the 'Fist' & the 'Pacifist'

Friday, April 28, 2006

The Homecoming

The taxi rattled and stopped. The driver mindful the engine might not fire when the lights change, started it up again. It stood, it rattled.

Abeer settled in his seat, drifting in and out of sleep. He moved away from the window, the draft of rain came in gasps like a spray of cool nettles. The streetlights - spheres of distorted illumination hung like ghosts in the falling rain.

The last time, he had spent the whole trip back from the airport making an inventory of all that was new, and trying to recall all that had gone. He remembered some, while others escaped all attempts at recollection.

A new housing complex, where a paper had once stood. He had pointed it out to Deborah, and then the place had been left behind. Now, he didn't try and seek anything out. It was dark and the rain hung like a haze over the road, there was no Deborah to show anything to. No scraps of the past to be glued to a page marked 'now'.

Did Deborah think of the old mill? Or the other things he had shown her on the drive home? Maybe she did, maybe some house or office in downtown Houston, reminded her off their vacation in Calcutta. It was a romantic notion, but he doubted it. His eyes were heavy with sleep again.

He remembered the afternoon they had driven to Galveston, to meet her parents. He owned a pickup and was too drunk to drive. She had parked the pickup in the sun and he had had a terrible headache all afternoon. The glare of the sun on his face, his eyes in a squint...

The taxi rattled, heaved and tumbled through the rain.

As he opened his eyes, to peer through the murky windscreen, he knew that the taxi had left the wide avenues of the By-pass, and was now slithering its way through the narrow lanes of Lake Gardens. Abstruse lanes which suddenly opened into wide roads, when you half expected a dead end.

The taxi drew into the drive way. The luggage was duly heaped at the edge of the stairs, and he stood and looked around, the house seemed pretty much as he had left it. The garden looked de-weeded, and there was a new postbox under the soffit. A cream coloured box with the words 'Chatterjee', painted evenly in black letters. He paid the taxi driver, giving him a tip of thirty odd rupees, his Non Resident status making it almost incumbent upon him to do so.

He stood under the Portico awhile longer. The rain had become a trickle, the driveway was a map of muddy water pools. The sky seemed clear and the night wrapped him in a comforting coolness.

The many vacations here had merged seamlessly into one single memory, a memory of now. The rest of his life...a memory of everywhere else.

The Marigold beds were bare - it was the Monsoons. He paused for a moment longer, a smile passed his lips at the thought of Homecoming and all its romantic allusions. He picked up his bags and crossed the raised step into the house.

Labels: Fiction

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Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Their Story...

"Actually doing it is very different". Smoke twirled in an upward spiral.

"I was young... I had thought about it, I had known men and all of that. But this was the first time... that romance and flirting had a physical meaning. I was in a room with a man - he was around me. It's a new experience - you are feeling things for the first time".

I listened. Their coming of age story, perhaps?
I knew them both, but now I listened as if I had tuned into the radio. Attentive but not involved.

I looked down from the window, cars glided through the rain, following orderly geometric paths. A two way street - friends going partying, a doctor rushing to a patient.

Everything seemed to be part of a Perpetual Motion machine. The cars barely stopped for more than a few seconds, even when they paused - the passengers - Closed arguments, arrived at conclusions, shared secrets, confessed to the truth or kept their silence.

I turned around. She had stubbed out the cigarette.

"I felt this with him for the first time. He must have felt it with someone else... for the first time. That someone else, with yet another...maybe it was you?" She looked straight at me, almost expecting an answer.

Life is always changing - like a kaleidoscope gone awry. Unpredictable and myriad, yet strangely orderly and ordained.

I thought of the two ancient men on the battlefield. One a reluctant warrior and the other an all knowing charioteer. To me - both teachers.

"Prepare for war... in peace.
Be at peace in pleasure and pain, in gain and in loss.
Be at peace in defeat and victory".

I walked towards the couch where she was sitting, and reached for the pack of smokes. I smiled "No... it wasn't me".

Labels: Fiction

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Of Going Away...

Last year, like now... the Nor'westers had come.
Last year, I nearly drove into a fallen tree.
Last year, I made another journey.

With an eight hour flight, a lot changes...people, mobile phone numbers, the space you call home. Amidst all this change - there is excitement...excitement of travel, of experience, of weather, of feel, of language.

As May arrives again, I wait for flight tickets in a rexene case.

But there is this strange feeling of life not done. What am I leaving behind? What did I build? What did I create by virtue of being me?

If I didn't go, would things be different? Would I stay back to forge strong relationships which would last a lifetime?

What of those people, who live and die in the same house - with the same trees in their backyard, with the same view from the window, with the same set of neighbors? Are they blessed, because they are saved the pangs of dislocation?

In the past six months, I tried to build all of that, which gives us our own individual identity and anchor.

Another free and fanciful departure waits. Going away is a constant, hopefully someday so will the reason to return.

Labels: Revolving Doors

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Tuesday, April 25, 2006

They were lovers like that...

Ashmit had been waiting at the kerb, where the road running down from her college met the wideness of Park Street. She walked down the footpath, brisker than usual, her eyes searching him out - amongst the trundling buses, speeding cars and half open shops. And then as she was almost onto the kerb, she saw him.

They sat on the stairs of the music store, till it opened for business. They walked around aimlessly for the next few hours, circling the block without actually realizing it. They spoke off the months since they had last met. College, Exams and how she had missed him.

He walked by her side, looked at her as she spoke. She was wearing a turquoise-teal short kurta, not cut-to-fit, in the light confused breeze it flapped against her jeans. There was an unversed elegance about her, a diamond solitaire on a slim chain, rested below her neck. "How beautiful are you?" he asked himself.

The coffee shops opened by eleven, they sat at a table in the corner. The lights were lit, the sky was turning a light gray and there was a sudden nip in the air. The anticipation of rain floated over everything dead or alive.

As she sipped coffee he tentatively reached for her hand, she smiled and laid her fingers on his. They talked about how they had missed each other, and the solitude of living in different cities.

She re-collected how Ashmit had proposed, in the darkness of a Cinema Theatre.
They had gone to see X-Men 2 - he a fan of the comic heroes, she just liked Hugh Jackman. They were late, the movie had already started. By the door - her eyes blurred by the darkness, she searched for the usherer. He stood looking at the screen. At the far end of the hall, she saw the yellow beam of the usherer's torch, and held Ashmits arm "That way". In the darkness she had tugged at his arm, he held her back and whispered "Swastika ... I love you".

They laughed, and squeezed their hands together.

The moment bled into the next, she sipped coffee from a large white mug and looked at their fingers intervolved and clasped, resting on an ochre tablemat. The palms at once warm and clammy, the fingers tingly with touch.

It started raining and they stayed on in the shop for a while longer. She looked through the full size glass doors and saw the city scamper to find shelter from the rain. Pedestrians animatedly hailed speeding taxis. Vendors pressed their backs against walls of buildings, their wares covered with colored tarpaulin squares.

She felt happy and warm, Ashmit was here. But there was emptiness, a sense of loss, of what...? She didn't know.

A feeling of disquiet, even though she felt at peace.

Labels: Fiction

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The Bhagwad Gita at Midnight

In the dark night of my soul...I feel desolation.

In my self pity, I see not the way of righteousness.

I am thy disciple.

I come to thee in supplication : be a light unto me on my path to duty.

Labels: Ear to the door

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Monday, April 24, 2006

News from the Cubicle...

My floor has got one of those fancy "Bean to Cup" coffee machines. Good. Now I can get good coffee at my desk! For the whole of the past month, used to trudge down to the training floor to get good coffee.

Yes, you guessed it right. This has been the highlight of the day, and maybe the week.

Going on vacation with the folks - end of next week, an event which is happening after ages.

Summer is here, I have this gut feeling that my Geneva assignment will happen sometime third week of May.

Yes, looking forward to spending yet another summer with friendly Europeans.

Have treated my consultancy job so far, as a raffle ticket... the prizes being trips to quaint lands.

Gotta get more focussed now.

Labels: Revolving Doors

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Sunday, April 16, 2006

2nd Anniversary!

Yes two long years of the contradiction laden yet celebratory coexistence of the fist and the pacifist.
Not bad!

Reflecting life itself, I have shared my moments of stillness and the joys of travel. Found refuge when work was maddening, found voice when all I wanted was for my side of the story to be heard.

Yeah pretty much everything. I am your regular Have-a-modem-Have-an-Opinion sorts!

Well the thank you bit, just one - rS! Yours was the first blog I ever read, and that was the inspiration. Thank You!

Labels: Revolving Doors

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Monday, April 03, 2006

Waiting for Swastika.

Park Street is lazy on weekday afternoons, a lot like a diva waiting for her big performance on Saturday night. Taking things slow, taking things easy.

The muri-wallah was setting up his square tin box, people milled around a man selling tea. A couple walked down the footpath, college kids...with satchels hanging across their side. Young lovers between days as a student.

It was a month and a half since I met Swastika, pretty par for the course really - in a bong sort of way.

Common family friend kicked everything off - boy in his late 20's, girl in her final year of college. The word "Shombondho" * flew around for a bit, and then that passed. And the buzz word now was "Beeye" *. To be honest I liked her, terminally pretty, lovely eyes. She listened, more than she spoke.

We were introduced at a party. We spoke for awhile. It was "virtual privacy", at least a dozen eyes made a mental inventory of our every move.

On the way back home, my parents popped the question - so what do you feel? At a crossing, waiting for the lights to turn green, I said "Yeah...all right, go ahead".

As I look back now, I cannot believe - the moment in life when destiny asked of me - whether I intended to commit myself to a woman for ever more?

My answer was a staid, "Yeah...all right, go ahead". No cantons of love, no expostulations, no drama, no flurry of emotions just a "Yeah...all right, go ahead".

We went out the following weekend - took her out to meet my buddies. As usual we talked of school and drank scotch. She smiled, made conversation on and off. She wore a flattering black dress, her hair framing her face. The sparkle in her eyes when her lips broke into a smile.

On the way back to drop her home - asked her if she was happy? In retrospect a superfluous question - did I expect an answer to the contrary? More importantly could I handle one?

On the way back home that night, it struck me for the first time - So buddy this is it, you are getting married.

I looked at my watch, she must be coming soon. Three girls walked out of the college gate. She wasn't one of them. The phone rang - people always want a bit of you - on the only afternoon you decide to take off in years.

It was warm for November. I lit a cigarette.

The last time I met her was six months ago in Bangalore. We had dinner, I saw glimpses of her. Bits and pieces of the past, that hadn't gone away. Dinner was over by ten. I dropped her home. She didn't ask me to come upstairs. Neither did I ask if I could. Maybe there wasn't enough left anymore, maybe our egos were still larger than the night. Maybe she had other plans. Maybe we were just sticking to the script.

I let my cigarette drop. I wanted the phone to ring now. I picked it up from the dashboard. Should I call? Should I just text? I let my fingers run along the fancy touch dial.

I looked up, and I saw Swastika. She walked out of the college gate and towards the car parked down the street. I leant across and opened the door on the passenger side.

"Hi", she said as she sat down and reached behind to find the seat belt extension.

"Hi". Waited. "Ready to Go?".

"Yeah", she smiled.

* Shombondho - A proposal for Marriage
* Beeye - Wedding

Labels: Fiction, Moments and Memories

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