No more!

Sympathy? No. I want no sadness attached to Mumbai. I love its memories.

I vividly remember this early morning bus-ride to school. We had divided ourselves into groups of four and were playing, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Our team, we had called it ‘Bombay’, had said, “Win battles!” I never challenged this statement since fourth grade. I didn’t, even over the last weekend.

Bombay seems to stand above these dastardly attacks of reproachful helplessness, untouched. Bleeding physically, but untouched in spirit, in soul; tears well in its eyes, but it stares the enemy in his eye with a mocking astonishment at the discovery of his cowardice, at the discovery that his power is only an orchestration of his mind.

There had been premonitory echoes of this currish scheme of the enemy throughout the year, in his half-hinted attempts to shake up the nation, in parts. All along, the nation smiled its characteristic smile, the smile that is a man’s substitute for breaking into tears, a smile of patience, of holding back even under grave provocation.

Holding back is a matter of pointless indulgence now. It is only parochial sentiment. It is a virtue wasted on this enemy.

The nation feels a stab of regret; regret over the million lives lost over its glamorous virtue.

But the seeming corpse has awakened to life and to power, and in an oddly quiet aggression is saying, “No more!”

In the Muslim neighbourhood clustered around Chandni Chowk, from behind the chick-blinds of her window, the widow is saying, “No more!”

Amidst his insistent rattle on ministerial resignations, the non-descript opposition member is saying, “No more!”

The fancy-peddling young rickshaw-wallah who spent too much money on liquor last night is saying, “No more!”

The school girls at the bus-stop, giggling uncontrollably at the prospect of saying something in unison, are saying, “No more!”

The Seth, shooing away the little clustered whirlwinds of flies around sweet-meat on his counter, is saying, “No more!”

The itinerant street vendor, packing berries for the little urchins in twists of paper, is saying, “No more!”

On the CST train platform, the clerk, standing wreathed in smoke, waiting for the 8:10, is saying, “No more!”

The flicker of candles lit to pay tributes to the Hemant Karkares of India, the hope of the hundred million Muslims of India, the prayers of middle-aged ‘satsang’ women, the indignant voices of media reporters, the angry jostling of boys in bus-queues, the force of the teacher’s beating on the knuckles, the restless honking at traffic signals is saying,

“No more!”

---End of an era---

Sensational end of the sensational silence of the nation against terrorism!

What do you see, my Love?

He took me to the sea and asked, “What do you see, my Love?”

“The white surge lifting and falling,” I said.

And he set up the sea to tantalizingly undulate.

It then heaved and halted and hurled and painted a thousand hues.

He tenderly lifted my head and asked, “What do you see, my Love?”

“The clouds floating”, I said.

And he spun an omen of hope in their wispy trails.

They then carved the plaited girl, the majestic lion, the couple locked in love.

He pointed into the morning sky and asked, “What do you see, my Love?”

“A scarlet flame,” I said.

And he lit up its sublime and incomparable splendor.

The Sun then came to be.

He showed me the dickey birds and asked, “What do you see, my Love?”

“Birds flapping their wings,” I said.

And he taught them to fly unscaled heights.

They then flew from steep slopes to rocky piles, into the infinite welkin blue.

He swayed me on the swing and asked, “What you see, my Love?”

“Rivers and trees and cattle,” I said.

And he swayed me again.

I then saw a thousand beautiful dreams, of mirth and passion and love.

He looked into my eyes and asked, “What you see, my Love?”

“The sea, the clouds, the Sun, the birds, the world” I said.

And he blinked mischievously.

I then saw that it was he who made my world!!!

Somerset Maughamly

I laughed to myself awkwardly; the idea that someone thought that I was “average” looking was something too overpowering to be readily assimilated (for me), even when I was thinking about it some millionth time then..

“Do you still look like a famished kid from Somalia? Shucks! You missed ‘even’ the Gold medal..CAT07 and then this! Yea, CAT was bad..who ever thought you’ll not go to IIMA after that brilliant mock CAT season..You are taking CAT again? Girl! You must be having an iron grip on yourself.. Who’d not go bonkers after a disaster like that.. Huh? Pardon?..’bull-terrier's dogged determination’?? Is that what it is called??..Yada yada.. I can’t wait to see you..In two hours then..”

Glad as I am, as a general thing, to see my old friends when they drop in for a chat, I doubted whether I felt equal to that, to hear from this friend of mine. She is a nice girl but a trifle too jumpy for my generally cloistered life. The last time I had met her, she had wound up the evening by embroiling me in a fight with my mother.

“Mummy, if she calls again, tell her..”

At this point, a thunderous ringing of my cell phone interrupted me.

“Where are you? I’m waiting in the coffee bar. I have a surprise for you!”

“Two minutes.” I said.

“Buck up, you lazy thing!”

She was sitting there with a guy and seemed to be in her customary jovial spirits, now as she dashed toward me.

“You look the same.” She shouted springing at me and hitting me on the back.

“This is bad. By Jove, this is bad; you must put on some weight. ”

“Doesn’t she look like a sixth grader?” She said introducing me to that guy.

She had a painful habit of introducing me to all and sundry like that.

“You haven’t changed.” I said. “Even my introduction!”

She frowned. The guy laughed at my joke. She frowned again.

“This is him. The pride of my life. Companion of joys and sorrows.”

This guy was looking at me.

“Surprised to find me committed? What? Take my word. Go and jump the dock yourself. Give up this “single” business. I look on you ‘single’ girls as excrescences on the social system. You are a menace. All you do is upset really happy couples.”

“The needle, do what it will, must obey the law of magnetism and turn to the North.” She said, poking her guy not to ogle me.

“You are a menace.”

“You still look like a sixth grader, but!” She continued and her cell phone buzzed.

She was out of the café and on her way upstairs. I was left to entertain the guy. So far his share in the conversation had been confined to a rather dazed smile which was apparently his chief form of expression. I was conscious of feeling a benevolent pity for him. (If I had been the guy, I would have preferred to get committed to a volcano.)

“You were the topper in your school?” said the object of my commiseration, breaking the silence.

“Yes.”

He leaned forward with shining eyes.

“I’m yet to see a girl more beautiful than you. I know this is bad manners and I must not be saying this. But there is something about you that makes every other girl in this café faded and insignificant.”

I saw a change in his expression, before I could react. It was as crudely abrupt as if he had thrown a switch.

He said to her (she had just come), his voice jarringly offensive by being completely casual.

“Your friend is really beautiful.”

She looked taken aback.

I was reminded of a line from Somerset Maugham’s “The Luncheon”.

But I have had my revenge at last. I do not believe that I am a vindictive (wo)man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the result with complacency.

A ceaseless flow of conversation poured in a droning monotone, rest of the meeting and I kept laughing to myself, awkwardly, feeling very Somerset Maughamly.

Chweet nothings

The wind was frolicking around me like a playful puppy, snuggling in my open hair and blowing my tresses. I was laughing happily at the little girls in my street who were playing curious games of their own invention. I was in a particularly good mood today, like I had been on all the other days of last two months, much to the surprise and suspicion of my mother. I was going to the coffee shop across my street to meet an old friend of mine.

An old man who happened to want to cross the road like me, was waiting alongside. He also happened to think that I’m extremely pretty and that the ‘proud little tilt’ on my head suited me. At least that’s what he told me. I must’ve given him a frighten(ed)ingly contemptuous glance because he laughed very loudly and even told me that he was harmless. Taxicabs full of couples rolled by every minute. A man grinned at a flitting colleague, and she had smiled back at him.

“Did you notice that?”, the flirty old man asked me.

“Well, as a matter of absolute fact, I, as it were, didn’t.” I said curtly. He laughed again and rather loudly.

“You did and you turned pink, my lady”, he said.

I had, actually, even wobbled in my tracks. The sight of couples, especially shy-shy ones, did this to me, now a days, and I, who had begun to weave a rose-tinted romance, lost track of what the old man was saying.

When I finally broke off from the labyrinth of ‘his’ colourful reverie, I heard the old man, and it seemed like he had asked me something and that he was pretty interested in what I had got to say in reply.

“Eh?”, I asked almost suspiciously, now. I was starting to feel that he belonged to the kind of old men/men that believed, every damsel has a love story and that she was only too willing to waive the formalities in return for their ear and advice on matters of her love.

“Did this remind you of him?” he asked, barefacedly.

“I think this is perfectly unbecoming of you, Sir.” I said, irked by his rather cheeky manner and by the restraints of the modern traffic rules. Old men, even normal ones, scare me, anyway, and this one seemed particularly incorrigible.

“No.” I said as if to end the conversation and looked at the large traffic policeman in a way so as to suggest to the old man that it is perfectly foul to converse with a pretty girl at a signal point and that in a space of thirty seconds, I could end his silly fun.

Much to my chagrin, he continued “It did, it did” and somehow the manner in which he said this almost amused me and I smiled.

A little boy had just come, for alms. “Get away,” the old man said. I stopped the boy, ruffled his hair, gave him a twenty rupee note, bought for him a heart-shaped balloon, and two of them for myself.

I waved the balloons at the old man. “It did, it did and thanks for noticing”, I said and I ran off aimlessly, sprightly like in a world of springtime and flowers and laughing brooks, in spite of 8 seconds remaining on the traffic light timer..

Happiness

This kid in my neighbourhood calls up to me in the supermarket.

“Didi, IIT-JEE ke results aa gaye. I did it!” I saw in his misty eyes, the look of a young man who has endured an excruciating struggle, had mortgaged his life for that struggle and has achieved his personal ambition, his highest moral purpose. He was happy. That non-contradictory joy which is like an end in itself!

I met his mother in the morning. I smiled to convey my congratulations. “This is worth living for.’, she said in her emotionally choked voice.

“Achievement is the only ethical and rational principle of all life.”, I said, bowed proudly and went off for running.

The result, for the kid and his mother, does not just mean getting into the best educational institution of the country. It is the spiritual payment in exchange for their consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed efforts and values. It is a concomitant reward for their loyalty to their values, to their judgement and to their life.

Happiness is only true to achievers. There can never be happiness in the dim-flicker of undemanding sensations. Parasites, looters, moochers and thugs can only pretend to be happy. Imagine a man with no achievements. Nothing is possible to him except the terror and guilt of a dirt ball caught in a nightmare universe. There is no greater self-delusion than to imagine that one can be happy being mediocre; it is like sabotaging the function of one’s own consciousness. Only a man with scarcely a shred of self-esteem can take pride in not desiring.

The profound pleasure of a student when he succeeds in an examination, the mad ecstasy of a batsman on his winning stroke, the smirk on the face of a strategic consultant when he sees the productive work of his mind on a client slide, the bright eyes of a baby eager to learn her day’s walking lesson — this is the pure, unadulterated form of happiness and it’s only form.

There can only be achievers and non-achievers. There can only be happiness and sadness. There can only be blacks and whites. The cult of wannabes, happiness pretenders and grays is sham and so are the men who cling on to these middle-of-the-road grooves in a panicky attempt to justify it.

The tiffin box

An hour with Scott Fitzgerald. “Civilization’s going to pieces,” breaks out Tom, a character in the novel, when, suddenly, a lady in my compartment in the local train, frantic with anger and panic, yelled to the passengers, to claim that mysterious tiffin box or have it thrown out. People were becoming uneasy and expressions started to sway and weave, as if cast by a distant flame, some were frightened, some angry, most of them, uncertain and expectant. We, all, watched not the rolling tiffin box, but the precarious balance of peace and the lives of men; we weighed not the fate of the innocent passersby on the road, or passengers on this train, but the unknowable result of unpredictable minds of unthinking men of unlimited power.

If the destroyer wanted suffering, he has succeeded. There it is: in the passengers of this local train, in the streets of Jaipur, in the faces of the nationals, in their whispers, in their fear, in their anger, in their diminishing hope, in their acknowledgement of the fact that this is much more than a moral catastrophe. It is unpatriotic to spread rumours exaggerating the power of the enemy, but, he is becoming stronger..

It is difficult to tell which community is being immolated to feed which community! And does it even matter? There is no way to tell which desolation has been accomplished by the policy makers and which by the undistinguished extremists. There is no way to tell who the cannibals are and who, their victims! Both are alike in fact, as they are in spirit. Both have held that immolation of men is proper, for their own reasons, and both are achieving it. Both claim that their misery is the measure of the other’s sin! Each is devouring the other, screaming to us that there is an unknown evil which is destroying peace.

..The enemy is becoming stronger but let him not forget that it speaks of our strength, much greater strength in refraining, in refraining from pulling the trigger when we are given a gun in our hand and we are hurt seeing millions of our fellow men die each day. It takes courage to strike back, but much greater strength to let go! Let go, this one time!

I still wish to see, in the chaos of the perishing humane relations, hope. Hope for peace. I want to achieve my wish to the letter, to the last bloodstained comma of it!

I know I will. Someday.

One reunion. Two fools.

Removing her coat, she stood looking, taking in the comforting familiarity of the scene, where she would stand against a tree and talk to him for hours. It had been almost eighteen years since they met; small-talk masking and holding at bay the pain of leaving, tears blocking her view as she watched him go. She had been unable to come to terms with the parting, slipping into a shunning silence when words had failed. Many times in these years they had talked, their talks stretched into an endless nowhere; about career, about life, descriptive as though to a child, willing away conflict, the reality, the procession of time.

She picked up her bag and went closer to the tree; crisp brown leaves pirouetted into the corners of the path that led to the tree, the smell of the dried leaves, and the smell of time, the surrounding ground, weed-strewn and poignantly empty. She stopped for a moment, trance-like, and it was all still there, the long gone afternoons on the laboratory steps, still somehow alive, the lazy smell of the coal fire, the songs, the squirrels, the wondrous stories, all echoing down the years, drifting memories, easing her back to a time, before the harsh reality of life had struck, back to those good olde days.

She remembered nothing distinct of the years between them, the years were blurred, like a streak of speed. She was going to meet him today, and here. “This is how things should be”, she thought, “It will be as difficult for him as it is for me”. She laughed contemptuously and easily.

Over the years, she had often thought, suddenly, that there was a word that expressed what she felt for him, but she could not recall it. She, unsuccessfully, groped for a word that hung in her mind as an empty shape. She could neither fill it nor dismiss it.

She walked around the place, and suddenly glanced back at the tree. The tree, in its immovable finality, told her what he meant to her. She winced. She desperately, for this moment, hoped she could tear apart time and re-sew. In the metal tin can, that lay abandoned on the ground, she saw on her face, a faint smile of a lost battle, a battle deliberately lost..

And then he came. She need not have seen herself in the tin can...

It’s the end of the world as we know it (And I Feel Fine)

I threw my arms about in an attempt to get my centre of gravity, my feet and the centre of the earth back in one straight line; to equilibrium. I felt my shoulder blades drawn together, the curve of my neck, and the weight of the blood in my hands. My heart roared. A roar, deep, full throated, not loud or obtrusive but calm and supremely confident as though aware of its power over all that beheld it (or didn’t). It was one of those moments when I actually understood the true and complete meaning of the sensation of belonging. A part of me wanted to run away from there, frightened by the colossal emotion, but there was another part, the one that prevailed, that wanted to just stand there and allow the power to wrap itself around me. The two emotions mixed in a sort of tickling sensation in the pit of my stomach. And I just stood there. Mesmerised.

It was my last examination at College of Engineering, Osmania University. I’d never again walk through these portals in the same capacity as I did today. It is the end of an era.