Then and now...

*Started writing this one fine June afternoon....and sat down to finish it yesterday :). Oh well, procrastination's one of my nicer qualities....



It’d been a regular Sunday so far.

Church in the morning……after staying up reading till 2 a.m.

A quick trip to the local book stalls for the week’s supply.

A leisurely brunch and cuppa coffee at her regular hangout.

And back home by two in the p.m.

Oh well and all that, she thought. This is the way it’s been for a while now. Hard to explain yearning for company, for a trip, for a casual conversation, yet being reluctant to call a buddy or just head out. She puttered around the room, telling herself for the thousandth time that this was the weekend to get the room tidied up. Oh yeah, it is. So’s next weekend. A fleeting moment of amazement when she realized that it was almost July.

What would the rest of the day be like? Sleep? No. Though she eventually will, she knows that. Call a friend? Mebbe later. A quick jaunt to the mall downtown? Perhaps, but the weekend crowd of loud families and clingy couples was the last thing she needed.

Better read a book till I decide.So she stretched out on the bed, keeping the windows wide open to catch the cool breeze.

Ahhhhh..bliss.

Karen Carpenter’s soulful alto rose from the laptop perched on the desk.

Perfect. The only singer she’d ever aspired to sound like. Soon, she was deep into the plot and subplots of the battered spy thriller.

She awoke suddenly, startled by a coolness on her arm. Confused for moment, she saw that the room was much darker now, the curtains flapped wildly, and Karen continued to sing. Make believe, the song name registered somewhere at the back of her mind.

But then is then, and now is now…..

And right now, it was raining…… the sweet, moist scent of the earth was heady alright. As was the cool spray that had woken her up. She could never explain how rain always, unfailingly, triggered off a series of images in her mind.

Of her much younger self stretching her arms out of the window to ‘catch’ the rain. Of running around outside with her cousins in a ferocious Kerala rainstorm, of an era when she could go topless (or bottomless, for that matter) without anybody batting an eyelid. Of praying hard for heavy rain on school nights, so that she could stay in the next day. And then feeling guilty at having her prayers answered, as she watched a street urchin trying to stay dry under the straggly limbs of the nearest tree.

Of more pensive evenings, when a teenager watched the simple beauty of an afternoon shower, and wondered why people and life itself had to be so complicated. Of the bright cleanness of the trees after the rain, of a green so intense it hurt your eye. Of silently crying in the dark a few years later, as she heard the rain pound relentlessly. They’d buried her beloved grandmother that evening, and the thought of the rain pelting that lonely grave, and battering the flowers was almost too much to bear.

Of deliberately prolonging the five minute walk back home from college, if it so much as drizzled. Of watching from her hostel window in another part of the country, as the rains misted the landscape into impressionist masterpieces. Of breathing in the damp, cool air one Easter evening, and wondering if it was just her or if life really was a bitch.

As always, the montage released a sharp, short pang of homesickness. And sadness. A longing to be truly footloose and carefree once again. Secretly, she enjoyed the rain even in the huge metro, despite the whole city turning into a squelchy bog. Despite the ordeal of her commute and the massacred footwear. No sense in spoiling the magic of the moment by thinking of day to day issues……Mundane practicality would rear its ugly head whenever, wherever.

Meanwhile, Karen Carpenter was almost through with her song.

…And now is all that matters, anyhow

I totally agree, she thought, watching as the rain caressed the earth and sang its love songs once again. As it had always done for eons past.

Paralysis by analysis?

Last Sunday evening was just like any other. Yours truly hovered somewhere around the confluence of boredom, inertia, and a growing awareness of yet another weekend slipping by. I flipped through mags and newspapers while my roomie caught up with Jodhaa Akbar on TV. Nothing new to read….. everything seemed to be a rehash of these ‘basic’ tenets :

1. Purple is the new black. Or pink. Or whatever. Every self proclaimed fashion guru is screaming his/her guts out about how anybody with dress sense cannot get enough of this colour. True. I cant get enough of Cadbury’s either.
2. Saif and Kareena are deeply in luuuuvvvv. Kareena says “Main unke bachchon ki maa banna chahti hoon”. Sho-shweet. Incidentally Bebo, some tabloid had already credited you with that line long before you said it. Whatever, lady. So long as I don’t have to see soppy lines in bold type on front pages everyday.
3. The auto industry is headed south. You telling me every other industry’s headed north??
4. Minister X accuses opposition of sowing the seeds of communal tension in the country.
5. Minister Y retorts that X and his party have let the country go to the dogs with their inefficiency. As evidenced by the recent terror attack.
6. Speaking of canines, dogs all over the country are up in arms at comments made by a certain senile Communist who is as mature as a cranky three year old. Canine leaders reaffirm that their community does not require party endorsements to merit human recognition.

Okay, I made up the last one. But dog lovers and humans everywhere are seeing red. And they’re not shouting pro-Marx slogans either.

A week’s gone by since the massacre at Mumbai. The media has dissected every second of the siege, shoved mikes in the face of every traumatized survivor, and made endless collages of a burning Taj, bloody corridors and slain fighters. No doubt it requires a LOT of guts to stay put at ground zero and provide updates, not knowing if a stray bullet’s gonna put a period to your life. Still, I can’t help but think that we’re guilty of overkill this time too. Now, it’s the CCTV footage of the shootout that’s doing the rounds on primetime slots.

Political parties are making the most of every mudslingin’ moment they get. And they’re ab-so-looooot-uh-ly lovin’ it. So much so that one prominent group just couldn’t wait to put out an ad in the paper asking citizens to vote for them if they wanted change. On Day Two of the siege at that. This, and the consequent blame game have finally convinced me that all our netas put together have a collective IQ + EQ in the region of -2500 (rounded).

Fresh opinions and theories have been thrown at my head every day of the past week. Public opinion also seems to follow a trend these days. Atleast the print representatives of the thinking public do.

First it was to point out that our heroes have fallen for the nation’s glory, and that we should not let their sacrifice go in vain. Weep Mumbai, for it’s your defining icon that’s under siege. THE Taj Mahal hotel. SoBo with its old-world charm has finally lost its peaceful aura to terrorist bullets.

Then it was to speculate on the possibility of an insider job. Otherwise, HOW could there have been such a massive intelligence failure?

All Indians everywhere, look seaward…..The very route used to fuel the communal riots of the early ‘90’s has been used again. Such audacity! Bull. If we couldn’t find the time to do anything in 15 years, then we had it coming.

Parallels, parallels everywhere. My…what a tangled web we weave.

India’s 9/11. Why we have to draw parallels with the US for every damn thing still mystifies me.

The NSG took only two hours to reach the Maldives when a coup started. Why nine within India? Buddy, if I knew that I would also tell you why we let off Union Carbide with nothing more than a rap on the knuckles for virtual genocide 24 years ago.

Angry declarations now. The celebrated Mumbaikar resilience may be finally showing signs of wear. Enough, we say!

The intellectual elite of the country scoff at the peace marches and candlelight vigils. This won’t get you anywhere, they smirk.

The latest question doing the rounds is why there was no coverage of the massacre at VT, no mention of thirty innocents who lost their lives.

Finally, the wheels have turned full circle.

How come Mumbai is finally demanding action?

Does chalta hai, yeh sab hota hai hold only for the aam aadmi? So, it hurts when the elite are hit in their watering holes eh??

And WHEN did the Taj become an icon of Mumbai?? The crowded trains of Mumbai define the spirit of the city better. Therefore, VT is a more appropriate choice of icon.

This country will never cease to amaze me.

In the meantime, I’m gonna go and light a candle for the dead at the makeshift shrine in the corner of my street. A shrine complete with a garishly done collage of pics of the slain top cops.

I’m no Socrates-meets-Einstein-meets-Gandhi hybrid, but I still maintain that some action, even of solidarity, is way WAAAYYY better than no action at all.

To cut a long story short, we Indians are back to doing what we do best. Pointing fingers.

Keep up the rigmarole people, and pretty soon we’ll have a nation that is more than willing to point the middle digit at the powers that be.

And then twiddle its billion times two thumbs till terror, tragedy and apathy meet and snuff out a hundred times something more innocent lives.

Yet again.

Souls and Raindrops*

7:44 A.M.

The green electronic display flickered, blinked and changed as she watched.

7:45 A.M.

The wind kicked up a chocolate wrapper and a dirty scrap of newspaper into a slow pirouette around her feet. She caught the flyaway end of her dupatta and wrapped it around her handbag, clutching both closer to her body. A gingerly placed step to the left, a little hop to the front, and she was past the puddle of water. Her pace quickened against the wet stone platform worn smooth by decades of rushing feet. Soon, she was just another blur of movement in a teeming, seething mass of commuters, under a sloping, leaky station roof, under a fast-greying sky.

He crouched in a filth-ridden corner of the stairs leading to the second platform. The corrugated sheet of the roof didn’t reach far enough to shelter him completely. A slow trickle of water crept down the side of the stairway into a splash of Coke from somebody’s carelessly thrown plastic cup. The trickle swirled, widened and welled up, till it finally broke free into the grooves between the smooth stone slabs and meandered into a puddle at his feet. It didn’t seem to bother him.

A rusty can with traces of its once blue wrapper sat at his feet. A faint gleam inside it told of some earlier passer-by’s generosity. His gnarled, dirty hands stretched out and away from him in that timeless petition for help, sympathy and most of all, money. Tangled, matted locks of greasy grey hair hung down the sides of his face that bent abjectly over his hands. A dull pair of eyes with yellowed whites and age-clouded irises stared vacantly, resignedly, at the ground in front of him. A blur of feet of all sizes and shapes, covered and bare, clattered around him as the damp wind whipped at his ragged shirt, bringing his shrivelled frame into sharper relief.

She stole a quick glance at her watch. Two minutes left for the next train. She could catch it if she hurried down the stairs to Platform 2 fast enough. She nearly ran past the brown, ragged, smelly isle of stillness on the stairway. Oh, she’d seen him before. No words of supplication from this one. No invoking curses or abusing ancestors if you passed him by. Even if he did, who had the time to listen? A slight raise of his hands, a barely perceptible movement as he leaned forward…this was all the indication one had to realise that a fellow being was seeking charity.

Something made her stop and unzip her bag. Sympathy? Sorrow? Guilt? All three perhaps? She dug deep into the recesses of her purse while being rudely jostled aside and sworn at by other frazzled commuters. Never mind. She dropped a couple of coins into his outstretched palms and raced down the stairs, just as the train pulled onto the platform. A few seconds later she’d pushed, shoved and clawed her way into the heart of a bogey filled with sweaty, ill-tempered women.

A little raindrop left its home and made its way down to earth. Falling down, falling fast. Past other drop-laden clouds, and layers of dust and fumes. Down, further down, past thirty-storeyed buildings, past shabby tenements stacked on a wasteland slope, dodging the outstretched limbs of a thirsty tree. Whipped and tossed around by a steady wind, it finally lay down to rest in a star-shaped spatter atop a train that was slowly pulling out of a suburban station. Soon the raindrop was joined by millions of its brothers who’d decided to follow suit. Together they drummed in time to the rhythm of the train, of the people moving, of the vast metropolis, of life itself.

If she could’ve looked back at the stairs, she would’ve seen him sitting in his corner, a huddled mass of assorted rags. She hadn’t realized that alms, one meal a day and an occasional scrap of sympathy thrown his way were no longer the focus of this man’s existence.

She couldn’t have possibly known that for the past few hours, the man himself had ceased to exist.

*Note: The title has been borrowed from that of a poem by Sidney Lanier.