The Afternoon

I'm lying on my bed, half-leaning against a pillow. A book lies by my side, face down, flaps open like a wounded bird. The fan zooms round and round in the air above me. I'm staring out of the window through the parted curtains.

The wind is heavy today. It rushes in through the hapless windows, it bangs shut the open doors. It shoves the newspapers to the floor, it plays with clothes and hair. It sings its way through the entire house, its rhythm echoed by the trees outside, and finally exits through the western windows.

My door is bolted, my windows face west. Still, the wind decides to peek into my room. It wakes me from my half-doze, and it beckons me towards the window. I go to it obediently.

Coconut trees waving their tentacles about in an elaborate dance. Roofs of terracotta brown and mouldy green. The acidic white of a tall building far away. Behind these and framing them, a sky of washed-out blue. The whole scene bathed in sunlight so golden that the eyes want to squeeze themselves tight for safety.

Have you ever heard the rushing noise that wind makes in a forest? It's a scary sound. The air riffling through millions of leaves, passing through them like an army of ghosts through a graveyard. One's eyes start up in fear, wondering what unearthly being could make such a noise. And the only sight all around is that of the leaves screaming in the wind, trying to cling on to their branches.

The noise I can hear now is similar. The rushing wind and the screaming leaves and the creaking trees. A metal sheet covering one of the roofs has gotten loose. Every so often, it lifts up and goes crack-crack at the wind, like a timid dog barking in vain at a stranger.

I'm standing in the safety of my house behind a grilled window. Yet, watching this fierce struggle of nature, I have pleasant goosebumps to my arms. It's a life-and-death battle out there.

The Thirunelly Temple

The Thirunelly Bhagavathy's abode is on top of a hill in the middle of a thick jungle. Tall stone steps lead up to the temple. Surrounding it on all sides are high mountains covered in green. The devout have to undertake a pilgrimage deep into the unspoilt jungle and up the hill in order to get a glimpse of the goddess.

Of course, the blue metallic road and the spanking new rest-house right in front of the temple makes everything that much easier. The Bhagavathy has become quite popular, apparently. Tourist buses and shiny white SUVs line the route up the hill. Our driver, having confidently started up the road, is forced to give up half-way because of the traffic jam in the middle of the jungle.

When my parents last came here ten years ago, the road was full of potholes, and the rest-house was some poor architecture student's third-year project. Nor was the goddess so sought after. They parked right in front of the temple - hard to imagine now. Of course, there were very few SUVs in India back then.

The number of visitors might have multiplied in the last decade, but when we climb up the stone steps, we discover that the temple itself is much as it has always been. Facing us is a low white washed building with a moss-covered tiled roof. Inside it resides the Bhagavathy in all her silk-clad splendour. The rolling green slopes of the surrounding mountains draw the eye upwards in awe. The stone floor is cool and comforting underfoot. A new gopuram is under construction, but that is almost the only change.

Apart from the people, of course. Somehow, we have managed to get there early enough to escape the rush hour. When we come out of the inner building, there is a huge queue outside, waiting to go in. Having paid for our archanas and pushpabhishekams and Bhagavathy-alone-knows-what-else, we leave the Bhagavathy to her masses.

My parents now want to visit the Papanasham, where my grandfather bali ceremony was done. The path to it leads off the main temple complex through thick jungle, down another bunch of stone steps. Green trees line the path, and birds call constantly in the gloom of the woods. Unfortunately, the poor traveller, having devoutly left her footwear at the temple entrance, has only rocks to step on most of the time.

And when the Papanasham is reached - oh, what a sight! The once-gushing stream has been reduced to a few pools of dirty water. Groups of recently bereaved people sit amidst the rocks on the stream bed and try to rescue the souls of their beloveds . A Brahmin priest with a big potbelly presides over each group. Depressing. Apparently, the water shortage is only partly because of the summer - people higher up the slopes draw water from the stream for domestic use.

We return along the same metallic road down the hill and towards our guest house. Signboards by the roadside speak of many 'resorts' on either side - for the spoilt city-people to experience the unspoilt jungle, perhaps. All along the way, tall bamboo groves sigh in the wind like lonely giants. I look out at the greenery with unseeing eyes and think about how nice places always get lost to modernity.

Tirunelli Temple, Wayanad, Northern Kerala. About 5 hours from Bangalore.

Moving On

I guess all my non-XL readers must be sick of my XL-related posts by now, but this was something that I wrote for the batch yearbook. I don't know if it will get chosen or not, but I think it's one of my best pieces of writing ever. Just had to post it here.

I walk out of my room, and the corridor is dark and empty. The rooms are all padlocked. I call out, and there is no response - no reassuring sounds from the mess, no music from the corridor across the hall, no call of voices from upstairs. Just a tremendous oppressive silence. There's something wrong, surely.

I walk out on to the veranda of GH3. The morning sunshine is warm and yellow. The birds are calling, the greenery is fresh and bright, the wind is rushing through the trees. But there's something wrong. I suddenly realize what has happened - everybody is gone. All my friends, they've left - never to return again.

I look back at my hostel, and it seems an empty shell. There is no life. The windows are closed and shuttered - the curtains don't twitch in the wind. No music blares out from the rooms. My beloved hostel, and yet not. I leave it behind and walk on. The learning center lies deserted on my left, but I ignore it and move towards JLT.

The sight of the empty JLT and the dark windows of GH1 makes my heart ache. But my spirits lift as I walk between the twin lines of trees. Their towering heads raise my eyes upwards in awe.  The wind whistles through the long leaves and soothes my pain. I sit under BodhiTree, and I feel as if I am in the lap of history. So many people must have sat under this very tree and dreamt of their futures. So many must have talked and laughed and sung songs and been happy here.

GH1 is cool and dark after the sunshine outside. I walk up to the first floor, the IR corridor. I remember how the entire corridor used to empty out five minutes before class, people pouring out of the rooms in a stream of rushing legs and flailing arms. I walk the entire length of the corridor, and run my hand over each of the doors, remembering who had lived where. I smile thinking of each of them, their idiosyncracies, the little stories about them.

The common room is warm and yellow in the sunlight. Dust motes float here and there. I think of all the avatars I have seen this place in - the drunkenness of pulsating lights, the emptiness of the grey dawn, the excitement of MAXI Bazaar, the seriousness of project meetings, the fun of TT matches. It makes my heart ache so much with loss that I just turn back and leave.

Outside, the sunlight seems dimmer, somehow. Dry leaves scrunch underfoot. The bougainvillea in front of the library mocks me with its brightness. Beyond it, the faculty quarters seem dark and promising, inviting me to take a walk under those trees, as I have done countless times before. But what's the point, when all my walking partners have left me?

I go to the sports field. The empty basketball court waits poignantly for the rhythmic thwack of an orange ball. The football field seems resigned to being an overgrown grassland. The tennis court lights are dusty from lack of use. I listen closely, and I can almost hear excited voices from the past, the generations that have played and cheered and been happy here.

How can one be so in love with a place? If it was because of the people and the memories - that would be understandable. But no - I am in love with XL independent of everything that I have experienced here. I am in love with the very air here, the green of the trees, the quality of the sunlight, the orange of the sky, the music of the birds in the trees.

I walk out of the gates of XL, and look back one last time. XLRI 1949, it says. I remember the first time I saw that sign, the excitement and the possibilities those simple letters evoked within me. And now my two years are done. I am now just another of those lucky who have lived and laughed and cried within these walls in the past. Time to move on, time to let another generation come in and experience the magic.

The Beach and Me

You know, I lived in a city with a beach for six years, and practically never visited the waves. My parents used to take me sometimes when I was a kid, and we would be one tiny family amongst thousands on the huge crowded beach. We would eat roasted peanuts and ice cream. My dad would chaperone my brother and me in the water, and my mum would watch from the shore.

Two trips I made last month have made me realize that I want to live in a city with a beach - or at least one that's close to a beach. Definitely not a landlocked city like Delhi. Where would I escape to, away from the dust and the grit of ordinary life?

Mountains? No, mountains are not for me. I like them, but they're too imposing to be calm and peaceful.

My parents used to have a thing for deserts. I've been to Rajasthan at least four-five times, thanks to them. Even when they took me to see mountains, they chose a desert - Leh. Leh, beautiful Leh. The name itself is so romantic.

I think I could sit for hours on a beach, just watching the waves. I don't even need alcohol, unlike a lot of my friends. A quiet beach, golden sand, noisy waves. Maybe a book - to hold, to read maybe a few sentences of, but not to get lost in. I used to daydream about owning my own island, complete with golden beach and palm trees. Considering global warming, I guess it's not that remote a possibility now, except for the beach and palm trees part.

Did I tell you about the time I lost my glasses to the Bay of Bengal? It happened in Puri last month. Early morning, the last day of our stay there. Only the die-hard beach fanatics were up early. Meanie and me, plus Blue as the male bodyguard. We went into the water, and Meanie wanted to go right up to the place where the waves formed. Just to have them go over her in an arc - you know, surfer style. We went further and further, and the spot seemed just a bit out of our reach. Or maybe it was so scary that we didn't want to get there.

Finally, I got irritated and left the others and went right up to that place, and a big wave went right over me, and I capsized like a boat, and it was scary-scary-awesome.

We stayed there for a while longer. Just as we were leaving, a HUGE wave came, and all three of us fell over. Scary to lose your balance in that much water. We swallowed some water and came up sputtering, and then Blue and I realized that our glasses were lost. Meanie, miraculously, had kept hers.

Blue and Meanie immediately started searching for them, but I started laughing at our idiocy. To go out into so much water and dare the waves to do something to us! But we were so insignificant to the waves that they had just made fun of us by making us half-blind. And now these two were bothering to search for the tiny little things in the vast ocean.

Of course, I could afford to laugh because I had my lenses to fall back upon. Poor Blue had to survive the entire journey back without his glasses.

Purge

I want it to rain. A long endless storm, complete with thunder and lightning. A storm so big that everything else ceases to matter. Something to clean up this place and drive all the negative things away.

The sky should become so dark that daylight is forgotten. The sound of the water must pound in my ears and remind me of waves crashing on jagged rocks. Bird calls and car noises must be silenced. The trees must fear for their very existence and bow before the wind in supplication. Leaves must scurry from place to place in search of shelter and finally, finding none, die a sodden death.

The purging should be complete, at whatever cost. Even if a few innocent things are washed away in the whirlwind. There must be no mercy.

Aayiram Kannumai

I'm sitting in a large well-lit room, surrounded by books and journals. A silent room, in which a lot of people are reading books or working on their laptops. It's a dark Jharkhand night outside - the end of an absentee winter. I have a fat blue book open in front of me - Labour and Industrial Laws by P K Padhi. A blue marker and a pen complete the picture of the faithful ghissu.

Suddenly, in the midst of learning about legal and illegal strikes, I get an image. No, not an image. It's complete with smells and sounds and feelings. I can even feel mosquito bites on my legs.

I'm sitting outside my grandmother's house in Kollam. It's dusk - after six. My grandmother always sits outside in the evenings. She lights the lamp at five-thirty, says her prayers, and then comes and sits outside in the gathering dusk. I sit with her sometimes. There is a half-wall near the gate, with blocks that make comfortable stools to sit on.

We are both sitting in companiable silence. The sun is rapidly setting behind the tall coconut tree in front of the house. Its orange rays come to me through the gaps in the coconut leaves. The call for prayer from the nearby mosque sounds in the distance. Closer, I can hear the sounds of footsteps and voices from the road outside. Mosquitoes bite my legs and arms, and I slap impatiently at them.

This could, really, be an evening from any year of my life - from one of the many summer holidays I've spent there, or maybe the snatched weekends. My favourite house in the whole wide world.

Back when I was a kid, that entire plot of land seemed to hold so many possibilities for excitement. The guava tree was easily climbable, and led up to a nice cosy place for reading on warm sun-dappled afternoons.  The ladder up to the water tank was a perpetual challenge that my brother and I posed to each other. The front yard of the house would become a shallow lake in the rainy season; we would make pristine white boats using fresh paper from our Malayalam tuition notebooks, and make them jostle happily in the water. The jasmine flowers had to be plucked in the evenings. Not that I was ever girly enough to want to wear them on my hair - my poor grandmother always had to give them away to the neighbourhood girls.

Lying in bed huddled under a thin sheet and listening to the rain outside. Being scared every time I had to go to the spooky back portion of the house at night. Reading a book and falling asleep with my glasses on and having grandmother remove them when she came in to sleep. Sitting on the verandah and daydreaming. Staring at the pools and valleys formed by sunlight on the guava leaves.

Were those times actually simpler, or does it just seem so now?

(Title Translation: With a Thousand Eyes. It's a beautiful, beautiful song about longing.)

The Beginning of the End

The big tree in front has started flowering. White flowers, whose pale petals have already started withering and falling to the ground. Last year, the carpet of white on the ground meant the end of the year, the seniors leaving, a whole bunch of treats. This year, they are the omen of the final goodbye that has to come in a month, give or take a few days.

Winter is over, pretty much. It hardly visited, in fact. It is already too hot to sit outside in the sun and read. The sweaters in the cupboard lie dusty and unused. I get nimbu pani instead of hot comforting soup. What from the last two years would I not want to re-live.

I would try to capture stray moments, as is my wont, except that I'm too busy to be able to do such small things. Next month, I shall wallow in the bittersweetness.