Fishing

This story was shared in the "Cultures of Peace" literary fest organised by Zubaan in collaboration with Heinrich Boll Foundation at the IHC, Delhi on the 28th - 29th Jan 2010. Prominent writers/journalists included : Indrani Raimedhi, Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao, Subir Bhaumik, Sanjoy Hazarika, Ananya Guha, Pradip Phanjoubam, Arupa Kalita, Mitra Phukan, Bijoya Sawain, Rita Chowdhury, Mona Zote, Monalisa Changkija, Triveni Mathur, Rupa Chinai, Uddipana Goswami, Aruni Kashyap, Rajesh Dev, Dhiren Sadokpam and Nazneen Hussain.

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I always ensure that the desktop wallpaper of my Personal Computer has something to relate to nature. And thanks to the internet, I can find myself climbing the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro one morning while I can unbend the next day sunbathing in a beach in Queensland. Then there would be that cogitative mood when I’d prefer to take a lonely walk by an already lonely lake. In due course of time my colleagues could relate my mood with the wallpaper I had chosen for the day. Whether I was a reflection of the wallpaper or whether the wallpaper was a reflection of me was an atrocious aureole I never got into.

Fishing with rods is an art; you cannot master it with one stroke. It requires endurance beyond compare. A sharp eye and an ability to hold back your desire to pull the rod until the fish has properly caught the bait needs only the learning of time and failure. Raihan, my ill-famed uncle compared it with primitive seduction. He was always a good catch. During one of our late afternoon search for earthworm baits he asked me if I had a girlfriend. My silence was enough for him to begin his first unpaid fishing tutorial.

You ain’t gonna catch a fish if you don’t learn how to catch a girl. The excitement lies in the way you lure the fish to your bait, never revealing the hook inside. And this excitement fades off like the last specs of sunset once your catch is complete. You keep the fish in your basket, put some more bait and look for the next fish…Ah! And there are these fishes, that’d caress the line of the fishing rod, play with the bait, eat it away and yet escape the force of your upward pull. This time, it’s you who get baited into the pursuit of this particular fish. Women are a similar species. The pursuit is more fulfilling than the accomplishment. You charm a woman’s senses and kindle in her the urge to be pulled towards yourself. She may refuse you at times, but like a patient rock you need to show your indifference towards this action of hers until she begins to believe that it was she who was whining and moving towards you. At other times, just like our playful fish which escaped your hook, a woman may not look at you altogether, ignoring all your efforts to charm her. Patience gives way to desperation and finally heartache. The real art is to know when this stage of patience ends, so that you can quit and look for some other prize before desperation pulls you on a path where you lose it all.

In my case, I never went fishing for the fishes. The sound of the croaking of frogs, the chirping of the birds, the sudden splash of the kingfisher, the grasses swaying in rhythm to the wind, the clear reflection of the woods in the lake, the sometimes cloudy sometimes clear skies, the howl of the foxes somewhere in the woods on the other side; in a way I found it close to living in the wallpapers of the lakes of my computer that I cherish so much. Fishing was just an excuse that I gave myself for sitting idly on the fishing bench. But then came in Raihan and all his teachings. I soon discovered that I no longer gave myself the excuses. I was learning to love fishing.

I learnt how to choose a particular bait for a particular fish. Raihan used flour balls, earthworms, small fishes, snails and even the larva of bees. He once took me to the woods to search for a beehive. We got the beehive alright but had to get a few painful stings before we could lay our hands on the larva. I had stood a close to 100 yards away from the beehive that was casually embracing a low hung branch. Raihan had an empty potato sack in his left hand and with his right hand he held out some old torn clothes hung tightly at one end of a long stick. He had covered his body to save him from the stings. Using a lighter he set the torn clothes on fire and projected the stick towards the bottom of the hive. There was more smoke than fire and as it caught up with the hive, the bees started moving out. In a moment they were everywhere, just like the bombers of Pearl Harbor. Not certain what to do, I moved back a few paces, while Raihan, still projecting the stick, hid his face in his clothes. After a few seconds, I heard him scream out ou ou ou ouuuu ei ei ei. Some bees had found his flesh through his armour and took their vengeance before going down. Raihan did not wait anymore, he let go of his face cover and in one go had the stranded beehive with its larva in the potato sack. He came running towards me followed by a trail of angry bees. I started off but one bee caught up with me and stung me in my neck. With one wade I removed it but the pain was intense. Running and panting, I cried out maayyieee maayieee.

The larva was good and we had a good time with the pain of the sting.

The day I caught my first fish, Raihan came from his side of the fishing area and said,

You got the fish alright; you’ll get a girl as well.

I just smiled at him without any pride of achievement of having been given the degree of a sure shot girl-catcher.

We hardly used to talk when we were fishing. He’d be lost in his world of women, imagining them in the swirls of his unfiltered cigarette smoke. I had once asked him why he does not take filter cigarettes. To him it was simple: he just did not want his thoughts about women to be filtered.

I’ve been fishing without a companion for the last two months. Raihan got drowned while he was fishing alone. The people in the area said that a big fish was sighted and they believed that it got Raihan’s bait, and before Raihan could realize, it pulled him underwater. The police took the believingly unbelievable story mainly because it involved no money for them. As for the family, he was hardly attached to the lot. Infact, his illicit relations with women was well known and so nobody grieved.

I saw it as an unaccomplished endeavor to win the love of the woman he never talked about, but had always hinted at in his love for fishing. Whether it was the fish or the women, or his own patience giving way to a silent desperation where he had lost it all—I wonder sometimes.

But that is an untaught fishing lesson he took to his grave.

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.

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.

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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

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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

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.