MY FAVORITE MORNINGS

I feel good now. I am on my way to the coffee store round the corner. I like to scamper along kicking the dust up to watch the specks catch the early morning rays. Just like the flies that scatter when the cow, lazing by the garbage drum by the bend, carelessly lashes its tail on its back. The morning air is always fresh. I take in lung-fuls of fresh air and stop to trip the few dew drops on the thick light green leaves of the weeds that grow freely all over my street. Of course, I have to be careful not to snap the stems – I think the whitish liquid that pours out of it is poisonous!

Most people are still stirring on their mats or cots I suppose; for their Aavin milk packets are still at the threshold. Though it seems to be carelessly thrown in like ‘The Hindu’, which flies in from the newspaper boy’s cycle, I know the milk-lady would have bent her knee just so slight and lurched sideways to reach the doorstep and place the milk packet as she would have a baby. If the packet ruptured, she will not get paid. The milk needs to be picked up quickly or it will curdle in the heat. It always got hot sooner or later in Chennai.

Some of the ladies were up, sweeping out their front porches, working up an undersized dense storm that tactfully picked up dust and deposited them a tad ahead; just to be picked up again and nudged forward. Before long I knew they would find themselves in the neighbour’s front yard or the dusty sidewalks; a daily ritual of community dust sharing. It made me chuckle to see some of the college boys who were polishing their motorcycles with an obsessive splattering of love, shielding their vehicles from the duststorms their mother’s raised.

It is too early for the coconut water peddlers and much too soon for the vegetable sellers who are careful not to come into the streets until after the school kids have left, lest the ladies not pay much attention to them. There is hardly anyone walking by. Very few stores are open this early in the morning. The Barber shop always is, as many men walk in to get a shave. My cousin baby had his first haircut there a few weeks ago. It is I who takes care of him every day when atthai goes to work. So he loves me and would only sit on my lap while his hair was being cut.

A little further down the barber shop lies the coffee store. It is my job to go fetch the right coffee from the store every Wednesday and Sunday. Though my favourite time is when I give my gurgling baby his baths, going out to buy coffee is really fun. It would have been good to come along with my older cousins but atthai will not bother them. Unlike me, they need to go to school.

I love the coffee store. I can smell it even before I can see it, after the second left turn. Here the coffee grains are roasted and ground every morning for each customer according to her wishes. Mani mama scoops out the still warm dark roasted beans out of the cooling plate and funnels it into the grinder. Thirty minutes earlier and I would have been able to see him pick out the grade of beans we pay for; dull green and unglamorous, coffee beans look quite sorry until you roast them. Then they are shiny black and ready to release the magic in them.

“Not ready for school yet, still in your petticoat?!” observed Mani mama and I guilty flattened out the frizzes in my hair. Here I was straight out of bed, shabby. The ribbons snaking down my two plaits clinged to just a strand or two. “I don’t go to school anymore but I brushed my teeth” I defended as I handed in the exact rupees and change for the coffee. Mani mama nodded as he remembered I had dropped out of school. I do not know why he sighed. A lot of people sigh a lot these days when they see me. Since atthai’s family moved into my house.

I love holding the warm coffee powder to my chest. The sun has steadily risen promising a typically hot Chennai day. The milk packets have been cleared out from the landings of most houses in the fifteen minutes I had gone. Predictably and yet miraculous to me, the street which had reluctantly stirred from its slumber has galvanised into action. The cow had moved on to the next garbage pile. The newspapers no longer on the ground, are now held up, folded in one hand while the men read them over their coffees in shiny stainless steel cups. Swept out house fronts now were wet from the customary wash they got, which was a heavy sprinkling of water to dampen the ground. They were also covered with kolams - some drawn by very skilled women and others merely to get the job done. If the kolams are drawn and the men are drinking their coffee, it can mean only one thing. I am late.

When I get home, Atthai is screeching louder than the milk boiler. She grabs the warm bundle from my arms and shoves me into the room where my cousins are still sleeping. “Go wake them up”, she screams, “they need to go to school and make something of themselves. Not be a gone-case like you; good for nothing like your dad used to be. How I took care of him when he was young; no sister would do what I did. Now, three kids and a job and I am stuck with you too. Only God knows what I go through!”

She complains a lot. But I mostly want to cry only when she scolds my dear appa.

My parents went out one day and came back to be cremated. Ever since, I only get to go out to buy coffee powder. At those times, I hope that before I am back, by some miracle, amma will be leaning over the balcony looking for me to get back and appa will be readying the scooter to drop me off at school.

White Horse

“I will be back by 7 girls. Don’t you dare go to Stomach2 without me.” Anjali raised her pointer at Anita and then Sonia.

“And Anjali! if you do not get your fat ass in here by 7,” said Anita unperturbed by her friend’s mock threats, “I swear I will just leave. I have worked my butt off this week and I have been dreaming of Chinese Indian, stomach2 chilli paneer to be specific.”She was lazily spread out on her mattress which she dropped almost to the floor level, chopping the legs of her cot off. Her usual weekend pose. Another mattress was on the floor with sheets dishevelled from use and pillows thrown about. Sonia sat on it and painted some pink on her long toe nails, shifting her gaze to see her nails through her hair that was constantly falling into her eyes.

“Sonia how do you tolerate your long tresses in this humidity.” grumbled Anjali. “Though I must admit, I like it here. Bombay is such an alive city and a girl can truly do what she pleases here.” She took a break from her frantic handbag packing, to walk over to the window and look at the sea. This was her favourite spot in Anita and Sonia’s two-room flat in Andheri. The din of the city drowned the crashing of the waves but the mesmerising swing in them shined through the afternoon glare.

Anita and Sonia maintained a college dorm atmosphere and it suited Anjali just fine. Anjali had moved into Bombay two months ago and was still put up on the extra mattress in Anita’s room. Between the long hours at work and her high impossible expectations for an apartment in the metro, she had not found a place of her own to move into yet. Anita, her college mate, had opened their doors to her and between she and her flatmate, Sonia, they provided a natural extension of college life which had ended less than a year ago.

“That’s funny Anjali. Did you say a “girl” versus a lady or woman or old hag? You are a woman of marriageable age or is it past marriageable age,” mocked Sonia and ducked a cushion scorned at her by Anjali.

“Do not worry Sonia. I am sure Anjali is just heading out for yet another setup by her mom.”

“No. Heavens no! My mother promised that all I had to do was collect the stuff she sent from Delhi. She swore there was no guy for me to see. You call yourselves friends! Please at least wish me well.” Anjali threw her bag on her shoulders and planted her sunglasses in her hair, just long enough to cover her ears. “My guy is out there and will reveal himself to me riding a white horse and scoop me into the sunset.” She declared as she stepped out of the room.

“He will have to be one strong guy to scoop Anjali off her feet,” said Anita who never missed an opportunity to mock Anjali’s girth which was just large enough to produce discontent.

“Is she serious about this white horse bull-shit? Where is she going to find a white horse in Bombay! On one hand she sounds sane, so full of life one would think she would be dying to share it with a special person. But she is in dreamy dream world about a white horse. Just a guy yaar! How hard can it be. Gosh!”, spewed Sonia looking up from her toes and dilating her pretty eyes with each exclamation in her speech.

“She is just scared Sonia. Are you not scared of ending up with the wrong guy? It is a strategy called Don’t play, Don’t lose.”



Anjali’s left shoe heel cracked even before she reached the main road to catch a three-wheeler auto rickshaw to the station. “Damned these cheap Bandra shoes!”, she cursed and too lazy to walk back, she swaggered to one side to spare the weak heel pressure. “Andheri station,” instructed Anjali to the auto rickshaw driver as she pulled out the address and mapped out her path to get there. She would have to take the train from Andheri in to Dadar and then change to Central line at Dadar to get to Chembur station and then take another auto or taxi to this address. Anjali did not mind the long ride, for the trains would not be crowded on a weekend and her mother would have send her favourite spice mixes to be eaten with hot rice and oil.
What if it was true. What if this was another setup. An elaborate arrangement concocted by her mother. Shit!

The last time, just a month after she moved into Bombay, she was asked to go meet an eligible just-right-for-you “boy” at a restaurant. Anjali protested and agreed just to save face for her parents on the promise that they would never do this again. He had turned out to be a worm, squirming at the start of every sentence and wringing his hands and scratching his nose every time she spoke and sneezed throughout the dinner from some allergy he had picked up on the way. “Don’t worry, my mother has the best home-made remedy for this!” he had said not realising that there was no bigger put-off for Anjali than a guy who ran to his mother at 30. She had pulled out two hundred rupee notes, placed it under a sweating glass of lemon juice and wished him luck.

Anjali bought her tickets and seated herself on one of the hard seats next to window. She sat so she could see the landscape run away as the train moved and so that the wind would not flap the pages of the Cosmo which she carried in her bag for reads on long rides. The compartment was empty except for a young boy and girl who had walked in just ahead of her. They had occupied separate spots but as the train strained out of the station, the boy moved next to the girl’s seat and it became clear to Anjali that the train was their private spot. He toyed with her hair and she threw coy glances at Anjali as she giggled coquettishly.

Anjali, embarrassed, slouched and subsided behind the magazine. For the rest of the journey, Anjali neither read her Cosmo nor looked out of the window. She was just jealous of the young ones. How she wished she could tell her parents that this is the relationship she wants with her man; light-hearted, young, innocent, careless love; eyes that laugh at each other, love that could find itself in a train compartment. She could not convince herself that she would get that from anyone her parents arranged for her. Yes, he would be a socio-economic, religious, educational match; it would probably be a solid and vacuum packed marriage like her parents’ lasting forever; may be even their horoscopes would match but would they feel a connection? One that was natural, that did not need working on; that would not be a management project like the ones at her work, that would just fit right in, that would sit on the right spot like the corner of this compartment?

Anjali knew she was getting no younger. At 28, she was too old to get the good young ones her mother complained. Now she has to settle for the old ones way past 35. Anjali had tried to explain to her that she would rather wait till eternity for the right person than settle for someone to start a family with. She had no urge to procreate for the sake of it. Her mother had sternly replied, “Anjali, eternity ages you.”



Anjali waited in the auto queue. She bend forward a bit, lifted her short hair up at the back of her neck a few inches to let some breeze, which had just started to drift about, to cool her down. A breeze meant possible rain. She hoped she could collect her stuff quick and leave after just a few niceties before the rain poured down. The stations could get very slushy very quick in Mumbai and she did not enjoy that at all.

Anjali greeted the people in the house pleasantly. There was Mr. Narayanan, her father’s classmate from many years ago, a thin man dressed in a white dhoti and pressed white cotton shirt just the way her father would when he had visitors coming over. Mrs. Narayanan walked in with a tray of snacks and coffee exclaiming how she had seen Anjali when she was really very young and how big and accomplished she had become. What time does she get home every day and does she cook her own meals? There was an old lady by the corner who was peering at Anjali from afar as if she had been instructed to stay away and a little girl hiding from behind the dining room divider and peeking at her. The whole family seems to have been waiting for her. She was being watched. And Anjali knew this meant only one thing.

Disappointment was beginning to well up in Anjali’s eyes. Her parents were relentless and even as she had run away from them, they followed her and spied on her hundreds of miles away. The only smart way to wriggle out of this is to pretend to not understand what was going on. So Anjali, politely asked for her package. She had an appointment she did not want to be late for, she lied.

“Anjali. You seem to be a very nice girl”, said Mr. Narayanan. “My son, Naresh has just stepped out to drop the car at the mechanic. Why don’t you have some coffee while you wait for him and we can talk some more.”

“How are you liking Bombay, my child,” said Mrs. Narayanan, getting up from her seat to pick
up the plate of snacks to offer Anjali which she politely declined. The elder lady then seized the positional advantage to sit next to Anjali and stroked the top of her head.

“God bless you my child. You are very pretty; as fair as your mother”, she said shocking Anjali who felt a rage rising in her. Anjali hated these situations where she had to confront an elder – and a stranger who showed unreciprocated intimacy; it was contradictory to her upbringing and required self-restraint beyond her capacity. “Damn you mom”, she thought, collected her thoughts and turned to answer Mrs Narayanan, wanting to take her leave and scoot before The Naresh turned up.

Just then, the front door knob turned and a surly man walked in throwing his key on top of the little console by the door complaining, “My beautiful white Maruti car! Just a few scratches and the mechanic wants 3 days to fix it.”, he said wiping sweat of his brow with a kerchief he produced from the pockets of his pressed-three-days-ago kurta worn carelessly over never-ever-pressed khakis. He stopped talking when he turned and took in the frozen moment. He looked at his parents, too neatly dressed for a relaxing weekend, his niece pretending to be in hiding, and his grandmother assigned to her corner where she was sent when important guests came in. He ran his hands over his near-beard stubble and saw a young girl clearly of marriageable age wearing a look of shock and embarrassment with a plate of snacks in front of her on the table and a cup of coffee and he connected the dots.

“Amma, what is happening?”

“Naresh, meet Anjali. She came to pick up a packet which her parents had send from Delhi. Her dad and appa were classmates many years ago.”

“The packet came to us by mail. Why did her parents not send it to her directly?”

“Hi. Naresh,” Anjali interrupted, “looks like we have been set up to see each other. You do not appear very pleased but you can safely assume I am no less displeased.” She turned to Mrs. Narayanan and said, “Thank you for your hospitality aunty. I might as well pick up the packet and see what my parents have sent across. I got to get going.”

“Anjali dear, please do not be upset. Your parents and we are in the same boat. Naresh will not....” she glanced at Naresh and continued, “... settle down on his own and will not take our help and so....”

“Amma, I do not think you need to sob to everyone about this. Just get the packet”

Thunder tore through the skies and filled the silence in the room. Anjali picked up her belongings and the packet her parents had send. She smiled without looking into any one’s eyes.

“It is raining, I will take you to the main street where you can catch an auto. Assume you want to go to the station?” Naresh gathered a mega sized umbrella and closed the door behind him. They descended the three flights of stairs in silence. On reaching the landing he said, “Anjali, I am really sorry for this show of temper. All this must have been much worse for you. Please forget this and do not take it as a reflection of you. I am the problem here. I am just not a strong believer in marriage especially this sort where you get fixed up.”

“Naresh, there is one thing your mother is right about. Our parents are on the same boat.”
Naresh cracked a smile through his stubble and said, “I’d better get you to an auto before you need a boat in this rain. Water logs here very quickly.”

Naresh and Anjali walked under the huge umbrella with Anjali’s right shoulder and Naresh’s left getting wet. They were hearing the drops plop on the umbrella and Anjali said “You need not have bothered. I really do not mind getting wet and it is not raining all that much.”

“Well, I could not have let you go without giving you an umbrella at least and though it does not cost as much, my mother would have prodded me into getting it back from you just to create a pretext for us to meet. Anyway, at this point in time, I would rather not be at home. I wish my car not under repair or I would have dropped you myself.”

“That’s kind of you!” Anjali was about to say when her left ankle keeled over and she almost fell into Naresh. “Shit! My heel had cracked and I was hoping to get back home before this happened but.... now I have to limp.”

“There is a shoe shop by the station. Not a great one but it has cheap rain-worthy shoes. It is hidden in a narrow gulley by the ticket counter building.” They had reached the main road by then. “ Why don’t I just drop you at the station,” Naresh said flagging down an auto passing by and waiting for Anjali to get in.

They got off at the station together and Anjali walked into the shoe shop. She was getting very uncomfortable and had no desire to shoe shop with a total stranger but she did need one. There was nothing in the shop she would have bought on another day but seeing how modest Naresh’s footwear was Anjali did not complain.

The cashier’s machine had broken down and they had a long wait at the billing queue. Naresh enquired about Anjali and Anjali about Naresh. Anjali had not been in Bombay very long. Naresh had his own consulting company and did recruiting. Naresh did not like to be tied down by a job. He designed a career so he could be by himself and take no orders. Exactly why he feared marriage. Anjali knew what he meant. Anjali did not mind moving cities or countries for her career but she did not want to do it for a man’s unless he was special, unless he would do it for her too.

Anjali explained as they stood by the door to leave, the payment procedures all done, “If my parents fix someone for me, he will forever feel my superior as he is brought up to believe so in our culture. And even if he does not, I will feel he does.” Anjali took a deep breath in and continued articulating her view on marriage the best way she had ever. “ There is no place for magic in such a marriage and without magic, life is not worth living.”

Naresh was stunned. Had she just read his mind? He needed to hear more. He wanted her to go on and on and not stop.

“Anjali, I really do not want to head back home yet. I have a friend in Bandra who I will meet up with. Think we are headed the same way, how about I just drop you at Andheri station then.”

Anjali looked at him a little quizzically. “And I will be honest. I want to hear more.”

Anjali talked. Naresh listened. Naresh talked. Anjali listened.

“I am 28 years old. Just starting my career. I do not want a marriage that is a project at this stage in my life. My parents think I am getting old. But compromise on something so important? What is your story?”

“I am 32 years old. Just starting my career. I do not want a marriage that is a project at this stage in my life. My parents think I am getting old. But compromise on something so important?” Naresh said.

They both smiled. Then laughed. Stations went by. People came in, stayed a while, left. They changed trains at Dadar and the Western line to Andheri was getting crowded. They was no seating space. Standing next to each other, they swayed with the train. When Anjali would let go of her hold for a second to adjust her bag or ruffle her hair, Naresh would instinctively hold up his hand in mid-air to ready it for support if needed. Anjali felt there were only two people in the compartment.

Naresh suddenly got conscious of what he was wearing. He wished he had shaved at least on Friday but he had not had any client meetings since early in the week. Thankfully his cloths were washed if not pressed. His heart began to race when he realised that she was wearing a kurta and khaki pants too. So what if she seemed to be very well put together, at least her style was casual.... like his. Except the orange in her top reflected on her smooth skin and gave it a glow. Why was he watching her face? He tried to look away but could not. Something had changed.

“Do you really have a friend in Bandra?” Anjali dared.

“Not really.”

“Well then Andheri station is here. Why don’t we have a drink somewhere?”

The rain had stopped by then. Andheri wore a cleaned look if you did not look down at the muddy streets that is. Anjali braved the evening crowds and got into an auto with Naresh. In her first week in Bombay, Anita had taken Anjali to a play with her boyfriend and a few others. Anjali had fallen in love with the bar around that place. She knew if she had a deck and bar in her house in the future, that is what it would look like and if she had a boyfriend to go out with, that would be the place to go. She did not bother answering the question that raced in her mind. “Why are you taking Naresh there?”

“Prithvi jaana hai.” She instructed the auto driver before she sat down.



Anita and Sonia were vegetating in front of the TV watching the Ten o’clock news or what they cared to hear through Sonia’s channel surfing.

“She is still not back.”Sonia said as she walked to the window to open it wider for fresh air which she always needed after over-eating.

“Who? Anjali? That is not unusual. She might have decided to go to the beach, or a bookshop or meet up with someone. She is a freebird and will always be.”

“Hey look! Is that not Anjali?” Sonia said pointing down one of the streetlight. Anita peered through the dark night and could see Anjali with a man.

They checked periodically- after changing into their nightgowns; after brushing their teeth; at every commercial break on TV. It was close to midnight and Anjali showed no signs of proceeding upstairs.

“You think maybe.....,” started Sonia not finishing her thought.

“I don’t know. Could be.” Agreed Anita to something very un-specific.



They were both at the door when Anjali rang the bell.

“You missed Stomach2 and by the way who was that?”Anita asked.

“Was it your man on the white horse?” Sonia jumped the question.

“Does a White Maruti count?” Anjali asked with a spark in her eye.

Gift from Heaven

Mani hunched, digging his palms into his thighs to keep his body falling off from exhaustion. He heaved in a rush of the dusty evening air and eventually found the room between breaths to call out to his brother, “Anna!” The small dingy provisions store was crowded as it usually was in the evening time. Mani realised he had to be louder and gave himself a few more seconds to completely recover his breath. He could see Ram on the ladder in the store. He was busy trying to reach out for a box of detergent packets, which he threw down to the store manager. The 10 foot counter of the store was lined with people ordering, paying or waiting for their goods to be packed and Mani would not have been able to even spot Ram if he had not been perched on a ladder.

Walking back with his neighbourhood school friends, in his refitted white-once school shirt, Mani had found his house empty and the neighbour next door had given him the news. “I have done my best, my child and spent Forty three Rupees admitting her in one of the ward beds but I do not have Five Hundred Rupees to spare for the treatment. Why don’t you go ask Ram at the store?”

Mani’s mother had just had another one of her respiratory block episodes. Four Hundred and Eighty Seven Rupees was needed in the next couple of hours. This was the second time. A month ago, they had broken their earthen pot of savings and used up the Six Hundred and Fifty Six Rupees saved over five months of Ram’s job at the store. With high school behind him, Ram studied at night to graduate through one of those correspondence courses. In the day he worked at the provision store, a back breaking ten hour day running errands, moving boxes and whatever else for which the store did not have anyone specific to do. But they were happy for their mother did not have to work two jobs anymore and could get a break for the first time Mani remembered.

One of the shoppers made space to exit and a gap presented itself. Mani tactfully wedged himself in. Just then he bent down to pick up a packet of shampoo sachets dropped by someone and there under the counter slowly drifting was a gift from heaven. A five hundred rupee note. All else grew silent. The fresh batch of sweat breaking at the back of his neck chilled him. After one very long minute, Mani saw his fingers crumble the note and shove it into his pocket. He left silently unnoticed by Ram.


It was very quiet and very late when Mani stepped across the threshold of the house back from the hospital. Mani froze when he saw Ram’s torn shirt, his hair in disarray and eyes downcast. Mani wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole as he saw his brother’s bruised and beaten body crumble into his sobs.

“I told them I did not do it. No one would believe me.”

Flashback

Carry loved Nat. Sitting there beside him, his body stretched out; she could not think of anyone else she would have rather spent her life with. She was truly happy, the way she fancied one should feel at the end; the fullness of heart that came with such a life, she now knew what that was.

His hair was long, carelessly flowing down the sides of his dark long neck and covering his forehead. She had been the one to give him his haircut the day he went for his first big break. She had been with him through the trials; the sleepless nights where he needed his beauty sleep. She had readily given herself to him for she could not ask for more. So that out of her love would grow his sense of peace and it would root him when the hurricane winds of photo-shoots and auditions would blow over him. She had been there and he had grown on her.

Every morning she arranged his health foods for him. She managed his appointment books. She re-arranged her work hours so that she could leave just after him and come back late at night. He had to work really hard and many days he would not be home till the wee hours of the morning. But she made sure he had a home to come back to, a warm embrace to melt into and oranges and blueberries for the next morning.

The money came in slowly and there was not much at the beginning. She paid for his physical training sessions and patiently measured his chest grow inches. The day he got the Hawaii assignment, he had run into the house, he had swept her off her feet in one easy swoosh and said, “Carry, this is all because of you. I do not know how I will ever pay you back for this.” Carry had arranged his bags for him. But she did think why he had said 'repay'. The choice of words had chilled her spine. But she was overjoyed for him. It took a lot of hard work to be on the summer launch of Boisterous. And he was perfect for it.

She did feel uneasy when she waved bye to him at the airport. He had told her she did not have to take the trouble to park the car and he would make his way from the curb. Carry did not know why she obeyed her urge to turn the car and see him once more for even she knew this urge was not born purely of love.

She had come home shocked that night. It might have been a sweet embrace of a colleague but somehow it did not seem to her to be so. Even as she drove away from the curb the second time, she could see the lady’s long blonde tresses flow out of his chest and her body held in the muscles she had lovingly assessed and measured.

With him lying next to her back from his trip, she felt happy and contented for she now knew that he truly did love her. What else could explain the ring in his hand unfolding onto the pool of red.

“Hello ma’am. Is everything alright?” she heard a voice outside her apartment door and the only way she could reply was to feel the cold metal at her temple and pull the trigger.

New beginnings

The clouds gathered into each other squeezing darkness into the late morning sky. Nilima stood on the balcony of her apartment egging them on like an overzealous fan would from the stands. She picked up her coffee mug, which still spilled smoke from its smouldering contents, with one hand and checked the SMS, which had just plunked on her iPhone screen: Ticket rdy pickup Paragon- Samy.

Nilima could not be hurried yet. If there was one thing she would most certainly miss at Christchurch, it would be the Singapore rain clouds. Through the 12 years she had buried in this rainforest country-state, they had been there for her. Darker than her darkest hours, they cheered her on. She always paused to wait and watch the moment when the firmament would give in and raindrops spill out like a frenzy of prisoners for whom the walls had finally cracked open.

She watched the drops wet the tennis courts below as the players looked up to decide if they should keep playing. The children prancing around the newly renovated pool dived in to escape the raindrops. Suri and Shashi, long before they were off to college in the States, had practically grown gills and pectorals in that very pool, or at least in the water body that occupied that space. While they moved from one apartment to the other in the condo, the pool and tennis courts had been renovated 3 or 4 times!

It was Nikhil’s idea to keep moving.

“Nilu, everyone does this. I know you love this place but we got to take advantage of rentals as they go down. And we are in the same condo. Still close to the train station; MRT is just a trot away. Also.... did you not want an extra room for the kids’ hobbies and yours? Now you can have that as well. I am doing this for you Nilu.” Nikhil had explained the first time.

Nilima had protested the third move. “But Nikhil. I cannot keep doing this you know. It gets to me. It’s not what I pictured myself spending my productive years doing. All that plumbing to be rechecked, the electricals redone, picture placements decided”.

She remembered Nikhil turning back to her, his hands still engaged in knotting his tie, locking his eyes firmly onto hers, eyebrows flaring up. “I don’t understand Nilu. You wanted to do interior decoration. I cannot get why you cannot look at this positively as an opportunity to re-decorate your house. For heaven’s sake! A lot of women make a good life at Singapore. Go out! Do something and you won’t feel these trivial changes.”

She had wanted to say. “I wanted to be an architect, Nikhil. I could have been an architect, Nikhil.” The words were spoken to herself. No one else had heard it.

“Ma’am, I go to NTUC okay. You want prawns? Can get la”. Mini, her helper asked in unmistakable Singlish.

Nilima nodded and handed over her emptied coffee mug. Now she must complete her last day of the Singapore farewell tour. Mini rushed to get the lift button for her as Nilima tailored her phone into her carefully arranged bag and swung it on her right shoulder leaving the left free for the umbrella.

Nilima had finally decided that she would not be a miserable twit. She knew she had a blessed life. She had easily settled into the creature comforts that dropped into her platter as Nikhil’s success continued relentlessly. It was just that the plate was too full now, too heavy; she could not hold on to it anymore and her appetite for it had died down leaving just a gaping hole in time where her life had passed her by.

She needed to feel alive again. There was nothing more she would have wanted than to have Nikhil with her, acknowledging that her turn was way past overdue but she was done waiting for him to pause, to get off the treadmill, to allow her to want something for herself and still to need her. She had the divorce papers ready and signed. She would leave them for him on his dinner table. Back from Seoul, the last leg of this month’s marathon business trip, he shall find her signature where she had been.

Nilima smiled at the beauty ladies behind the SK-II desk at the extravagant cosmetics floor of the department store.

“Good morning Mrs Das. Scheduled for the treatment nex’ We’n’sday righ’? See you then.”

“Of course Sally”, she lied and rushed on. When the rain poured she sometimes walked through Isetan to get to the underground crossing. She would miss this underpass. It ran all under the Orchard area; miraculously connecting travellers to destinations, intended and unintended. That is what she loved. To be on foot this way.

Every one of the last 6 days she had been on foot or trains or buses most of the time. To feel the real city. She could not recall the last time, she had gone to the Bird Park and the Zoo without the kids. But she had spent a bulk of her farewell tour there. She had held the nectar filled gooey cup while colored feathered friends, greedily licked them off. She had never realized birds had tongues before she had been there a few times on various science project trips for Suri and Shashi. Shashi’s face lighting up on reaching and Suri’s drooping, his body suddenly feeling a ton heavier. Watching animals was not what he had really liked.

The night races were another thing. She had watched Suri delight at the show and secretly hoped he would get over the races one day. Or at least that Nikhil would be present for the races and not she.

“Nilu, this is what boys do and it does not mean he will die on the tracks one day so just chill.” That is what he would have said always stating things as they were even when he knew words prick more when heard than when left unsaid.

The buildings were packed compactly along Orchard Road like fronds of a palm tree, water dripping from all sides. The top floors encroached onto the pavement providing an awning. Nilima lifted her umbrella up so it wouldn’t bounce off ill-placed raindrops while running into others. It always gets cramped with the narrowing of the pavements when it rains, every one rushing under the awning. A daily everyday type of challenge, negotiating a smooth path forward, that did not bother her.

The traffic controller’s whistle brought everyone onto a screeching halt. Nilima stopped with the throng and waited while cars were being ushered into underground parking lots. She glanced at Mt Elizabeth hospital through the tree growth and memories of her marriage counselling sessions rushed at her violently. She had really wanted the marriage to work though she never got over Nikhil’s little rendezvous with his long lost ex-colleague. She had re-appeared, bought gifts for the kids, come over for drink and dinner. And Nilima had not realized that when she had opened the door to her, malice, bad times and mistrust walked in unnoticed. The malice and mistrust tip-toed into a comfortable corner, huddled and stayed on since then; like a smiling fat bellied China-man made of stone, that could not be budged, that only she could see, that laughed and sneered at her ever so often through her lonely nights and days.

He moved in five years ago. She would bid farewell to the China-man tomorrow. With that relieving thought, she stepped out of the Paragon office elevator.

“Good morning Mrs Das. I could have dropped these tickets off you know.”

“That’s alright Samy. I only need an excuse to get out on such a beautiful day. You know how much I love it when it rains. Much needed respite from the heat don’t you think?”

“For sure. But rain is trouble too….. here you go...Christchurch! I need to get myself one of these tickets and just run away!”

Nilima felt a chill run down her spine as if she had been seen through. She shifted her weight, recovering her balance, adjusted her sunglasses on her hair to veil the change in her eyes and smiled as she received her freedom from Samy. “The cash is in the envelope Samy. I did not want Mr. Das to know; I am preparing some surprises from him you know. He watches credit card bills like a hawk.”

Resolute. Unwavering. The ticket powering her swagger, Nilima proceeded to the elevator.

If she had not been swaddled in wrapping up her memories, in uncompromisingly weeding out hurtful ones and embalming the good ones for life; if she had not been dreaming of all the green energy houses she was going to design in Christchurch; if she had not been obsessing over the research program she had got into that would push that sense of uselessness, that had stayed on and grown mightier with each passing day, out forever, releasing her from bondage; if she was not balancing her umbrella and sunglasses while slotting the ticket in place; she might have noticed It was following her and gathering power like a storm. Powerful the way only bad news can be.

It stepped into the elevator with her as the doors closed. That is when she was slowly awoken from her trance.

“It is the first Singapore Airline crash in a long time you know.”

“San Francisco to Korea right?”

Please say no.

“Yes. Seoul”.

Nilima watched the last of the mourners leave. Only Suri and Shashi remained with her in the house. And the China-man, heavier in his invisibility than she could budge. He had grown a little bigger. His belly now even more prosperous with unresolved anger and revenge impossible.

LEELA, RAVI and THE END

PART 1: Leela

Leela adjusted the excess Kohl escaping from her lower eyelid with her fingertip. She batted her eyes and peered into the mirror, hung by her shut bedroom window, her face a kiss away from it. She carefully arranged strands of hair across her temple into disarray and rearranged them after stepping back to look at it. Even though she was trying to be who she was not today, she still preferred careless attraction to calculated appeal and even looking at herself in such detail bordered on the latter for her. She applied some lip gloss for extra shimmer and measured how to wear a pout. The colour in her cheeks was unnatural, warming up her copper skin to a rust. The other girls at college wore makeup all the time but Leela rarely did. There had been a many firsts for Leela lately and if things went as per her plan today there would be a lot more.

She had not wanted to step out of the shadows before. But now there was a push from inside, forces she could not control commanding her to do their bidding. She had put on a blouse under her sari that pushed up and revealed a lot of her bosom. She had got this blouse tailor made, shuffling her feet and nervously hiding her face beneath a veil of her long hair while the tailor had taken measurements. The tailor was 5 train stations away and not the one she usually went to, lest her mother should find out. She had picked today as the day for her deed as her mother had gone out of town. Leela stepped back from the mirror. “Nice”, she thought but missing some of the magic they called oomph. She slowly slipped the sari off her right shoulder and watched the chiffon slide. The plunge she saw sent shivers down her spine, her hands stammering to find the sari and bring it up again while her eyes darted across the room in fear that there might have been a witness to her obscene act. She sat down, calming herself.

Ever since Ravi had moved into the apartment above, Leela had felt like a woman. On fire.

Leela considered herself neither appealing nor revolting. Just plain. She was born when the stars were aligned to mediocrity. She was neither called on for beauty or personality contests at her college, nor was she caricatured on blackboards and bathroom walls. She was mostly unheeded. She knew she had beautiful eyes that rescued her otherwise common looks from complete anonymity. And she knew she had a bounce in her long black hair which would have been best complimented by a spring in her feet. But she was just not good at putting herself in the spotlight. Before long, her parents would fix her up with a nice man who would be as plain as the walls like she was, call it a match made in heaven, and she would never experience the rush of youth and romance. Since high school, Leela had spent many hours in her classroom looking at the popular pretty girls and hardly ever found anything very special about them. Finally in college, she had realised that it is not who they are, it is what they do and who they want to be. A few months away from graduating and she had did not know how to translate this realisation into action for herself or even if she wanted to, until Ravi came along.

Leela realised she had to make the choice to attract. With only her walls watching, she started trying to be like the other girls and pretend to be uncommon; slant her head the way Blossom does, always standing tall or picking a point of elevation to address her coterie; or smile coquettishly with her eyes like Sabina and talk with phony innocence; or wear disdain on her face like Sandy- Sandhya really- did while snootily appraising a teacher’s choice of attire.
Ravi had moved in two months ago and been a catalyst to her turmoil and the ensuing change. Leela stood on her balcony one morning drying and unknotting her hair when she saw him offload his trunks and suitcases from the taxi carriage. She had felt dizzy as her eyes zeroed in on him. He was simply the most attractive person she had ever seen. Her mouth had gone dry and she had to hold on to the railing as her heartbeat threw her off-balance. And then she day-dreamed about him every day; she ran her fingertips over his eyebrows, ran her fingers through his hair resting her palms to envelope his ears, and outlined the broadness of his shoulders with her scrutiny. She lay awake at nights knowing he was possibly just over her at that very moment except for many feet of space and cement.

But Ravi never noticed her. She had seen him nod at the other neighbours, even spoke to young ladies in the elevators but she knew she was invisible to him. Women swooned all around him and presented themselves to him with great fanfare.

Eventually, she decided it was time to make herself seen. He was no schoolboy. A young man like him, who could pick anyone he wanted with just a twitch of his fingers, needed a young woman who could offer him the world and she decided she would. She resolved she would make herself irresistible. That was when she had boarded the train to the tailor five stations and a world away.

It was time. Leela collected her bags, waved goodbye to her dad behind the dailies and shuffled out pretending to be all together. As if she had a fresh coat of paint on, the skin on her chest shivered from the air they had never felt before, through the chiffon. It was also Leela’s nerves. It was 8:20 and she knew she would very soon hear Ravi lock up upstairs. The open air staircases and corridors made it possible to not only hear all happenings but also to be seen by neighbours in the adjoining block craning their neck to hang sheets out to dry, or to water flower pots that hung on threateningly to pot rings strapped reluctantly to balcony walls or window ledges, or just by those who possessed curious eyes. So while she stood there for two long minutes or so waiting to hear Ravi lock up upstairs, she looked through messages on her cell phone, not really reading any.

Then Ravi clanked the grill outside his door shut and latched it. Leela threw her cell phone into her bag, waited 10 seconds for him to press the lift button and then did the same timing the lift perfectly. And while she held her belongings securely to her side, and hoped she would be alone with him in the lift for once to draw him in with her eyes unashamedly unwatched, she found her hands doing that which she would never have dared. She unhinged her sari from her left shoulders and allowed the folds to fall on her arm stretched across her abdomen. The lift had commenced its stop on her floor leaving time only enough for her to bring her fever to a boil and to borrow some confidence from air.

PART 2: RAVI

For most of Ravi’s 24 years, he got a lot of attention from women. Even as a very young child, teachers deliberated on his retribution or reward a little longer than the situation demanded. The aunties of the neighbourhood always stopped to enquire about his studies and commented on how emaciated he was getting while pinching his cheeks pretending to measure his fat. While there was a sure charm about him, he wore it with much humility and grace. At first he attributed the goodwill he received to his pleasing manners and industry rather than his looks. Ravi had always been a focussed child who understood the meaning of a goal and set his standards very high. This made him a darling of the grown-ups whose search for a model child, to showcase for their own children, stopped with him.

As he grew into a teenager, his charm ripened into a spell and though it was not his intention, girls around him were ever caught in a bad case of trance. Ravi realised this and did not like it. He did not want to be judged on his looks even if the verdict was in his favour. He picked modest cloths, sported basic haircuts, counted his toes as he walked and avoided any place that had too many girls. He rarely discussed girls with the boys as they would do little to hide their envy. “Things are too easy for you Ravi. You will never know what it is like to be one of us ordinary folk”, they would say. After a while Ravi stopped explaining that he did not really want things that way, for they would only roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders dismissing his plea as something he put on to make them fell a little less sorry for themselves.

But Ravi was no stone. Sometimes when he went out for a stroll to clear his head, and when the late night breeze would stroke his face, he could almost feel it also stir her long hair. He could then feel her holding his hands, warming the insides of his moist palm. He would watch her feet taking each step with his. Sometimes when he was in need of rest and repair from the mundane trials of life, he could feel her hands on his temple humbling a swollen vein. Sometimes after his morning meditations, he would feel her joining him in prayer, finally opening her deep eyes to him, inviting him home. Where was she? He knew she was out there.... somewhere. Who was she?

Ravi was in search of true love.

When he saw Leela for the first time, it was from inside his taxi as it pulled into the driveway of the colony he was moving into. Leela was airing her hair to dry in her balcony and as she turned her head around to catch the sunlight and breeze in her hair, Ravi realised the girl who walked by his side when he went out for a stroll on lonesome nights was faceless no more. The bustle of getting his luggage off and paying the driver had distracted him and she had left when he looked up again. It was not until few days later that he saw her again. Since then, he had slowly allowed her image to invade and take over his private moments.

He had learnt from his landlady, that Mr and Mrs Patil lived downstairs just a floor below his and their daughter, Leela went to college nearby; she would graduate in a couple of months. Such a gem of a girl, she had said. “Not like the tramps you find these days!”, she said, her hands symbolically waving and pushing away the air as if the tramps were strutting in front of her eyes at that very moment.

Ravi could not agree with her more. Ever since he had moved in, as if dictated by law, the young ladies and not-so-young aunties threw more than glances and smiles at him. From his perspective, the world had always been filled with those who saw him for what he looked like. Only Leela never looked at him. Perhaps, she will know me for who I am, he thought smiling in relief that he had finally met the One.

“Leela is the One”, he found himself saying aloud once and had celebrated his acknowledgement. Surely, she needs to know me and how she makes me feel. Perhaps, she thinks the same way. Perhaps those deep eyes which draw me in think of me. But what if she never noticed me, he thought in alarm, experiencing for the first time what the boys back in his hometown had tried to explain to him. Ravi felt like a novice and the thrill of vulnerability flowed through him along with all this love. He resolved that he would make her his.

So while Leela was planning a rendez-vous with Ravi , unknown to her, Ravi wrote her a poem:
Days and nights you have been with me,
a faceless angel of mystery.
Now after years of search and agony,
in you I found my beloved - my destiny.
Will you be mine, Leela?
Eternally Yours, Ravi.

“I will give this to Leela tomorrow”, he decided ecstatic about the poem he had written and doors it would open for him. He would meet her, hopefully in the lift on her way to college and holding her gaze he planned to give her the envelope with the poem. No doubt, she would be too shocked and shy and find him intrusive but he would persuade her. “I must try”, he thought as he slipped into his sheets.

PART 3: THE END

The next morning, Ravi was up early. He turned around and gazed at the floor and pictured her in her sleep below the mosaic and concrete and said aloud, “You will be mine today Leela and I will be yours”. This would be the day.

For the first time, Ravi looked at himself in the mirror from many angles and also practiced looking straight at her with as much subtlety and deference as he could. Would she look beyond all this and stay with him through it all till the end? Self-doubt walked in hand-in-hand with nervousness. He meditated a few extra minutes that morning to gain some composure. Finally he was ready to go, his satchel thrown over his left shoulder and the envelope in his right palm, secure.

Ravi latched the gate to his apartment and pressed the lift button. When the lift door opened one

floor below, Ravi was prepared with a smile. Soon it melted away. It was not his Leela who walked in. It was a demon with lust in her eyes, her cloths providing no modesty and her lips dripping hunger. She looked at him, pinned him to the corner abandoning her college bag to the floor and took his lips in hers. Her left leg was riding up Ravi’s and tying him to the spot. He allowed her to be done with her beastly act. He then quietly created space between them with his arm not wanting to touch the creature with his hands. Brows knotted, lips curled in disgust, Ravi stared at her breathless face ugly over her dishevelled sari which she had started drawing up. He pictured himself alone again on a moonless, barren night, Leela consigned to the legion of vacant women.

“Disgusting. You taste like cardboard”, he spat and walked away throwing the poem in the garbage can on his way out of the lift.

There is no place like home. Where is it?

PAST
On most days in Cincinnati, I could hear the calm, broken by small sounds that arrive one by one, each one waiting its turn to the ear, with no urgency. The soft not-so-distant whirr on summer Wednesdays would be Mr.Whitman’s lawn mower. On Thursday evenings it would most indisputably be, Ms. Eve’s from next door.

On summer evenings I could also hear the sprinklers showering gently on neighbourhood lawns, un-parching cracked veins under the apple trees. Children would squeal as they ran in and out of the sprinkler drizzle and only the occasional chime of the ice cream truck could get them away from the water theme park in their very front yards. On moonless nights, I often strolled along the streets watching stars or just sat in my backyard and sipped in cool lemon tea as the bejewelled skies revealed itself, one star at a time. And then I would hear Ms.Eve’s chime which hung out from the awning of her sunroom, and it would lullaby me to sleep.
In the wee hours of the morning, I would sometimes hear crackles of twig just under my upper storey bedroom window and I would tiptoe in a hurry to view deer reach up to the leaves of the magnolia tree.

I would sit for long hours watching, peering out from the dining room window and see the cars go by. Unfailing every season, the window set the stage and performers danced in and out. The same comforting interlude. Cincinnati taught me to breathe. One breath at a time, with no commotion. My house was by the Stop sign and every car stopped religiously at its altar. Some would roll as if out of obligation, the others would stop like their lives depended on it. The pause in between cars would give me adequate time to fix my cup of chamomile. And one by one, I would watch cars-big and small, rich and broke: trucks- trudging carriages of lawn care equipment or tree trimmings; and the occasional cyclist, go by.

I would not need to look at the clock, marking time with events unfolding instead. The mailman never failing to make his rounds across the streets just before noon. When he made it to my mailbox along his designated route, I knew that it was around 3:00 and the entourage of school buses would soon start. First the bus to drop off the kindergarteners would stop across the street, engines still purring on. It would blink its innumerable red lights and fold out its stop sign reminding any vehicle passing by to wait. The driver would only leave after each child was in his mother’s arms and waved goodbye back at the bus. The torrent of buses- preschool, primary, middle, high school- would continue for the next hour or so in periodic ebbs and flows. Clockwork.

And then there was the snow. Freezing the landscape. The small but sure footprints of deer, front and hind, after snow, would tell me how many came by the previous night. Some prints with shorter strides for babies following the mothers around. Some prints further apart with portions of snow gorged out around each impression for a deer that ran across in fear of a headlight, perhaps.

So on cold nights after I would shovel snow off the driveway, I would sometimes look around at the stillness with the only movement coming from smoking chimneys all along the street and the occasional breeze shaking snow off leafless branches. I would then draw down the garage door and retire inside and curl up in front of the fireplace with some hot chocolate. After locking up beautiful moments in a place in my heart, a place I knew not before that I had, I would make a pact of peace with the universe in gratitude and wonder what all the fighting is about.

PRESENT
Even from atop the 24th floor, I hear the noise of Singapore unceasing - layer upon layer of complex decibels wanting to be unpeeled. The sharpest clank coming from the construction site across the main entrance to my building- cranes splattering metal on metal. The unmistakable sound of drilling machines echoing from various construction sites is an integral part of the soundscape here. The screech of vehicles, braking suddenly rises from streets and lanes crisscrossing below. The screams of inspiration and instructions from tennis coaches thrown at young talents at the courts many feet below floats up to my balcony. The only respite from it all comes from dark clouds clapping loud thunder, a noise to drown out all hollers and cries.

The nights provide no escape. Motorbikes whiz through streets, simmering rich with activity as they pierce their way into my shallow slumber. I wake-up and look out the window but the night sky above provides no drama, staring blankly down accusing the city below of stealing the spotlight.

Every day-break, for just a while, there is a radiant veil of quite until the cycle starts again. The lift takes me down and I brave the street crossings. People splash around me purposefully, knowing exactly where they want to go. Soon I know, I will learn to get point to point, not trying to catch anyone’s eyes, not trying to greet them with Cincinnati’s customary “How are you?!” for I am begin to realize that faces are blank when they are lost in thoughts, plans and destinations. Brightly lit shops, peopled by eyes that want my attention, hawk their wares at me intrusively. No one else seems to mind.

I board the train after waiting behind the yellow line for just a few minutes, rubbing shoulders with strangers as I scramble to hold the only available strap hanging from the compartment roofs for balance, as announcements filter through- words in languages, known and unknown. I emerge from the train stations and rush onto the escalators that fasten my pace, unforgiving of my sloth, un-accepting of my desire to be a spectator as I walk. At first, frightful of the multitude of ways I could indulge my needs and pamper myself, I allow myself a foot massage and slurp some coconut water only just beginning to learn to ignore people around me. To find my sanctuary.

The warm air that thawed my bones when I got here from Cincinnati’s winter is beginning to embalm me and take me into its arms. Soon, I shall learn to rest to the rhythm of the clanking cranes, to the beat of the honking cars and then find myself in this sea of humanity. This hiss of the hoard below, alarming now from my balcony, will one day, I know, welcome me into comfortable anonymity. Not yet, but soon, I shall renew my pact of peace with the universe once again, for this too shall be home.