Wine is a great equaliser, I think, as I wake early on the second day of my vacation with the missus. Its barely 7 am but even as I brush my teeth in the yellow glow of the swanky sink light of our luxury suite, my thoughts have already gotten ahead of me. It has travelled out of the washroom to the refrigerator where an empty Milton Thermos sits pre-chilling awaiting the ritual washing of its insides with iced water. It shall later receive the contents of the bottle of red that sits alongside it in the cool zone. I am a coastal kid and there’s little on this planet of ours that can cause me to swap my pre-disposition to gravitate to cities and destinations with a shoreline for the cozy comfort of a hill station. There is indeed a lot to be said for the thrill of adventure. There is no denying that the rush of adrenaline of a hike through the brush and along the undulating trails amongst the hills is a rejuvenating experience. Blood coursing hard through our veins as we make our way through the untouched wilderness of the mountain is a life affirming experience. But the soothing arms of sameness is what I prefer on a vacation. The sun, sand, surf (and the sweat pouring down my brow and back with little to no effort) and good bottle of red, chilled and poured into a thermos from which I can sip iced comfort as I meander aimlessly through strange streets which is the only distinguishing factor between home and holiday.
Its 7:25 am now and the wine has been packed away into the thermos that will never leave my side until we are back to the air-conditioned comfort of our temporary home. In the years since the pandemic (of 2020 for those of you who don’t or can’t recall) I evolved even more into a homebody. In the years prior to that, I loved to get out and see the world about me. Plays, parks, random bars and tea shops were few of the places I would visit just to observe humans in the act of communing (which should be a word if it is not one already). If pubs (and their restrooms) have been rated as great places to study human conduct in its most unrestrained form, then the tea shops adjunct to office buildings are the second-best place to really view the human race in action. Sneak away from your desk just when the office is operating at full capacity (“Office is officing” as the proudly ineloquent amongst our midst are likely to say). Popular markers of the workplace having achieved this pristine state are as follows:
- The printer has been churning out prints incessantly for a good 30 minutes and more.
- No one is at their seat and neither are they to be found in places they would otherwise be found.
- There is a pervading sense of breathlessness. You could be doing just nothing and still feel your breath come out in short painful gasps.
I am not sure if I had to really provide that point-wise breakup. It should simply suffice to say that when your office begins to feel a lot more insufferable than it is at other times of the day, and misery is the pre-eminent mood amongst all and sundry, that is when you make your way out to the tea shop. It’s a strange thing that I have noticed that all of humanity reaches peak productivity around the same time. Night owl or morning dolt, there is one point in course of the sun’s transit across the sky when we are all at our frenzied best. This is when its ideal for the curious amongst us to make their way to the tea shop closest to the workplace. At this strange, frenzied hour, the only people in the tea shops are those who really need to be away from their desks. Conversations that transpire at this strange hour are packed with meaning and purpose. The idle onlooker too is at the venue for a purpose- to observe without judgement.
But then the pandemic came in and such expeditions of public voyeurism were put on hold, then temporarily shelved and eventually became a thing of distant memory- dusty and cobwebbed. And so I remained until very recently, when my eyes lit up yet again and my ears peaked at the prospect of examining humanity through the warped lens of my imagination and prejudice. The latter which is in a constant state of becoming and unbecoming. I love the fact that I can hold staunch opinions, fully articulated in its nuances and then disassemble them simply because its tiresome to be just one way and closed out to other possibilities out there. Red, red wine supplies the malleability required to maintain a detached state of mind. It’s silly to claim mindfulness as the aim if you are not going to fill it up with something or the other before you decide to flush it out and bring in new influences into your space. I prefer to stay awake to my judgemental nature and revel in my tendency to make impolite observations that I share with the missus in private.
This is the state of mind I inhabit when I am out and about the streets of [•]. The sun is out and bringing the sunscreen to a boil. I should be worried about my entire epidermis peeling off before the evening is upon us, but I am too plastered to care. I have my shorts on and my favourite sneakers, a hat and a shirt so light and breezy that I could, for all purposes, be tramping through this strange new city naked and without a thread of care. But I do have a care. I have to keep my lovely in sight. I would not be out here in this heat if it weren’t for the fact that seeing and meeting new people in new places is what makes her happy. I am happy even otherwise. I am happy with very little. Clean sheets, cold rooms and light blankets make me happy. But now we are under the tropical sun traipsing through a strange bazaar of some kind. There is too much colour and too many faces staring out at me with practiced commercial smiles (and far too few of these smiles are fetching by any stretch of imagination) hoping I would be sucker enough to pause and contemplate if I needed a bead curtain or some wooden teaspoons. I could use a towel but The Half is now calling out to me to check out some garment or the other. My mouth feels dry, so I wash my mouth, quite liberally, with some more of that cold fresh red from the thermos. I also wash it down with some water so that my head can really swim. I love this avatar of myself. I am not much for fashion, but every time I am taken out to shop, I transform into a strange sub-specie of a Prada-loving devil who has scathing remarks and impossible standards in all matters pertaining to colour, cut, fall and feel of a garment. I could even toss my coat contemptuously (Fashion is complete make believe- if you know enough words and possess the matching sass you can set about defining a whole new style that the masses will worship) at an unexpecting sales assistant if I could, but I am not one for blazers and the like.
She is talking to me now, but I can only catch a few words here and there as the red is really catching on and keeping track of entire sentences is too much an ask. One can aspire to comprehend only so much on a holiday. A length of time away from the mundane chores of every-day living can send a man into a delirium. We have been here in this new city three days now with 4 more days to go. The long break from routine and the heightened state of inebriation of this author has escalated the delirium into a state of surreal fantasy. I look around the stall or tent which I believe is what we call a shamiana in those parts of India which interpret their world through Hindi-touched tongues, half expecting to see a man-sized bunny hopping toward me holding a stack of folded garments. There is no such vision, the red clearly is only wine. I look and see a pair of faces that make me want to empty the contents of my beloved Milton in one long draught. I resist the impulse, pause and look to her. Large brown doe eyes sparkle at me. The look of enquiry on her face causes the head to cease swimming and I find that I can still feel my feet and make intelligible use of my voice. I am a bit too loud at first but then operate from a lower octave and we pick out a few items that really appeal to the wife and self. She links her arm with mine and walks me gently out of the shamiana. Fleetingly, I feel like I was a tool in her negotiation. While there, I was made quite aware of my bearish build and now when I am here, by her side I feel like my dreamy docile 12-year-old self, albeit very sloshed. I suppose that’s like most 12-year-olds in France? I get chatty at times like this. I rarely ever talk unless it is for work, but when I am with her and there is little to worry about, I talk about the first thing that pops into my head. That is one of the perks of having found your person. You don’t feel the need to entertain to keep them interested. You feel safe enough to open up to them and present yourself to them as you are. True to course, I begin yammering about the first thing that pops into my head- innerwear.
To be more specific, I start to express my concern about the alarmingly sparse supply of sleeved inner vests in retail outlets. “It’s like shopping for bigfoot. You know what you are looking for and where you should be looking for it, but the chances of ever catching sight of one are remote. In the unlikely event that you do find one, it’s not going to be what you were looking for, so you have continue looking…” But then it dawns on me that one would never go shopping for bigfoot since we don’t really know what we are looking for. It’s a poor analogy but she understands. “It’s terrible”, I continue, “they are like collectors’ items. You are lucky to get a good one but they age even faster once you have them despite the best care you give them. Sorting them for the wash is like the segregation- you have to discriminate between the white and yellowed and not-so-whites. It’s poignant. The not-so-whites and the yellowing are still good but for the colour and you know if you had better supply you would not have to subject them to the indignity of being considered for conversion into yet another piece of exquisitely desi ‘waste-cloth’. There has to be some way to treat our vests better. Does baking soda work?” Any further fermenting on the subject is prevented by pristine intervention of the spouse.
She’s hungry now and I feel the effects of the red slipping away almost immediately. Then she tells me about a boat ride she had booked. Now what kid doesn’t like a good boat ride. Unless you are one of those whiny, perennially whimpering, insufferable breed of human children, you always wanted to be on a boat. The red recedes even more. This one is good because there’s even a restaurant on board. Two birds, one stone. Yes! And while on board it’s going to take us around the island and get us a grand old view of the sun going down to the bottom of the ocean where he sleeps with the fish and sexy mermaids. The boat took us quite far out into the Indian Ocean to a space where the winds blew strong and steady and the water rippled blue and turquoise all around. The birds flew out with us before the sky began to darken and they headed back to the safety of the shore- I suppose. The sea shifted hues as we grew still, yellow and gold with fiery red flashes as the twilight hour grew close at hand. In the distance we saw the modest fish boats puttering and bobbing atop the darkening water. There was some idle chatter amongst the guests on the boat before a hushed silence fell upon all of us. The sun had downed and we were one with the night. We listened to the sound of the waves lapping against the hull of the yacht. We spoke in whispers so as to not disturb the delicate fabric that wrapped around us. Milton lay forgotten somewhere in my backpack and we had no need for reprieve from this moment of velveteen perfection. We had slipped away into a dream and so truly got away from the mundane.
.V_
Righting Writing 