A walk in the past with a book in hand

The streets are alive with the sounds of the evening rush hour. One by one a trail of sickly yellow lamps come aglow in the smattering of tiny little shops packed tightly against each other. A thin wire dangles at the entrance of each of these shops holding various knick knacks from milk containers to baby dresses in bright garish colors.

Somewhere, in the middle of the busy street, the traffic has come to a grinding halt. 

The cause of the commotion slowly comes to light when the onlookers spot a stray bullock plonked right in the middle of the road. A stream of angry honking can be heard till the last stretch of the road as one by one the vehicles line up stranded behind the bullock.

It’s a strange parody as one notices the interesting conflict of emotions that takes place on the busy street. As the intensity of the honking increases with tempers flaring, the bullock seems even more undeterred with the pandemonium caused around him. He raises his head with a somewhat defiant air and continues to chomp at the last blade of the dead grass at an increasingly slow pace. 

But the bullock is not the main protagonist in this story. He is just a minor distraction. Amidst the swarm of daily commuters and the smell of evening dinners getting cooked there is this young girl Silla walking past slum infested areas pursuing her search for a shop, famous for stacking up secondhand books.

It has to be somewhere close she mutters to herself as she stares down at the address for the umpteenth time, jotted hastily on a scrawny piece of paper before leaving from home.

If not for her love for books she would have easily given the pint sized shop a complete miss by walking past it. However, a prickling doubt at the back of her head daunting her loudly of having left something of grave importance behind, makes her retract her steps and she turns around .Voila! A rickety little shop miraculously springs into view half concealed behind a milk booth. Quite incongruous in it’s appearance the shop could easily manage to deceive anyone looking out for it.

A rusted tin board hangs at it’s entrance displaying the name “Amiri Bookwallah” The faint lettering is tarnished with oil paint stains, and there are huge holes spiking out from in between the broken letters.

The owner, a thin frail fellow with a receding hairline is seated outside on a wobbly little stool. His one ear is pinned to a transistor. On seeing Silla’s doe like eyes peering hungrily at the insides of the shop, he gets up and gently leads her in.

Once inside, Silla is in a state of enchantment. There is something magical about the entire place. From floor to ceiling books in every shape and size dominate the space. Some are bound by thick worn out leather, while the frayed edges from others happen to dangle loosely. There are also the risk takers who are quite daredevil in their approach as they threaten to tumble, dangerously plopped one on top of the other by doing a perfect balancing act. 

All around her, the books stare at her gawkily; misfit in their appearance but comfortably settled in their respective dens.

Her eyes fall on a popular classic “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett. She picks it up, taking utmost care of not disturbing the other set of books lined up in a haphazard manner. It’s a hardbound with a faint trace of dust collected at the corners. As she leafs through the pages a sharp scent captivates her senses. She holds the book close, breathing in the smell of old pages. In its dishevelled state it feels like a treasure in Silla’s hand. 

There is a stirring of senses taking place within her like a slow awakening. Standing there in the middle of the shop, she looks around at her surroundings. A table fan in the corner is whirring at slow speed, there are dried flaky bits of paint tearing away from the ceiling, and the ground below where her feet are planted, the red earth stands exposed by the giving away of the linoleum tiles.

But for Silla she is drenched in an absolute state of excitement of finally coming alive, surrounded by so many books

It must have been days, the owner recollects with a smile on his face, since a young reader had last visited his shop. A sigh slowly escapes his lips on realising how today’s generation find themselves to be part of high rise malls, discovering books with gleaming covers stacked in book stores. They would be perched on wrought iron table stools flipping thru the glossy pages.

Wistfully, he reminisces of those golden times, when his tiny setup would be flocked by youngsters standing atop plastic stools and raising their little arms high waiting to grab the Enid Blytons and the Nancy Drews. Laden with an armful of books, their faces flushed with excitement they would make their way out chattering nineteen to a dozen about the land of adventures and mysteries they were soon going to unravel by pouring themselves into those books.

The bookseller never gets to know her name as Silla walks out dreamy-eyed from his shop. He sends a little prayer, glancing at the sky upwards hoping that she too finds magic, in reading the pages that had lost their sheen, the pages that still carried a whiff of musty old scents from the olden times, the pages that had turned yellow and would crackle and tremble at her touch. 

The evening sunlight had slowly lifted up, casting a honey stained glow on the skyline. Somewhere, the bullock too had woken up from his evening reverie, unhurriedly making his way amongst the throng of people.

Peace reigned once again.

Facts laced with a little bit of fiction- III (F.R.I.E.N.D.S)

Those were days of paltry living. Those were days when Mumbai used to be called as my favorite Bombay:)

We lived in a modest abode then of 1BHK. At nights, the bedroom would get occupied by my parents, the living room by my brother and me being the youngest, was left with no choice but was unceremoniously handed over the balcony to sleep. Not that I had much to complain about because the balcony was of a decent size, fit enough to be called a room. It had a sparse bed and an old sewing machine turned into a writing table for company. My childhood friend who lived in the house adjacent to mine also slept in her balcony and only a thin wall separated both our rooms. 

From the time we came back from our respective schools we would be inseparable like conjoined twins. We would chat and chat till the cows came home. As dusk would settle in, our mothers would call out our names, but we were so meshed up in our own little fancy world that we were unaware of the happenings around us. Finally, one of the mothers would come out and threaten to thrash us if we didn’t abide. Once back home, I would get busy in gobbling up my dinner and packing my books for the next day. As a ritual at sharp ten every night, the lights would get turned off as I had to wake up at dawn for my early morning school. 

Since my flat was located at the ground floor, quite often I would hear strange sounds and notice bulbous shadows emanating from outside. Sometimes the sounds were of hurried footsteps and on other occasions it was the raging wind howling outside. Later at some point in time it would get pitch dark as the nearby household lights used to shut one by one except for a thin ray of light that would shine weakly from the street lamp outside, casting ghostly patches on my window pane. All this would result in scaring the daylights out of me, and I would be too frightened to even hop off from my bed and rush to the comfort of my parent’s bedroom. Rooted to my bed I would get busy in counting sheep in my head. 

The only reassuring factor was that my best friend was also sleeping in her balcony located on the other side of the wall.  

As sleep would continue to evade me, I would keep tossing and turning on the bed, until a faint knock surging from the cacophony of all imaginary sounds around would alert me. It would feel like music to my ears to notice that this sound was different and was coming from nowhere else but from the other side of the wall. A wave of happiness used to then engulf me, making me realize that my poor friend sleeping in her cushy balcony was also grappling with the same feeling of heady terror that I was encountering and was hence softly knocking on the wall to check if I was awake.

Excitedly, I would plaster my ears to the thin wall longing to hear the knock one more time. There it was heard again. Two fat knocks repeated this time. I would respond enthusiastically by tapping the wall twice from my end. 

And then the game would continue just like the strings of a sitar, striking one note after the other.

The knocks were in perfect unison like a jugalbandi taking place between two music maestros. They would then slowly fade, becoming lighter and lighter as sleep used to overcome both of us. But the thought of my closest pal sleeping next door was strangely comforting, making me feel lighter and ready to fight with all the imaginary demons that prowled around me that night.

So this was an important lesson I learnt that night and one that stayed with me for many more nights to follow. Have friends in abundance, but allow a handful of them to seep into your lives, tell them your deepest, darkest secrets, your dreams, be true to them, guard them with all your might and if there ever comes a time when you are all alone and frightened just stand still and seek out for that knock. You will hear it. And once you do, let those friends inside your heart. They are the ones who are the definite keepers. Have them tightly bound around never letting them go.

P.S. -- Till date, the thought of sleeping all by myself in a pitch-dark room terrifies me. At times when I am pushed with no choice but to sleep all alone; my room then resembles a lit-up Christmas tree, as every light in there would be turned on J

Facts laced with a little bit of fiction- II- Childhood memoirs

In a child’s mind, the imagination always seems to run wild. There is nothing restrictive about it. It is carefree, innocent, boundless, and life is always seen through rose-tinted glasses. 

I would have been around five or six years old then. Wearing a summer frock with bold red flowers printed on it; my two well-oiled pigtails dangling in the air, I ran as fast as my little feet could carry me. Seated on a stone bench surrounded by shady trees, I dug my hands deep into the pockets stitched at the insides of my dress and got out my booty of hidden treasures; an oval shaped ivory colored stone, that had smoothened at the edges, a tiny exquisite shoe of my ragged doll which had glittering studs woven all around its heel, a half broken scented eraser and a packet containing colorful bindis. The bindis were stuck to a wafer thin piece of cellophane paper which had got wrinkled over time, but it was the striking round globules of different hues that held my rapt attention. I had seen Ma’s forehead adorning the same dots, red in color and slightly bigger in size and sometimes there would be a dash of red vermillion that would stand out from the parting of her hair. 

So caught up was I in playing with my treasure trove, that I failed to hear the rustling sound coming from the nearby shrubs. A sudden movement at the grass below made me look down to the sight of a thin frail baby mynah limping towards me. It had wounded its left wing, which suggested that it might have toppled from its nest perched above the giant peepal tree. Hurriedly stuffing my precious treasures back into my pockets I yanked at a nearby Taro leaf and gently placed the wounded bird on it. Nestling it on the massive leaf I then carried it home. By the time I rang my doorbell I could sense that the little bird had stopped moving. For a moment, I consoled myself thinking that it had fallen asleep, but there were warning signals shooting in my tiny brain that something was not right and a lot more had happened to it beyond sleep, the reason for which I couldn’t fathom whatsoever. Ma opened the door and one look at my pitiful face and the lifeless bird in my hand made her realize the enormity of the situation. 

That cold evening I squatted besides Ma and helped her dig a trench with my picnic shovel at the backyard of my building. As the shovel hit the dark red colored mud, I could feel my eyes brimming with tears, involuntarily. I felt disillusioned and cheated.  It was the first time I had seen death up so close. My hands felt cold and clammy as I stuck my head into my mother’s bosom hugging her tightly. Heavy sobs wreaked my little being. That cold wintry evening it dawned on me that nothing lives forever. People die, animals die, birds die, and the little baby mynah lying in front of me with its feet upturned was dead and even if Ma had chanted all the mantras she sang early morning to appease the divine the bird could not be revived. I had lost it forever.  

I probably cried myself to sleep that night. 

But the mornings adorned with its freshness and bountiful energy spelled new beginnings. It managed to clear off the muddle and the cast of gloom caused by the previous day’s incident. In addition there was always Ma waiting for me with her abundance of hugs. She was my hug factory then. One tight hug from her used to leave me with the warmest of feelings flowing within which used to be even better than her famous besan ladoos. 

I don’t hug her so often as I used to then… 

Adulthood comes along with its own packaged instructions. The Do's and the Don’ts created by our own insidious minds robs us from the simple pleasures of life. We grownups tend to assume this cloak of consciousness around us little failing to realize that our souls lying deep within are still so childlike. 

A hug, a touch, a comforting word is sometimes all that one requires to get through life’s toughest battles. 

For me hugs matter a lot. Least of all it doesn’t come along with any "packaged instructions" stating that it is injurious to health. So if you haven’t hugged anyone lately, go do it now. It could be anyone... A friend, a lover, a child or even your pet…

And if it’s your Mum squeeze her even more:)

xxx