Distorted Thoughts: Episode II

Terrace Nights

 

And you made me to sing to the music of the tranquil upon a mesa. It was but your presence that made me the Billy Joel of the night. For where can old Billy find an audience, as silent as the movement of the snail and as connecting as the two ends of a circle.

With our stargazing romance restricted by the clouds, we had quickly moved onto our palm’s world. We traveled to the future in them, frowning at lines not mapping to our desire, and looking for the missing ones. Some ran hand in hand with what we wanted to see and we floated in its dream-cloud for time we knew not...

Some songs fluttered around, like fireflies without a desire of direction. We picked a few and let them light our eyes through our heartstrings.

 

Now that the clouds are gone and our palms are covered with the sweat of the day, we have but one desire – to climb the thirteen floors, on a moonless night, to the water tank upon the terrace. The remnants of the songs we had sung reverberate as the music of the heartstrings that lives in the smallest fraction of our moments – in our heartbeat.

Morsels of Faint Recollection: the Sunday Baths

As a kid, there was one thing that I abhorred the most – the Sunday baths. And the villain in all its episodes happened to be a woman.

The Sunday winter mornings would always have the unremitting lazy feeling that would threaten to encroach into the afternoons. And in them I always had the pleasure of sleeping well past my usual school time, with black tea and thin-arrowroot biscuits served royally at my bedside, and some oranges or olives warming in a thatched roof on a dola. But then there would always be something or the other that would ruin the well crafted dreams created by my conscious mind in my pleasure sleep’s prefecture.

My craft at carving out stories in this realm was immaculate and engaging. Like the game of marble where I’d win back my lucky pea green marble from Aseem and then with it deplete the pouch that he carefully strings to his waist, a treasure which had some of the most beautiful marbles in it. Or laying my hands on the guavas at the topmost branches of Hifzoor Mama’s orchard of five trees, the ripening stories of which could only be savored by the parrots and the crows. My catapult would find the scarecrow’s cap from every angle of release. Why the scarecrow’s cap, from the distance I could hit the middle of O of the “VOTE for AGP” sign painted on the rusty electricity pole many moons ago by the political campaigners. So much that my art would defy the science of trajectory and gravity and I would be able to shoot down Munaf’s kite and hunt wild ducks in the mire by the paddy fields.

These perfectly written early-morning-soft-sunlight dreams would never be driven to culmination where I could end up gifting a guava to the girl in pink frock, counting countless times my hoard of marbles, and be envied and feared by the kids of the neighborhood for my catapult skills. The disruptions could be anything – from the blaring stereo of some Jhankar Beats songs played by our neighbor to the weekly cleaning activities of my mother that would involve, besides others, lots of movements of objects that make noise, like the brass vessels and the Singer stitching machine. Even the crow at times will find the glass panes of the window beside my bed to clean its beak. And on the scantily spaced days when none of these disruptions led their charges, I’d suddenly get the urge to relieve myself. Feeling my way to the bathroom by making the least use of my vision lest the daylight ruin the half knit dream that I was weaving, I’d hardly bother to aim at the hole. When I was done, I’d feel my way back to the bed only to find my mother folding the blanket and replacing the warm bedsheet with a cold and new one.

And so, although I had no upper-time-limit on my Sunday morning sleeps, I always ended up on a small little cold stool at the back-verandah, with my knees folded to rest my hanging chin. I’d carelessly tug at the combs of oranges peeled by my sister sitting beside me while letting the sun warm my back. Near the tube-well, mother would be busy washing the clothes and having a conversation with Sumira Mahi. Everytime she’d pitch up her voice I’d look at her in a lazy daze and would find her reproachfully smashing the wet clothes on the stone slab without any rhythm. At times when she’d be in the midst of a happy conversation, the wet clothes under her clutches would feel the soft scrub of her hands. So much for the poor clothes, everytime they were soaked in the detergent powder they must have prayed that old Sumira Mahi had something amusing and agreeable to share in her tube-well conversations with mother.

The tube-well would also be the silent witness of my mother’s next drama, the unwilling and helpless protagonist of which would be a long legged sleepy boy bathing himself in the flimsy chrome sunshine by the verandah. Mother would pull out water from the tube-well and put it in two steel buckets by the stone slab. And before I’d realize, she’d pull me by the hand towards the butchering arena of the clothes. I have made copious attempts to flee the arena; from running around the house to the age-old I feel feverish drama, but all roads would eventually end up near the tube-well. Mother would pull out my shirt and half-pants and fling it to a corner. She’d then pull off my vest and underwear and keep it on the stone slab.

When it comes to bathing on a cold day with cold water, one always proceeds on an unwritten step-by-step protocol. First the limbs go for the soak, then the head follows and finally after many doses of you-can-do-it, the body is soaked in the barrage of a few quick mugs of water. To my mother, this protocol did not exist. With a wave of her hand she’d pull out mugs of water and soak me, head to toe, all in a matter of a few milliseconds. And while I’d be shivering in the cold and would be waiting for the entire ordeal to get over as soon as possible, more often than not, old Sumira Mahi will have her spiciest story lined up for the occasion. Her narration would slow mother down, and the cold wave in my chest would force me to clamp my wet forearms and let out a shivering huuhuuuhooo huuu uuuuhhhh… That won’t bother my dear mother though. From the soap case, she’d pick a pink lux soap and daub it on me. She’d use the same soap to froth my hair too. The real drama would start when she’d pick my vest from the slab and use it like a scrubber to cleanse me. She’d scour me vigorously without any compassion like she usually does when she’s cleaning the soot off the aluminum rice pot. The pot gets back to some shade of aluminum, but my mortified body turns pink in patches and if not for the mugs of water that mother keeps putting on my body while scrubbing, those pink patches would have surely caught fire. I’d scream, cry, dig my nails into her skin, but the scrubwork would continue. Then with one move, she’d lift the bucket and spill the water on me. Sumira Mahi’s prattle would echo in my ears as the water cleansed me.

As I run for a bath in my apartment today, I think about the small puddle of frothy water accumulating near my feet and the face of my mother wrapping me in a thin towel. Putting my ear to the music of the FM station playing in my living room, I wait in anticipation for the radio jockey’s crisp voice to break my morning trance. A body scrub, a liquid soap for the body, some shampoo and conditioner for the hair and some make-me-fair face wash – I look at it all in the bathroom and still do not find one single thing that could bring me the smell of my palm after my mother had bathed me. The radio jockey’s prattle echoed in the distance. Switching on the geyser, I wait for a few seconds, and then step into the shower.

Something to Iron Her Wrinkles

wait never stretches beyond death. And often it is the spectacle of death that makes us realize it.

=========================================================================

The summaries of our lives lived so far includes a huge portion of a world that waits for us, a world where we grew up in but have gradually gravitated away from. In that world, amidst all the inanimate objects of there-and-then remains some who still breathe with a hope to see us someday for every remaining days of their lives. Their wait gets answered, but only in installments of a few days of our vacation. And while, during such a vacation, we gather as much as we can to last us until the next time, they do not even know if their next time will ever come…

In an old house in the village of Dibrujan, a cycle finds a resting place beside an old typewriter and a wall the painting of which has long peeled off. The cycle, initially cleaned every second day, now finds a hand only once a week. It has not been taken out for a ride even once since the last ten years.

With a broken leg, the settee chair stands in the backyard. It had seen better days when it lived in the living room and its legs were stronger. The kids used to run around it in the evenings, occasionally pulling or pushing it. And in the winter Saturdays, both the kids would wrap themselves in a blanket and squeeze into it for the stories of uncle Raihan. The kids have long left. In the backyard today, it finds company of the sparrows and the crows who’d sit on its arms and clean their beaks on its wood.

Some broken flower tubs line up near the settee chair. The plants that once grew in them have long stepped out of it. Some like the seasonal cosmos that needed the delicate touch perished to the lack of human attention, while some others found a new breeding ground in the unattended backyard.

Near the broken flower tubs, the olive tree still stands tall. It has seen the days when the kids would run underneath its green foliage and pick the olives that had fallen the night before. They’d eat it with a mix of salt and chilly powder. On days when very few olives had fallen, the kids would throw stones at the branches. The stones would often miss the branches and land on the tin-roof of the house. The catastrophic outcome would be Nani’s high decibel raga, an Aaie-oooooooooou that would prompt all creatures in the backyard, including the ducks and the sparrows to flee. That has changed. There is nobody to pick the olives now, and Nani’s raga has not been practiced since long.

Lapped in rust, the iron rungs in a make-shift open shed lives a life they were not destined for. The house was never extended but the rungs were already made. Since then, the rungs have been living in the infinite space between hope and despair, but not amidst the concrete and cement that it still dreams of.

A bed beside the window and a cane chair constitutes the living room. Despite the changes in the content and color of the room, the sunlight still slits in through the window. Its warmth and color of the season has remained the same.

A brass vase with artificial flowers decorates the living room. With a layer of dust on its petals, the flowers look different than their original white, yellow, blue and pink. But somehow it seems to blend in well with the color of the wall that has not seen a fresh paint since long.

There was a time when the kettle would always be on the stove, puffing out steam while the air was filled with conversations ranging from some whispers to announcements to arguments that never seemed to end. Although old and battered now, it still finds itself serving the needs of the morning and evening. The little steam it lets out searches for the echo of those conversations, but it just meets the thin cold air to which it dissipates.


A solitary cup of black tea finds no friends on the table. Its nearest company happens to be the cup of tea of the previous day.

As she waits for them to come home, Nani looks out from the window at the loosely latched gates. Even when she is not by the window, she keeps her ears and her mind on the gates. A small sound and she’d rush to see if it’s them. Some neighboring kids, the newspaper vendor, the beggar who makes his routine visit every third day, the vegetable hawker, the neighbor’s dog… but not them. She goes back to her work, but her mind would still be there, at the gates. In the summers, when her waits would be made longer by the length of the day, she takes the needles to make a muffler with the blue merino wool – one for Bulu and one for Rinku, she’d smile. She stops in between to think if it really gets cold in Mumbai during the winters. Ah! Bulu can wear it when he is here, she thinks. Then she drops it all and goes to the adjoining room to look at the old newspapers which she keeps with care. She tries to pull one of December or of January. Looking at the weather section, she looks for the temperature of Mumbai - 26 degrees, it says. Too hot, she thinks and looks sadly at the half made muffler.

Then she looks at the cycle on the other side of the room and smiles. I’ll clean you today, she says.

Heart Crossings

The most constant thing in your life, a heartbeat, often bridges you to the most mercuric and intriguing world.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Listen to your heart at times. Listen to its soft words that reverberates in the uniformity of the night. Let it take you swinging back to those secret stories that you have once lived and which are now written in the depths of your heart, in its deepest corners where you have left them sealed in some unmarked graves.

Listen to your heart as it wheedles you. In the hour which sees the orchid bloom to the dying night, let your heart open one of the graves in its bosom. The stories therein are your small secrets, the sweetest treasures of your life. Cherish them as secretly as the orchid’s bloom. And before the morning dew sets in, put them back to their buried state.

Go back to the arms of the lover who gifted you the first rose or the one who drew your initials in his arms in blood. Tell him now what you could not tell him then – that you were scared to see the scar, but then secretly loved the act. Add a few portions of spice to that story and take it to an evening where you could feel the scar liberating your deepest feelings. Won’t you uncover now what you have not discovered in your entire life – the tender feelings of a young heart?

Go to the moment when you had your first kiss, and the moments thereafter when you went back home wondering why every stranger on the road was staring at you. Your excitement was clearly overshadowed by the fear that you were an amateur kisser and more by the fear that some relative or family friend has seen you. Try to feel that kiss today without the shadow of the fear cloud, but with the same newness that your abused lips cannot buy anymore.

Go back to the long hours that you spent staring into nothingness in your drunken stupor. Try recollecting the promises that you made that day. Someday, I’d do this… I’d do that… And what not… You’d definitely end up drawing a line to where you would have been if you would have fulfilled all those promises. Well, if that would-have-been state makes you to feel miserable, don’t try to find an antidote. Instead, let that feeling sink through your pores as well. Afterall, what is life without some small regrets that you don’t care about much, but which pops up like a swarm of stinging bees when things don’t seem to be moving?

Go back to the class of the professor who lived in your fantasies. To the moments when the size of your room-mate’s breasts prompted you to look into the mirror everyday, to check if you were anywhere nearer. To the day when you hugged your mother before boarding the train to the city, till the time you realized the worth of that hug and the fact that how meagerly they were placed in the scale of time…

Let these ticketless voyages remain a small secret – stories that are your own. Every time you visit it, garnish it with the best fantasies that the juices of your mind makes available in that moment. Soon you will start making different recipes with the same ingredients but with different proportions of emotions, drama, clairvoyance, adventure and surrealism – proportions to suit your mood of the day. This when cooked with the base story that you have already lived, will be just right for your heart.

Serve it well...

In search of a lost giggle

Some look into an album to go back to yesteryears. Some others just look into the eyes of a child.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amidst the chaos of our everyday life, we tend to look out for some small pockets in time as well as in space where we could comfort our senses. These pockets can be anything – a view from a rented window, the undated thoughts on a dated letter, the last few puffs of a cigarette shared among three friends, the wait for a vacation, the stories narrated in a book by the myriad combinations of alphabets… Every person on earth stitches his own pockets of solace and although we seem to borrow from each other, we nevertheless pick from our own pockets. One such pocket that seems to be common to all humans alike is the sight of a child.

I realized of owning one such pocket when I was once heading to Muradnagar, Ghaziabad. I was accompanying a friend who ran a small school there, right in the middle of a densely populated slum. I was taken to a small wooden gate, loosely closed by a latch and which looked like any other ordinary gates in the area. I was wondering what we were doing there when we were supposed to visit the school. Just then my friend opened the gates for me. The moment I stepped in, I knew it was not an ordinary place.

Before me were two doors, one slightly ajar, while the other was wide open. My friend led me through the first one, to something that looked like a primitive classroom. Seated before me, and looking straight into my eyes were three rows of children. That sure made me nervous. Facing a review panel for a project is much easier. Atleast I know what their expectations are from the project – the dollar savings and what not. But these children, each of them had a question in their stare that seemed to differ from the others’. A sea of questions, each simple and yet difficult to answer. I wore my best mirror-practiced smile as the only defense to wade through it. The kids were dressed in almost everything that has been and out of fashion: baggy jeans, oversized jackets, colorful sweaters, scarves, tunics, skivvies, and monkey caps.

I was asked to tell the kids about Mumbai. When I started, they did not know anything about Mumbai except the name. Whether it was in India or Pakistan, whether it was a village or a Delhi like city, they did not know. When I finished my stories of Mumbai, they knew Bollywood, the Arabian Sea, the Gateway of India, the monsoon rains, and the Taj Mahal hotel. I had a few pictures of Mumbai in my digital camera which I showed them. To conclude my small talk, I asked them if they wanted to go and see Mumbai. The kids roared a YEAAA in unison.

That sight, the sight of the children seeing things through my eyes, believing every story I told like the stories they read in some Nagraj and Chacha Chowdhury comics at the kabariwallah shop, and envisaging everything the pictures of which I had not in my camera, that sight of a class in awe of a fancy filled bona fide world unfolding before them was something that can only be felt, and not captured by any cameras.

I felt sad at their ignorance, but then I was glad when I thought about what I have seen elsewhere in the country. Once when I was enjoying the sunset on top of a sand dune in the Thar Desert, some 60 miles west of Jaisalmer, a middle-aged man with a long moustache and an oversized turban approached me. He was with his six year old daughter.

He said, “Sir, traditional banzara dance, only ten rupees”. I was taken aback, not because of the cheap pass to a three minute dance spectacle, but for the age of the girl. I asked him why he did not take her to a school. He said there were none anywhere nearby. What mattered to him was the two hours before the winter sun would set, the few fleeting hours of the year that he could use to wade through the other seasons when the sun would be hotter.

The kids in this school had their copies and pencils, some torn textbooks, a few benches under a roof to sit upon, a blackboard, and a teacher. These may not be the best of the instruments, but definitely something when compared to the banzara girl. And the efforts of my friend and all others who help running this school is duly rewarded when they see the kids coming back for classes the following day.

I took pictures of most of the kids in the school. As a return gift, they recited me a few poems.

I’m sharing a few pictures of the school, hope the reader is able to relate to it.

Some kids posing for the camera

These kids were not in the school. They just hung in there at the gates with a shy expression on their faces

A view from outside the classroom 

The bisleri plant 

Saheli

Questioning eyes

We are the world - the kids just ganged up for this picture. In the end, they were all around me. Guess I needed a 3D camera to capture them all.

 A class session

After the final bell

Finally... the teachers

=========================================================================
The school in the story is an effort of the NGO “Jatan Sansthan”. Jatan was formed in 2006 by a group of college friends to work for the underprivileged children. Today the organisation has setup schools in Muradnagar and Nagpur and survives only on the donations of the well-wishers. For more information on Jatan, please get in touch with the author

Lovemaking

How I love the act of lovemaking. Watching the sea caress the sands into an evenness and leaving in its belly some shells wrapped in the covers of foam that had once breathed in its divine lymph. If I classify it as a smooth union, there are the times when I see them in a violent act. Whatever it is, the sea always leaves gifts for the sands and takes with it anything the sand has to give. I look into the Arabian Sea in the darkness of a moonless night and see nothing. The sound of the waves hitting the shore and the muffled song of the wind is all that my senses can detect. In the distance the horizon ceases to exist and for once the sea and the skies are one. I wonder if the stars feel close to the sea during one such spectacle. I have been told by a painter that there are three basic colors: red, yellow and blue and all the others are just derivatives of it. From the east to the west, from the morning to the night, from the skies to the sole of my shoes, I see colors that are neither red, nor green or yellow. In their lovemaking of different intensities, these colors have lost their identities.

I make love to my beloved on the sands of a stranded beach, wearing colors that are none of red, green or yellow, at a time in the night when our horizon of infinity concurs with the horizon in the distance. I am belittled by the thought that we are still not a part of the homogeneity of the existence around us. What convergence do we lack that forestalls our entry through the gates? I lie on the sands on my back and look at a star. My beloved sprinkles some sands on my chest and I kiss her lipstick laden strawberry lips. I am still not the sand, and I cannot see any stars in her hair. We make love, and yet it is not lovemaking. We are still two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears, a pair of nose, eight distinct limbs trying to cocoon into a single heartbeat.

That stride towards a “WE” needs the dissolution of two “I”s. The irony is not our reluctance to let go of that “I” but the verity that we are yet to discover it fully. But doesn’t the sea get to know itself better because of the shore? Doesn’t the sky whisper to its stars to look at it’s reflection in the mirror of the sea?

While we enjoy these sights and sounds of the togetherness of the universe around us, we are caught up as a solitary spec of white in a tissue paper blotted with an ink. The water touches our feet; she smiles at the receding wave and draws a pattern with her toe in the sand. The waves come again to take the pattern in its foamy ride. She draws an arc on my chest with her finger, much like the pattern in the sand. The cold sensation of her wet finger slowly sinks into my skin and with it the feeling of her presence.

Suleiman-Ki-Biwi: An Introduction

Think of something that can bring out different colors of your mood, something which isn’t a byproduct of your girlfriend’s or your wife’s actions. Well, forget about the road traffics or the picture of your oh-that-bastard boss – they are hardly going to make your mood better. If you are lucky, you might be blessed with a sexy maid, making it difficult to hold back the Shiney Ahuja in you. A small grin on your face might just turn into a deplorable expression the moment she opens her mouth to ask for a hike. Well, in that case, the maid surely turns out to be one element in your life that can color your mood in different shades.

I looked about in my life to find some of such elements, the most catastrophic and yet benign of which turned out to be Suleiman-ki-Biwi (wife of Suleiman). This soft pawed, mostly sleepy, always ravenous, wet nosed warm creature, as I’d call it, brought out the best and also the worst in me.

The name Suleiman-ki-Biwi, must have prompted you to think (guys with an envious look ofcourse) who this Suleiman is and what does his wife look like. Suleiman-ki-Biwi was actually my pet cat! Don’t ask me who this Suleiman is, because that would not be humanly possible to find considering the remarkable tendency of a female cat to get pregnant and the tremendous potential of a male cat to screw around. If I go on to find Suleiman, I might just encounter more suitors than the Rakhi ka Swayambhar participants. So how did the name come? Well, it was not related to anything at all. On a day when it was raining heavily, I and my sister found a small kitten stranded under a park bench. We took the shivering thing with us to our home. My sister dried the kitten and that was when the first catastrophe belted me. She pulled out a blue sweater, MY BLUE SWEATER, from the closet and wrapped the kitten in it. I straightaway started hating the kitten.


In my anger, I was thinking of christening it with a peculiar name. I remembered the story of one of my friend, Siddharth. His family had two dogs and they adopted a third one, a small Labrador pup from someone named Tiwari. As the days passed, and since no one had named the pup, they started calling it Tiwari, just to distinguish it from the other dogs. In no time, the neighborhood kids started calling the pup as Tiwari and so the name remained and Siddharth’s family didn’t bother much to find a better name. Then one day, Mr. Tiwari visited Siddharth’s home. You can imagine the scene when Mr. Tiwari is having tea and Siddharth’s eight year old sister comes to the living room with a biscuit in her hand, shouting, “Tiwari…come here boy… take it… take it”

In my revengeful attempt to christen the cat, I looked around. The TV was on where a guy by the name Suleiman was doing some strange antics. I just took it from there and with one pronouncement I baptized the shivering creature who had just encroached into my closet, as Suleiman-Ki-Biwi. That was my victory

It was only after a week we’d realize that the kitten is male.

Distorted Thoughts: Episode I

I sang the Gypsy song, and yet found myself banking on a compass for fear of losing my direction.

* * *

Abundance

Never gift your love a rose too often, it’s just like gifting a man with many wives. God has gifted us with only two eyes because we tend to lose our way in abundance and forget to appreciate the significance and beauty of each in many. That’s why a single rose stands out while it is lost when we put it in a bouquet. It sheds its splendor for a bigger beauty.

* * *

I opened the windows. I opened the doors. Lit an earthen lamp and placed it on the porch. Like every evening, the wait lasted the entire night. In the morning, I collected the leftovers of her love, the jasmines which she left scattered in her mad dance with the wind. The flowers would last with me till they would be replaced by new ones. But the fragrance would stay the same, much like her chimerical presence.

* * *

Don’t dwell in the past. Use it like a holiday resort. Go there, fall in love with it and when you come back to the present, feel its infection in the way you smile.

* * *

Deformities in existence comes
Not without the feel of acceptance
In others

* * *

An effort for some words,
The filtering of thoughts before expression
Is a walk away from self,
Or a stride towards purification?

* * *

My Beloved

My beloved knitted me words of the choosiest colors,
With a ply of wool that let the air marinate into us in a warmth
That neither boiled like the pleasant morning sun growing into the day
Nor cooled down like some coffee left in the window sill over pensive thoughts.

My beloved left me a blank note beside our smiling photograph
With the weight of the photo-frame’s shadow holding the message
From the call of flight of the sleep-disturbing wind of a Sunday morning.
I read the words which her three-page letters would otherwise never talk about.

My beloved left her painting palette and a begging-to-get-wet canvas
And stepped into the picture she wanted to portray.
The colors have dried up,
But even in the deep smell of cobalt blue I find her attentive hand’s fresh prints.

My beloved, why do I see you through your creations,
And never through the compass that you had gifted me once?
You keep an intrigue element in this game of yours
That you have no intention to teach me and yet ask me to play.
I just keep on playing for you to win me
And for me to understand your unstated rules of the game.