Enough

Trains are the lifelines of Mumbai, where people from every walk of life adjust, make space for everyone. What makes this city unique is that no one complains. May be they’ll grumble and mutter obscenities under their breath but just will not talk about what is bothering them, because it is bad manners to complain. Aaighaalya and bhenchod will rattle the headboards more than the bumpity bumps of empty local trains. Patience is a virtue. Adjusting is yet another one, which does not come to all. Resilience and patience, even in the most neck-breaking crowd inside a train, is the mantra.

Smelling armpits, dirty feet sliding down your trousers as they meander towards the door to get down at ‘aapla stop aala.’ Well, the spirit of Mumbai. Ho hum! Enough. Mixing the ubiquitous tumbackoo and chunna with the thumb of one hand pressed into the palm of the other, letting the lighter elements fall into your sandal, through the gap of your toes and shoving the ‘tonic’ between the lower row of teeth and the lip, haven’t we seen it a million gazillion times?

I have had enough of this bath towel-between-the-collar-and neck middle class. It is no point telling anyone what to do. No one wants to hear you. Who you? Enough of rubbing shoulders with the common man (read, peon at Mantralaya, office assistant of PWD Chief Engineer, driver of shipping corporation manager.) Stock of patience, over. Being stoic, thing of the past.

No more strutting around penniless. No more waiting for 'we'll let u know'. No more adjusting (read, getting a sore leg and a shoulder wet with the adjacent person’s sweat) to make room for the fourth person. No more. No more. Had enough. Time for a change. Time for a game plan.

The power puff girls

Will the world ever turn around and be different from what it is now?
Now, people say, “…the male chauvinist pigs in Delhi, you know how they are….” I do know how they are, not as strongly as I am not one of them- happily so, but because I have had the misfortune of meeting a few of them and hearing quite a lot about them through friends, through media. The corners of my mouth curl as I imagine what it would be like to live in a female-oriented world in the real sense of the world and not only as it appears on dark websites…in the crude form of femdom.
An excerpt from an interview: “So what do your parents do?” “Uhh…my mother is a pilot and my father is a househusband.”
Unflinching, unhesitant and bold- proud to have a caring, understanding father at home to tend to her, to listen to her after-school stories and to ridicule her History teacher for teaching his daughter unmindful muck instead of real facts.
Somewhere, a househusband cackles. Someone is coming to see his son today. For marriage. He is pensive and excited and wants his neighbour to be there for moral support (actually to share the preparatory work!) His wife and daughter had chipped in considerable amounts from their savings and he was proud of them.
Seven girls had rejected him so far and he does not want this to happen again.
One of the girls had said that the boy was a tad too dark and they had started badgering him to use Fair and Handsome. Someone else had wrinkled her nose at the boy’s long nose and they had had him undergo plastic surgery. But the result did not please the suitors and they called it off. An engineer girl who came to see the boy had asked if he was a virgin and had stormed out of the house when she knew he wasn’t. His father still doesn’t know why that team did not like his boy.
There wasn’t a single time when he had rejected an offer. The girls would always find fault with him each time. Someone even said the boy had stared into her eyes instead of looking down at his hands, as was the custom. The father was tired. The boy himself had agreed to tie the knot with anyone who married him. He had decided that he would take care of his wife’s house and their kids.
Spineless? Meek? Pashtuns may consider this demeaning, outrageous, against their nang and namoos, their honour and pride.
Lder, well-settled women would marry men who are just out of college- fresh graduates or HSC passouts. If the women die first, the men would have to follow their wives’ corpse on the funeral pyre- the Sata tradition- a symbol of their undying love for their better ‘a little more than’ half.
Ages on, some men would have had enough. It was too bad they couldn’t divorce their wives. They were all too powerful. So, it would be decided that some men meet at a secret [place, may be at the handsomeness parlour, to chalk out a plan to swim out of this oppression. A Men’s Rights Association would be born.
Hari wakes up. In a filmi setting, his brow would be bathed in sweat and he would be panting.
In the normal setting, he looks at the clock and wonders when that time will come. It has been his all-time fantasy that his life partner makes good use of him.
Oppression is only euphemism. May this oppression also have an erotic tinge to it. At this very moment, the corners of his lips are curling upwards.

Death of a friend

It hurts when you have to say good-bye to someone very dear to you. A very senior colleague of mine today had been for the 10^th day prayers of her friend. She came back from the function and couldn’t stop the steady stream of water flowing from her eyes as I held on to her soft, wizening hand. She talked to fondly about her friend, about how humble he was and how good he was to people, so much so that I developed this strange urge, wishing I had met him at least once before he had departed.

Sometimes the world is like that.

My colleague said something, which is a matter of fact but struck me as strange. “All my friends are old are dying one by one,” she said. This reminded me of a story that I read in some children’s magazine and had adapted and re-adapted it to suit my story-telling. Three best buddies- a tomato, an onion and an ice-candy are inseparable. They live together, sleep together, go to school together and play together. One monsoon day, they decided to go for a movie. They were bumping down the street even as it poured, more excited than the three best buddies.

But from nowhere, came the sun, beaming bright, scorching light. The ice-candy started sweating. It started feeling nauseous and soon collapsed and melted away into the BRIMSTOWAD, much to the dismay of his friends.

His friends wept and they wept in the rain. It was good it was raining, so people couldn’t see them crying.

Since they had already set out for the movie, they planned to continue with their plan and proceeded to the theatre. In the pitch-black darkness, a man sat on the very seat that tomato had occupied, squashing him into Kissan Tomato Ketchup.

The onion cried and he cried. He went outside the theatre and he cried and he cried.

Then it suddenly struck him. He thought, “The tomato and I cried when the lolly died. I cried when the tomato died. Who would cry when I were to die too?”

The thought suddenly made him feel very lonely. He wept even more.

A sage who was passing by saw his pitiable state.

Crying “Alakh niranjan” he ruffled the hair on the onion’s head and asked him the reason for his sadness.

The sage smiled at him and said, “Is that all? Henceforth, whoever brings the knife to you, will shed tears!”

I remember Richard’s death in 2004, a few months after we had all grabbed admission in an Ambarnath college. It was during the exams. I remember, the next exam was Hindi and all the poems in the textbook read as if mourners had penned them. I still cannot help feeling a pang of guilt as I pass his house everyday. The pain has ceased to be a dull ache now. A guilty, dull ache. I still remember how inconsolable his father had been after he had been buried in the Fatima Church cemetery. Some gave him toy guitars, others wreaths. I had said I would be back to say hi to him. I never went back. Somehow I cannot bring myself to go to the graveyard again, without feeling nauseous and spooky about it.

Recently realisation struck me. People who had been friends, thick buddies till a little while ago are mere chat friends now, who say hi and howz u and wassup. Lots of friends, no money. Now- money, money and no friends.

Friends? Hmph. Who? What? Where?