Teri karam kahani,
Teri atma bhi jaane,
Paramatma bhi jaane, Paramatma bhi jaane.
Jag jise kehte hain,
Karamon ki kheti hai.
Jaisa beej boye,
Use waisa phal deti hai.
Tune boya tha kya prani...
Teri atma bhi jaane
Paramatma bhi jaane, Paramatma bhi jaane.
Kitne hi jatanon se,
Paap kamaye tu.
Kitne hi jatanon se,
Bhed chhupaye tu.
Kahaan chhupega tu prani...
Teri atma bhi jaane,
Paramatma bhi jaane, Paramatma bhi jaane
Prabhu ke dware tera,
Aana hi bahut hai.
Khol ke na bol,
Pachhtana hi bahut hai.
Teri vipada purani...
Teri aatma bhi jaane,
Paramatma bhi jaane, Paramatma bhi jaane.
Teri karam kahani,
Teri atma bhi jaane,
Paramatma bhi jaane, Paramatma bhi jaane
PS: Picked from my favorite bhajan.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
A Sky Full of Kites
On a hot, humid afternoon, the aroma of roasted lamb rises from a grill and wafts across the street into a small shop. Inside the shop, offended, partly, by the profusion of the smell, Raag squirms in his chair and rises to leave for the third time in less then ten minutes. Then he looks at Imtiaz and hesitates. He sits down on the chair.
Imtiaz is engaged in taking the measurements for a pair of trousers. “Length twenty eight. Waist thirty four,” he dictates to a subordinate.
A smile briefly flickers on Raag’s face as he watches Imtiaz bending to measure his short, rotund customer. In this abrupt moment of amusement, though, it does not escape his attention that Imtiaz has grown up to be a tall and lean man. “Lean, he always was. But this tall?” trails his thought.
It is a busy day in the shop. A rattling ceiling fan adds to the cacophony of three ceaseless sewing machines. Rolls of cloth are spread out on the counter table – different shades of blue and grey, and among them, a shade of green, olive green, that has been chosen for a suit. Neon glow of Modella Tailors outside tries proudly to allure the drifting passers-by. Black mannequins, one on each side of the glass door, stand smartly by.
“Life – in such perfect harmony,” thinks Raag, and unease sets in again. Determined this time, he informs Imtiaz about his need to get a smoke and dashes out of the shop.
Marquis Street, looked at from the sky, appears like a sedate grey line escorted by dirty yellow boxes. It begins as an offshoot of the busier Free School Street, darts in straight for a few hundred meters, and then meanders along the curves before ending sharply at a circular platform that hoists a red flag of the ruling Marxist party. Seated under that briskly flailing flag, as he is now, Raag observes that the neon glow of Modella Tailors competes with the charm of quaint bookstalls selling second-hand books, about half a dozen brothels, a sweet shop and a cinema hall that employs, among others, an army of black marketers and roadside food vendors.
He lights a cigarette and, tracing the pattern of his smoke, he looks up and sees a scatter of small dots in a narrow grey sky tasseled by a surfeit of black wires hanging from one dirty building to another. The month is September, he remembers.
_________________________
That year, the rains were severe. Sun hardly emerged from behind the clouds. But when it did, the sight of roads submerged in streams of water flowing alongside serpentine queues of old Ambassador cars was quickly forgotten; puddles dried in football fields and kites spurted in a rage to conquer the open skies.
It was one such evening. The sun was descending in the horizon and the grey clouds had begun to recoup. Raag knew from the nip in the air that the rains were not far behind. “The kite is still too high,” he worried as he tried to quickly roll the spool along his thigh.
At some distance from Raag, almost at the other end of the park, walked Imtiaz, trailing behind Arjeena; his eager eyes tracking the movement of Raag’s kite.
“Grandma, I could bring it down,” he said. Then, he corrected himself and added, “If the winds don’t pick up too fast.”
“I know you can,” said Arjeena. “Now stop looking at the kites and run along. I have no interest in getting drenched.”
The clouds gathered quickly, but Raag had the time to bring down his kite. Just as the first drops of rain began to fall, Raag picked his kite and spool, and rushed to a building next to the park. Others from the park had already arrived. It was the usual chatter of abandoned cricket matches, and Maradona’s exit from the World Cup. He would have seized upon one of the conversations, but when he arrived, he saw Arjeena sitting on the stairs.
“Caught in the rains, you too?” Raag opened the dialogue.
“What else, Raag babu! I was returning from the school, and it started to rain. Doesn’t seem like the skies will clear up anytime soon.”
“Yes, so it seems. And the rains have been so bad this year,” said Raag. “I hardly got to fly any kites.”
Imtiaz was sitting quietly in a corner behind Arjeena. The mention of kite evoked his interest, and his brown, pimpled face emerged from the side of her sari. Then, as he caught Raag staring at him, he recoiled and shrunk back into his space. Raag looked on.
Arjeena wiped her face with the border of her sari and said, “My grandson. My daughter’s son. Came from the village a week back.”
As the old woman was wont to do, she rambled on, “My daughter, Raag babu, her husband threw her out of her home. You know, don’t you, how things are in the village. He has married again, and thrown my daughter and their son out. Now, they live with me. Even at my age, I must take care of such things.” Then, distracted by a fresh torrent of showers outside the building, she added, “And, now these rains. They will just not stop.”
“What’s his name?” asked Raag.
Arjeena tugged her grandson, “Tell Raag babu your name.” Without pausing to ask Raag, she continued, “If he likes you, he will even let you fly kite with him.”
“Imtiaz.”
Raag probed further, “Ah, Imtiaz. How will you fly a kite? You behave like a girl.”
Imtiaz smiled. Still shy, he said, “Oh no, I can fly kite. I am really good at it.”
“If that is so, come by tomorrow and we shall see,” said Raag. He added, pointing to his house, “There, you see that yellow building, right there? Come over tomorrow afternoon at three.”
Raag went inside and joined the conversations about Maradona’s ban. When he looked out after a while, it was still raining. Night was beginning to fall and the streetlights were lit up. In the rain, he saw Arjeena walking away, a drenched white sari draping her frail slouching figure. Alongside her walked Imtiaz in his lean brown frame; his face pointed to the sky, his arms spread out to welcome the shower.
_________________________
When Raag first asked Imtiaz to fly kite with him, he thought that Imtiaz could be a good help for him – someone to hold the spool while he flew his kite. Only when he became a regular to their house, despite the misgivings of their maid – “No Raag babu, you must not befriend such boys. These boys from the slum, they are no good. You have no idea what this boy might vanish with from our house” – did Raag realize that Imtiaz knew a lot more about kites than he himself did. He would teach him nuances like tying a thread on one side to rotate the kite more during a kite-fight. Not to be outdone, Raag would tell him about the Chinese kites, that, unlike their own fighter kites, came in different shapes and sizes – sometimes the flying dragon, sometimes the whistling train. Astonished, Imtiaz would look at Raag, laugh out loud, and say, “Raag babu, you take me to be a simpleton, but that I am not.”
Their friendship continued to blossom. Every now and then Raag would take Imtiaz to the nearby market and treat him to a soft drink. Sometimes he would give Imtiaz some of his pocket money to buy a kite of his own. Imtiaz, in turn, started confiding in Raag. He told him about his life in the village and about his drunkard father who came home every night only to beat up his mother.
Imtiaz longed for his village, and when Raag asked Imtiaz how he liked the city, he replied, “Raag babu, city is all fine. And, grandmother treats me well too. But I really do miss the village.”
“Can’t you return to the village?”
“I don't think so. Mother has taken up a job as a housemaid, but she does not earn enough. Grandmother is getting old and she doesn’t have a lot of money either. I wish I could find myself a job.”
“What work would you do? Become a rickshaw puller or a helper in a tea stall?”
“No, I want to be a tailor.”
_________________________
Raag absentmindedly fidgets in his pocket, searching for the missing cigarette box. Then he sees the empty box thrown on the pavement and realizes that he has finished all his cigarettes.
“Raag babu,” calls out the voice.
He turns and sees that Imtiaz is walking toward him.
“What, Raag babu, you said you are stepping out for a cigarette and it has been almost an hour now.”
“Oh yes, I almost forgot.”
“No worries, babu. Let us get back to the shop. Hot tea and some snacks await us.”
“But where was the need for all this?”
“Oh, you embarrass me,” says Imtiaz and places a hand on Raag’s shoulder. “For all that you did for me, should I not even offer you tea when you come to my shop? And this shop, would I have had this shop if it weren’t for you?”
_________________________
Calamity often strikes without a warning, but Raag should have seen it coming. He had no reason to be shocked when Mahesh gave him an account, somewhat frostily, of what transpired in the school that day.
Mahesh was calm. Five hours of living with the knowledge of his predicament had subdued him. When the class teacher announced the names of the students who would not be allowed to take the board examinations that year, he was stunned into silence. Then, as his fear grew, the pleading began: "But sir, how can you do this to us... I am really sorry, sir, but please don't do this... You know, sir, how important this is... Sir, if I don't take the board exams, my career is ruined..." Mahesh almost cried. His pleading did not move the teacher. He sympathized with Mahesh, but he had seen this happen before - "Mahesh, I wish I could help you, I really do. But I am bound by the rules. You should have known that you needed a minimum of seventy five percent attendance to take the exams. And yours, Mahesh, doesn't even add up fifty five."
Raag was only marginally better at sixty.
"We should have known!" reflected Mahesh.
Raag was not willing to give in yet. "Why don't we just get that goddamn attendance register itself and burn it off?" he retorted, still animated with anger.
Imtiaz was on the other side of the terrace, unaware of the turmoil just twenty meters from him. He shouted out, "Not a good day to fly the kite, Raag babu. Not enough wind today."
Distracted briefly, Raag looked at the dwindling kite.
"Your kite is not in the wind. You won't be able to keep it flying for long."
"Raag babu, every kite flyer knows that the winds must be on his side for his kite to fly high,” said Imtiaz. Then, with equal measures of boast and innocence, he added, "But you know what, sometimes, and only sometimes really, if the kite is already soaring and if the kite flyer has mastered his art enough, it is possible to cheat even the elements."
“…to cheat the elements,” repeated Raag and shrugged. The thought stuck on.
Raag and Mahesh met again later that night, convincing each other of the plan. Many ifs and buts were discussed, but in the end, Raag summed it up: "This is our best bet. If we pull it through, we pull it through. If we don't, we will see what happens next."
_________________________
The next day they met at the park in front of the school.
Imtiaz was livid when he heard the plan: "Raag babu, we may be poor, but we are no thieves.”
"Of course you are not a thief, Imtiaz. But don't you see, that's the only way?" implored Mahesh.
Imtiaz was not convinced. He looked to Raag for redressal. Raag felt a surge of guilt rise from within, but said instead, “Mahesh is right, Imtiaz. That is the only way for us. You are our only hope,” He grasped Imtiaz on his shoulders, looked him in his eyes, and said, “Imtiaz, I am your friend, like your elder brother. Will you not do this much for me?”
“And, it won’t be difficult at all. Just go in with your grandmother when she goes to clean the school this evening, pick the register and leave. No one will ever know,” added Mahesh.
Imtiaz reluctantly agreed and they decided to meet at the same spot later that evening.
Things went as per plan. Imtiaz handed them the register. Raag sneaked out an old sewing machine that his mother did not use anymore and gave it to Imtiaz. Imtiaz protested, “Raag babu, I don’t need this. I did not do it for a reward,” but Raag was insistent, “No, Imtiaz, this it not a reward. Keep it as a gift from an elder brother.”
When they burned the register later that night, Raag asked Mahesh, “Do you think, then, that this is it?” Mahesh wasn’t sure, but he nodded.
There was some commotion about the lost register in the school, but no one probably suspected that the register was stolen.
They thought they were safe.
_________________________
Back in the shop, Raag notices that the frantic activity has died down. The ceiling fan continues to rattle but the shop is empty of its tailors. Imtiaz explains, as he passes Raag a cup of tea, “They have gone for the prayers.”
They both sit in silence as the strains of Mullah’s Allah-o-Akbar leak into the shop. An old sewing machine, placed next to one of the mannequins, catches Raag’s attention. Imtiaz looks on at Raag as he examines the machine.
“Same machine,” says Imtiaz, “that you gave me.”
Raag looks up and sees Imtiaz’s black eyes. At first he tries to probe further in the eyes, and then he blurts out, “I feel ashamed till this day. I always did.”
“I wish I had more of a heart, but it all happened so fast,” he mumbles on.
… When the maid came and told him that the police had come, Raag did not realize what it could be about… last rites of the attendance register had been performed more than ten days back, and he had almost forgotten about it… that day, seventeenth of September, the last day of flying kites, the day on which the water tank in front of the house was decorated with series of small bulbs that glowed in the fading light of the evening, just as the loudspeakers blared Hindi movie songs from the tent that the rickshaw pullers had erected to worship Lord Vishwakarma… that day, when the maid came to him, all he thought about was bringing down his last kite… and, unknown to him, two black eyes pried at the same kite from a distance… the owner of those eyes caged behind the doors of a police van…
“Raag babu, I was upset. I felt betrayed,” says Imtiaz. “You always said I was like your brother.”
… “Madam, we raided the slums last night to evict some Bangladeshis, and we found this sewing machine with that boy. He says he got it from your house,” said the inspector… Raag was already there, standing next to his mother… his face looked pale, drained of all the blood… and then, when his mother asked him… he could think of only one way to escape, “Oh no, mother, I did not give him the machine”… Imtiaz looked on with horror…
“But, my anger faded away with time. What remained with me was the sewing machine, and you… I remembered you as the person who gave me the machine and helped me start my career.”
… “Oh, of course inspector, I remember… I gave the machine to that boy… I had no use of it anymore, you see” … Raag was surprised, but his mother knew what she was doing… she later confided – “I hardly ever thought that that boy would steal… but I hope he can at least start a life now with that machine. What would have the police done with him, anyway… made him an ever more hardened criminal?”
“Did the register help in the end?” asks Imtiaz.
In the end, it did not. The school authorities had a copy of the attendance records and Raag was not allowed to take the board examinations that year. With that, began a decline that continued throughout his faltering career.
Raag does not reply. He remains glued to his seat and stares out toward the sky.
The sky is filled with kites - some high, some low.
Imtiaz rises and stands next to Raag. He pats him on his shoulder.
“Raag babu, the destiny of kites is unknown. See there, that kite that's entangled in the tree - it was soaring just sometime back. Now, the next rain will simply wash it away. And see those kites that are only beginning to fly, you can hardly tell which one will soar next."
Imtiaz is engaged in taking the measurements for a pair of trousers. “Length twenty eight. Waist thirty four,” he dictates to a subordinate.
A smile briefly flickers on Raag’s face as he watches Imtiaz bending to measure his short, rotund customer. In this abrupt moment of amusement, though, it does not escape his attention that Imtiaz has grown up to be a tall and lean man. “Lean, he always was. But this tall?” trails his thought.
It is a busy day in the shop. A rattling ceiling fan adds to the cacophony of three ceaseless sewing machines. Rolls of cloth are spread out on the counter table – different shades of blue and grey, and among them, a shade of green, olive green, that has been chosen for a suit. Neon glow of Modella Tailors outside tries proudly to allure the drifting passers-by. Black mannequins, one on each side of the glass door, stand smartly by.
“Life – in such perfect harmony,” thinks Raag, and unease sets in again. Determined this time, he informs Imtiaz about his need to get a smoke and dashes out of the shop.
Marquis Street, looked at from the sky, appears like a sedate grey line escorted by dirty yellow boxes. It begins as an offshoot of the busier Free School Street, darts in straight for a few hundred meters, and then meanders along the curves before ending sharply at a circular platform that hoists a red flag of the ruling Marxist party. Seated under that briskly flailing flag, as he is now, Raag observes that the neon glow of Modella Tailors competes with the charm of quaint bookstalls selling second-hand books, about half a dozen brothels, a sweet shop and a cinema hall that employs, among others, an army of black marketers and roadside food vendors.
He lights a cigarette and, tracing the pattern of his smoke, he looks up and sees a scatter of small dots in a narrow grey sky tasseled by a surfeit of black wires hanging from one dirty building to another. The month is September, he remembers.
_________________________
That year, the rains were severe. Sun hardly emerged from behind the clouds. But when it did, the sight of roads submerged in streams of water flowing alongside serpentine queues of old Ambassador cars was quickly forgotten; puddles dried in football fields and kites spurted in a rage to conquer the open skies.
It was one such evening. The sun was descending in the horizon and the grey clouds had begun to recoup. Raag knew from the nip in the air that the rains were not far behind. “The kite is still too high,” he worried as he tried to quickly roll the spool along his thigh.
At some distance from Raag, almost at the other end of the park, walked Imtiaz, trailing behind Arjeena; his eager eyes tracking the movement of Raag’s kite.
“Grandma, I could bring it down,” he said. Then, he corrected himself and added, “If the winds don’t pick up too fast.”
“I know you can,” said Arjeena. “Now stop looking at the kites and run along. I have no interest in getting drenched.”
The clouds gathered quickly, but Raag had the time to bring down his kite. Just as the first drops of rain began to fall, Raag picked his kite and spool, and rushed to a building next to the park. Others from the park had already arrived. It was the usual chatter of abandoned cricket matches, and Maradona’s exit from the World Cup. He would have seized upon one of the conversations, but when he arrived, he saw Arjeena sitting on the stairs.
“Caught in the rains, you too?” Raag opened the dialogue.
“What else, Raag babu! I was returning from the school, and it started to rain. Doesn’t seem like the skies will clear up anytime soon.”
“Yes, so it seems. And the rains have been so bad this year,” said Raag. “I hardly got to fly any kites.”
Imtiaz was sitting quietly in a corner behind Arjeena. The mention of kite evoked his interest, and his brown, pimpled face emerged from the side of her sari. Then, as he caught Raag staring at him, he recoiled and shrunk back into his space. Raag looked on.
Arjeena wiped her face with the border of her sari and said, “My grandson. My daughter’s son. Came from the village a week back.”
As the old woman was wont to do, she rambled on, “My daughter, Raag babu, her husband threw her out of her home. You know, don’t you, how things are in the village. He has married again, and thrown my daughter and their son out. Now, they live with me. Even at my age, I must take care of such things.” Then, distracted by a fresh torrent of showers outside the building, she added, “And, now these rains. They will just not stop.”
“What’s his name?” asked Raag.
Arjeena tugged her grandson, “Tell Raag babu your name.” Without pausing to ask Raag, she continued, “If he likes you, he will even let you fly kite with him.”
“Imtiaz.”
Raag probed further, “Ah, Imtiaz. How will you fly a kite? You behave like a girl.”
Imtiaz smiled. Still shy, he said, “Oh no, I can fly kite. I am really good at it.”
“If that is so, come by tomorrow and we shall see,” said Raag. He added, pointing to his house, “There, you see that yellow building, right there? Come over tomorrow afternoon at three.”
Raag went inside and joined the conversations about Maradona’s ban. When he looked out after a while, it was still raining. Night was beginning to fall and the streetlights were lit up. In the rain, he saw Arjeena walking away, a drenched white sari draping her frail slouching figure. Alongside her walked Imtiaz in his lean brown frame; his face pointed to the sky, his arms spread out to welcome the shower.
_________________________
When Raag first asked Imtiaz to fly kite with him, he thought that Imtiaz could be a good help for him – someone to hold the spool while he flew his kite. Only when he became a regular to their house, despite the misgivings of their maid – “No Raag babu, you must not befriend such boys. These boys from the slum, they are no good. You have no idea what this boy might vanish with from our house” – did Raag realize that Imtiaz knew a lot more about kites than he himself did. He would teach him nuances like tying a thread on one side to rotate the kite more during a kite-fight. Not to be outdone, Raag would tell him about the Chinese kites, that, unlike their own fighter kites, came in different shapes and sizes – sometimes the flying dragon, sometimes the whistling train. Astonished, Imtiaz would look at Raag, laugh out loud, and say, “Raag babu, you take me to be a simpleton, but that I am not.”
Their friendship continued to blossom. Every now and then Raag would take Imtiaz to the nearby market and treat him to a soft drink. Sometimes he would give Imtiaz some of his pocket money to buy a kite of his own. Imtiaz, in turn, started confiding in Raag. He told him about his life in the village and about his drunkard father who came home every night only to beat up his mother.
Imtiaz longed for his village, and when Raag asked Imtiaz how he liked the city, he replied, “Raag babu, city is all fine. And, grandmother treats me well too. But I really do miss the village.”
“Can’t you return to the village?”
“I don't think so. Mother has taken up a job as a housemaid, but she does not earn enough. Grandmother is getting old and she doesn’t have a lot of money either. I wish I could find myself a job.”
“What work would you do? Become a rickshaw puller or a helper in a tea stall?”
“No, I want to be a tailor.”
_________________________
Raag absentmindedly fidgets in his pocket, searching for the missing cigarette box. Then he sees the empty box thrown on the pavement and realizes that he has finished all his cigarettes.
“Raag babu,” calls out the voice.
He turns and sees that Imtiaz is walking toward him.
“What, Raag babu, you said you are stepping out for a cigarette and it has been almost an hour now.”
“Oh yes, I almost forgot.”
“No worries, babu. Let us get back to the shop. Hot tea and some snacks await us.”
“But where was the need for all this?”
“Oh, you embarrass me,” says Imtiaz and places a hand on Raag’s shoulder. “For all that you did for me, should I not even offer you tea when you come to my shop? And this shop, would I have had this shop if it weren’t for you?”
_________________________
Calamity often strikes without a warning, but Raag should have seen it coming. He had no reason to be shocked when Mahesh gave him an account, somewhat frostily, of what transpired in the school that day.
Mahesh was calm. Five hours of living with the knowledge of his predicament had subdued him. When the class teacher announced the names of the students who would not be allowed to take the board examinations that year, he was stunned into silence. Then, as his fear grew, the pleading began: "But sir, how can you do this to us... I am really sorry, sir, but please don't do this... You know, sir, how important this is... Sir, if I don't take the board exams, my career is ruined..." Mahesh almost cried. His pleading did not move the teacher. He sympathized with Mahesh, but he had seen this happen before - "Mahesh, I wish I could help you, I really do. But I am bound by the rules. You should have known that you needed a minimum of seventy five percent attendance to take the exams. And yours, Mahesh, doesn't even add up fifty five."
Raag was only marginally better at sixty.
"We should have known!" reflected Mahesh.
Raag was not willing to give in yet. "Why don't we just get that goddamn attendance register itself and burn it off?" he retorted, still animated with anger.
Imtiaz was on the other side of the terrace, unaware of the turmoil just twenty meters from him. He shouted out, "Not a good day to fly the kite, Raag babu. Not enough wind today."
Distracted briefly, Raag looked at the dwindling kite.
"Your kite is not in the wind. You won't be able to keep it flying for long."
"Raag babu, every kite flyer knows that the winds must be on his side for his kite to fly high,” said Imtiaz. Then, with equal measures of boast and innocence, he added, "But you know what, sometimes, and only sometimes really, if the kite is already soaring and if the kite flyer has mastered his art enough, it is possible to cheat even the elements."
“…to cheat the elements,” repeated Raag and shrugged. The thought stuck on.
Raag and Mahesh met again later that night, convincing each other of the plan. Many ifs and buts were discussed, but in the end, Raag summed it up: "This is our best bet. If we pull it through, we pull it through. If we don't, we will see what happens next."
_________________________
The next day they met at the park in front of the school.
Imtiaz was livid when he heard the plan: "Raag babu, we may be poor, but we are no thieves.”
"Of course you are not a thief, Imtiaz. But don't you see, that's the only way?" implored Mahesh.
Imtiaz was not convinced. He looked to Raag for redressal. Raag felt a surge of guilt rise from within, but said instead, “Mahesh is right, Imtiaz. That is the only way for us. You are our only hope,” He grasped Imtiaz on his shoulders, looked him in his eyes, and said, “Imtiaz, I am your friend, like your elder brother. Will you not do this much for me?”
“And, it won’t be difficult at all. Just go in with your grandmother when she goes to clean the school this evening, pick the register and leave. No one will ever know,” added Mahesh.
Imtiaz reluctantly agreed and they decided to meet at the same spot later that evening.
Things went as per plan. Imtiaz handed them the register. Raag sneaked out an old sewing machine that his mother did not use anymore and gave it to Imtiaz. Imtiaz protested, “Raag babu, I don’t need this. I did not do it for a reward,” but Raag was insistent, “No, Imtiaz, this it not a reward. Keep it as a gift from an elder brother.”
When they burned the register later that night, Raag asked Mahesh, “Do you think, then, that this is it?” Mahesh wasn’t sure, but he nodded.
There was some commotion about the lost register in the school, but no one probably suspected that the register was stolen.
They thought they were safe.
_________________________
Back in the shop, Raag notices that the frantic activity has died down. The ceiling fan continues to rattle but the shop is empty of its tailors. Imtiaz explains, as he passes Raag a cup of tea, “They have gone for the prayers.”
They both sit in silence as the strains of Mullah’s Allah-o-Akbar leak into the shop. An old sewing machine, placed next to one of the mannequins, catches Raag’s attention. Imtiaz looks on at Raag as he examines the machine.
“Same machine,” says Imtiaz, “that you gave me.”
Raag looks up and sees Imtiaz’s black eyes. At first he tries to probe further in the eyes, and then he blurts out, “I feel ashamed till this day. I always did.”
“I wish I had more of a heart, but it all happened so fast,” he mumbles on.
… When the maid came and told him that the police had come, Raag did not realize what it could be about… last rites of the attendance register had been performed more than ten days back, and he had almost forgotten about it… that day, seventeenth of September, the last day of flying kites, the day on which the water tank in front of the house was decorated with series of small bulbs that glowed in the fading light of the evening, just as the loudspeakers blared Hindi movie songs from the tent that the rickshaw pullers had erected to worship Lord Vishwakarma… that day, when the maid came to him, all he thought about was bringing down his last kite… and, unknown to him, two black eyes pried at the same kite from a distance… the owner of those eyes caged behind the doors of a police van…
“Raag babu, I was upset. I felt betrayed,” says Imtiaz. “You always said I was like your brother.”
… “Madam, we raided the slums last night to evict some Bangladeshis, and we found this sewing machine with that boy. He says he got it from your house,” said the inspector… Raag was already there, standing next to his mother… his face looked pale, drained of all the blood… and then, when his mother asked him… he could think of only one way to escape, “Oh no, mother, I did not give him the machine”… Imtiaz looked on with horror…
“But, my anger faded away with time. What remained with me was the sewing machine, and you… I remembered you as the person who gave me the machine and helped me start my career.”
… “Oh, of course inspector, I remember… I gave the machine to that boy… I had no use of it anymore, you see” … Raag was surprised, but his mother knew what she was doing… she later confided – “I hardly ever thought that that boy would steal… but I hope he can at least start a life now with that machine. What would have the police done with him, anyway… made him an ever more hardened criminal?”
“Did the register help in the end?” asks Imtiaz.
In the end, it did not. The school authorities had a copy of the attendance records and Raag was not allowed to take the board examinations that year. With that, began a decline that continued throughout his faltering career.
Raag does not reply. He remains glued to his seat and stares out toward the sky.
The sky is filled with kites - some high, some low.
Imtiaz rises and stands next to Raag. He pats him on his shoulder.
“Raag babu, the destiny of kites is unknown. See there, that kite that's entangled in the tree - it was soaring just sometime back. Now, the next rain will simply wash it away. And see those kites that are only beginning to fly, you can hardly tell which one will soar next."
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Ab na koi pooche mujhse
Sagar ki gumsum lehron mein
Ek toofan sa jab aata hai
Kshitij samet apne daman mein
Kala badal chha jaata hai
Ek garaj si tab uthhti hai
Kho jaata hai sab soonapan
Bina ruke barish hoti
Badal ka bhi rota hai man
Badal bhi jab bhar jaata hai
Nir bahut behte hain uske
Mein roya to kyun roya mein
Ab na koi pooche mujhse
Written long time back, perhaps in 1993.
Ek toofan sa jab aata hai
Kshitij samet apne daman mein
Kala badal chha jaata hai
Ek garaj si tab uthhti hai
Kho jaata hai sab soonapan
Bina ruke barish hoti
Badal ka bhi rota hai man
Badal bhi jab bhar jaata hai
Nir bahut behte hain uske
Mein roya to kyun roya mein
Ab na koi pooche mujhse
Written long time back, perhaps in 1993.
Friday, February 03, 2006
The sky is dull black
The sky tonight is dull black. A dithering wind did not blow away the clouds. It will be a gloomy Wednesday morning tomorrow - I will wake up, read a book sitting on the toilet seat for ten minutes, then I will look at the watch and rush up to take a shower, enclosed in a glass cabin that gets covered with steam and makes me look more attractive than I am in a luminous yellow light that floods the wide mirror on the front. Ammu will knock at the door and remind me that I will be late to work. I will quickly step out of the shower cabin; carefully place my feet on the blue mat, careful not to spill too much water on the floor. I will spread a palmful of cream, and apply it on all parts of the body accessible to my two hands. The clock will have ticked another five minutes. By then I will know that I will be late to work.
That will be tomorrow.
Tonight, it is a dull black sky. Not that I can see the sky – the blinds are pulled down and they shield the view from me. In the morning, Ammu rolls them up and looks out at the swaying green leaves or the brazenly oversized flowers. But before the night arrives, she pulls down the blinds. Keep the darkness out, she says.
Ammu is in the other room, asleep. Asleep, I know, because I hear her gentle snores. They are not like the loud snores of fat people. Just soft, intermittent snores, once every five, maybe seven, breaths. When I don’t hear her snore, I know Ammu’s eyes are open and looking at the ceiling. She says she sees flowers in the ceiling. When I look up, I see only the white paint.
I was looking at the ceiling with Ammu sometime back. It looked even more impermeable than the blinds, so I kissed her on the forehead. She held my hand for a while. I said, dream of me. She kissed my fingers and I left.
Now, I sit next to the blinds – one horizontal white layer upon another, covering each other at the edges, making sure that what remains in the room, remains in the room. My fingers twinge with the desire to slide into the blinds and split them apart. It feels that if I look out into the dark abyss, perhaps, I will travel inside, somewhere deep inside. I feel the twinge.
Ammu loves light. Always has. In the days gone by, they said she had a dazzling smile. When we gathered for the photo session – I, wearing the grey suit, Ammu, dressed in the pink and orange dress, my friends, her cousins, her friends, my cousins, and many others, all standing by the bride and the groom – they said she had a dazzling smile. But it was in her eyes that I saw the light; even in the darkness of our room that night, much after the photo session, when I whispered to her some tribal chants. She laughed, and her eyes dazzled.
This room is the living room. If Ammu hears this, she will say that the side of the room where I sit right now is the dining room. She sees the imaginary partition that separates the living room from the dining room. To me, it is the same big room, in which we hung seventeen paintings. Seventeen paintings, two years back. Just random colors splashed on paper, and Ammu insisted they were paintings. Modern art, Jaanu, what do you understand?
That wasn’t all we got.
Two bean bags – brownish grey and red. Two floor cushions – blue and green, and yellow and green. One rug in different shades of blue. A black flower vase. One basket full of potpourri with the fragrance of cinnamon. A violet bed sheet.
Colors that fill our life today, I wrote in my diary. Colors that make me want to live.
I lay behind the cane lampshade on the mattress, and Ammu splashed colors on pieces of paper.
Six down, three more to go, she said and dazzled again. Jaanu, just three more months.
I also want a wind chime, she added.
I want to peep out, beyond the blinds, and see if the leaves are swaying. I do not hear the wind chime right now. I removed the chime. It had to be removed. I didn’t ask Ammu. I did not need to. The wind was treacherous, and even on the nights when we wailed, the chime kept making noises. We had got used to the noises, but when the most important one had been taken away, we wanted them all to go.
Ammu wanted the noises to go. but she was scared of losing the light. She started pulling down the window blinds in the night.
I sit in front of the blinds, and my fingers twinge. I slice through the blinds, and travel deep inside, deep inside, into the darkness, far into the darkness.
Bring back the light.
_____________
Note: Wrote this as part of an exercise - the prompt was to write about a person looking at an object, and then how, either the person or the object undergoes a transformation. Partly copied from some of my old postings here.
That will be tomorrow.
Tonight, it is a dull black sky. Not that I can see the sky – the blinds are pulled down and they shield the view from me. In the morning, Ammu rolls them up and looks out at the swaying green leaves or the brazenly oversized flowers. But before the night arrives, she pulls down the blinds. Keep the darkness out, she says.
Ammu is in the other room, asleep. Asleep, I know, because I hear her gentle snores. They are not like the loud snores of fat people. Just soft, intermittent snores, once every five, maybe seven, breaths. When I don’t hear her snore, I know Ammu’s eyes are open and looking at the ceiling. She says she sees flowers in the ceiling. When I look up, I see only the white paint.
I was looking at the ceiling with Ammu sometime back. It looked even more impermeable than the blinds, so I kissed her on the forehead. She held my hand for a while. I said, dream of me. She kissed my fingers and I left.
Now, I sit next to the blinds – one horizontal white layer upon another, covering each other at the edges, making sure that what remains in the room, remains in the room. My fingers twinge with the desire to slide into the blinds and split them apart. It feels that if I look out into the dark abyss, perhaps, I will travel inside, somewhere deep inside. I feel the twinge.
Ammu loves light. Always has. In the days gone by, they said she had a dazzling smile. When we gathered for the photo session – I, wearing the grey suit, Ammu, dressed in the pink and orange dress, my friends, her cousins, her friends, my cousins, and many others, all standing by the bride and the groom – they said she had a dazzling smile. But it was in her eyes that I saw the light; even in the darkness of our room that night, much after the photo session, when I whispered to her some tribal chants. She laughed, and her eyes dazzled.
This room is the living room. If Ammu hears this, she will say that the side of the room where I sit right now is the dining room. She sees the imaginary partition that separates the living room from the dining room. To me, it is the same big room, in which we hung seventeen paintings. Seventeen paintings, two years back. Just random colors splashed on paper, and Ammu insisted they were paintings. Modern art, Jaanu, what do you understand?
That wasn’t all we got.
Two bean bags – brownish grey and red. Two floor cushions – blue and green, and yellow and green. One rug in different shades of blue. A black flower vase. One basket full of potpourri with the fragrance of cinnamon. A violet bed sheet.
Colors that fill our life today, I wrote in my diary. Colors that make me want to live.
I lay behind the cane lampshade on the mattress, and Ammu splashed colors on pieces of paper.
Six down, three more to go, she said and dazzled again. Jaanu, just three more months.
I also want a wind chime, she added.
I want to peep out, beyond the blinds, and see if the leaves are swaying. I do not hear the wind chime right now. I removed the chime. It had to be removed. I didn’t ask Ammu. I did not need to. The wind was treacherous, and even on the nights when we wailed, the chime kept making noises. We had got used to the noises, but when the most important one had been taken away, we wanted them all to go.
Ammu wanted the noises to go. but she was scared of losing the light. She started pulling down the window blinds in the night.
I sit in front of the blinds, and my fingers twinge. I slice through the blinds, and travel deep inside, deep inside, into the darkness, far into the darkness.
Bring back the light.
_____________
Note: Wrote this as part of an exercise - the prompt was to write about a person looking at an object, and then how, either the person or the object undergoes a transformation. Partly copied from some of my old postings here.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Thanksgiving, Halloween and more
Streets in Pleasanton can be hauntingly quiet. No brawls are seen in miles, neither are the dharnas to bring Saurav back in the team. The leaves quietly turn from green to red and yellow, and hustle onto the ground. Clouds drift by, with the same nonchalance, over the tri-valley hills.
But then, life is not that so staid after all.
If you are a compulsive excitement seeker or just a regular cost conscious desi looking to steal a deal, Thanksgiving is just the time for you. Forget the millions of tons of turkey that must be butchered despite the fact that when the tradition initially began with the first ‘pilgrims’ thanking the Red Indians for helping them survive in their first year in the US, turkey was not even on the menu. Also forget that over the four day weekend you could get away to a beach by the Pacific coast or lose yourself in the glitzy dens of Vegas. What matter on Thanksgiving are the deals. Sample this – Laptop worth $820 being sold for $400, or, a 51” flat screen projection TV with a regular price of 1400 bucks being given away for 800. Too good to be true, huh? There has to be a catch, no? Of course, there is. All these items are limited in number, so you have to be among the first ten or fifteen to strike the shop to get the deal.
Thus, the plan was made. Yours truly and Manas and a friend of his (Raghu) would raid the shops, max out the credit cards, get what we can, hoard as we must, and then e-bay zindabad. (Even at the risk of sounding patronizing, I must mention here that e-bay is the online auction site where you can trade almost anything. Last I heard that drunken monkeys and Saddam Hussein puppets were on sale. Go figure!). Anyway, let me not digress. Our plan was simple - the shop opens at 5 am, leave at 11pm the night before, be there by 11:30, and there can't be more than 10 people in front on you on a rainy night in a rich white neighborhood. Who would beat the desi after all? The plan was executed with not much of a change. We were at the shops (split in two teams) by 12:30 am. And what do we find? 50 people, at the minimum, had reached before us. All stocked with umbrellas and garden chairs and sleeping bags. The first guy arrived at 7pm. Huh!
To cut the long story short, our dreams of making a quick buck were quickly squashed. Manas stayed back in hope of getting the TV, which he did, while Raghu and I headed back home to catch the match. With India at 56 for 4, I didn’t have any other option than to get some sleep. Read a grossly Gangulisque Telegraph’s headline the next morning – 188 all out, 156 one out.
Anyway, that is how the Thanksgiving went.
We celebrated another festival too – the Halloween. Again, for the uninitiated, this is a uniquely American pagan festival that celebrates the devil. So, you have these parties where people dress up ever so weirdly. It is sheer madness, and to witness the true extent of it, one must see the Castro Street Party in San Francisco.
Here, allow me to briefly talk about San Francisco. It is a city that I haven’t seen much, but it has a striking freshness akin to the cool breeze from the Pacific, in whose back drop the city is set. You will see in San Francisco piers that anchor clusters of yachts, and you will see high rises that glisten in the night. You will see a dark orange Golden Gate Bridge, and if you care to walk around, you will walk along undulating roads reminiscent of a hilly terrain and see the distinctive cable car. San Francisco, they will tell you, is the gay capital of the world, it is the bio-technology capital of the world; it is the city that exploded with the dot com boom and survived the subsequent bust. They will remind you that the city was burnt down to ashes in the devastating 1906 earthquake and rose like a phoenix and that it remains the fourth largest American city.
So in this San Francisco, we went to see the Castro Street Party. In shivering cold, as we parked our car in one of the many multi-storied parking lots, and walked along the narrow undulating roads to reach the Castro Street, we encountered the bizarre. Among them, some dressed as Greek philosophers (booze does keep you warm, doesn’t it?) walking alongside Playboy bunnies. In that frivolity, the quietness of the suburban America was ever so conveniently abandoned. There was music playing all around, beats from drums rising in unison. We witnessed a riotous sea of humanity (there were an estimated 300,000 people in attendance) drowning itself in revelry.
Halloween is an interesting concept. You wear masks and be what you are not. Or perhaps, for once, you let it show. And, like Holi, perhaps, it's only one human that interacts with another; not the race or religion or caste or creed. Or maybe, I am just being naïve.
Anyway, that was that for Halloween. On our way back, the drums were still echoing in my ears. But somewhere in my heart, I was missing the sound of the dhaks. Somehow, the memories of a quarter of a century’s life in Calcutta don’t want to leave. I tend to miss them, no matter what. And, the irony is that even Calcutta will never replicate those days again.
Now, let me not get sentimental.
We celebrated the Diwali too. Not as grand as it would be back home, but we did things in style. Had the diyas to light up the house. Deepika dressed in Sari. Manas and I wore kurta pajama. Rangoli was laid out at the door. Kheer and puri and sabzi. And, unlike ever before, we played cards late into the night.
But then, life is not that so staid after all.
If you are a compulsive excitement seeker or just a regular cost conscious desi looking to steal a deal, Thanksgiving is just the time for you. Forget the millions of tons of turkey that must be butchered despite the fact that when the tradition initially began with the first ‘pilgrims’ thanking the Red Indians for helping them survive in their first year in the US, turkey was not even on the menu. Also forget that over the four day weekend you could get away to a beach by the Pacific coast or lose yourself in the glitzy dens of Vegas. What matter on Thanksgiving are the deals. Sample this – Laptop worth $820 being sold for $400, or, a 51” flat screen projection TV with a regular price of 1400 bucks being given away for 800. Too good to be true, huh? There has to be a catch, no? Of course, there is. All these items are limited in number, so you have to be among the first ten or fifteen to strike the shop to get the deal.
Thus, the plan was made. Yours truly and Manas and a friend of his (Raghu) would raid the shops, max out the credit cards, get what we can, hoard as we must, and then e-bay zindabad. (Even at the risk of sounding patronizing, I must mention here that e-bay is the online auction site where you can trade almost anything. Last I heard that drunken monkeys and Saddam Hussein puppets were on sale. Go figure!). Anyway, let me not digress. Our plan was simple - the shop opens at 5 am, leave at 11pm the night before, be there by 11:30, and there can't be more than 10 people in front on you on a rainy night in a rich white neighborhood. Who would beat the desi after all? The plan was executed with not much of a change. We were at the shops (split in two teams) by 12:30 am. And what do we find? 50 people, at the minimum, had reached before us. All stocked with umbrellas and garden chairs and sleeping bags. The first guy arrived at 7pm. Huh!
To cut the long story short, our dreams of making a quick buck were quickly squashed. Manas stayed back in hope of getting the TV, which he did, while Raghu and I headed back home to catch the match. With India at 56 for 4, I didn’t have any other option than to get some sleep. Read a grossly Gangulisque Telegraph’s headline the next morning – 188 all out, 156 one out.
Anyway, that is how the Thanksgiving went.
We celebrated another festival too – the Halloween. Again, for the uninitiated, this is a uniquely American pagan festival that celebrates the devil. So, you have these parties where people dress up ever so weirdly. It is sheer madness, and to witness the true extent of it, one must see the Castro Street Party in San Francisco.
Here, allow me to briefly talk about San Francisco. It is a city that I haven’t seen much, but it has a striking freshness akin to the cool breeze from the Pacific, in whose back drop the city is set. You will see in San Francisco piers that anchor clusters of yachts, and you will see high rises that glisten in the night. You will see a dark orange Golden Gate Bridge, and if you care to walk around, you will walk along undulating roads reminiscent of a hilly terrain and see the distinctive cable car. San Francisco, they will tell you, is the gay capital of the world, it is the bio-technology capital of the world; it is the city that exploded with the dot com boom and survived the subsequent bust. They will remind you that the city was burnt down to ashes in the devastating 1906 earthquake and rose like a phoenix and that it remains the fourth largest American city.
So in this San Francisco, we went to see the Castro Street Party. In shivering cold, as we parked our car in one of the many multi-storied parking lots, and walked along the narrow undulating roads to reach the Castro Street, we encountered the bizarre. Among them, some dressed as Greek philosophers (booze does keep you warm, doesn’t it?) walking alongside Playboy bunnies. In that frivolity, the quietness of the suburban America was ever so conveniently abandoned. There was music playing all around, beats from drums rising in unison. We witnessed a riotous sea of humanity (there were an estimated 300,000 people in attendance) drowning itself in revelry.
Halloween is an interesting concept. You wear masks and be what you are not. Or perhaps, for once, you let it show. And, like Holi, perhaps, it's only one human that interacts with another; not the race or religion or caste or creed. Or maybe, I am just being naïve.
Anyway, that was that for Halloween. On our way back, the drums were still echoing in my ears. But somewhere in my heart, I was missing the sound of the dhaks. Somehow, the memories of a quarter of a century’s life in Calcutta don’t want to leave. I tend to miss them, no matter what. And, the irony is that even Calcutta will never replicate those days again.
Now, let me not get sentimental.
We celebrated the Diwali too. Not as grand as it would be back home, but we did things in style. Had the diyas to light up the house. Deepika dressed in Sari. Manas and I wore kurta pajama. Rangoli was laid out at the door. Kheer and puri and sabzi. And, unlike ever before, we played cards late into the night.
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