Farewell

There had been a lot of hugging. And laughing and crying and then it was time to go eat. Dinner had commenced in a haze of alcohol, refusing stubbornly to ebb away. There had been, I remember some discussion on whether the restaurant would be open or not and why friends missed you and whether or not we had had fun. As it turns out, the restaurant was open and we staggered into the lift and up to the roof before the question of fun had been settled.

I think we were the only people there so late on the evening. At any rate there can’t have been too many more. And we flicked through the menu trying to recreate what had been our first meal together in the city, all those months ago. There were some rueful mutters over how we couldn’t have the same table we sat at that day. But this was close enough. Yes, that potato thing stuffed with cottage cheese and the Bhindi Amchuri and that platter with the different kinds of roti, hmm, indeed. And there was laughing about times that had passed and sniggering at photographs and truant messages sent from the phone of a neighbour so conveniently oblivious of it all. There was, directed at me, a solemn urging against a change of residence unless totally essential. An exception regarding addresses in Pennsylvania was raised and accepted.

“Lemon…”

“It’s pronounced LeNNon”

“Lemon…”

“Aah what the hell! You know what the four of them together were called, good enough”

I have a feeling someone’s going to teach her kids the wrong name just to have that conversation all over again.

There might have been talk of coppersmiths, my music notes and gold and cold medicine. And then the food materialised, as if by magic. The rotis were too hard and the potatoes too spicy, but such petty details could be ignored couldn’t they?

I love Indira Nagar so late at night. I loved Indira Nagar so late that night.

Actually it had little to do with the time and nothing to do with the place. It all felt so warm and pleasant and nice.

When you stroll down an empty city street so late , with the shutters down and the traffic reduced to the odd straggling engine on wheels purring quietly away by one side, and you see a coffee place that’s still open and serving, you go inside. And when the coffee place has Jefferson Airplane telling you of times when the truth is found to be lies, you know this really is an evening for the records. And there was more talk including some of people not having been out of home so late at night. Ever.

I borrowed a phone to call home and tell mom that I was on my way and that my battery had died.

And as always, we haggled with the driver before agreeing upon an obscenely high price and getting into the rick that would take us home. It might have been chilly. And stray talk floated around, hollow like those boxes waiting to be packed. And there were tepid stares out at the world passing so rapidly by. The coffee was cold. I drained my cup before stacking it on Asmi’s. And we passed, one last time, those dubiously lit lanes, leading into darkness and then on to nowhere, before coming to a halt under the beaming neon grin of the pizza place. Aah, sanity, civilisation, and melted mozzarella. There was a hug to the left and a shy lean towards another on the right, before the customary farewell message and the ride on home. It was cold. And late. And with the morrow, life would go on as usual.

No mom, I did not remember to ask for your microwave box. Let them keep it. Not like it’s a big deal.

Sometimes, still

It’s still not worth it. The effort, the hours of labour, of harbouring expectation and hope… when all the world has someone better to care for, when those hollow slogans echo in the chasm that’s grown around you, highlighting more starkly all that you despise about yourself, you know that actually, really, deep down, you don’t matter. And there’s that little blot of pity spreading grudgingly towards you until they don’t have to play along any more. There are better things to do, better conversations to have, better people to have them with. And your dearest fondest little achievements that finally make you so proud are the clueless mumblings of a mind that’s just that hopelessly lost in the world.

That’s misery.

Happiness

He had dreams. Now they were just shapes and noises sneering at him,  rubbing his face in his failure. Ideas, images and thoughts he’d fed off for years –  the sustenance they brought, the meaning they gave to his plodding through life. Now they were just jagged ruins of foolish fancy, lingering on to remind him even more starkly of their absurdity – slashing to shreds the fabric that he had spun from the air around him, and that he had, after years of silent observation dared to call his life.

Why did he even try?

Happiness is a warm gun; and the splatter of red on the wall.

Prophecy

As a child she used to play a little game with herself. As she spooned honey over the bananas she was having for dessert, she tried to guess which way it would run off the inclined surfaces of the cut fruit. It wasn’t easy. She actually got it wrong a few times. Every choice seemed so conceivable, yet nothing seemed certain. And when it actually happened, the way it happened seemed so simple, so natural. All those other options suddenly seemed foolish. And she would chuckle to herself, that little waltz with speculation reminding her even more starkly of her immense power. She didn’t need to guess. She could see it all, when she chose to.

Now, two decades on, she still enjoyed playing a twisted version of her little game with those who came begging her for a little glimpse of what lay ahead. Mostly they were the helpless, loose sort, who didn’t know where they were going. They just clung on to that little piece of drift wood, they called the present, as they were buffeted from all around by the waves on the high seas of time. They needed to know if there was any land on the horizon, anywhere to get, any point to it all. Usually there wasn’t, maybe because they didn’t have the will to try hard enough. But that was speculation. She didn’t speculate. Why should she, when she didn’t need to. She just knew what lay ahead, and told it as it was. Except for the little bit of amusement she squeezed in for herself.

She tried to guess how they would react to her prophecies. And she didn’t like being wrong. She liked to scorn at them, to beat them at a game she didn’t even need to play. Just for the fun of it. Experience had taught her that if she dallied long enough, and the prophecy was dark enough, it would usually leave the victim crushed – a fairly reliable guess.

She, knew. They, wanted to. It really was too easy, too one- sided, just as she liked it.

She looked up over the table at the young man before her; how absent he seemed, how fidgety, how hopeless. She didn’t know him. But however he was, this wasn’t it. His eyes darted every which way, first resting on one object, then another, before flitting on to the third and then returning to re-examine some detail of the first that had, in hindsight, caught his attention. His hands and fingers kept moving, wiping his mouth, rubbing his eyes, tugging at his earlobes, twisting around each other as he squirmed in his chair. And when he spoke, she saw his lined, haggard face and his sunken eyes that seemed always to focus at a point some eight inches behind the join of her eyebrows. And how the skin around his eyes crinkled as his lips curled to one side in that molestation of a smile. He wasn’t there. And he wouldn’t be, for a while. Anyway, he’d already paid up, and he still had feelings she could toy with.

 How foolish, how pathetic, how desperate he looked, begging for the end. Miserable wretch! Now she knew what lay ahead of him.

And what was, would be. He’d asked for it. May it amuse her while she was at it. She looked up at his eyes, eager for the verdict, yet insensitive to it, hopeless for its content, yet relieved at its existence. Yes, the honey would flow the way she guessed. She tapped her ringed fingers on the walls of her wineglass before smirking one last time at him.

“It will, indeed, shatter him”, she chanced, before finishing him.

Grey

(Charlie’s Note: Another one from Bombay )

When all the world was too much of a pain, you took the nearest train and went to Marine Drive.

He always did; every so often. More so in recent times, as he did today. And he sat on the low concrete wall, facing the sea – that swirling, smelly, grimy mass of saltwater, churning and crashing against the rocks. And the wind blew in his face, ruffling his hair, heavy with the moisture of coming rain clouds. It didn’t bother him too much now, the billowing wind. His collars didn’t have to be stiff any more nor his hair combed.  And his stick of tobacco was alive and glowing and serving him well. Soon, he would be sick and giddy with the fumes of new fancy. But for the moment, he was content to suck and wait for it to smother the pain he felt.

The pain of furrowed brows and moody silence built on foolishness, stupid assumption and unheeded advice. How could he ever have thought it would happen to him? The very idea was so absurd, so utterly ridiculous! Him! Of all the people! Hadn’t he ever looked in a bloody mirror!

 The shame stung him such, that he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it, even to the air around. Here, amidst Bombay’s lovers, joggers and losers, it wasn’t hard to find which he belonged to. He loved her, through the strangling lump in his throat. He loved her with all his heart, and through the tears that came streaming down. So much! So much, he loved her, as he watched them drip off his chin onto the rocks below. He loved her.

And that he did, mattered about as much as the little grey smudge he left on the pavement as he stubbed his cigarette out.

When all the world was too much of a pain, you took the nearest train and went to Marine Drive. And you cried yourself to solace in the privacy of the throng.

Five bucks for the cigarette, five more for the greasy vada-pav dinner and the long ride back to the grind, and the prospect of another morning of inconsequence. He even had a mirthless coin for the beggar’s bowl, hearing it tinkle miserably to a halt as he walked down the lane home.

Random

(Charlie’s Note: This post will probably be completely inconsequential to your life, so if you have something better to do, you should do it.)

1971 was the awesomest year in the history of rock music. The following albums were released that year:

1)      Who’s Next (The Who)

2)      Led Zeppelin IV (Led Zeppelin)

3)      Pearl (Janis Joplin)

4)      L.A. Woman (The Doors)

5)      Paranoid (Black Sabbath)

6)      Aqualung (Jethro Tull)

7)      Sticky Fingers (The Rolling Stones)

 

The year also saw the release of “Meddle” by Pink Floyd, which features “Echoes”, my favourite Floyd song of all time. 

Vignette : A vignette is a snapshot in words. It’s different from flash fiction because you’re not aiming to tell a story. The vignette focuses on one aspect, mood, character, setting or object.

What I write is apparently a legitimate form of writing. I am no longer a literary bastard. Yay! I can breathe again. I can also stop calling what I write “thingies” or “pieces”. They’re vignettes.

Just Another Day

[Charlie's Note: For Amma ]

Nobody ever forgot that stairway, that dark, narrow passage with its chipped, uneven steps of stone. It was ancient, and almost inevitably, you tripped over on your way to the top. And you stretched and lunged for the banister and leaned heavily on the crumbling, plastered surface before getting your breath back and hurrying on up the rest of the stairs. And you ran your hand along the bare wooden railing in silent appreciation, feeling its surface, smoothened and pockmarked with age, punctuated with the heavy cast iron nuts of middle class Bombay. And you parted ways just before turning away down the first floor corridor.

They all had to walk up those stairs, the sick, the dying, the pregnant. Sometimes, the bai helped you up. Sometimes, when you were too sick, you were carried up. But mostly, you trudged up on your own, hammered into independence by the city’s remorseless pragmatism. And you waited your turn on the bright blue bench in the corridor, that gleaming benevolence of a faceless stranger clashing horribly with the peeling yellow walls around.  And the solitary doctor examined her patients behind the green curtain, just like her mentor before her had done, all those years ago, when your mother gave birth to you in the labour room tucked away around the corner.

And there was the ten bed ward and the two “special” rooms and the operation theatre all visible amidst the shadows of the muffled, watery sunlight, nudging its way through the labyrinthine mess of Worli’s residential heart. And you sat, and waited, listening to the traffic and the shutters of the shops and the milkman and mothers screaming to their children and the nurses screaming to the mothers and the babies screaming to the world at large.

“7:15 am”, the old clerk recorded, “Male”. And he handed over that slender certificate of existence to the nurse as another hurried by carrying those huge white sheets, sterilized in vats of boiling water before being laid out to dry among the soggy, gurgling pigeons, to wrap the baby in. And there was food for the mother and congratulations for the family and the folded handkerchief passed quietly towards the silent tear of joy. And everyone stopped to say a little prayer for the little one before moving on with their lives.

And cardamom from someone’s sheera breakfast below mingled with disinfectant and agarbattis and the clerk leaned back on his creaky chair. Another day, another life, another cup of chai.  He sniffed morosely. August was here.

Weird Typoholic Guy

There’s this weird American guy who I share a wall with, the cubicle wala wall…he’s always typing. Super duper fast, all the time! It completely freaks me out!

 Here I am sitting a my desk pretending to work and people around me keep running around talking about incredibly technical stuff, taking telephonic inerviews for job offers and then there’s weird typing guy who’s like a workaholic and everyone else who is actually doing something productive while I’m sucking up oxygen and drinking free coffee.

 I don’t want to turn into weird typoholic guy.

 He literally lives in the damn office. He’s there, typing when I get in each morning. He’s there, typing when I leave. He never seems to have lunch, he just types. He even uses the gym shower to bathe each morning.

Look, there he goes. With that weird orange and white striped beach towel across his shoulder. And he never takes more than like, 5 minutes. Ever.

Aaaaaaaaand back he comes. For God’s sake if only he dressed up before walking back to his cubicle! No, he’s all drippy and pink and wearing nothing but a damn towel around his waist. Thank God, he’s finally sitting down in his cubicle. Out of sight. And I can smell the bloody shampoo the guy uses. Crap! What is this place? And yes, he’s typing again.

And now he’s stopped. And he’s standing up again. And he’s gone down. And OH MY GOD! Those are his legs protruding off the top of the wall, and more of his legs and higher, the guy’s fucking standing on his hands and he’s wearing nothing but his towel and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! I need to puke.

 “We like to encourage our employees to bring a little bit of themselves into the workplace, it adds a more personal touch to the air don’t you think?”

 *Rapid typing noises*

The Way It Is

(Charlie’s Note: “The Way It Is” is the first collaborative piece that I have put up on this space. Thank you very much, Neha for joining in the effort. It’s been an awesome experience.

This is also considerably longer and more involved than anything else I’ve put up before. Please do take your time over it. My recommendation, print the pdf out back to back, settle down, put your feet up and chew over it.

(Click on the big blue “The Way It Is” above to download the file)

And it has a bit of poetry too, at the end. Enjoy the post! )

All You Need Is A Whole Lotta Love

(Charlie’s Note: LOL)

 

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.

You need coolin, baby, Im not foolin,

 Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.

Im gonna send you back to schoolin,

Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game

It’s easy.

Way down inside honey, you need it,

There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.

Im gonna give you my love,

No one you can save that can’t be saved.

Im gonna give you my love,

Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you

in time – It’s easy.

Wanna whole lotta love?

Wanna whole lotta love?

 

All you need is love,

Im gonna give you my love,

all you need is love,

Im gonna give you my love,

All you need is love, love,

Im gonna give you every inch of my love,

love is all you need.

Yeah! all right! lets go!