No Sunlight

I wake up at 6 a.m.to yet another gray morning.
An hour later I hobble towards the rickshaw stand.
Below the overcast sky, everything wears a brooding look.
Or is it menacing?
...

There is not a rickshaw in sight.
...
May be, it was menacing.
...
Half an hour later, I am seven minutes late for my usual 7:48 CST local.
The bloody F-O-B is throbbing with bodies.
Bodies, bags,umbrellas,fish,vegetable, beggars,peddlers,TCs.
...
It could have been menacing.
...
I'm still on the bloody F-O-B as the 7:54 CST local pulls into the station.
The sea of bodies suddenly gathers more momentum.
Bags jostle against backs, baskets drip over heads, peddlers elbow beggars.
Someone trips over my long, black umbrella.
Aye Maddamm! Dikhta nahi hai kya?
...
It was definitely menacing!
...
Push,pull,nudge,jump.
Miraculously I'm on board the very crowded 7:54 just as it begins to pull out of the station.
...
We hang on to the edge of the bars, like leaves on a bough.
As rain and wind lash us, soaking every possible thing exposed to it,
Co-foot board traveller1, "Umbrella hatao, my raincoat is getting wet."
Co-foot board traveller 2, standing beside traveller 1,
"Pressure mat dalo, you want to push me out of the train kya?
...
Forty five minutes later, I've survived another breezy foot board journey.
I waddle through mucky water strewn with rotting leaves and paper and plastic
The 8:35a.m. bus no.167 is just limping out of the depot.
Gone.
The black clouds have burst open once more,  with more vengeance.
...
God! It's so menacing!!
...
Seven hours later, again on the foot board,
Soggy and damp, disheveled and worn out,
I muse about crossing over, switching sides, changing jobs,
About chauffeur driven cars, high heels, expensive cotton,
And the sun.
When will it be out again?

At the Bus stop

Her face crumpled into a grimace as she skirted the last of the mucky puddles and reached the bus stand.Despite her best efforts, she noticed, her foot was studded with fine brown dots of muck.A fine wind had been blowing since the morning and it had played truant with her hair. Holding on to her umbrella and her printed cotton duppatta, she stood in queue, waiting for the bus.Idly, she went over her day so far.She had skipped breakfast, missed her usual train and was late yet again for work. But seeing the people and places around, always comforted her. She amused herself with inconsequential details.

Her walk from the railway station to the bus stand was delightfully amusing.It was lined with distinct sights and smells. The earthy smell of wet mud fused into the smell of the fat man's Navy Cut smoke, which mingled with the aroma of steamy, crisp vada pav, which finally merged into the fumes of the taxis in the taxi stand. Then there was the bovine cow, just at the steps of the foot over bridge. It was always there, ruminating on cud while commuters hustled past it, making a pit stop only to touch it for a moment and seek its blessings before the lugubrious work day started.  

There were many more. But today something else amused her.She quizzically looked around as she heard a Bollywood song playing somewhere in the background. She thought she saw a pair of roving eyes staring at her, from behind a tattered curtain. She had often noticed this shop, but had never cared to look inside. The curtain always religiously veiled the doorway and she had never stood long enough at the bus stand to watch anyone emerge out of the shadows of the room. She tried to catch a glimpse of the interiors, as the curtain slowly moved in the breeze.

Intrigued, she looked skyward. The name board, was a modest work of art. A huge red rose stood between two words, also splashed in red, against a dull white backdrop - "Red Rose." Scrawled in the subscript was "Deshi Daaru Bar." Suddenly a man darted out from the shadows. He was beaming at her, as he walked past the queue at the bus stand and disappeared into the mass of moving bodies on the road.

She smiled to herself as she got on to the 8:20am bus. There was always a new reason to smile in the city.

Breakfast

He waited for the morning breeze to tease the tattered curtain. Seated on the table right next to the door, he thought "The curtain must sway". His morning rite would remain unfinished, just like the glass in his hand if the bloody curtain did not sway. He looked down at the glass in his hand. It was his third one since the morning. A black blob of something sat on the rim of the dull cut-glass tumbler. He was momentarily disgusted. Luckily, the TV, perched high on a wall somewhere behind him cut into his thoughts. It crooned a soppy Bollywood number, "Tum dil ki dhadkan mein..." His spirited glass and he softly swayed. "How apt!" he thought tapping his fingers to the tune. Of course, he forgot the unwelcome black blobby resident on the rim. He took another sip and began to meditate on the doorway again. He put down his glass as his eye caught a glimpse of the blue umbrella bobbing up and down. It came to a halt at some distance from the doorway. He gazed out, thankful that the curtain was finally swaying.

She looked a little tousled today but that seemed to add to her charm, he thought.Her eyes lingered on something overhead.She stared at it curiously. Or was it a look of amusement? He couldn't tell. He washed down his third glass for the morning, happy that his morning rite was complete. He waited a while before he darted out, past the faded curtain, into the gray morning, smiling.   

(Im)modest Proposal

Spitfire the sweet faced, from the East, thought of me after a after a long time. It was a welcome surprise. "What's happened to your blog?" she said, among other things. I wondered too, what had happened to it? I'm tempted to say "life's like that" with a nine to five job and some more. But that's bull shit.

So Spitfire, I decided to make a feeble attempt to resuscitate it back to life. Thanks for being my muse in a way, you've been good (for a change :P).  I dread looking back to see these pages splattered with monochrome. It would be cooler to see something tinged in a hue of pink and yellow, red and green.

During this longish hiatus I missed writing about the first rains that left the city smeared with some more muck and grime.
Of the early morning train ride with raindrops and raingear.
Of the black tarry road which glistens with an unusual radiance.
Of lazy strolls on cobbled sidewalks.
Of cutting chai and piping hot vada pavs
And of course, some of my favorite people.

(I'm sick of all of you leaving my city.)

So if the rains haven't reached you yet, you know where you can find some showers, made more wonderful with chai and me! 

Derivatives

I try to pin it down to mediocrity. Self doubt. Disinterest.
Options: Swirl into a blaze of  orange flames. Dissipate into vapor.Mingle with the heavy molecules of humidity.Hang ominously over you like a wretched day in Mumbai.

It might be easier to just pass out.
The heat provides an easy excuse for laziness. And procrastination.
So may be its not mediocrity after all.

Confessions of a compulsive consumer

The silver on my  toe is chipping.

The electric pair of silver mojris carries a wisp of dusty Hyderabadi grandeur. Tired creases on the insoles spill a tale of worn feet.
My electric pair of silver mojris sadly, has lost its sheen.Beyond redemption.

The humidity laden Mumbai air plays truant with the carelessly strewn silver earrings.They've steadily gone from sparkly silver to gray to a dull black.They now face an uncertain, pasty fate...the yearly ablutions with toothpaste and water.
The hundred bucks buckled belt from Causeway now shows it true colors. Unlike the earrings, the silver buckle doesn't metamorphose into something old but pretty. It ungracefully bears orange stains of rust.This orange now slowly spills and spreads all over the white body of the belt. Cancerous.  
The silver of the stainless steel cutlery looks dubious.The shiny silver is too shiny. Can it be?
The thin line of mercury in the thermometer is a relief after the shiny silver. It comes closer to the silver of my Hyderabadi mojris.Erstwhile silver of the mojris.

Encased in the tube it looks placid and cool. While the mercury in the city rises I'm tempted to pour out this beautiful, thin strand of mercury.

It is the perfect shade of silver I'd like on my toe.

As always, I'm left a little more saddened at my compulsive consumerist status.

Endlessly

It begins with a knotty feeling.It's like a black, shadowy, gloomy, distrustful, menacing feeling.
Pit.
Hollow pit.

A nerve strains somewhere in the center of the pit.Then, it slowly starts radiating.
It's an empty sort of gnawing ache.
You want to spit it out, but you're ashamed of what it might look like once it's let out.
You silently choke on it instead.

You wait.
Wait for something
Right
For a knock
A glint
A beam

I had always wondered how it feels to wait for a miracle.

On Doorways

Jew Town Road,
Fort Cochin

The narrow stone cobbled streets seemed like they had meandered out of a book of illustrated Fairy Tales.Now, black tarred roads stick out only as a unsure memory.Here, feet mostly tread on age old stone, bathed in a film of sand blown over from the thin shoreline. 

Every other street corner was splashed with color or bedecked with beads, flowers, clothes or jewels.Resplendent.

In the midst of this extravagance I spotted a humble door way. Welcoming curious feet was a worn out but formerly bright yellow wall. Leading on was a cobbled stone path. Hovering over, cautiously was the blue sky.

Where will it take curious feet?
I have yet to find out.

This is as far as my camera's eye could see. 
But does another door always open when one shuts?
Is everything illuminated?

A Catalogue

Unreasonable

Dominating

Infuriating

Irritating 

Illogical

Petty

Obstinate 

Annoying

Autocratic

Hypocritical

Nerve-wrecking

I have it in the same measure as you.
Measure for measure.

Walls, now and then

The car snakes its way around the hill, through the bastis and mandis. We are momentarily distracted by the women in their red,yellow and pink lehengas and silver chudis. A bright sun beam bounces off a metal pot carefully balanced on a woman's head. Our driver squints for a moment. He shifts from the third to the second gear. The car slowly purs up the gradient. Brown stone walls stealthily creep up against the blue of the sky. The pale blue transforms into a dramatic space as battles of yester years peek through the small windows, chiseled out of stone. Mouthfuls of the sky emerge from behind the open windows of the thick fort walls.  He tells us it was a city ravaged in the past by pillage, murder and deceit. Every window has a steep decline, going all the way down. Buckets of hot oil were poured down these slopes if an enemy tried to scale the walls to enter. What bloody walls they must have been. Now they stand as a silent relic of the city's past. Mute spectators to the unfolding of a new history.