A Million Delhis

It was an uncomfortably hot night. Delhi was an island in a sea of humid air, barking dogs, impatient feet, bright street lights and faint recollections of boring TV commercials.

The burning stars, some of them hidden behind wispy clouds, seemed to be vaporising slowly in the heat. The moon had disappeared; a warm breeze seemed to suggest that it had evaporated off the sky. It had stopped raining. The streets were still wet. Everyone around me seemed to be in a hurry. I stood still for a moment, and gulped in the humid air.

I had stepped out to get away from the world of laidback smell of the air conditioner, hour-long phone conversations, and tiresome monotonicity. I looked around — a thousand scattered reflections of my own face stared at me from shop windows and puddles of rainwater. It was like walking inside a thousand-sided glass ball — light threw at me lifeless, two-dimensional imitations of my body from all directions.

I trudged on through rivers of gossip, concrete, muffled yells of children coming from houses, and hysteria. I cursed the chaos.

I walked toward the metro station at a slow pace. A wave of commuters passed me, staring curiously. Was it so obvious that I was searching for another city far away from this sea of noise and confusion? Was a teenager, roaming around aimlessly at night, a rare sight? I was trying to get away; I was a culprit. The stares seemed to be unfriendly. I lowered my eyes and stopped walking. The night was filled with the squeal of a train pulling away from the station.

I looked around once more for something that perhaps never existed, sighed, and turned away.

A few minutes later, I saw a beggar. Seeing me, she stopped on the other side of the road. I searched in my pocket for money. She immediately came toward me and lit up when I handed her a ten rupee note. I turned up the volume of my iPod — Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony drowned out the noise of the kid arguing with his mother a few feet away from where I stood.

I took a turn into another street. It led me back to the Metro station. I stood at a dark corner, looking into the distance. No one else was near. Silence enveloped me. Light from a few apartments reached out to me across the distance. I smiled at that other Delhi that I had set out to discover — the Delhi that was a delightful mixture of silence, peace, and after-rain smell. Suddenly, I realised that Delhi was, at once, a million different cities. And they were all there, within me: noise, silence, blinding lights, darkness, boredom and discovery. I looked up. The stars seemed to wink at me.

Appears in the Capital Letters section of Outlook Delhi City Limits’ latest issue. Feels good to write for people who actually allow you to post your article to your blog. Meh.

This, here, is fine too.

There’s another world out there somewhere. With acceptable opinions and meaningful words. A world where everything fits in. Everything. Even the songs one listens to on lazy Thursday afternoons, and the tardy poems one writes in bedecked journals.* A world existing with the consent of all the sane people. Yes, there is another world out there somewhere.

Another World. An Other World. A(h) (K)No(w) The(i)r World.

A bloodyimportantterriblyrightextraordinary world. A world where people with a penchant for Solitude, nail files and five o’ clock wisecracks are not allowed. And that’s why I’ve never been there.

But this world, with its pleasing pseudoreality, is fine too. It only has room for one person, though.

* Do you still do that too, Prachi? Or am I the only one left?

I was alive once. Now, I just do Real Analysis.

A yellow Butterfly passed me by. A second, and a third. Butterflies in a decidedly Un-Butterflyly city. Like three pages from One Hundred Years of Solitude carefully preserved in a yellowed textbook. I glanced at my watch – math lecture would start in five minutes. One of my favourite lectures, yes. But the Butterflies were too beautiful.

In the end, I chose Real Analysis over three quivering drops of joy.
In the same way that I often choose bluegrayblue over purplegreenyellow, smug assumptions over doubt, and human company over solitude.
Almost bewitched by beauty. Almost, but not entirely.

In the hour-long lecture, I was counting Butterflies in my head. Onetwothree. Three yellow Butterflies inside my head. Butterfly-lover in a decidedly Un-Butterflyly city.
Like a lost cloud hovering over No Land.
Like a pair of sneakers belonging to a man with No Legs.
Almost bewitched by Butterflies. Almost, but not entirely.

Halfway through the lecture, it started raining. Happy crystals of infinite beauty fell down toward the earth, colliding violently with a Sea-less city. Puddles of shattered crystals accumulated on the ground. Nature’s apology for absence of the Sea.

I thought about my three yellow Butterflies. They must’ve been out there somewhere, fluttering yellow Butterfly wings in a charming Butterflyly manner.

I, on the other hand, was trapped in an hour-long Butterfly-less world.

It stopped raining when the lecture ended. I rushed downstairs to a noisy crowd and No Butterflies. Raucous people in a decidedly Un-Butterflyly city. Acquaintances, not quivering drops of joy.

Real Analysis could’ve waited. Next time, I’ll choose to be bewitched. Entirely.

Blah

To the girl who blows things out of proportion:

Inconsequential things like hanging out together, at Barista and Mickey D’s, and belonging to the same clique don’t make us friends. But they sure as hell make me a hypocrite.

You say that you’ve got me all figured out: I’m too upright; I don’t respect tradition (your choice of words amazes me); I live in pathetic little worlds of my own; and I am The Snob That Drinks Too Much Coffee.

You started a fight, and now you accuse me of being unkind. There’s only one flaw in this Great Battle — you’re the only one who’s taking part. You walk through corridors picking up slender ribbons of trivial issues, and nagging people. You drive them crazy over half-forgotten things until they say what you want to hear. Because in your world of Corridors That Hand Out Interesting Gossip, the only answers that exist are yours. It’s hard to believe that you’re nineteen.

I know not whether to laugh or not — no one else has ever taken such admirable interest in my decisions, after all. And, no one else claims to know me so well. By the way, you missed something:

I write letters to people and post them on my blog, where they would never find them. Why? Because you’re not the only one who can act like a kindergartner.

Colours

Yellow-brown words. Yellow voices and brown voices. A yellow and brown song.

A song and a remembered, fleeting moment. A memory remembered on a bright yellow morning with the smell of golden-yellow sunshine in the air. A remembered moment that rose up from a pile of discarded, brown, dim recollections like a fragile bubble — pretty yellow thing — cheerful, and riding on the wings of a yellow-brown song. The song played itself over and over again, until the whole world seemed to be a curious painting of extravagant yellows and muted browns. Yellow rivers and brown rivers merged with each other in various permutations to form familiar voices — voices that repeated half-remembered conversations in my mind. It surprised me that all those things could still come back to me, — some after numerous years, a handful after a few months, and others from a couple of days ago — a mixture of different times and different flavours, all coloured in various hues of yellow-brown.

It came back to me, all of it, on the wings of a yellow-brown song, clothed in the yellow-brown words from a favourite book.

Brown coffee. A yellow summer dress that was one of my favourite outfits as a kid. A warm, brown hand of an old man. The myriad yellows and browns of my friends’ beloved voices. The deep brown voice of my first love. The countless smiling brown eyes that I see each day. A yellowed newspaper cut-out. Dried yellow leaves making crunching noises beneath hasty feet. And the soft brown sound lurking in the background of warm, nutty evenings and rainy afternoons. Rich, rich brown dancing in the yellow morning air. Brown breeze playing with my hair on hot summer nights. The peculiar brown taste in the mouth on cold December days. The yellow perfume lingering in the air, merging with unending phone conversations. The cheerful, yellow memories of a city by the sea. The dim, brown memories of an ancient land—birthplace, but not home—around me, but not quite inside me. Not yet.

Yellows and browns danced in front of my eyes.

Yellows and browns of the people I hear colour their images in my head, so that the face of everyone I know is a blob of brown and yellow (and, in a few cases, some other delightful colour thrown in). No wonder, then, that I spend entire mornings listening to the numerous purples and greens of a dead man’s masterpiece — rising, falling, fading in and out of view, disappearing to some hidden place sometimes, and blinding me at other times — dancing around my head.

I drowned the yellows and browns that lay inside me, in majestic waves of purples and greens.

I was listening to something, and then I had this sudden urge to write. So I wrote this random, seemingly nonsensical piece. (The result of an overdose of yellow and brown, perhaps.) I just might give everything to simply listen sometimes, like a blind person, and enjoy colourless sounds. Bleh.

A dog, a fat kid and a moron

Lessons learnt the hard way, part I: A dog, a fat kid and a moron

• Walking slowly on the road, shaking your head to music like a person possessed, with earphones thrust clumsily in your ears is considered as insane behaviour in Delhi.

• Looking around for something, and suddenly leaping with delight on spotting an emaciated stray dog is likely to make you look like a moron.

• Tiptoeing closer to that dog to take a good shot is not a wise idea. It might not actually be asleep.

• And, by the way, there’s a feature called “zoom” in the camera. Using it won’t hurt.

• If you throw a chocolate bar to the dog, it will probably not appreciate the friendly gesture. (It might even try to act all confused, just to outsmart you.) And, oh, dogs don’t seem to be particularly crazy about chocolate—biscuits, perhaps, but not chocolate.

• Perhaps that bar of chocolate wouldn’t have been wasted on the fat kid staring at you from across the street. It might’ve even made him go away and mind his own business at home, watching cartoons or something.

Summer break is going on, and I’ve been let loose for quite a while now. (Blame it on Delhi University!) So I was monkeying around with my dear little camera, when a stupid fat kid ruined my day. Much grief and embarrassment. Maybe I should pack a jhola and scurry away to the Himalayas now.

Just another post

D: You should’ve dated R, you know. He was madly in love with you. You should’ve given him a chance.
Me: Hey, I didn’t like him. Besides, we were kids back then—he couldn’t possibly have been in love with me. He just had a crush on me.
D: Okay, whatever! He was madly crushed under you.

* * *

S: What do you hate about me?
Me: What sort of a question is that?
S: Come on, be honest. What do you absolutely, completely hate about me?
Me: I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what you hate about me?
S: Er… you’re nasty sometimes, but you make it sound like you’re being really nice and all. That’s mean, I guess.
Me: He he. I love doing that! Okay, my turn now. Um… you seem to be a leftist. You are one, aren’t you?
S: No, yaar! I’m right-handed!

You wouldn’t have understood

Your words were so… familiar. I stared at the page. The number ‘4’ printed confidently, at the bottom of the page, stared back at me. And then, I read the author’s description of you. I shuddered.

Another page. I saw you there, and called out loud. You didn’t look at me. I shouted anyway: Who are you? You didn’t reply. You didn’t even notice me. You said something, to someone else—you merged with the plot, with the words in the book. Perhaps you were instructed to stay in your own world. Is that why you didn’t reply? You, who could have been so much more than a mere character, chose to remain inside that book. But, what else could you have done? Of course, you wouldn’t have understood. You don’t exist in the real world, after all. Yet, I devoured every sentence, and I drank every little drop of the book you were in. I got drunk on it.

I still think about you a lot. But, I guess you never noticed me.

I came across a particular fictional character sometime back. She was me, with a different name, living in a different world. I was, of course, surprised—how did the writer think of such a character? This piece is an excerpt from a letter that I wrote to her. Surprisingly, I didn’t enjoy reading that book.

Have you ever experienced anything like this? Have you ever found yourself in the pages of a book?

All the people I’ve been

One of the many impenetrable aspects of a lazy day is this: bits of it remain, like annoying shadows, on the colourful canvas of the next morning.

When I woke up today, I was blind to the world. And I could only see myself. I saw all the people I’ve been, and all the people I chose not to be. I saw them all. I studied them. I saw what they were becoming, and why. I wrote their names in the fresh morning air—the sounds of their names will be there in the breeze, for a few days, until I wake up from this oracular dream into another unreal prophecy. For now, I’ll just chant their names in my head—all the people I’ve been, all the people who bear my name and my face, all the people who’ve been me.

I miss you, my love

Your kiss, years later, lingers still
On my trembling lips;
Doomed am I
To a lifetime of love.
Concrete, neon, plastic,
Tetrapods in the sea,
Dreams and disasters—
Memories of these, and
My love for you, haunt me.

A thousand miles away,
In a dry land,

I am damp inside.

This one’s on Mumbai. I wrote it a few days ago, when it was raining in Delhi.