XL Again!

I'm going to do the whole Bangalore-Calcutta-Jamshedpur thing again. I'm going to go in through those wide open black gates again. I'm going to see Anu again! I'm going to sit on JLT and drink nimbu pani again. I'm going to have coffee at Daddu's again - steaming hot coffee with chocolate powder liberally spilled over it. I'm going to talk to the Profs, and this time know what an honour and opportunity that is! I'm going to sit on El Top Top and watch the orange lights of Tata Steel again. I'm going to go to Karnel Singh's Dhaba and have butter naan and paneer butter masala again. I'm going to walk under those tall tall trees and be awe-struck all over again. I'm going to visit the library and walk through the fiction shelves again. I'm going to watch the dawn lighten over the top of GH1 and feel an indescribable longing again. I'm going to have Bishu Da's Cheese Maggi again! I'm going to NOT be a company senior. I'm going to ride back from Bistupur in a cold cold auto again. I'm going to go to Mad Sam and have butter masala dosa and their insanely sweet coffee again! I'm going to try to get enough people to play basketball again. I'm going to sit on a green bench in the sun and read a book again. I'm going to take a walk through Faculty Quarters with Anu again.

For two whole days in February.

On Reading

There is something wrong with me. I haven't finished a single book in the last one month. Oh, I'm reading all right. But I lose interest halfway and start another book. Here's a complete list of the books I've begun reading and abandoned in the last one month. Please note that this is NO commentary on the quality of writing of the below authors!

• Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient (beautiful, beautiful book)
• T. Coraghessan Boyle - If the River was Whiskey (Picked up in Blossom's - mostly cuz I liked the title!)
• Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
• Anjum Hasan - Neti, Neti (I've been wanting to read it ever since I read Jai Arjun Singh's piece on it here)
• J R R Tolkien - The Hobbit (PDF)
• Robert Jordan - The Shadow Rising (The fourth in the series - e-book version, though)
• Kate Fox - Watching the English

On Writing

Every story that needs to be told has already been told. And now we're telling the same things over and over again, in different words, in different colours.

Where do I fit in? Do I have a story to tell? Does anybody want to listen? My ideas are cliched, my tone amateurish. I read what I've written and wince at myself.

Yet I need to put words down. I get joy out of seeing them there, little black squiggles on white, little bits of my soul that I've squeezed out and lined up.

Maybe that's enough, at the end of the day. But not at the end of the life. Surely not?

Loneliness

Inspired by a couple of hours spent reading a book in the park today. Supposed to be fiction, but more a collection of impressions that a story. All characters are based on real people - complete strangers, except for a minor appearance by [drumroll please] me.

The park is cold today. The sky is dark overhead, no sunshine shining through the branches. I do my usual rounds, glad of the warm wool of my shawl, the silk of my salwar-kameez. Courting couples, a stern girl reading an orange book, gangs of boys, a family with a small muffled-up boy who smiles up at me.

I keep writing letters to you, letters I can't mail. I pile them up in my little wooden chest, one on top of the other, the older ones yellow and curling already. They keep me company these days.

There's an elderly man in a white kurta-pajama who comes every afternoon, accompanied by a teenaged boy. The boy holds the man's hand and walks him around the park a few times. The man's eyes are anxious, confused, scared. He doesn't know what's happening, why it's happening.

I've held on all this while because I thought it would be cowardice. But I'm tempted. Sometimes, I cross roads without looking either way. But always, somehow, I get to the other side. And I wonder why I did.

Sometimes I fantasize that I did die. Perhaps my body is lying on the blue road back there, streaming red blood onto the crevices. Perhaps it is only my soul, my spirit, that is walking on, unaware of the gathering people, the hushed voices. Any minute now, they'll come to take me to you. A golden chariot will land in the middle of the dirty road, and I'll ride away on it.

How does one know, anyway, when one is dead?

Cause and Effect

Two men met under a board at a station. It was early morning, and there was no train on the platform. The two men carried identical suitcases. They exchanged them without further ado.

No on saw them. A group of coolies stood nearby, but they were busy commenting on a girl. The girl went away soon after, and the coolies quietened down.

The first man went to a room in the station house and opened the suitcase. It contained, among other things, a set of freshly laundered clothes. He quickly changed. While he was changing, he heard the train chugging into the station slowly.

He spent some time praying. The babble of voices outside rose steadily.

He came out of the station house. Earlier, he had been an anonymous man in a checked shirt. Now he was an authoritative clipboard, and a dark jacket over a white shirt and trousers. A crowd of people converged on him, gesticulating, negotiating, pleading, arguing.

The unlucky ones got seats. The lucky ones went away, cursing the clipboard and the dark jacket.

The man suddenly realized that he had forgotten the suitcase. He went back inside the station house and got it. He tucked it safely under his seat. The train left the station with a final whistle.

The second man went back to his house and opened the suitcase. The suitcase contained money in thick wads. The man had not seen so much money in his life. He went to a nearby hospital and paid a bill. They finally released his daughter's body.

A while later, there was an explosion. Several bogies of a train fell off a bridge. Others hung down from the rails, and it was like a garland of bogies on the neck of the bridge. The river was a deep one, and it flowed on, unmindful.

Life

It's been raining for three continuous days in Bangalore. Lovely wet weather. The entire world is gray, it reminds me of foggy winter mornings in Delhi, waiting for the school bus and shivering in my short skirt. But now it's seven years later, and I'm waiting for the bus that will take me to office. I tweet from my phone about the song playing in my head. I think of how much my world has changed in seven years.

Inside the bus, it's too dark to read my Murakami. I settle back with headphones plugged in and the music on shuffle. The first song is Blue October's 18th Floor Balcony, which doesn't quite suit my mood. Skip. Next up is Norah Jones, and she is exactly, exactly right.

I open my eyes and stare out through the window at the Bangalore traffic. Honking motorists, construction work, wet orange mud by the side of the road. The proverbial traffic jams of Bangalore, made worse by the unceasing rain. I float above it all, uncaring. I'm inside my exclusive shell, and nothing can touch me here. The rain makes wet channels on the window, wiping away the dirt. I watch the water flow down and wish it was that easy to cleanse human souls of all the bad things we accumulate. Not just sins - attitudes, habits, resignation, blind acceptance.

Vellai Pookal. Ah, even better. Such a beautiful, comforting song. The very first strains make me happy.

A flyover is being constructed, and we get stuck at the junction. I can't see the sky, or anything remotely green. A monstrous pillar rises up high next to my window, drowning out light, sky, nature. At the base of these pillars, scattered all around, are iron rods and heavy machinery, rusted metal and concrete blocks. Holes gape open for no particular reason. It's a sea of heavy sticky brown mud, thankfully fenced off from the road. I close my eyes rather than have to look at such vileness.

Tum Ho Toh from Rock On. We move on from the junction, and enter the road that leads directly to office. The land is more open here. Fields on either side, waterlogged now and waiting for the sun. A solitary lake, fuller now than I've ever seen it. The gray sky, heavy and roiling with rain. Apartment buildings dot the horizon, and more are under construction. Soon, I'm sure they will even fill up the fields to build more of them. I hate apartment buildings.

The office is two minutes away. I sigh. I open my bag and take out the tag with my office ID card. I used to hate it so much, it was a sign of my selling out. But now I'm resigned to it. It's there around my neck, the whole day. I barely notice it. I put it on, and step out of the bus with the rest, heading in a straggly bunch to the office building.

Full Moon

Eight in the night, and the Fin folks and I are all alone on the floor. Today the rest of my own team has left early, for some reason. The music of choice today for the Fin guys is Enrique Inglesias. "You can take my breath away," the sweet Fin guy croaks gently. I hide my smile, because he's a sweet guy.

Outside, the office grounds resemble a resort. Bamboo groves and paths of rough stone; hidden lights and croaking frogs. It's so peaceful in the nights - partly the reason I prefer to leave at seven or eight rather than at six. I look up and almost trip over the pavement stones. It's a full moon night - or near enough as to make no difference. I stare at the moon for a full five seconds quietly. And then walk on, neck still craning to catch a glimpse of it behind me.

On nights like these, I think of XL. I think of the same moon rising over XL and I feel a strange sort of connection.

Full moons were always my favourite nights there. I would go for walks in the dead of the night, just to catch glimpses of the moon. Somehow, these nights more than any other used to remind me of how little time I had; how every day, every hour at that place was precious and should be enjoyed. At the same time, they were calming. I could sit back and relax and just watch the moon. Sometimes it was silver, sometimes it was golden, at other times it was almost a battle red. But always it was large, looming over the hostel terrace like some pre-historic God keeping an eye on his people.

And here in Bangalore? I only notice the moon on nights like these, when I'm coming out of the office in the night. Last month I noticed that it was a full moon when I went out to buy something, and took an extra round of the colony just to keep seeing it. And the month before, it was on MM's birthday, I remember. I came out of office talking to her on the phone, saw the moon and said, "Oh! It's a full moon!" And she said, "It is?" in that typical MM way. Of course, it turned out later that it was the day after or something.

I think I must have been a werewolf in a previous life. :)