Boring Road

He stepped down from the large autorickshaw, and his feet landed straight into a puddle. The autorickshaws running in Patna were different, not like the ones he hired in Delhi, with exclusive usage for the duration of the journey. He had had to share this one with around ten co-passengers, not to mention two others hanging precariously at the back. The rains had arrived and the air was humid. Amir’s shirt, soaked half with rain and half with sweat, still carried the smell of strangers.

He had been dropped at Hadtali Mod. Around him, the traffic went on with its usual business, cars honking and crawling past, the incessant rain just adding to the confusion. Sublime chaos, at three in the afternoon. The old temple on his right, the hoarding for Amrapali restaurant on the left, images from the past past. Still the same, this place, except for the new red lights which did not work.

The house wasn’t far from here. About a kilometre and a half. But it was still drizzling, and Amir called out a rickshaw-wala. Reluctantly (as afternoons were meant for siestas), the man agreed to take him to his destination. ‘Only 20 rupees’, is what the man asked in return for his sleep, and Amir found it hard to deny him that.

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Puku, the old housemaid recognised him at once, and came almost running to the gate, mumbling something beneath her breath. She was visibly happy to see Amir, and perhaps, as Amir thought, couldn’t think of the right words to greet him with after all these years.

‘How are you, Puku mausi?’, said Amir, not knowing how else to start. Having opened the gate, she now reached down for his feet. He dismissed her with a couple of embarrassed utterings.

‘Is Nani at home?’, he now asked her.

‘Where else will she be? She’s here only....come come’, Puku replied, and signalled him to follow her.

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The room, silent, orderly, unchanged. On the bed lay his Nani, his grandmother’s sister, sleeping, with her head turned away from the door. The fan went about its work slowly, as if it too had given in to the inviting afternoon. On a table alongside the bed – tablets, small bottles of medicine, a water flask and a glass, and an empty cup of tea. The table was the only new entrant since he had been here last, almost nine years ago; even the little sofa set and the paintings on the wall had remained as they were before.

‘Nani...nani’, Amir pronounced in a low voice, touching her feet gently. She turned to look, and for an unreal second or two, kept gazing at him.

‘Amir....amir...arey such a long time!’, she cried, and reached out for his face, covering it with both her hands. She looked at him closely now, and Amir wondered whether there was already a hint of moisture in her eyes. As a child, he’d always wondered how grandmothers could cry almost at will, or to put it more mildly - how easy tears were to them.

‘Nani, how are you?’, said Amir, caressing her hands and then taking them into his own. He looked at her hands, the wrinkles jutting out like cracks in a famine-struck land. Her nails, like his grandmother’s, curled completely in a perfect semi-circle. He had never seen a more abnormal pair of hands, and never a pair that was so beautiful.

‘How will I be, beta?’, is all she said in reply, and then asked, ‘How are you here?’

‘One of my friends is getting married. I was in town...so I thought I’ll meet you’, said Amir, and they exchanged a smile.

She called out for Puku now, in a volume so low that it could only have been meant for Amir. He relayed the call, and Puku came, hunching, eager. She was asked to get another cup of tea, and she walked away, nodding.

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‘What can I do, beta? It’s only these four walls for me now. Even to go to the toilet, I have to call Puku. Poor woman, she’s still here after all this....’

The rain had resumed full service. Amir sipped on the tea, nodding slowly from time to time. The saucer now had a small ring of brown in the centre, tea which had fallen down from the cup, and he watched this circle form and un-form as he picked up or placed down the cup. Everything was so slow, relaxed; he wished he could lie down on the bed too, in this peace broken only by his grandmother’s voice, and the soft tip-tip of the rain outside.

‘Time has come to a standstill for me. Days pass and I don’t even remember what date it is...I read sometimes, but even that is difficult to do for long when you are always lying down, no? Everything is so monotonous but what can one do?’

‘Why don’t you change things around in this room, Nani? A little change here might help...why don’t you replace these old paintings for one?’

She only smiled at Amir, said nothing. The smile made him feel uncomfortable, he wondered whether he had hurt her in some way, and lowered his eyes. There was silence for a minute or two. How distant they had grown, thought Amir, in their own worlds now, separated by time, space, memory. And still, everything on the outside had remained the same, the gate outside the house, the room with its old structure intact, the two beautiful hands, the semi-circular nails, her voice.

‘I’m so happy to see you. At this age, what else do we have to live for? Not just me, but anyone. To see you again after so many years, to hear your voice, that’s enough. Otherwise, what is there to look forward to? Just two lonely women living out their respective lives. ’

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On his way out, Puku had handed him one of his grandmother’s umbrellas. When he refused saying that he wouldn’t need it, she thrust it into his hand, adding that it was of no use to the house anyway. It was still raining, in fact more heavily than before. But Amir had decided to walk to the Mod, and he ambled along slowly.

Half-way, he paused to look at the scene around him. The rain had cast a white shadow over everything. So much so, that it seemed to him that even the early evening traffic chaos looked beautiful. A stupid, dangerous thought, he then reminded himself, shook his head, and walked on.

The Death of Familiarity

“Why don’t we ever learn that all changes of place are for the worse? It’s not love for the place; it’s the familiarity, like old winter clothes.”

- English, August
Upamanyu Chatterjee

How does he start?

It was like being in the presence of an old lover, there was familiarity but also the knowledge that he didn’t belong here anymore, that it belonged or was going to belong to someone else very soon. Yet, everything was there as he had left it, books and papers strewn on the table, the almirah wide open with some leftover clothes, some leftover books and CDs. Even the graffiti on the wall, and the little Mao Zedong mask, hanging rather precariously.

He had only a few hours to himself. His last few hours as the owner of this hostel room, one that he had inhabited for four long years, his territory. He had to check if anything worth of value was still left to be taken away, throw out the remaining garbage and pass on the room possession to the supervisor.

The place almost felt eerie, naked and abandoned. To think that not so long back, this place had been full with conversation, laughter, Floyd and Morrison, was unimaginable. He felt heavy with feeling, something that was hard to explain, even to himself.

How does he start?

He looked into his drawer. It was quite a melange, from everything like newspaper contacts to received rakhis on display. There were also a broken nail-cutter, some shampoo pouches , fee receipts as old as four years and keys for which he had now lost the locks.

He picked up the rakhis; they could not be thrown away like that. The shampoo pouches – they could still be used. And what about the newspaper contacts? Couldn’t they be of use later?

Suddenly, he felt tired, physically and mentally. He closed the drawer and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Was it possible for him to take away everything? Was it even desirable? Was it correct wanting to create an exact replica of this room, with its drawers, racks and closets, wherever he was headed next? Is it right to carry memory as baggage and not leave behind things knowing that they didn’t belong to you anymore, and indeed weren’t even needed?

With some effort, he got up again and headed for the almirah. It had been wide open for the last couple of years, in the exact position as it was now, owing to his lethargy and near aversion to cleanliness. There were cobwebs and dust all around, and retrieving things felt like digging up stuff from debris. There was not much to take really; the few t-shirts, socks and handkerchiefs littered weren’t fit for public consumption anymore, and he let them remain where they were. There were a few assorted CDs too, perhaps the only thing worth taking away, and he pulled them up.

He felt rather exhausted. There was dust on his hands and his whole body was soaked in sweat. Why, he thought to himself. What’s all this for?

It was over. Whatever remained would be thrown away. He walked to the door and looked at the room one last time. He tried to sum everything up – the room and him, but his thoughts failed him, or his intelligence did. Irritated, he switched off the power, walked out and locked the room.

Ready to walk away, all of a sudden, he felt the urge to see the place once more, now for the last, last time. He opened the door again, switched on the lights and had another look. Unanticipated, a wild surge of emotion ran through him.

Why, why does he even have to leave this place? Why can’t he live here forever? Why do we ever move away? Why do we ever leave our homes?

He felt angry, repulsed – whether by himself or the room, it was hard for him to say. He walked out finally, locked the door and walked away, without looking back, with as much confidence as he could possibly fake.

Dark Man IV

The near-darkness to which the brown curtains subjected the room was making Amir almost feel drowsy. The heavy thick piece of cloth had something resembling flowers stitched on it. He ran his hand on the contours, absentmindedly, not knowing how really to spend time. It was a holiday, and an afternoon, and with Papa asleep and Maa busy with chores, there wasn’t much to keep himself busy at.

The eyes were slowly giving way now. He was almost half-asleep.

Just then, the door bell rang. Far from being irritated to be disturbed when just about to doze off, Amir felt rather excited. Activity was activity. And on an afternoon with nothing to do, even to open the door for the maid or the dhobi was an event, an occurrence that gave the passing time some shape, some meaning. So before his mother could even call out to him to answer the bell, he was almost there, ready to finally let some sunlight in.

Through the netted door, Amir saw a man, dark, spectacled, slightly bending forward with a beaming smile on his face. Even he, as little as he was, could see that the smile was fake, forced and rather shaky, that of a man eager to please. On his shoulder, he carried a thaila, and in his hand was what looked like a box wrapped in plastic. Before he could ask the man anything, he himself spoke.

‘Bete, mummy ghar pe hain?’

‘Haan hain….kya kaam hai?’

‘Unko jaa ke bulao…’

He had ignored Amir’s little query. Children have to get used to their little queries being ignored.

He gave the man a momentary stare and then rushed inside. Maa was in her bedroom, recording expenses in her diary, the one household task she seemed to enjoy most. Looking at Amir entering the room now, she gave her writing hand a pause.

‘Kya hua? Kaun hai?’, she asked.

Again, before Amir could speak, a question had been thrown at him.

‘Koi aadmi hai. Bola ‘mummy’ ko bulao’, replied Amir, then eager to provide some extra useful information, ‘Lagta hai kuchh bechne aaya hai…’

‘Bolo woh ghar mein nahi hain.’

‘Lekin hum bol chuke hain ki who ghar mein hain’, Amir lied.

His mother looked up from her diary now. For a moment or two, she looked at Amir, wondering whether she should get angry at him, and then decided against it. Instead, she clicked her tongue, threw the diary on the bed and stormed out of the room.

‘Kya hai?’, she shouted at the man outside. She stood in the dining room, in the darkness. The man couldn’t sight her, and as he hadn’t really seen her coming, he took a little while to reply.

‘Didi zaraa idhar aake dekh to lijiye…AquaGuard Zero-B sab bhool jayiyega!’, he finally did, holding something he had just taken out of the box.

‘Nahi chahiye!’ is all she said in reply and then stormed back into the bedroom. The man kept pleading behind her, begging her to give the machine just one single look, offering her the world’s cleanest water, and even free installation of the contraption in the household kitchen.

Amir looked at the man closely from behind the netted door. He appeared exhausted, if anything. Mentally and physically. Sweat poured down from his forehead, pure transparent drops of crystal, like the clean water he promised. The flat was on the 3rd floor. God knows how many such he had visited this afternoon, Amir thought, and how many steps he had had to climb, only to be snubbed at the doorway.

After this latest unsuccessful attempt, the man prepared to pack up and leave. When just about to turn back, he looked at the door and saw the kid gazing at him.

‘Bete…ek glass paani pila doge?’, he asked in a low tone.

‘Haan, ek minute rukiye…’, replied Amir, without even a moment’s hesitation and ran to the kitchen. He didn’t need his mother’s permission. You never deny a thirsty man water if he has asked for some, he remembered having been told by his elders many a time. Surely, Maa doesn’t need to be bothered for this.

He filled a glass with water and walked back to the door. Silently, trying not to attract his mother's attention, he kept the glass down, unlatched the netted door (something that required both his hands), lifted the glass and placed it into the man’s extended hand. He did it all almost like a ritual and it gave him an immense sense of satisfaction. Why, his little mind wasn’t quite disposed to fathom yet.

The man drank the entire glass and gave it back to Amir, saying ‘Thank You’. He himself replied with a neat ‘Welcome’ and closed the door again. He then watched the man pick up his thaila and walk down the stairs, to ring the bell for another potential customer, to sell the world’s cleanest water.

Tea & The Sky

Dear Mani,

Though there is no point in writing letters anymore, I just didn’t know what to do with the irrepressible temptation to do so tonight. It’s been quite a dull day, all throughout the clouds have stayed overhead, the rain teasing, without any wind. The sort of day that passes without making you realize that it has. The sort of day you love and hate for the same reason. And strangely, because I don’t know why, the desire to talk to you on such days becomes practically irresistible, even if it’s only one way, only like this.

Sometimes, on such days, when I lie on the bed in the afternoon, watching the white of the ceiling above, the blankness gives way to images and memories. Images in the form of memory. Memory in the form of images. And almost always, on such days, they are of you, and one other thing.

I see the both of us, like an approaching stranger would, sitting at the chai wala near the government school, the same which gave the tea in long, over-sized cups, more suitable for beer, which always made you feel that you were only being given half of what you paid for. Do you remember?

Maybe you don’t. It’s been a long time anyway. But regardless, the image of us at that joint remains fresh in my mind, and comes again and again on such slow, uneventful afternoons.

Why, I don’t know. I’m not sure why I even remember it so vividly. Does it bring me comfort? Pain? Ache? I have no answer. Maybe it is the feeling of timelessness we felt in our meetings there that fascinates me, the joint but unspoken feel of being suspended in time, as if the moment before and the moment after didn’t exist, as if the world was restricted to the few square metres of the shop, as if the world beyond was only a fantasy of our minds, as if anything we did before and after didn’t matter, as if this was what we were born to do, to sip tea beneath an empty sky and talk about anything outside the realm of consequence. How limitless and ecstatic would it be if our lives got frozen there, beside the chai wala, with the cups of tea in our hands, all the innumerable possibilities of our lives reduced to a beautiful, complete zero!

Consequence, consequence. How powerful and dangerous can that be! Yes, maybe it was the absence of this in our meetings and conversations that still make me remember it.

Do you remember? Maybe you don’t. It’s been a long time anyway. The shop doesn’t stand there anymore. The school authorities had it removed on the grounds that many students used it to bunk classes and have a smoke. But it is there in my mind, exactly as it was then - unscathed. As it will always be, as it will always come, on such days, which, in their stillness and completeness are quaintly similar to it,

Good Bye,
Manu.

Chai Ho Jaaye!

‘Tara, chhat se kapda utha!’, shouted his grandmother, in a tone so filled with alarm that it would have sounded more appropriate if the entire house was on fire. And without waiting for any confirmation from the maid, leaving the brinjal she was slicing in the kitchen unsliced, she ran frantically to the balcony to do the needful there.

The monsoons had arrived, and to little Amir, it seemed that it rained nowhere in the world as it rained in Patna. A moment before, it seemed like a perfect, idle, hot, summer afternoon, and now, all of a sudden, all hell had broken loose. The unlatched doors banged against the walls ferociously, the clouds roared, all tree tops pointed horizontally to one direction, as if showing a stranger the way to his destination. It was perfect, sublime chaos, turning the impeccable tranquility of the entire household to over-frenzied activity in a jiffy. As Amir saw, everyone in the house was running, everyone had suddenly sprung to action.

He ran to the terrace and stopped at the door, looking at the maid who was busy picking up as many clothes as she could in one go and depositing them at the nearest dry place. No one could have been more efficient right now; she did it as if her whole life depended on it.

‘Kuchh kapda tum bhi utha lo. Khade ho ke dekh rahe ho!’, she shouted above the rain when she saw him.

‘Rehne do na. Kya jaata hai? Bheeg jayega to kya hoga?’, he replied, teasing her.

‘Kya hoga! Agar tumhari Nanima ne humko baad mein daanta to? Tum bachane aayoge?’

‘Kyun nahi?’, Amir said, smiling his most mischievous smile. Leaving Tara behind, he now walked back into the house to see what the rest were up to.

His grandmother had returned from the balcony, satisfied and exhausted, and sat at the dining table, just below the ceiling fan. The look on her face was almost triumphant, as if she had just diffused a time bomb only a couple of seconds before it was supposed to go off.

‘Kitne jaldi aaya baarish. Bhaagte nahi to sab kapda bheeg jaata!’, she said when she saw Amir, explaining the supreme importance of the task, waiting for someone to commend her for her effort.

‘Hmmm’, Amir replied and went to the kitchen to fetch her some water.

The maid returned, the clothes replaced to safety. All was still once more, the household relaxed, only the sound of rain falling outside to be heard. His grandfather, who had carried on reading the newspaper quietly all this while, unperturbed by the abrupt bout of activity the world inside and outside had been in, also came in and sat down on the divan.

‘Chai ho jaaye!’, he cried, as always, as if the moment called for a celebration of sorts. In a way, it did, thought Amir. The rain always called for celebration, even in Patna, where there was never any scarcity of it.

Tea was brought, and as little Amir wasn’t allowed to have it yet, he sipped quietly on his Bournvita. The coming of the rains was almost a ritual, everything happened the same way every time – the runs to the terrace and balcony, the subsequent tea session, the small talk. Watching everyone have this unplanned chat, with the sound of the rain in the background, Amir felt strangely happy.

Nai Dilli

Let me start by saying that when Marvin, IC tagged me some time ago, I wasn’t very keen on penning down a flashback on my home of many years - New Delhi. For the simple reason that it’s close to impossible trying to write about something you have been so closely related to, and for such a long time. At least not without letting your emotions get the better of you. But as I’ve been suffering from the Dearth of Ideas syndrome again of late, I thought I might as well give this a try. If nothing else, it would make the old man happy.

Hmmm.

When I first set foot in the capital, I was about 4-5 years old. I was then staying in a little town called Sindri in Bihar and had come on a visit to my grandparents’ place in Saket. Within a few hours, I urged my maid to take me to the park opposite the house. Slides are meant for sliding, one might slip and things might happen. The recollection of what happened in the park then is only a blur in my memory. All I do remember is that there was quite a lot of blood, a few stitches and a little boy crying, shouting, cursing the city, saying repeatedly – ‘Ab dilli kabhi nahi aayenge!’. Later, when my grandmother had moved back to Patna and I to Delhi, and I wouldn’t get to see her often, she would tease me and say – ‘Look. You said you’ll never go there. And now you have become a permanent Dilliwala!’

Around two years after the incident, my father left the job he had in Sindri and as was the trend then for all ambitious, moved to Delhi. After a one-year stint in a particular flat in Vasant Kunj, a place of which I have no real fond memories, we then moved to another a little distance away. This was to be the place where I would spend the next five years of my life.

One of the first things I remember noticing about the place was that the flat was on the 3^rd floor, the steps were steep, and so everyday, coming back from school, with the big heavy bag on my shoulders, I had a taste of how Edmund Hillary would have felt trying to climb the Everest. That was perhaps the only disagreeable thing about the place, as the rest was perfect – a balcony with a view of the entire colony from it and a huge park just opposite our flat with swings, skating rinks and a whole lot of empty space to play cricket on.

My first introduction to how Delhi was different came through the neighbourhood. In Patna and in Sindri, every flat had the same sort of people, all like you, middle-class, friendly, always full with unnecessary smiles when they saw each other. Delhi was different. It was the proverbial big city – hustling-bustling, busy, always in a hurry, smiles - yes but twisted, the sort which never encouraged you to start on a conversation. Unlike Sindri, not many uncles or aunties came to your house, not many asked you which school you were studying in, whether you could recite a poem or sing a song for them.

The difference was also in the variety of people. Before, I had only encountered people from Bihar in my life. Delhi, on the other hand, was a zoo of different-looking people. In the flats below us lived two Bengali families (loud and unclean), and in the ones opposite lived a family from Punjab (financially better placed than us, I remember thinking), one old South Indian lady, who looked rather lonely, and therefore friendly, and a Nepalese couple on the ground floor (they scared me every time I saw them. Even to my little mind at that time, they looked the sort of people who would be making explosives and stuff, a belief strengthened when they later covered their windows with black chart paper). Our apartment was a mini-India in itself, I still remember thinking.

The routine all throughout my stay there was rather fixed. School till two, lunch on the floor consisting of rice, dal and mashed potatoes, a brief study period, getting milk from Mother Dairy using coupons (which fascinated me no limit at first), off to the park for a two-hour cricket session, returning home like a weathered soldier, another brief dash at homework, dinner and sleep. All this may sound mundane to the reader but there are thousands of memories intertwined in this daily drudgery – like playing cricket from six in the morning to one in the afternoon on Sundays till our bodies ached and heads reeled from the heat, fighting ferociously with one of my best friends over a controversial run-out till I tore off his T-shirt resulting in he giving up and running back home crying, being mistaken by the man at Mother Dairy for a servant, shitting in my pants at school and being slapped by my mother when she discovered so at the bus-stop, being hit by a gunda called Shakal (what a suitable name, I thought!), kicking him back impulsively in return and running away, waiting for Shri Krishna on Doordarshan desperately on Sunday mornings, thereby watching the whole of Krishi Darshan also in the process, and the best of them all - mixing water colours in the terrace tanker on Holi with my partner-in-crime.

Then, when I went to Class 6^th, we moved to Chandigarh. But Delhi was what we would eventually return to, and so we did in a couple of years, again taking shelter in Vasant Kunj. That was the start of another six years in the capital. But I wasn’t a kid anymore, rather a boy trying to act like a man. Reading and writing overtook cricket, surfing the net overtook the mythological serials, listening to George Michael and Queen, to an extent, overtook idling away with friends.

Love also entered thoughts somewhere. Falling in love with someone and then falling out in a month was the usual trend. It is amazing to think now how I got myself deeply infatuated with every second girl in sight, and ruminated over her for hours continuously, and then due to mental exhaustion, in the end, forgot her entirely. It was almost as if January to December, there was someone new every time, like the Flavour of the Month at an ice-cream shop.

With time also came an increased emphasis on studies. And the final three years of my school life were absorbed in wanting 80 when I got 70, 90 when I got 80 and so forth. First there were the 10^th board exams, then coaching to get into ‘THE IIT’, and then the 12^th board exams again. Being the reluctant science student that I always have been, the coaching proved to be futile with me failing miserably in all competitive exams. Result – while my friends got busy with their first year at college, I had to stay at home and drop a year.

I would be deceiving myself if I say that the last year of my stay in Delhi wasn’t the worst of my life thus far. Coaching continued, and also my awareness of the futility of it all. In January, helpless, I moved to a flat in a place called Jia Sarai, which I fondly refer to as The Shithole. The move was supposed to help me concentrate better, away from home and between fellow students. But it hardly helped; the four months stay there was slightly better in terms of studies, but was accompanied by long late-night walks to Hauz Khas or Munirka to keep my sanity intact. The desire to leave Delhi, the city where I had grown and the city which I had loved, was overwhelming and it was no little relief when I did so finally in August 2005, putting an end to the eleven years that I had lived in the capital.

Three years have passed since then. The family has moved to Gurgaon now, a place so self-sufficient that Delhi seems like a part of the past. Trips to my old home are made only to meet up with friends at CP or to the railway station to catch the train to Gandhinagar. Delhi is always so near but always so distant, not just in terms of distance but also in terms of years, and in terms of memories - some good, some bad - but as a whole package, strangely warm.

I am not an expert on Delhi and Delhi life, nor do I claim to be. My association with the city has almost entirely been with only its southern and central parts, and there is a lot, as some have pointed out, that remains to be seen. But this was how I knew the city, and the city knew me. Maybe someday I’ll return and see the capital in its entirety. Maybe. Someday.

To carry on the string of tales, I tag Jezuz and Calvin.

P.S. - And now that Zinque is with us, I invite her as well to tell her story. After all, small, insignificant places deserve a mention too ;)

Patiya Ma

When my mother was a kid, there was a maid who used to live with her at my grandparents’ place. She did the cleaning and washing for the house, and also looked after the children when my grandparents were away. She stayed with my family for about ten years, returning to her village home when my mother moved out after her marriage.

Everyone called her Patiya Ma. I don’t really know what her real name was, and what Patiya means, if anything.

Anyway, some years ago, on a visit to our village, my mother and I went to meet Patiya Ma at her place. Patiya Ma now lived alone, her children having deserted her with all the money after her husband’s death. She had a house, but it hardly could have been called so. It was a kachcha makaan, with a tin roof placed on top to prevent sunlight from coming in. She herself showed no sign of well-being, old, wrinkled and thin.

All I remember of Patiya Ma from the brief meeting is she squatting on the ground, hands joined together, wearing a worried expression on her face. She said she wanted to die, and when my mother asked her why, her reply with a faint, twisted smile was “Jiyab ta ki ki nai dekhab”, which translates roughly as “If I live, god knows what more I’m destined to see”.

She repeated this line after almost every thing she talked about – her family, her health, her shortage of cash.

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But why am I writing about it? What’s the point?

It’s just that for the last few days, when I’ve been having all kinds of examination papers dished out at me, when I’m feeling utterly helpless trying to cope up with it, when the world seems to leave no chance to annoy, trounce and demoralise me, I feel suddenly reminded of Patiya Ma and her favourite words.

Jiyab ta ki ki nayi dekhab.

Simple Things

Sid dear had been very kind to tag me in his last post. And as I’ve nothing better to write on right now (going through a dearth of ideas, as the sophisticated novelist would put it), I choose to elaborate on his crappy topic. I choose to make it even crappier.

Be sure to refer to his piece before you have a look at mine.

http://sleepingtablets.blogspot.com/2007/10/you-got-tagged.html

If you don’t do so, you might end up taking me for a bored, sadistic idiot, something that I might actually be but something I would rather not confide to you.

So here it is!

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At the age of 21, you are neither a kid nor a man. You are somewhere in between those two states, unsure about yourself, about what you must retain and what you must change. Self-obsessively lost in your endeavour to make this transition peaceful and coherent, you forget the little things that you used to do earlier, things that gave you great joy in the past and those which you might be embarrassed to execute now. Now, that you are unsure.

Well ‘Keep It Simple’, as the old clichéd saying goes. In an attempt to do the same, I shall now make a list of small things that you might have loved doing in the past and which you must try doing from here on -

1) Fight with your kid sister – Ah! Remember the last time your sister and you tried pulling each other’s hair out, and having been frustrated doubly by your eventual inability to do so, satisfied your desire to inflict pain with a big thump or two on the back? Deeply satisfying, wasn’t it? You’d never realise how much so it was, but once you start doing it again, you’ll relive the same boundless joy you felt the first time. After all, this was your personal home version of the Fight Club!

By the way, you can fight with your kid brother as well, if you don’t have a sister. The joytitude would be almost the same, I presume.

2) The Knock-knock bluff – This is something I used to do a lot as a kid. On days when we friends didn’t get the bat and ball to play with, to pass time, we rang the bell of any house in our locality and then disappeared into some nook or corner waiting for the response of the person who opened the door. More often than not, the flat chosen was of the Uncle or Aunty who was the most khadoos (the ones who scolded us before giving the ball back when a sixer reached their terrace) and it was immensely satisfying watching him/her annoyed at finding no one at the door. Also, if the person was someone who had actually never returned a ball that had reached his/her terrace, we rang the bell multiple times till each one of us was convinced that that particular ball-eater had been given ample punishment.

3) Mixing colours in the water tanker – This is something you can attempt during Holi. After four or five hours of mutual decoration, when the people in your apartment have retired to their bathrooms to wash their vividly colourful selves, you and your friend can go to the terrace and pour colours into the water tanker. People dying to get the much needed bath would be aghast to find red, blue and green coming out of the taps. I’m sure that would annoy the Uncles and Aunties no limit, which is again something that is sure to give you stupendous joy and satisfaction.

That’s just three. The Dearth of Ideas Syndrome again. Well anyway, you can add an idea or two of your own here. The rule is simple and easy to remember: Anything that gives others agony will give you joy! Do such simple things and you would find yourself becoming a child again, happier and less caught-up.

The Hard Way

“Not that way, moron!”, he says after about a minute of loud, non-stop laughter. I lie on the cement, feeling my bums, trying to smile, see the humour of it all.

This is my first try at skating. My friend had bought a pair of skates just the other day and he asked me if I would like to learn. He is pretty good at it, he has done it before.

I decide to give it a try. There are two round skating rings in the park opposite our apartment, each around seven or eight metres in diameter, with the floors made of cement, and boundaries lined with netted grills, probably to prevent novices like me from crashing out.

“The secret to skating and skating well is to keep year head slightly forward, ahead of your body, so that your entire weight is taking you in the direction you wish to go. You know, that way your Centre of Gravity…”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just keep your head slightly forward. You can’t possibly fall on your back that way, and nobody falls forward really, unless he's stupid.”

“OK.”

I do exactly that. And as he had said, I don’t fall.

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But he was wrong. I found that out this morning, on my way back from the galla. It had rained severely last night. With my Bata sandals so slippery that I might as well have been walking on two banana skins, it was hard trying to stay on my feet.

Then, I remembered what my friend had told me that day.

I jutted my head out in front, bending above the waist just that little bit. The little bit slowly became a little more, and more.

Result: I slipped on my toes, the Centre of Gravity got too far ahead, I think, forcing me down.

Lesson: When it rains and your footwear doesn’t have a good grip, you can fall either way, forwards or backwards.

Kudo Thakur

His name was Kudo Thakur. A barber by caste, he had been so all his life. From age 15 to age 70. In his own words - “From when my hands learnt the trade to the time when the same hands started shaking when I picked up the scissors.”

But he was a very old man now. He said he thought he was something like 80, but he looked more like 120 to me. Most of his teeth were gone. And it seemed that the ones which were still there were so only out of goodwill and respect for the man. All of them jutted out, irrespective of whether he was smiling or frowning. All that was left of the face were those sagging wrinkles. If there was a competition for the World’s Most Wrinkled Man, Kudo Thakur would have bagged the first prize for sure. The hands and legs were as thin as thin can be, you could easily circle his legs with your palm, and make your thumb and index finger meet, like they do with their hands at the pillar near Qutab Minar.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t bald. Not by a long way. Specks of white on his head shone in the sun and I think I even spotted some which were still black. This for a man who had almost lived the entire last century ! He carried a stick with him, a piece of wood really, pieces peeling off the surface all over. I couldn’t help noticing that his stick was as thick as his two legs, so that if you saw his silhouette, you might just be deceived into thinking that he had three of them, three legs or three sticks to stand on.

Everyday, while I was there in the village, he would come early morning and evening, and sit there on the bench in the veranda, gazing at everything around him. I found his stare somewhat uncomfortable at times, his head always positioned slightly forward, aggressively, as if he was a teacher, asking you why the homework for the weekend wasn’t complete. He had a constant expression on his face, what I would regard now as a cross between a jovial smile and a disgusted frown. I remember thinking to myself that if Kudo Thakur had to laugh or cry at something, the expression on his face would remain exactly the same. One face for all emotions. One expression to express all expressions.

“I have shaved your Nanaji’s head too, once, when he was even younger than you are”, he told me one day. I gave him an as-if-I-believe-you look. For me, small that I was, the image of Kudo Thakur shaving my Nanaji’s head, with a pair of scissors in his hand and the mirror in front, was not that easy to imagine. He was the oldest man in the village, one person who had watched everyone else grow and many perish before him. He was conscious of this fact, he seemed proud of it.

I took his presence in the village home as granted. So when, a few years back, I hadn’t seen him since I had arrived in the village, I asked my grandfather where he was.

He was dead. No one knows whether he completed the century, or just failed to do so by a year or two. Even Kudo Thakur himself wouldn’t have known, I imagine.