Fiction

The door clicked open, and yellow light from the hallway flooded in. With a start, she realized that she had been sitting in the dark for the past couple of hours, staring at the hypnotic starlight outside. The moon's rays slanted in through the French windows. Had she moved from the sofa all day? She couldn't remember.

His dark shape blocked out the light. She saw his arm reaching for the switch, and instantly put up her arms to block out the harsh light. She heard a click. And then another, a moment later. Cautiously peering past her arm, she saw that he had switched off the light again. The door clicked shut behind him. The renewed darkness felt cool and welcome on her eyes.

His footsteps sounded in the dark emptiness of the huge room - cautious steps, navigating the furniture. Soon, he was visible by the moonlight. Light coloured trousers and a blue-grey shirt. He went to the window and stared outside silently for a while. She kept her eyes on him, dispassionately taking in his slim form.

He turned and came back to her. Sat beside her on the sofa. Put his arm around her. Caressed her hair. She turned to him, and crushed her face against the crisp blue cotton of his shirt. Breathing in, she smelled the coolness of expensive airconditioning. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I forgot again." Once again, she had left the food untouched. Once again, she had forgotten to switch on the lights at dusk. Once again, she had not stepped outside.

"It's alright," he said. "It'll take time." She sighed, and snuggled closer to him. He hugged her tighter, as if he wanted her to melt into him. And so they sat there in the darkness, the woman who had forgotten how to live, and the man who was waiting for her to remember again.

Rain in XL

How I shall miss Jamshedpur weather. I must have said this many times on this blog before, but I just can't get over it, so I'll just say it again - it rains in Jamshedpur all the freakin' time! It's amazing. And it makes for excellent moods, despite quizzes and submissions.

Yesterday, for example. I came out of the hostel in the morning, on my way to class. The wind riffled through my salwar-kameez and tried to steal my dupatta. I had to shield my face and my hair against the leaves flying about. But soon enough, I gave up and just raised my face to the wind, enjoying the way it tickled my face.

Then, in the afternoon, the sky was overcast again. The mess was giving out samosas with tea, and Anu and I brought our plates out and sat on the hostel steps. The trees were waving, and there was a wind ruffling our hair. We discussed our Kerala plans for September, and talked about everything we wanted to do. It was brilliant.

And then it started raining. We moved off the steps and onto the veranda, and sat there and watched the rain. It was more of a downpour than a drizzle - something that you rarely see in Jamshedpur. People were running to and fro, shielding themselves with books. The sports guys coming back from the field were the only exceptions. It was nice sitting there in the protection of the veranda, hugging our knees, eating our hot samosas and being sprinkled with cool water droplets.

And then, today. I spent a couple of hours in the library in the afternoon, studying. And then came out at 4:55 exactly, because I had a meeting at five. And oh, the weather - it was gorgeous. The thing about the XL campus, you see, is its trees. Other campuses may have more trees and more greenery, but there is this.. quality about the very trees in XL. They are simply gorgeous. You walk through the campus, and you'll be dazzled by their beauty.

There is a path leading from the acad building to Bodhi Tree. It borders JLT and the admin building, and is lined by trees on both sides. And whenever I walk this path in the daylight, on my way to the library or the sports field or outside campus, I get amazed by the sheer beauty of the trees - every single time. There is this sparkly green-ness to them that is so breathtaking. They wave in the wind, and the colours change, a thousand shades of green, all around me.

At around dusk, I was sitting with V on JLT. Again, under an overcast sky, with a bit of a drizzle. The drizzle suddenly became stronger for a while, and then dwindled down again. It left the whole of the lawn full of water drops, which caught the fluorescent light from the big lamp on top of the hostel, and sparkled like a carpet made of a million diamonds.

And I looked at the sight, and wished I could take mental pictures, and sighed, and got frustrated, and burst out with, "V! Do you realize that we won't be here this time next year?" V got shocked by my sudden outburst, I think, and he said, "Arre.. That's a long time away, baba.." "No, you don't get it!" I said, even more frustrated. I didn't bother to explain more, but I had suddenly realized that I would see no more June's or July's here. It made me profoundly sad in a way I can't explain.

"You know," V said after a while, "We think that we'll never have as much fun during the rest of our lives as we had here, and that way, the rest of our lives actually does get ruined." Or, well, words to that effect.

So yes, the profoundest statement of the evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is all about the self-fulfilling prophecy. I shall now look forward to years of being bound to the desk, and of office politics, and loving Fridays and hating Mondays. Yay.

I can feel the time slipping through my fingers. Less than seven months now.

My Room

Red curtains. A red lamp casting yellow light. A red chair. Bedsheets with red design on them. A laptop that has forgotten the last time it was shut down. A teddy bear that is slowly asphyxiating inside its cover because its owner thinks it would be too girly to take it out. A white piece of thermocol with some twenty pairs of earrings hung on it. A cupboard containing way too many clothes. A basketball in the corner. Clothes chucked here and there. Course books that have clearly never been opened. A folded up rajai and two red cushions pretending that they form a cool floor-seating-type thing.

The view outside is of the ugly, lichen-laden back of the cafeteria - which is why she never opens her curtains. But sometimes, when it's just about to rain, she opens the curtains and sits at the corner of the bed. She loves the sight of the buildings framed in black clouds. She wishes she could burn that picture onto her mind - try as she might, she can't take a photo that quite captures the magic of that moment.

There's music perpetually on - music that none of her neighbours appreciate. English music - Coldplay, Blue October, Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Fleetwood Mac - Hindi music, Malayalam music, Tamil music. Eclectic? Nope - 'wannabe' is more like it.

I like this room - it's my sanctuary.

Staring at the Sun

A rooftop party in the early morning. I land up slightly late, but earlier than the crowd. I sit a little bit apart, because I don't feel like participating in the conversation. I stare at the horizon, and it is beautiful. There is the Tata complex in the distance. It is ugly by day - all metal and towers and soot-black and burnt-brown. But now it is beautiful. Orange. The entire sky is orange. There are flickering lights, dancing cheerfully in the distance. The fumes coming out of the towers are lit up by the orange lights.

That orange complex has been responsible for so much in India. Right now, it looks ghostly and far away and superior - like something from another world or another time, perhaps. I feel like I'm peering through a hole into another Universe. Surely, there must be great and mysterious things going on in there, things beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals.

Sometimes, there is a blaze of orange from one of the towers. It lights up the entire sky, like sunrise. The hostels get framed in orange for a while. And all of us, sitting in front of the night canteen or out on a walk just for the heck of it, we all gasp at it, at the beauty of it, the sheer power of it. And then it dies down, and we get on with our ordinary lives, which seem a little bit dimmer somehow.

Gurgaon

I really must dedicate a post to Gurgaon. Specifically, to ranting about Gurgaon.

I live in Delhi - South Delhi, to be precise. Every day, I travel one hour or so to reach my office in Gurgaon. I go with a friend of mine. Every morning, we have two ways of getting to office - the National Highway 8, or the Mehrauli-Gurgaon road. Pretty much every day, we take the swanky new NH-8, even though it is longer and has a toll booth. You see, the Delhi Metro is being extended to Gurgaon along the Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road. As a consequence of which, the traffic has been cut down to two lanes in each direction. And given the density of traffic at rush hour each morning, two lanes are definitely not enough.

My first week in Gurgaon, I couldn't stop bitching about the place. It is the only city I have been to so far in my life that has no public transportation system!! Getting to Gurgaon is easy enough even if you don't have your own car - you can either take one of the DTC buses that ply regularly between Delhi and Gurgaon, or you can take a cab. But once you get there, what do you do? The entire city has about 60-70 autos - none of which are ever to be found, of course. If you want to go anywhere, you take either a riksha or a tempo. If the journey is too long and you don't have your own transportation, then you better hire a cab. The roads of the city seem completely haphazard. They are dangerous, too. They lack signboards, they lack pavements. They are just rolls of solid tar laid out between buildings.

Everywhere you look, there is construction happening; big ugly buildings coming up on all sides. Every day, my friend takes the right turn from NH-8 at the boat building (anybody who has been to Gurgaon will know which building I am talking about) and my heart sinks instantly. After the mostly smooth travel on the highway (navigating between, admittedly, murderous taxi drivers in Sumo's and Innova's and Qualises) we enter a road with no pavement, unfenced parking lots on either side and (worst of all) monstrous high-rises lining the road. These buildings are covered in glass; they reflect everything around them and show nothing of their insides. Little signboards on their vast exteriors announce mysterious company names. They look down upon us as we get stuck in the usual morning mess of honking vehicles.

I love Delhi. I love its greenery, I love the roundabouts, I love the personality of the city.

And Gurgaon is the exact opposite of everything Delhi is. It is hard to describe what is so hateful about it. Dust swirls around in the tremendous heat of the afternoon sun. The road-side trees, when they are to be found, are lonely and yellow; they give no shade. Everywhere you look, you find man-made things - pollution-spewing vehicles, anonymous buildings, the half-done Metro. Nobody loves this city enough to take care of it.

Gurgaon has no middle class. Either you have the rich people living in tall shaky buildings, with their long cars and their arrogance; or you have the poor people struggling to cling on in the rich people's wake - as their housemaids or riksha-wallahs or neighbourhood vegetable-vendors.

When you travel around, you get the sense of a city without a heart. A city that grew up without going through childhood or adolescence. A city that didn't get the chance to explore itself and decide what it wanted to be. A city that sold itself to glass-fronted office buildings and multiplex malls and twenty-story flats. A city without a culture, a city without an identity.

Kerala

For anyone who loves Kerala - the rain, the people, the green fields, the elephants, the poorams, those little moments from other lives glimpsed for a few seconds. Oh, Kerala rain - how I miss you.

(Not all the pics are worth it, but most are.)



My Public Shoebox

Book Tag

Saw this book tag over at DC's.

A book that made you laugh: Eats, Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Strauss. I remember people in Calcutta airport looking at me rather strangely as I laughed out aloud at periodic intervals.

A book that made you cry: The ending of Gone With The Wind.

A book that scared you: Not a book, but a story - Stephen King's 1408. And I'm too scared to watch the movie.

A book that disgusted you: Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. I haven't finished it, and don't plan to.

A book you loved in elementary school: There was this Malayalam book called Katha Parayunna Nighandu - a huuuuuge book full of illustrated stories from Hindu mythology. It was a highly age-inappropriate book for me to read - the things these supposed Gods got up to, I tell you.

A book you loved in middle school or junior high school: To Kill a Mockingbird. Not least because the copy I read was the gift my mother gave my father for their first wedding anniversary. Also, The Diary of Anne Frank.

A book you loved in high school: Stephen King's On Writing.

A book you loved in college: American Gods.

A book that challenged your identity: On Writing. King made me actually wonder what I was doing when I should be reading and writing like there was no tomorrow. Alas, that phase, too, passed.

A series that you love: The Five Find-outers - I was head over heels in love with Fatty during my pre-teens. I can still read any of the fifteen Find-outers books. Anyone else who has read the Mystery series? With Snubby and Loony and Barney and Miranda?

Your favorite horror book: Stephen King is the only horror writer I've read, so one of his, I suppose.

Your favorite science fiction book: Not really into sci-fi.

Your favorite fantasy: American Gods. Neil Gaiman totally redefined the way I thought of fantasy.

Your favorite mystery: I used to be really into mystery books - Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell, Colin Dexter. Particularly loved the latter's wit.

Your favorite biography: I have a mental block against biographies, so - none.

Your favorite "coming of age" book: Vernon God Little. Also The Diary of Anne Frank, again.

Your favorite classic: Hehe - Pride and Prejudice! :)

Your favorite romance book: See above. And since DC mentions M&B's, there was this really old one of my mother's that I used to fish out and read whenever I went to my grandmother's house. It was called Logan's Lake/Island. Yummm. (By the way, M& B's make such nice reads. Except that you get depressed after you read them.)

Whoever sees this tag and likes it may do it.