I rushed to her window and she allowed me enough space, the car was far ahead of us. She then told me all about how it was a cub with furry paws and had its face pressed against the window pane and it was clearly very exciting, but I couldn’t help thinking that it still would have been better to catch a glimpse of that cat.

My sister always got first preference when it came to picking her seat. She was the oldest and the wisest and hence she always went for the seat behind the driver. I was the youngest and the scrappiest and hence I always willed my way into getting that other seat with the window. Always stuck in the middle, my brother fell asleep once we pulled out of Dubai. On a few rare occasions he protested and got the seat with the other window and then I would sit in the middle and get full blast of the AC and having little else to do, would quickly fall asleep. I don’t recall my sister ever enduring the agony of the middle seat. She was also the tallest and because her head would block the rear-view mirror, she would be relegated to a window seat and my brother and I would once again squabble over who got to stare out the window this time. Even when he did get that seat, he would still fall asleep and I would be the one craning my neck to get a look outside the window.

That time when we were driving to Abu Dhabi I sat behind mother and was looking out the window into the desert. I had read stories of the nomads and their camels and I wondered what it would be like to be a nomad. My sister had once read to me a story of a nomad named Abu who was travelling in the desert with his camel Ahmed. At night, Abu set camp at a spot which he estimated was not too far from the desert town that he was headed to, fed and watered his camel and resigned into his tent. It was a tiny tent with very little. Abu was poor, but when he made it to that tiny town with the stash of premium spices that Ahmed carried, it was all going to change for Abu, and for Ahmed. But things are never that easy in these stories that appear in children’s magazines. During the night, there is a great storm. The wind whistled and wailed and when it finally stopped, Abu stepped out of his tent (it is not advisable to step out during a desert storm. It’s alright if you have never tried it. If you have, then you know what I am talking about) and saw that the entire topography had changed. The dunes were bigger and the night was colder than it was and his blasted camel had escaped. The rest of the story is as one would imagine. Abu loses his way, has the skin of his feet burnt off by the boiling desert sand and by the time he reaches that tiny town he is badly sunburnt and dehydrated and dies a short while later, and then a few days afterward, Ahmed turns up at the town with all the spices intact. I felt like shit when I heard that story, and hoped to God that Ahmed felt just the same.

When I was done thinking about nomads and their camels, I turned around to look at what was happening inside the car. My mother was fast asleep, as was my brother. Sister had her forehead pressed against the window pane and was looking far ahead and I think, if I remember correct, she was humming a tune. Father held the steering with one hand, something he did only when he was relaxed, and drew vague patterns on his thigh with the fingers of his free hand. There’s a blue-green vein that sticks out on the back of his hand. He is a handsome man and that is how I see him even today. With a barely there smile and the hand gripping the wheel. Firmly in control.

Meanwhile, my eight-year-old self continued to stare outside the window and wonder why he was sitting there. It wasn’t his choice to be there, but there was a turn of events and he had to be where he was. He wondered if he could turn his back on all of it and simply walk away. He didn’t owe it to anyone to be nice to them or be compassionate and kind and understanding to the people that he knew. He could be without them, and he was certain they would get on fine without him. Why did they have this hold him? They sure didn’t earn that right.

Looking out into that vast stretch of blue outside the window, I realised how temporary it was. That moment and that situation with its people and their baggages. No one owed anyone anything and yet they chose to remain obligated. I felt smaller than I already was and I felt a shame for thinking the way I did. It seemed so easy to run away from people who choose you and give a part of themselves to help you define yourself. It’s the easiest thing to do and that is probably why people who run away are never happy because they are only running away from themselves. It might also be the reason why to run away, even when it is for self preservation is deemed an act of cowardice and the brave are always the ones who stay back and fight. The truly courageous are probably those who have taught themselves to pick their battles. This last bit is definitely true because I have been told this enough times and I have learnt through the fine art of listening and testing, that it is important to pick the right battles. Whatever be the case, I had opened up a Pandora’s Box inside me and I did not have the words to make sense of it all. I did the best thing I could do. I ran. I ran to the kitchen and asked mother what she was doing and she told me that she was cutting fish. I asked her if I could help and she told me yes and that she would teach me how to cut fish.

To this day, if someone asks me what I love to do in my free hours I tell them I read and watch movies and cook. But if I had to be completely honest with you, my answer will be simply this:

I love cutting fish.

_V. 01/06/2017

When the sheets of water rolled up into my head, I could see my adversary clear. He was sharp around the edges and everything inside and outside that was fuzzy. His voice rang sharp and clear. It cut through the empty air that separated us and touched me like a soft pink tongue lapping at my nose.

‘What is it that you hold?’, he asked

‘Nothing’, I mumbled

‘What does it do?’

‘Nothing. It’s a toy. It does nothing.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, toys don’t do anything unless you make them do something. And the lazy ones need you to stick a battery in them before they do anything.’

‘So you don’t have batteries?’

‘This doesn’t need a battery.’

‘Is that why it does nothing?’

‘No. It does plenty. It is an intelligent toy. It doesn’t need a battery or two to be stuck into its belly. Look at it! Don’t you know what this is?’

‘I don’t know. What is it? I have never seen anything like it before.’

‘This son’, I said pausing for dramatic effect, ‘is the model of an animal. Not just any animal, mind you, but a reptile. A lizard. This is a dinosaur.’

‘What is a dinosaur?’

‘It’s a lizard, son. A very old and big and bad lizard. A mean, mean bandicoot if there was one.’

‘The lizard is a bandicoot?’

‘No. I just said bandicoot because it fit in well instead of something else I’d rather have said. You’re too young to be impolite with. When you’re older, you’ll know what I mean. And if you remember this then, you might even get a good laugh out of it.’

‘You must really like lizards.’

‘Not all. Just some. This one is a favourite.’

‘What is so great about this one?’

‘Well, he’s the greatest, isn’t he? He is the baddest. He’s the strongest and the fiercest. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of him before. But you know him now, so that makes you better than before.’

‘I can’t say I know him. What’s his name?’

‘Ah yes. I forgot that. I call him Big X. He’s a T-Rex. That makes him a king of tyrant lizards. A Tyrannosaurus Rex. I’ll show you how to spell that when this train stops in a bit.’

‘Ok. Why do you call him Big X?’

‘I don’t know. I like the sound of that name. And you’re saying it wrong. You write him Big X, but you call him Biggex. There’s second ‘g’ in there that you say but don’t see when you write him.’

‘Biggex?’

‘Right! That’s right!’

I look at the kid and now notice his sharp face for the first time. It’s a clean face. White with dark brown hair parted at the side and plastered to his skull with shiny odourless oil. His shirt is crisp and white and the trousers dark and comfortably stiff. He sits back in his seat such that the back of his knees press against the rounded edge of the seat. His soft brown eyes held me in a steady gaze. I lean back in my seat and return his stare.

‘Where’re you off to?’ I ask the kid

‘Chennai. My aunt lives there. I am travelling alone this time because my father thinks I should learn to do things on my own now. Where are you headed to?’

‘Same. I’m travelling onward though. Once I get to Chennai, I’ll head to the beach and get some rest and take the train out to Ariyalur to meet some friends there. Chennai is a nice place though. I wish I could stay there longer.’

‘So what about the lizard? Where can I see more of him?’

I held up the toy for a bit and then gently placed the model on the side table between us.

‘Not really. This is just a model. There aren’t any more of him running around anymore.’

‘What happened?’

‘They died out. They got killed. And just like that, now they’re gone.’

‘Who killed them then? You said that they were big and bad. What went wrong?’

‘Everything. Just about everything. And that’s just the way it is when you get too big and strong. It makes people around you aware of their own smallness and then they want you out. Or they want you down. They want you being small like them and they want you to want less because their flimsy little hearts wouldn’t dare to dream a dream that scared them. They are pitiable little things- the rest of them. They tell the world that they aren’t afraid of a thing in it and yet they run scared of themselves. Walk up to the bravest guy in the room and ask him to spend an hour without his phones and tablets and coterie of screens and the guy will lose it. The thought of being by himself will wring him dry. That confident swagger crumbles like stale cookie and he is just a weakling like the rest and when that happens, take a step back and look around at the others in the room and you will notice how the ones- the weak and insignificant ones- are suddenly cocky and happy and you will know that it is because they are content knowing that everyone in the room is now mediocre and there are no standards by which they can fall short of.

That’s what went wrong with the T-Rex. They got too big and too strong and that got under everyone’s skin. There wasn’t a fight they couldn’t win. Their prey knew they were just lucky when they got away and knowing that, they always lived looking straight and over their shoulders. The ones that weren’t preyed upon hated that they were of no consequence or of any significance in his mighty world. They were passengers passing him by and he didn’t care enough to take note of them. They wished he would, but he didn’t and that ticked them off. They were safe. But they wanted some of his adventure. Yet when they wanted it, they woke up and realised that they weren’t fit enough to match their step with his. So they got around doing the one thing that they did best. They hated him. Now if he cared enough he would have known better and acted wiser. But if there was a flaw in him, it was that he didn’t care. He didn’t care enough to learn what the others were thinking. He didn’t learn that knowing what others thought of him wouldn’t change him. Instead he got so busy looking forward and leaning into the future that he forgot to pause for a moment and look at his own hands that had grown weak and small. He didn’t need it, but they could use it. They used it to tell him that he was the problem that they couldn’t help him when he needed it. That quite literally, when it came to him, he had tied up his own hands and that is why they couldn’t pull him out of that bog that he was drowning in. His biggest weakness was that he kept his own counsel and wanted little of mediocre companionship. And if there is one thing that the large majorities have hated, all throughout the course of life- human and otherwise- it is that one guy who can think and act for himself. Nothing is scarier than the self reliant soul, for if one cannot discern one’s own purpose and walks into a world not being needed by the self reliant ones, all ambition becomes recipe for immense solitude. And this, as I have mentioned earlier, is something few can handle.

Now here’s something you need to know. There is a lot of truth in what I have just said. And there are a whole lot of factual inaccuracies. I’m not sure if you will remember all of it because it came out in a rush and you might want to sit back and mull on it a bit. Read up on it as well. But you must remember this much. The most clarity you will ever find is going to be shapeless and vague. You will know it is there not because you see it, but because you feel it. Not because you heard it, but because you have known it- all along. And everything you are ever going to be will be what you make of the truth that you have known all along.

Now I’m starving, kid. Hold Biggex while I get out there and get us some grub, wont you?’

_V. 04/12/2017