All the way up and all the way down

Steps

Steps that take her up and bring her down and on certain days manage to leave her at intersections and crossovers where she bumps into a former lover. They share a friendly hug. It gets awkward at first and the awkwardness slowly melts with time when they started talking about Toby and Mathias their friends from the library.

Toby had once let out his plump faced hamster from the bag causing a stir in the library. The hamster kept hopping from table to table, and finally when he landed on the librarian's desk, they both had an eye to eye moment causing the stern faced librarian to topple from her seat and let out a loud shriek.

"Where did he vanish? said a baffled Toby. 

They all had then searched for him high and low, underneath lined bookshelves, spaces between antique looking cupboards and peeped into wastepaper baskets. But they couldn't locate him and had finally resigned to the fact thinking that maybe the poor fellow had gotten around making a nice home for himself in the midst of books that carried the faint scent of war stories and stories of unrequited love locked within.

She wondered about him then and she still wonders at times whether he had shown some refined manners by not going around tearing pages and on second thoughts if he did, whether he had made a nice makeshift bed from those very pile of pages. He would have then sunk deeper into the mound seeking warmth on rainy days when it kept pouring really hard outside.

Steps

A day she remembers climbing nearly a hundred steps, that went winding all the way up with tufts of green grass growing in patches at the sides. Once on top the view from the hillock was magnificent. The depth of the city with terracotta tiles as roofs over houses displayed a brown hush everywhere. In the background the sky kept changing its colours from a livid orange to a tempered brown and by evening the daylight had shifted to a purple haze knocking off the sun behind. But the evening mostly carried with it the fragrance of jasmine buds growing in clumps beneath her feet. 

Couples sat in various corners, their bodies fitting snugly in stone-walled arches, arms and legs colliding with one another. She simply sat on a battered ledge drinking in the view. Occasionally, she watched those couples from the corner of her eye with a growing agitation fuelling inside her; waiting for the boy whom she loved then and who she knew was not going to turn up.

But with the shift in time, she felt subdued and a sense of calm settled over her agitated nerves. The boy, the lecture that she had missed to come here all the way, her evening coffee, friends from college all felt hazy in the background and what took centre-stage then was the horizon, the melee of houses below, the rocky valley and the sounds of exotic birds that filled up the warm afternoon air. 

In her own company she realised that sometimes it is the ordinary things in life that can bring you sheer bliss.

Lovers can always wait. 

Truth-or-Dare

Truth or dare

A game I loved.

My eyes closed

I opt for a dare

And as if unwittingly the other person 

Reading my mind 

Lays out a dare.

I place a hand over my chest

My heart beating wildly

As if a hundred horses are galloping all at once.

I walk up to him

To look into those coffee brown eyes and utter the magical words. 

To tell him, I saw him in my dreams last night

His face lingered around long after I woke up.

To tell him I snatch every bit of conversation I hear about him

In corridors, in public parks and in local libraries

To tell him I even know about the faded mole he carries in his left palm, 

Unobtrusive from the rest of the world but not a secret to me anymore. 

To tell him about every shrinking detail I have of him in my memory.

He sings a tune, my favourite too.

A long legged girl walks up from behind 

They share a kiss

She cocooned in his bear hug.

I wish to melt away

Instead, I withdraw, slowly and silently

The ‘Dare’ wilting away like a forgotten summer rose

The ‘Truth’ left hovering between my lips.

Truth or Dare

A game I will never ever play.

The daily travails in an Electrician's life

I knew an electrician, who had woken up on a certain morning with a pounding headache. The previous night’s dreams had assaulted him; where he had seen hammers and pliers everywhere. Outside his tin roofed shanty that morning, the birds were unusually chattery, leaving behind  droppings on his window sill.
Just before the birds arrived causing a cackle of sounds, he in his dream, was searching for screws in a room that had hammers lying in abundance everywhere. 

Jolted out of his reverie, he dashes to the bath for a quick shower before lighting up a stove to make himself a cup of tea which turns out to be pale and watery. All dried up, he opens a wooden shelf and notices a jar of half-used face cream, a tin of talcum powder and a packet full of colorful bindis. He pictures his mother with the red dot on her forehead and his eyes glisten unwittingly. He doesnt find it important to dispose any of his mother's bare belongings after she had passed away a few years ago. He locates a plastic bottle, lying at the far end of the shelf that has a fine layer of oil stuck around it's edges. On opening the cork, a strong whiff of jasmine scented oil arrests his nostrils. Pouring few drop on his roughened palm he gently applies it over his mop of curls and slicks it on to the side.
The tiny mirror by the kitchen window catches his blurred reflection showing few strands of grey sprouting at the temples. At the age of forty, intentionally single, he has no complains from life and busies himself in re-arranging the contents of his toolbox. The morning outside is nice and bright carrying with it the smells of chicken curries getting cooked in the neighbouring kitchen. His weather-beaten toolbox in tow he then heads to travel to faraway distances. A bus that he alights in takes him to a nearly dried up creek bed. Once he steps out, placing a leg atop a slithery stone; the toolbox held close to his chest; he takes two long strides and crosses the creek to get on to the other side. 

Every now and then his feet take him to strange unnamed streets, alcoves that look haunted, narrow gullies that are stretched forever. 

The sun today is certainly not kind; the harshness of the weather bringing in big droplets of sweat that drip casually from his underarms. By day end he would notice angry red blisters gathering in a clump at the soles of his feet. 
Days when he is fortunate enough to make a quick buck, he finds himself in dark sullen rooms wearing a slim torch like a band around his head. 

Behind dingy cupboards, the plaster peeling from wornout painted walls he discovers crumbling old switchboards. 
The switchboards he realises always made a creaking sound when drilled with screws and pliers. Once in a while he hears a splinter of darkened wood tearing away. A tangle of wires get ready to greet him sprouting out of those moth eaten wooden boards. The light shining weakly from his torch; he fumbles with a hundred open wires knowing exactly which one to puncture with his array of instruments. 

There are times, when he comes across buildings that are torn down and dilapidated; the owners themselves over ninety years old, coughing and tottering around with their walking sticks screaming out instructions to the electrician. 

On a certain evening, like today, when the sun is dipping behind the shadows, he is called to fix up a house that is enveloped in darkness due to the breakdown of electrical systems or faulty wires. The sight of half lit candles meet him everywhere; the melted wax dripping in a continous stream. 

Inside those rooms, where the blinds are perhaps raised to catch  the last filter of sunlight, spiders in a corner are busy rustling up a patchwork of intricately sewn cobwebs and roaches have a gathering of sorts in between weedy spaces of thin cupboards. 

Nothing misses his eye like today. His torchlight catches a flash of a mouse or two darting across from one end of the room to other, scurrying beneath the wooden four poster bed, and chewing at the weathered ends of a tray table. 

Under the glare, the mice appear to be frightened, taken aback, as they stand exposed to their crime. But in true sense, they are cocky enough to know, that the man standing before them is benevolent and is compassionate in nature and means no harm. And even if he decides to run after them with a stick in his hand, as they had often seen the old couple do, they had their runaway route planned. A hole in the bedroom wall, that was dug after days and days of perilious labour now stood in front of them worthy enough to justify every means of their escape. The meek mice stand at a distance, guilty as charged. 

The sharpness of their teeth amazes the electrician, and he  wonders in his head whether bits of flattened wire would have got stuck between their teeth while tampering with the switchboard. But answers he has none to and there is nothing much he could do, other than fixing those half chewed wires. The mice aware of his growing dilemma stare back at him, brazenly flashing their teeth. For a moment they both lock their gaze. In a flash of a second, they escape promptly by vanishing into their cubby hole. The last image, he catches of them is of their grey tails sweeping the ground below. 

The lights in the house is now restored, and the angry wrath from the old couple’s face is replaced with smiles and thankful gestures. 

Some decent money in his pocket, he stops by at his favourite Iranian restaurant. The owner recognizing that he is a regular, offers to add an additional spoon of sugar into the already sweetened milky chai, to which he gladly obliges.
He has his first proper meal of the day. Two slices of buttery toast with a spread of strawberry jam mocks his tastebuds and he devours it in an increasing speed. He leaves behind few annas as a tip which he has never done before and steps out of the place. 


The night breeze is cool as he resumes his journey back home. The street lamps glimmer on the pavements. Hunger-ridden moths circle wildly around those lights making it their home for the next few hours.

Lights, he wonders out aloud. The reason he makes a living.

A childhood gone by and a bucketful of memories- Fishy tales

Every now and then snippets from my past make its way into my mind, getting me reflective over all the sweet memories.

I was in the fifth or sixth grade when I remember taking walks with my Dad; hand in hand, my stubby fingers enclosed in his large ones. We hardly had any idle chatter going on between us as he was the silent types and we would busy ourselves in watching the surroundings around. A certain kind of quietude filled up our walks and now when I look back, I felt there was a supreme grandiose attached to those walks, merely by the sights we got to encounter.

The roads those days used to be particularly dusty but it was a treat to watch a rare Ambassador car zooming  past us crisscrossing in those narrow lanes leaving a trail of dust and billowy black smoke behind. Our local cobbler with his thick bushy moustache and sunken eyes waved out to us whenever we passed by his little shop painted a pretty fluorescent green. It was ensconced in a corner with tufts of grass growing all around it. I think even the cobbler then was part of my so called acquaintance list, solely by the number of visits I kept making to his shop to mend broken slippers. 

Dad & I often stepped out of our house to run errands which either included going to the bank or for dropping letters into the post box that my mother had written in her dialect to her sister in Mangalore or it was simply about planning a visit to the fish market.

The fish market was out of bounds for me to otherwise go and explore on my own. So on Sunday mornings when Dad suggested a visit, my eyes would shine with excitement..

The fisher-women; Maharashtrian ladies clad in their Navari saris, their broad beautiful butts staring hard at our face were the nicest. Loud mouthed, with their gold chains jangling around their necks they called out to my Dad in their raspy voices, 

“Bhau ya na ikde, taaze  bombil, surmai, bangda, khekda gheta ka…”

Dad would smile at them but at the same time reluctantly shaking his head he would keep moving further. Trudging on close heels behind him I tried to keep pace with his hurried steps.

Finally we would come to a spot where Dad's regular fisher lady was found seated on a tiny stool, with a string of fresh mogra flowers wrapped around her oiled bun and lips that were painted a jarring red. Supposedly, her catch was always considered to be fresh and on whom my Dad had enormous faith in. He immediately got on to the task of inspecting the fishes. For Bangdas he checked if the fish carried a metallic sheen on it and for surmais, she gladly obliged by allowing Dad to check it's gills; if they were a deep red in colour he pronounced their freshness by nodding his head slightly in agreement.

While all this was happening, I sometimes caught sight of black crabs hobbling around, leaving the comfort of their woven straw baskets taking a walk to nowhere. Anxious looking kittens kept watching their every move, but at the same time they used to go and purr near the fisher-women persuading them to part with chopped fish heads.

The whole buzz of the place with men and women haggling about prices being too steep, rancid odors emanating from a variety of fishes, the hustle and bustle left me spellbound.

A bunch of hungry crows cackled loudly from top, seated on wooden ledges.

 The muddy stone floors, filled with grime and remains of dead fish were enough to nauseate anyone, but for me it was a thrilling adventure all along.

With the gullets of the fish removed, their tails hacked off, the fisher-woman would make precise thin slices and double wrap them neatly in polythene bags. An assortment of crabs was packed  in a separate one. Dad & I would then leave the place with our bags full and our hearts seeping with joy. A wee bit of trepidation used to bother me, thinking about those live crabs getting hurled against each other, jostling for space in the cramped polythene bags. 

I would get excited to reach home and showoff our booty to Mom. But more than me, I think it was Dad eagerly waiting to catch Mum's expression on seeing the fish that was considered as a stamp of approval. Being raised in a coastal land, Mum was considered a fish aficionado of sorts and hence was famous in expressing her pleasure or displeasure by observing the contents of the plastic bags.

 Also, by then, I was old enough to read her expressions well. When only vegetables were bought, she let out a smirk and the vegetable bags got plonked on the dining table, without even a second glance. But any fish items in that bag, was enough to lighten up her face with the brightest of smiles. I remember relatives long after visiting our house wherein lunch used to be a lavish affair, with a delectable spread of fried fish, curried fish, prawns cooked in a tangy masala would reminisce about all the soul food that mum had cooked for them and how they had immensely relished it.

Soon, Mum would get down to peeling the polythene bag and exploring its contents. Occasionally, when crabs were bought, our place turned into a riot house. One by one they would come out of the plastic bags, crawling all over our two by two kitchen space. A few used to go hiding behind the grinding stone and some found solace behind wooden shelves. There were the brave ones who mindlessly roamed without a care and unfortunately were the first ones to get swooped up by my Dad who wasted no time in getting their claws clipped and dropping them in hot water.

Once, I perfectly remember, of having an insidious desire to pick up one of the crabs and keep it as my pet by hiding it inside my book shelf. I imagined taking it to school the next day and wondered about my best friend rolling her eyes in excitement on discovering my precious find. 

But then all my thoughts had come tumbling down that day, as I morosely stood watching Dad drop the last of the crabs in hot water. 

What followed then was a finger licking crab curry prepared by my mother. 

With all our tummies full I later would roll in bed on lazy Sunday afternoons, sometimes clutching my stomach in pain on having eaten like a glut; greed outpowering my tiny appetite otherwise. Mum would immediately make a concoction of jeera water and make me take slow sips of it.

By evening, I was perfectly fine, urging Dad to venture out for yet another one of our memorable walks.

Memoirs from a Sunday gone by...

There were unending plans he would make and write about them on sticky notes and orange coloured diaries.

In his neat and impressive writing, he painstakingly jots downa the list of things that had to get done when his favourite Sunday would arrive. 

Bits of handwritten notes get shoved into his trouser pockets, and they lie there ignorant without a care; By the time he reaches home he forgets all about them, the trouser going in for a wash along with the rest of his clothing.

Next morning, after a run in the dryer, 

when a bucket full of clothes is pulled out for drying, scraps of paper fall out, 

the writing now hopelessly unintelligible.

The words are all jumbled, tumbling over one another, big blobs of ink having blotted them out; like a giant wave swooshing away the sand castles built the previous evening.

A host of other paraphernalia also pops out.

A half smoked cigarette bud; the grey ash still quivering at the tip, a 50 p coin now emerging with a slight dent and a ticket to the opera, all lie there silently in a slush. He blames his absent-mindedness for the mess, offers a careless shrug and starts writing his plans all over again.

For the coming Sunday, there were things to get done, errands to be run,

An overgrown toenail that had to be clipped,

An unsettled bill that had to be paid,

A musical opera that he had purchased a ticket for, but then he remembers of forgetting it in the trouser pocket and how it had got washed away. No regrets he tells himself and proceeds to write some more.

He makes plans of visiting his great grand aunt, who was all of ninety, ramrod straight and who would cook Chingri Malai Curry for him, that was not adapted from any cookbook.

This time he was careful enough to tuck the notes in the second partition of his frayed wallet.

But come Sunday, the notes, lie untouched and unread; He has forgotten all about them; 

except about making a visit to his aunt.

He goes for a walk, finds an unattended phone booth, drops a coin, dials a number and counts exactly till ten rings. On the eleventh she answers, letting out a delightful shriek, on hearing his voice. In slow halting tones, she tells him that nothing in this world would give her greater joy than cooking his favourite prawn curry and feeding him. 

She informs him that she is in a rush to get things done and hangs up the phone without telling him a proper goodbye.

He carefully replaces the receiver, a smile leaving his face as he sets out for his walk again. 

On the way, he finds a lone bench that had creepers growing from beneath it. He sits and stares at the clouds above that are gathered in a huddle, hiding the sun behind them.

As the clear winter air fills his senses, he looks around to find a pair of orange hued butterflies chasing each other and the trees shedding their browned leaves.

A one eyed horse passes by that has a skittish walk.

These sights please him, bringing in a joy from within.

He leaves from there, wanting to make new purchases at the grocery store. Weekly shopping done, he winks at the blue-eyed cashier for tendering him the exact change.

The notes that were carefully written in his impressive handwriting are long forgotten except what occupies his senses now is the taste of Chingri Malai Curry that he would soon be experiencing.

Another week would begin tomorrow,

and he would encounter the same rush, 

the same throng of people he would be surrounded with, the empty faces that would stare back at him. But for now, he is happy revelling in the Sunday, that he calls his own, the sunlight filtering inside the rickety bus that was taking him to his great grand aunt’s house…