Letters

The evening you lost your name
Letters were scattered on the sidewalk

Broken. 
Burnt. 

I found them - 

I lifted them up gently on my fingers
Looked into the bruised mirror
And smeared them on my cheeks

It felt warm.

And when the wind wanted to steal them away
I hid them in my bones
I clutched them close to my skin
And set them free within

Did you ?

Stuck !

What is life? , I thought.

There could be so many different definitions, depending on how you look at it. Leave alone other subjects, just scientifically you could define it from a chemical, physical, obviously biological and a possibly mathematical perspective. Which leaves infinite endless arguments all hovering around these four magical letters.

I took out a small green pocket comb and brushed my hair back.

They say, our hair is dead. Some graveyard it was on the scalp of Rapunzel !

Beautiful , isn't it ? Look all over you - the indomitable power of the dead makes you all the more living.

I scratched my armpits.

What is more powerful, then ? Life , or lifelessness?

Good question.

Both, I think. We are locked in this spiritual vacuum - floating as we speak , tightly held in position by nooses from above and below. I am, literally. You are, metaphorically.

And in all these arguments about heaven and hell and afterlife and pre-incarnations, what really boggles me is that everything ends with death. As if the sole purpose of infusing life in a system is to end it. Why create life at all, then ? Even if you did , why make it so precious ? Scared of death ? Not me. Never.

Okay. May be. Slightly.

I unbuttoned my shirt a little, wiped the sweat around my neck with my white handkerchief and made loud noises hitting the door in front of me.

The floor beneath me shook violently.

I took a step back.

What do you do, I thought, when heaven and hell pulls you with equal forces ? Do you remain stuck where you are , or do you expect one of them to get defeated, lose control and let you go to the other half? What if they both forsake you , discard you and leave you in this post-existential void of nothingness ?

That's even worse.

My stomach started grumbling. Partly in fear, partly due to something else. No, I guess it's wholly in fear.

I took out my cell phone. It was outside the coverage area.

I picked up the intercom on the wall. Dead.

Damn it !

Death seems to be at the doorstep, leaving signs everywhere for me.

It's time.

But no. I shall not be defeated this easily. I have fought the Mughals and the English on the battlefield , the West Indians and Australians on the cricket pitch and my wife and my boss till just a few hours ago. And therefore, I inhaled deeply and let out one loud -

Twirrrrrrng ! Gwrrroooong ! Frrrrrrrwissshhhh !!


The power supply returned. Lights blinked back to life.


My elevator started moving again.

Frames

So the bus came.

I was waiting for her.On the opposite side. In a different corner.Not knowing where she would be. Not knowing when she would be. The night breathed of pastel and grime.

The wilting seconds were at a bar. Waiting for their drink.

And the bus left.

And another one.

And another.

A row of them.

Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.

And in that mesh of moving cages, the wind sent pictures of her, frozen between the frames of numbers and round lights, as she walked under the sodium vapours.

The smoke settled down on the paved nothingness.

My radium struck for bed.





Post Script : Many years ago, I had read a little poem which described beyond par the seeing off between two lovers on a railway platform. This piece is an ode to the poet.

The Ambulance Driver

On a cold, wintry morning, the first of January this year, a friend of mine fell from a flight of stairs, fractured his leg and was in excruciating pain. Being the only person at hand, I had to call in an ambulance and move him to the medical centre of his institute (that being the nearest option) as fast as I could. The nurse wheeled him in, he was given an intravenous shot of ibuprofen and was admitted for further investigation. As the doctor got busy doing x-rays and other pathological tests, I took a seat on a wooden bench in the lobby beside a gray haired old man who was sitting with his arms folded across his chest. I usually get bored quite easily, and so being the person that I am, I struck up a conversation with him within a few minutes.

'This place is good, right ?', I asked him, somewhat skeptically. The building looked really shabby, which made me doubt its worth.
'Yeah, as good as a government-run-clinic can be,' he smirked, 'You a student here?'
'No. My friend is. I am from a different institute. ' I replied,'And you are an employee, are you?'
'Yeah. I drove the ambulance you brought your friend in,' he smiled.
Shit ! My brain must have blocked him out in this entire mess.
'Oh yes! Yes. That's why you kind of seemed familiar', I cooked up a conventional excuse and smiled back,'You from Bangalore?'
'From north Karnataka. Settled in Bangalore decades ago though. You ?'
'Calcutta.'
'Been in Bangalore for long?'
'Not quite,' I answered,'A little over two years.'
He nodded his head.

An awkward silence followed for a couple of minutes.

I broke the ice again.
'It must be really difficult in your job, isn't it? Being on your toes twenty four-seven?'
He smiled.
'Tell me something', I shifted in my seat turning towards him and asked, 'How difficult is it to drive an ambulance than driving a regular four wheeler?'
'Technically, both are cars. The basics are the same. But other than that, there's a hell lot of a difference. Every day you drive with the notion that the next bend you take can be the patient's last. You keep telling yourself to hurry up, but you cannot afford to crash into the kerb, nor can you afford to be slow. It's like carrying a ticking time bomb in your dickey, which makes you think twice before pressing the brakes every time.'
'And how long have you been doing it ?'
'For the past fifteen years'
'That's a pretty long time! But then,' I  guessed his approximate age, made calculations and asked,' But then I guess you were not always an ambulance driver, were you?'
'No. Before this I was in the army.'
'The army ?!', I exclaimed, 'Like the army army ?'
He laughed,'Yeah, the army Army. The Indian Army, I mean.'
'That's amazing!'
'And if you are wondering if this old man had ever been active in the battlefield, yes he had.'
'Really ?!'
'I fought in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Been in Calcutta at that time, had stayed at the Fort William- seen the Ganga, the Howrah Bridge, the Eden gardens. Good old times they were.'
'So what happened ? If you were in the army, how did you end up driving ambulances ?', I asked.
'You see my son,' he got up, stretched his arms, and smiled,'In life, we all suffer, in one way or the other. How we decide to deal with the suffering makes us who we are. Some people decide to bury their's, while others try to negotiate with it all their life. I just chose to drive mine.'
  

Heads or Tails ?

When I was a toddler, my parents, like yours, made me babble alphabets and numbers. It started off by connecting fruits and toys to mere sounds, followed by mugging up nursery rhymes about how glowing gas giants blink in the dark, or how an overly obese man fell off a wall (who in all possibility was drunk - how else can you imagine a man that heavy sitting atop a wall ?) and fractured his bones. Soon I became a copycat - mimicking songs on television adverts and dances on the celluloid - and even sooner, a walking exhibit of wonder for my relatives and neighbours.

When our maid's son was a toddler, he, unlike you and me, learnt to speak random, scattered words that he heard around. None in his family could sign their name, none could read, none could write. So he picked up clauses and half sentences here and there, a couple or two of nice ones though, and a whole lot of unspeakable slangs. Soon he too became a copycat, and followed his sibling into spraying leaded paints on cheap chairs and tables at the local furniture store every morning.

I, however, went to a school every morning, and the day I learnt that a correct answer and a teacher's correct answer might not always be the same, I grew up. I quickly graduated from half pants and tightened ties to trousers and tucked out shirts. In a wink, I passed out of secondary school, pushed my way through the higher secondary traffic and chalked out my plans for getting a monthly paycheck. Bingo !

On a few lucky mornings, our maid's son, on the other hand, went to an impoverished municipal school that taught him the basic skills to write a receipt, in case he decided not to remain unemployed. His father, a rickshaw puller, died all of a sudden from methanol toxicity. His mother, our maid, desperately tried to increase the number of houses at which she could do chores, but was thrashed by washing machines, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners. So he and his brother dropped out of schools and started spending more hours at the furniture shop. Inhaled more toxins. Got cancer. Both of them. They waited for long hours in serpentine queues at government hospitals. After months, he got operated on, got a pipe fixed to his intestine (while his brother was sent for chemo), loaned a small tea shop with the last penny left to earn a little more to buy his medicines, and survived. 

I lived.

I enjoyed. 

I partied hard. 

Because I always knew what I wanted when the coin was flipping in mid-air. 

He did not. 

Because, for one, he did not have the coin itself.

Post Script : Both the picture and the story are real, but do not talk of the same people. The story is rooted in Calcutta, while the picture was taken in Bangalore - the kid in the shot works as a daily labour in a potter's workshop and had left school by the third standard.

Everywhere, it's the same goddamn story. 

But am not the only one !

It is surprising that events, to which you have no personal connection whatsoever, can drive you mad. A glass window focused light onto oxidized pages bearing reports about the girl on the late night bus in Delhi, and I burnt. I burnt in silence. In an air conditioned cubicle, while sipping a cup of coffee, and typing on a Babbage's bastard about how bad I feel. Because that's the most I can do. 'That's the most you can do ?', you ask. Oh yeah ! With all the paid leaves spent on going to the mall to watch American superheroes fighting for 'global' peace, do you think I could do anything more ? Like you, I too dream of changing the world, being a Martin Luther or maybe a Medha Patekar someday. Therefore, I pickup my burger, grind juices out of the lettuce and chicken, throw the empty packet on the road and post updates on social media about how cities turn into dumpsters. Yaay ! 

Sometimes, though, I feel good. And positive. And I feel I am really worth something much more. Something on the lines of a piece of puzzle in the cosmic jigsaw. On those days, I try talking to bus conductors about their twelve hour daily service schedule (with a unitary pee-break) and ponder about their shabby homes, waiting wives and crying children, thinking if I could change some of it. On other days, I see eunuchs clapping their way to beggary, and I feel this isn't the right way to live -perhaps an NGO that provides alternate sources of livelihood and makes them literate may be the first step towards healing. I start making subconscious blue-prints, ignore my professional chores and suddenly, the loop pulls me back for a head on collision with the piled up backlogs. 

So I survive. Day in. Day out. Trying to be different, ending up being all alike. Like the clay cups in the picture - each one a clone of the immediate next. Each one born for the same old job. Each one filled to the brim with beverage, each one sipped slowly and peacefully, and each and every one of them discarded once their worth is over. But maybe, in the life that is so short and subtle, maybe if I can cause a little less burn, and degrade in the raindrops to make the earth a little more fertile, I would have served my purpose. That is why I dare to breathe in dust, and try to breathe out poetry.

And I am not the only one !

The Hungry Road

Far from here, in midst of endless days
I wish the roads had left a sign for me
Behind turns, the silent omen stays
Kissing dreams to muted destiny

And in the monsoon fireflies keep calling
The bridge burns, singing rhymes of love and sorrow
Leaf by leaf, my ciphered words start falling
A cradle grows for the poems of tomorrow

As omens rise in smoke and dust and stones
The hungry road now takes a nameless bend
It whips me to a bag of broken bones
And leaves a new beginning at my end


Post Script : The image and the poem, though created almost half a year apart, seem to be tied by a common theme. I found this man sitting in one of the busiest niches in Calcutta during the Durga Puja (the biggest festival of the region) of 2012. Loudspeakers tore apart the wind, oodles of wasted popcorn became the buttery snow, and this man sat under a scorching sun not seeming to care a bit about the colours around. He caught my attention while I was crossing the street, and not surprisingly enough, he never looked up when I was taking the picture, or afterwards. No one cared about the man, not even he himself. 

I felt the road was hungry, and the man was her meal. Or maybe, the other way around.