Across the River

Riku is eight, and he loves the breeze on his face when they get onto a steamer to cross to the other side. The river is pretty wide at this time of the year, but he has heard his father talk about a river that has no banks on either side, is covered with ominous clouds carrying rain, where the sun abandons your boat, and the night advances stealthily bearing rage and fear.

"At the mohona the river knows no bounds, and I was only five, holding my mother's hand,  praying for the night to pass." And every time his father told him the story, Riku waited for the reference to the morning, in which his father's uncle appeared, admonished the family for having undertaken such a perilous journey with a kid, and took them to the comfort of home, in Khulna. It was a wedding in the family.

Riku is only eight, and he loves to cross the river on a steamer, from the side of the tall buildings to the stark contrast of the rows of abandoned factories on the other bank, with their redbrick chimneys gone dark with moss and decades of neglect. 

There is a wedding in the family. There will be a river crossing. But it isn't a steamer this time. It is a yellow taxi, rather stuffy and uncomfortable inside, with the springs coming out of its seat, and they will take the bridge to the other side. Riku loved the smell of diesel fumes, but he longed for the breeze on the river. To see the bride, you had to go in a car, and hence the two yellow taxis. The yellow ones ply outside Calcutta, his father explained. Riku and his elder brother Sujan got into one, and although it was a squeeze and the traffic was slow, he was in a car. 
In the dingy by-lanes of the other side, most of the houses were abandoned too. The taxi stopped in front of a hundred-year old house that had green shuttered french windows and trees growing out of the brick folds. At the end of the street, sat some people with blank faces, as old as time.

When the bride gingerly stepped into the living room, Riku first saw her feet on the red-oxide floor with a black skirting all around. There was a nail driven into the center of the floor where all the lines seemed to meet. And there were her white feet.

Riku looked up, and couldn't believe his eyes. He hadn't seen anybody more beautiful in his life. She was like Shuyo Rani from Thakurmar Jhuli, with long eyes, curly hair falling on her back, and red lips slightly parted. She was in a white sari. Everybody around him was speechless, and he heard Sujan murmur, almost to himself, "...smooth as monumental alabaster. Yet she must die..."

The groom was their uncle, and the elders stayed inside as Riku and Sujan came out with Riya, a wiry little girl who seemed to appear like magic from behind the green curtains that covered the door to the bedroom. The three of them walked to the riverbank. Come back for the singara, someone said.

Riku shyly wished he could be the groom instead. He was so mortified by the thought that he never could ask the name of his would-be aunt. There was a longing for the breeze again.

There were steamers plying on the river, the sky was clear, and somebody remembered to switch on the lights in the buildings on the other side as the sun slowly set.
"Will your uncle marry my mother, do you think? I have always wanted to go to the other side of the river."
"Yes, of course. Of course he will." Riku was positive.
"But they say she is a widow and men don't like to marry widows."
"I will marry her, then," was Riku's valiant answer, and they all laughed.
"Do you know anything about keeping ghosts away by driving nails into the floor? My dad really loved me, you know?"
"He is here, somewhere, watching you," said Sujan. "And if he loves you, a nail on the floor cannot keep him away." 
Sujan somehow always seemed to have reassuring answers. 


The uncle didn't marry her, eventually. He married someone else, who wasn't previously married. And Riku could never find out who Riya's mother was, or her address. 

Since then, he has only longed for a river with no banks on either side, of the mohona, for ominous clouds and a tornado tossing their boat high up in the air, but there was no boat, and someone seemed to have stopped the breeze on the river too.

All that remained were memories of diesel fumes.

The Crows of Durgapur

Mr. Nandalal Ghoshal used to play chess with my dad every evening. I must have been very young then to remember, but according to what my dad later told me, they spent hours walking each other back after dinner because the conversation never got over. From Edison Avenue to Newton Avenue wasn’t a long distance, and the nights in Durgapur were pleasant and breezy. What better than being able to converse with a learned friend especially when you were stuck in a Steel township that reminded you of the 19th Century Eastwood of Lawrence, narrow in its thinking like the dark tunnels of a coal mine? When he had just moved to Durgapur, my dad used to stand alone on the over-bridge of Durgapur Railway Station every evening, looking below at the trains headed to Calcutta, a city he missed so much.

“Each train reminded me of everything I left behind there, and even a remote chance of meeting someone I can talk to. So I started talking to myself.”

Talk of trains used to excite me and I invariably ended up asking “How far below were the electric wires? Could you touch them? Why don’t the crows perched on the wires die?” little knowing how lonely the man used to be. And then he met Mr. Ghoshal.

We moved from Edison to Joydev, and the frequency of their meetings came down. It was a good 10 km away, and it wasn’t possible for either of them to leave their family duties to go for chess on their bicycles. There were no telephones those days, and as time passed, the two friends grew apart. But I kept hearing about Mr Ghoshal from my dad—his first friend in Durgapur, a scholar of Bengali and Sanskrit.

When I was in class IX, in my search of a person who would teach me literature, I found Mr. Ghoshal again. I spent four years under his tutelage and believe he played a very crucial role in keeping me on track when everything else other than studies seemed so attractive. I was mostly a vagabond, riding my cycle to unknown places, coming home late, bunking classes, watching Hindi films (that's the worst a Bengali boy can do, watch Bollywood films), riding in and out of Einstein Avenue to catch a glimpse of someone, but I never bunked his classes. And for the first time in my life, I was regular not because of any pretty girl in the class (although there were a few), but for Mr. Ghoshal himself. He always managed to make us laugh. Once when I paid him his fees in an envelope from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, he exclaimed, “Oh, our poet Lau Sen? When did he move to Switzerland?”

Among many weird ten-minute essays he made us write, one was The Crows of Durgapur. I remember mentioning how they nonchalantly perch on the overhead electric wires with no worries of being burnt black. There were some rules about writing these essays. You had to start the moment he gave you the topic, and not stop until the alarm went off after ten minutes. You could go berserk with your imagination, let all the absurd come out, forget about punctuation and syntax, and just had to write. The kind of things that came out of each one of our minds was fascinating. Shovon and I were his favourite students. By the end of four years, our minds were free and wandering, welcoming abstraction in any form, like The Dry Twig I Found. Many years later when I watched The Terminal, I remembered how he had asked us to write about being lost in Charles de Gaulle. I wonder if he had a brush with the rudeness that's French and why really Charles de Gaulle. Maybe Syed Mustafa Ali had told him about his university days in Paris.

When my dad passed away some years back, among many other things I found in his belongings, there was a letter addressed to Mr. Ghoshal and an old Parker pen that he hadn’t opened. Because we didn’t know where Mr. Ghoshal was, the letter never got sent. So I took it upon myself to deliver my dad’s letter to his first friend in Durgapur.

Durgapur had changed. There were shopping malls all around and the roads unfamiliar. I got off the bus at Newton Avenue and tried locating his place. The Steel township quarters were like single-story row houses earlier, uniform in shape and colour. But now people had changed all of that. They had built extra rooms on top of the houses and painted them wild. The entire area seemed to have grown like a formless protozoa, pretty much like the DDA apartments in Delhi have grown. Nobody in that area knew about him, so I was stranded with no clue about where to go. Suddenly I remembered Mintu’s cigarette shop and went a couple of streets further to find if it was still around. It was still the same, the same small gumti only now with billboards stuck all around. “Mintu?” I asked the bald man sitting crouched inside the shop reading Anandabazar.

Mintu was so surprised to see me, he bumped his head trying to come out of the small trap door. Shuvo! How come! You haven’t changed one bit, bro!

He didn’t have Capstan cigarettes any more. People smoke Gold Flake and Classic these days. Mintu himself had stopped smoking after a bad bout of asthma. We remembered how he had started the shop because of his love for tobacco. Although he was an outcast and most of our parents didn’t approve of that boy, I used to still go meet him every day. He had dropped out of school and had a lot of time to spare. And he was a master storyteller, narrating stories of movies animatedly. Watching him enact each scene was more mesmerizing than watching the real film.

Mintu told me about “Ghoshal Sir” and where he had moved to. He had moved from his quarters to a place further north. His children had grown up and moved out, so he stayed alone. He was still teaching after retirement and should be available now, Mintu said. He called the assistant of the neighbouring puncture-repair guy and asked him to look after his shop while he dropped me to Ghoshal Sir’s place on his scooter.

We stopped in front of the house and I asked Mintu to come in with me. He refused. “I didn’t finish school, Shuvo, and he had kept insisting that I do. Somewhere, I don’t think I can face him again.”

“But he loved you, Mintu, just come in with me.” But he just gave me a long hug and said, “good you never took to smoking, bro… it was good to see you.” I opened the creaky gate and walked in. There was an old button switch for the doorbell, pressing which made the bell scream in agony. 

And there he was, his hair all white, looking at me through the netting of the door.

“Wasn’t that Mintu who dropped you?” he said as he recognized me and opened the door.

He recognized me, which was a big thing given he must have seen thousands of students in his lifetime as a teacher. He was very happy to usher me into his living room strewn with books. “You should have brought that boy in. He had talent, that boy. He could have regaled any audience with his stories.” To him, we were all boys and always would remain so.

We talked about publishing in Delhi, the weather in Bangalore, and he asked if I had had a chance to see the leopard of the Yellagiri Hills. “If you remember, your dad used to read out Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson to you every night.” Yes, I remembered. I used to imagine the jungles in little detail and always wanted the machan to be placed high above the ground beyond the reach of the tigers. And I dreamt of big double-barrelled rifles in my sleep.

“Do tread the path Kenneth Anderson did when you are in South India, my son. Your life will be incomplete without that."

He was overjoyed with all the Penguin titles I had carried for him from my collection. “Warehouse clearance? Get me a job there, Shuvo! You really worked with David Davidar?” And it was a morning of stories and reminiscences that spilled over to lunch. “If you have a chance, find more of these Mintus. Don’t let them get wasted.”

On the way back from his place I thought of dropping by at Mintu's shop, but somehow my mind was filled with a strange jealousy I had never felt before. 

I might have been his favourite, but Mintu would always remain his Ekalavya.

Rag-Tag Voodoo

on the surface, like acupuncture
the shiny steel pins find their way
into a doll 
swaying to a hindi song
even till yesterday,
with a tiny little bell
in her hand

and the needles can tell
if it is wheelchair for life
or a speeding truck
struck by thunder
or quick-burying sand.

on the surface,
every little pin
is innocent acupuncture

but there's hell,
just fucking under.

Arrivals and Departures

I brave the rain on the roof
scanning the sky
for an approaching light
blinking in the drizzle

you'll be on one of them, tonight

and soon the green of the messenger
will tell, you landed

but I see a shooting star, instead,
unblinking and bright
and forget to ask if you reached,
and would never get to know
are you richer for my not asking
am I richer for the star?

and if i go again, tomorrow,
whom will it be for?

Alternative Reality

Alternative reality taking over you and me.

I forget which is home.

You forget vaccinations, but defend,
"This one's 4.5, dude, am on top of things."

He forgets the brand of scotch you love,
coz you passed out in his arms, hun...
although he wouldn't get to know
how I pressed you against the red, red wall
begging for a kiss.

And she?
She goes ranting in crepe,
unready to drink, smoking a Black
staring inanely at the rudeness of skirts,
baring her fangs, but only in a private smile.

I don't have body hair, I whisper into her ear.

Alternative reality has begun,
no more alternating between reality and dreams,

Waiter, can you play some Black Hole Sun?

And then he asked "What about love?"

And then he asked, "What about love, then?"
"What about it, sir?"
"You say you want a romp with a 26-year old when you are 85, but that sounded so insensitive and blatant. I can see someone else putting that idea in your otherwise chaste wish. You are, from what I see, generally losing your libido, aren't you?"

"Yeah, you can say that. And it is effing irritating to talk to a person who knows it all, already. This is so weird. And I thought you would look like Morgan Freeman."

"I don't, actually. I don't know it all because when i created the brain, I never thought it would have thoughts in it. It was chalky, tasted bland, and I stuffed as much of it as I could into the skull. It was meant to find you food and shelter. It evolved, and evolution wasn't something I had accounted for."

"No wonder. Before meeting you I kept thinking if you had really created and willed it all, how come the world's such a dark place, like...like someone's spread a jet-black sheet of night sky, and scattered only a few bright stars, as if you had thought of Blackle before us, and then given us pollution."

"I hadn't thought of the mind's capability of thinking. I had kept thought exclusively to myself, and to...err... some dolphins, but it seems there's an evil design that had gotten into everything even without my knowledge. Like what do you call it? Virus? And that brings me to the question I had been meaning to ask you all this while. Why demonhead?"

"Eh! That's supposed to be secret, maaaan! Am not the devil in anybody's mind. I ask them to invoke the devil in theirs."

"See? Now tell me about love. Haven't you loved?"

"Oh yes, and you probably know about all that too. Yes, I have been madly loved by two, almost unconditionally, where one embrace can lead to a koala snore, and another conversation can remain open-ended in 'when you decide to come to me, don't think twice.' And then I have chased three, obsessively. And that pretty much sums up all."

"Who was the last? The dancer?"
"Yes, and you wouldn't like the term bimbo, would you? You being effing G or whatever they call you."
"No, and I hate the term romp as well. I don't understand why you created language and created slang in parallel. That was like a virus in your original thought about how effective communication would be, with language. See, it is inflicting all of us."

"Slang helps make communication precise, sometimes. You wouldn't happen to know Bengali, would you? A term 'baal', meaning pubic hair, can be used in almost every sense to communicate a range of emotions. Very nice, in fact. By the way, about this dancer, what do you want to know? Why I was obsessed and what I got out of it? What if her husband reads this?"

"He wouldn't reach till here. He has very little patience in life, and you must have heard about it from her. Every morning he stands in front of a picture of what he thinks is me and utters some unintelligible stuff in Sanskrit, which he himself doesn't understand. I didn't feel any prayers in his heart. He wouldn't reach till here, am sure. You continue."

"It was obsessive, that's about it. And now it is over. And it left me scarred, which I thought wouldn't heal for quite some time. But strangely, there's no pain, and there's nothing left to say."

"So, the open-ended, lifetime offer saved you?"

"You can say that. Sometimes she is quiet and her hand, with her nails painted shiny black, is placed on mine. And nothing throbs. That's peace."

"And the snore of the koala?"

"That too. In a disneyland of her own dreams."

"Why is it that you don't talk much about what you genuinely received as opposed to stories of how much you have given in vain? Do I smell some vanity in that? What does it get you?"

"Where, you should ask, non?" I replied with a sheepish grin. He knows me inside out by now.

And then I offered him a drink of a local whiskey. He said he will be back to hear more and that he is drawn to demonhead. He asked why he is seen as ugly in some parts of the world. And I have the answers.
I wonder if he will ever figure who the devil in our minds really is.

Uncorked

It was the summer of 99, with overcast skies and whirlwind memories of the first two years of our marriage. We had broken beds and kitchen tables, shattered glasses and got new ones. Blue, this time. Casement memories blocking the sun in brilliant hues of gold and blue, too. Yes, from newspapers blocking glass windows, we had moved to full-length curtains that gingerly kissed the floor. And a giant air cooler where we kept our pet mosquitoes, floating, dead. It was the right time to uncork a bottle of wine, we thought. Never having bought wine before, the only parameter was affordability; so a long, green bottle of Riviera found its way home one evening as we rubbed our hands in anticipation of a celebration like never before. 

Blue glasses from Good Earth, gifted by Punita​. A green bottle. Yes the white wine served at British Council was superb, we agreed, as it made us forget which passage Sashi Tharoor read out from, or the wisdom about love and longing Vikram Chandra shared. It was good, so white it is, although a cheaper version. OPEN IT ALREADY, wilya! 

Open? The bottle presented us with quite a tough challenge, with a smug little cork on top that seemed intent upon sitting there for good. How do you uncork a wine bottle, by the way? The bottle openers were of no help, and we had never heard of a corkscrew. Not to be deterred by this challenge (and having the dubious distinction of having sawed the legs off the hostel warden's bed), we brought out the hammer and a screwdriver. What was a mere cork in the face of a couple of devious minds from Banaras with clear intent? It gradually disintegrated and started going down the neck of the bottle, deeper and deeper, until we heard a pop! The night was young, a battle was won, and although we had to strain the residual pieces of the resilient cork from the wine, the white did taste good after all.


This is in memory of the cork which we preserved for a long time after that, and finally let go along with the chipped blue glasses after about 16 years. Also in memory of the bed, the bamboo table, and the air cooler, which we sold to the ironing guy for five hundred. The brilliant hues of the casement that faded, the Indian wine that got pushed over by French and South African, the hammers and screwdrivers that were forgotten with an abundance of corkscrews, and the evenings that became rarer as the books gathered dust. So, let's make an evening of it soon, and raise a toast to the brave cork that posed a tough challenge to our ignorance.

"Nice one, but aren't you forgetting something?"
"Umm, what exactly do you mean? It was really the summer of 2000, and not 99, but Summer of 2000 doesn't sound so nice as a Facebook post, does it?"
"I mean the savior in the form of Tropicana black grape juice?"
"Are you sure I should mention it? Isn't it a tragic end to an otherwise nice story? The fact that we couldn't have the strained wine without mixing it with grape juice?"
"Let's just be honest about it."

As you say, then. I'll go gather some firewood and you rustle up something for us.

Lagaa, Chunar-i mein Daag

 If it's already 2.00 in the morning, let's not go off to sleep. Let's just laze around Lanka for some more time till it's around 5.00 and then catch the sunrise on the Ganges. Maybe can take a cutter on hire and row upstream as much as we can, have tea at Assi and come back to our rooms? Parking our bicycles can be an issue that early, can’t it? Have to take a chance, I think, and who’s gonna steal these old cycles after all! Have you been towards DLW ever? No? How about trying that road? And jilipis for breakfast! You have money? Maybe around Rs 50, which is a lot. I have around ten bucks myself. 

So we slowly kept riding our bicycles on a road previously not taken. It was a moonlit night and the streets were deserted. The road led us out of Varanasi, through the Diesel Locomotive Colony and then on to some rice fields and sleepy villages, with the trees resembling humongous lizards standing guard like sentries. He was a couple of years older and obviously at the age of 22, someone who is 24 or 25 is respected for those extra summers. And anyway he is god to me. Has given me refuge in his room, plays the esraaj at 3 in the morning, can cook sooji with milk, sing Manna De’s songs more soulfully than I had heard before, and is an excellent shoplifter. Our shoplifting was limited to cooking oil and milk, and mostly for the adventure of it all rather than a real need. The girls, though, preferred stealing only greeting cards from the nearest Archies Gallery. We didn’t like the owner so nobody really cared much.

As we rode on, on this unknown road, we started discussing the favorite topic of most guys that age: women. We had both fallen in love many times by then, and although I had never succeeded in holding on to any relationship, he had achieved something that I could only dream of. He had had sex. That was the singularly most fascinating thing in my eyes then, and I had a secret feeling that if I was seen hanging around with him, it might work as a lucky charm for me.

‘Rhima is bold and pretty direct. She swept aside my indirect hints, looked me straight in the eyes and asked “so, do you wanna sleep with me?”’

I listened in absolute rapture and could see Rhima very clearly that night. Maybe the full moon helped.

There was not a single other person on the road and our raucous laughter must have traveled over the shining paddy into the sleep-laden houses and messed with some everyday dreams.

And then he told me about Menon’da (a Malayalee from West Bengal, hence the appendage hanging from his surname) and how he brought in L.Subramaniam to his life. And about Dr N. Rajam, who heads the Music Dept at BHU. I was surprised to know that she is a Hindustani classical violinist.

‘I was in love with her daughter once,’ he added nonchalantly. On meekly asking if she too faced the same fate as Rhima, he merely let out a mirthless laughter. What an enigma he was!

Suddenly there were headlights in the distance. They were almost a mile away and didn’t seem to be approaching us. As we were getting curious about what they belonged to, the headlights vanished. Must be a bus that stopped somewhere. We will soon find out. They appeared again, now closer, and disappeared. What could it be? It happened several times and each time the lights seemed closer than before. Suddenly I felt, all these years of stoically denying spooky was about to change. It was clearly not human and the creatures of the night were ganging up against us in a sinister plot about to culminate in something horrid.

The dinosaurs started moving and looked more menacing than ever.

When finally we realized it was a sand truck tackling the dunes and gradually trying to reach the road, we looked at each other and laughed, but our faces were ashen. We picked up our parked bikes from the side of the road and started off again. When had we stopped? We didn’t seem to remember.

 And then there was a milestone that read “Chunar, 10 kms”. Chunar??? Looking back today, it seems the joy we felt then was almost like the joy of having found lost treasure while looking for ruins. Chunar Fort was a day trip from Varanasi, about 35 kms away, so the prospect of making it on bicycles was too tempting to resist. We were always told it was built by Sher Shah Suri in the 1500s, but wikipedia says it was built long back by King Vikramaditya. By the time we reached the western bank of the Ganges, it was still dark and the fort on the other side of the river loomed large, looking unassailable, reminiscent of all the battles, as two weary plotters sat panting on the sand bank, planning a siege, waiting for the sunrise and the morning ferry service to start. Probably due to our exhaustion, we ruled out the idea of swimming across and using monitor lizards to climb up the straight walls rising right up from the river.

We took the first boat across, and it seemed a normal custom to be ferrying your cycles on boats. 

The mossy stones of the fort, if you place your palms on them, tell you a lot of stories from over the years, of love, battles, defeats, and deceit. Some were desecrated by tourists who wanted to etch their love in stone. Through one such stone we got to know that a certain Dinesh of Mirzapur loved Mala in 1978. I wonder if they ever had a chance to unite.
The huge white structure at the top of the fort had a beautiful view of the river and a cold marble floor that served as a welcome bed to us. It was probably built by the East India Company in the 1800s.

By the time we started on our way back, it was about 12.30 in the afternoon and we were weary from staying up for more than a day. The idea was to take the GT Road this time because it wouldn’t be potholed and deserted. The prospect of riding 35 kms didn’t look very attractive. Carrying water while riding was an unheard-of concept because plastic bottles weren’t still in vogue and we didn’t want to be caught dead carrying water bottles like those school kids. All the water we had was from the taps at the fort and some at the dhaba serving thalis for lunch. And under a harsh sun, with hardly any respite from foliage unlike the other road, we were soon out of breath and things started looking pretty dry after we crossed Kailahat and Sahasapura. Near Narayanpura, we spotted this huge irrigation canal that had a lot of water gushing through, tumbling eastward in a tearing hurry. Should we? Within minutes we stripped to our briefs and jumped into the water, and now that I look back, thinking how we dived in, I wish there was a third-person camera held on our lives all along. Not quite like Truman, though. Wouldn’t it be nice to rewind and replay the beautiful moments and fast forward all the rest? If given a chance, I would bypass the part in which we were dog tired. My memory serves the same purpose today, wiping away reels of tape that makes no sense archiving.
Holding on to the rods on the concrete embankment, we allowed the water to make us young again. The current tugged violently at our outstretched legs and I almost wished this water went downstream towards Assi, carrying us like playful banana trunks throwing caution to the wind.

Although we had walked around naked in the hostel corridors, especially in the Rajneesh wing of Gurtu Hostel where Soumitro started the trend, being naked in broad daylight on the road was a first. We took off our sodden briefs in full public view as a busload of passengers cheered on. It was for a very brief moment, but a huge life-changing milestone, almost instrumental in my choice of a career many years later.

We came back to some chicken and rice cooked by his classmate, who was upset with us for having gone without informing. And then it was time to catch up on some sleep and we didn’t need to be reminded. 

Today, when I gyrate to the music and slowly take off my clothes at bachelorette parties, I still draw courage from that first day that I had bared myself to an unsuspecting audience of Mirzapuris. If the mustachioed men could take it, these Mumbai girls wouldn’t flinch at all. And somehow, I can’t seem to recollect the first time I made love any more. Women have been generous with their love and money, but I could not find a Rhima like he did. Her vivid face from that night still comes to me, looking deep into my eyes and asking, boldly, “do you want to sleep with me?”

I wish I knew how she looked like in real, but I somehow already seem to know.

(pic courtesy: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/North_view_of_the_fort_of_Chunargarh_on_the_Ganges_from_across_the_river..jpg)

"Coming Back to Life"

Crouching with my head between my knees, all I can feel is you aren't my friend any more. You have not come to me in three years, not allowed me to come pour out to you. You are not any more my confidante. And I don't know your gender although I would like to think you are a woman. I generally connect with women better although there are some that I can't understand or connect with at all. And there are some men who listen. Some men who have always shown the right path while numerous others told me I was wrong.

It is something I cannot put in words. It isn't suicidal, really, although I must admit to having brought a gun to my head many times and thought of jumping off from a higher floor onto the wilderness behind, punctuated with abandoned iron rods, now bent with years of neglect. From the third floor, my instincts and agility wouldn't let me die. I will manage to catch one of those rods or maybe a branch of a tree to break the fall. If I could climb a wall 30-ft high, I can arrest my fall too from that height. So that's ruled out and every time I think of jumping off, it seems improbable. So I abandon it, but like I said, it isn't completely suicidal. It is like a sense of giving up, hugging myself and burying my head deep into my knees, looking for a painkiller. And then the cursor starts acting up, moving from one word to another, inserting stuff where they are least intended, pretty much with a mind of its own, making the blank page almost resemble my life, which has started involuntarily responding to external stimuli that are beyond me.

I have sought directions, cursed myself for not being able to attribute any real therapeutic powers to spirituality, found a counselor who has been able to show me the right path at times, but even she couldn't manage to hold me together for long because I wasn't really interested in finding the lost marbles. But was I losing it, am I? I don't think so. It is more to do with something irreconcilable I have done. And it can't be undone.

What are your pursuits? Why do we live? What is the purpose, going forward? Is it to sit and watch the gradual degeneration of everything around me? Read about how the white female tourist in India is masturbated at and watch my son gradually quitting everything he had taken up as a challenge? Like someone asked me, "where did I go wrong?" I want to ask the same. But to whom, I have no clue.
Where did I go wrong? You, my dear, had no clue what you were dealing with. A maniacal brain at best. Someone who has no control over his own actions. Isn't he getting enough sex? Maybe he is, but he wants to believe he isn't finding enough. That keeps him going and justifying whatever he does. He has many faces, some that are unknown to him, some that he forgets about altogether when burying his head into his knees and working up a fury. A furious defense, almost plausible, almost empathizable in its plea.

So is this. A coming back to you. You have listened, not been critical, been patiently waiting. I was wrong in accusing you of not coming to me. I hadn't come to you all these years. And am happy to be home.

Birth of the Consumerist

I clearly remember the year although I can't tell you when it happened. My Australian uncle came visiting us with his family. It was a 200-km journey to Durgapur from Calcutta, so they came in an air-conditioned Hindustan Ambassador, hired from The Grand Hotel, where they had put up like they did as an annual ritual.
It was a white car, shining, with a chauffeur in a white uniform. They came with Japanese toys, as always, and that year it was a racing track with two remote-controlled cars, one white one red. It took time for us to set it all up. Batteries were hard to come by, and I think I had to run to the nearby grocery store to buy some AA batteries. Expensive toy to maintain, and like all the other battery-operated toys, even this one would remain mostly packed, I could foresee.

Once the novelty of the toy wore off, although the novelty of it never really wore off for the next ten years, I came out and stared at the white Ambassador with a lot of wonder. I was 8, and I could see the neighbors across my street standing in their balconies to see who had come to our house in a car. It was a huge thing that I could boast about for many months to come. I often used to pretend to my neighbors that I was born in Australia and that I can go whenever I wanted for high school. Deep inside I knew I would have to continue going to my local school in a cycle-rickshaw, but then I was a kid with lofty dreams and the neighborhood kids were equally gullible. I stared at the Ambassador and the chauffeur was kind enough to open the door and let me in for a dekko. It was a great moment for me. The red leather seats were plush and yielded under my weight like only a feather bed from the Arabian Nights would have in my dreams. These kind of days were rare in my otherwise routine life, and they were so memorable, I still remember the colors of the Lacoste t-shirts my cousins wore that day. They wore Adidas sneakers, something I had never seen before. But the car, just a little smaller than our living room in dimensions, got the lion's share of my attention. I was fascinated by it, not so much for the bragging rights it would give me later as much as for its sheer presence.

When it was time for them to leave, probably around 3.00 in the afternoon, I complimented my uncle on the softness of the car seat. "It is so soft!" is all I could manage in real earnest. Everybody smiled and they even offered to take me to Calcutta in it. Of course I couldn't go. I was eight, and it being a Sunday, I would have to go to school the next day. But they offered, which I politely declined. Moreover, the trauma of having to converse in Australian with three cousins was too much for me. I was shy and my English was limited to probably something like "This book was not available in the market." That was when I was six, standing up for myself for the first time, trying to explain why I didn't carry a particular book to school. In the two years that followed, I hadn't picked up anything more formidable than that life-changing sentence I had spoken once and remembered forever. So, armed with that English, the prospect of spending time with my cousins made me really shaky. But speak I did. The car seat was indeed soft, and I let them know what I felt.

Strangely enough, although I felt the "It is so soft" sentence, complete with an exclamation mark thrown in for good measure, is going to earn me some brownie points at home, my dad was rather upset with it. He saw the ugly head of consumerism surfacing in me through that comment. Although completely innocent as a remark, it shocked him out of his wits and put him in grave doubts about how he was raising me. In the company of classical musicians, listening to Tagore's songs, in the midst of socialists, watching and discussing movies by Ray and Sen, how did his son find a mere cushioned car seat more fascinating? Couldn't he have recited BirPurush instead?

For a long time after that I felt rather ashamed of what I had done, although I placated myself by saying it was inadvertent. But the fact that I couldn't understand the gravity of my mistake made it even worse. I couldn't see the point. What was he upset about?

I can see the point very clearly today though. My dad never forgot this incident and never allowed me to forget either. He said he felt insulted. What in him was insulted by my comment if not for his own sense of incapability? If he had not been a consumerist deep inside himself, why would he be hurt at all? All that glitz of my uncle must have hurt his pride, although they were really down-to-earth people and made us feel very comfortable indeed. And when I praised the car seat, the fact that he cannot buy a car for himself or for me must have pricked him real hard.

I wish I could hug him today and tell him that it was okay to not have owned a car ever. If I had the luxury of roaming around in cars as a child, the excitement of buying my first car, a really battered pre-owned Suzuki, wouldn't have been as much. And that humans are basically consumerist by nature. Having isn't opposed to intellect in any way like it has been preached to the have nots. It isn't a bad thing to crave to do better in life as long as you don't lose touch with your humane side. Poetry doesn't have to be borne out of rags.

Worries

am i worried when

your skin from this close sets the focal length off?
or the clove burns your tongue?
when people see,
look back,
think, cast aspersions,
gossip?
when the tint in the glass is not enough
to hide my desperation
in cheap thrills,
a slight touch?

am i worried when

strong wishes of floods--
sweeping us off like a nine-year-old cleaning a bored chessboard---
come crowd my mind and dreams?

am i worried the world will end?
of the world order and bored colleagues?

or critics who rant, having achieved nothing?

is my soul covered if Citylights again
swells me up in sobs?

Indian car buyers: a smarter generation

If you are an automobile manufacturer and want to launch a model in India, you albeit have to do a lot of market analysis. And the huge market in India provides a sea of data to base your analysis on. How many Mahindra Scorpios were sold versus how many Tata Safaris? What is the preference of any particular geography? Did more Safaris get sold in the Northern parts of India? If yes, why so? Does it have to do with the cultural preferences of a particular race? According to a market research agency, although a Mahindra Scorpio is more reliable and the service experience is infinitely better than at a Tata outlet, North Indians have shown the Safari preference over a Scorpio solely on the basis of aesthetics. Do Indians go by hearsay or do they make their own decisions? Is www.team-bhp.com a place where potential customers gather their information from? How does it influence their final buying decision?

You can understand if a foreign manufacturer like Nissan or Renault have not had the chance to do a lot of research before coming into the market and hence some of their solo products are not even taking off. Nissan, for example, have sold only a handful of their Teana, which is a premium luxury sedan. On the other hand, Skoda could manage to sell a lot of their Superb in the same price bracket. The number has nothing to do with the quality of a premium product like that but with a customer's buying behavior. Now let's look at what influences an Indian customer's choice between Renault Fluence or Chevrolet Cruze. The Cruze is better marketed both in print and television ads, there are many Chevrolet outlets in your city, and a test drive can easily be arranged. Because there are other Cruze owners around, one can ask around about any quirks that their cars have shown. So, even if there are persistent clutch problems and climate control issues reported in a Cruze, a customer can be seen preferring it over a Fluence. If the customer, however, prefers elegant European designs over flashy American ones, she might think between the Fluence and the Skoda Laura and opt for the latter. "Let Renault sell some more cars without the help of Mahindra, let them set up a few more dealerships in my area/city, and I can think about it."

Chevrolet themselves couldn't get it right initially. They were launching petrol models one after another, and all of them tanked at the box office. The much publicized Aveo lost out to Ford Fiesta, which had a diesel variant coupled with aggressive sales. The U-VA was launched a few years ahead of its time when the Indian mindset was to buy hatchbacks priced only below Rs 4 lakhs or so. Their diesel Tavera did sell as a people mover, allowing them to stay afloat, but it was the launch of the Optra Magnum diesel that changed the game for them and brought them back to contention.

The only manufacturer that staunchly held on to its "only gasoline" cars was Honda. And in the current scenario, they have also been forced to slash the prices of their models drastically. When you get a Fluidic Verna crdi or a Ford Fiesta Kinetic TDCi for a similar price, why would you buy a petrol Honda? The Jazz, a premium hatchback, was frugal in terms of fuel efficiency (the 1.2 liter mill being a really efficient one), but the initial pricing was a huge mindblock for an Indian customer. "If I pay 8 lakhs, why should I go for a hatchback?" So the price cut on the Honda Jazz is the biggest we saw in recent times.

Did the Indian manufacturers have it easy? Take the case of Tata Aria, premium 4wd UV with 17" wheels and unlimited features. The people who did the market research for Tata got it all wrong. They launched a product at such a premium pricing that nobody who could afford to shell out that kind of money would want to settle for a Tata product. They could easily go for a Ford Endeavour, a Chevy Captiva, or more importantly, a Toyota Fortuner. More reliable, better plastics and interiors, better service. Why Aria? I will leave out the discussion about its design because it is just a little more inspiring to look at than the Innova, and the front grille looks straight out of an Indica. At least borrow the Safari's grille? But that's my personal opinion and nobody has to subscribe to it. So, after all this didn't warm up the Indian customer, they had to go back to the drawing board, take off a lot of the features, take away the 4wd transmission case, and relaunch it at a much lower price point. Within days of this rethinking, one could see many Arias on the road.

The Skoda Yeti 1.4 is coming, did you know? Another relaunch, another story of having read the Indian customer wrong. The price will be around 11 lakhs. The one available abroad delivers a peppy 122 ps so one can expect this 2wd beauty of a car to get a fresh lease of life on Indian shores. Surely the Indian car buyer can't be fooled no more. And there are some morons still building the Morris Oxford and trying to sell it to us.

Where to?

You ask me where to, and I don't have an answer really. Where to is a question that can be answered by people who have a specific destination. Like they would say, to the horizon, to the edge, to see the sun going down. I can't say that. I would laugh as I say that because knowledge lends a certain humor to things that are impossible. But then, sometimes you want to say things that don't make sense in general but make a lot of sense to you. For example, if I start writing about one of my experiences without any context, you wouldn't understand, but that would be writing for myself, without thinking of you. You, the reader, would cease to exist. Is that how one should ideally write, without any cognizance of there being a reader or a bunch of them later? The wine on an empty stomach burnt its way down and I felt I should have first had some butter at least for it to not affect me adversely. It fucked me up for a while, made me high-strung, temporarily. I am not high-strung. Is it hyphenated as a noun? Maybe not, but right now I can't check. The wine and then the acceptance speech for my Oscar. Yes, thanks guys for recognizing my talent. You have a lot more coming. Those wrinkles can't be hidden, but somehow they aren't hindering normal life. Did you know that? That despite wrinkles people like you and get attracted to you? That you don't have to listen to all that crap about ageing because ageing is natural and doesn't really mean ceasing to live? I didn't. I always thought I had to look good and then I couldn't live up to that expectation. I would look into the mirror and get a shock. And then gradually I stopped looking, stopped bothering about the crumpled shirt or that obstinate strand of hair. Stopped bothering about my body being not perfect, about the head being too big, about the nose being crooked (and now short after the surgery), about the love handles and the paunch, about the spindly legs. I realized I can still love myself with the flaws and the people who love me are not really bothered. They love me for other reasons and the flaws are just human in their eyes. For long, you know (yes, you are right...am still writing for you and not just for myself), I was not high-strung. I never grew up knowing that it is okay to want. I was always told it is not okay to want something. So every time I wanted something, I told myself it was wrong to want. And somehow it became a habit to do what others wanted me to do. It is good to please others. Who said this, initially, for me to believe in it so strongly? Is it part of our culture to grow up to please others? So, along with doing things for people and conforming to their image of me, I also stopped believing in feelings. It is not right to feel. You are coldblooded, you can't feel. You can't feel love. If someone gives you love, love him back. Don't love by yourself. Loving means pain, and pain makes you high-strung. I quite like the hyphen by now.

But then the wine and the acceptance speech and a movie that makes you cry were together working toward opening me up. And I opened up. Only two drops? Is that all you can afford to cry? Isn't it okay to cry when you should? Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead, remember?

Like the other day when you left me alone and slammed the door behind you. That day when I could hear the click of your heels fading away into the distance. That day, I stayed back behind the closed door and thought if it has moved me. You took my hand and wrapped it around your waist. "See? Nothing happened, see?"

Well, perhaps nothing happened. Perhaps a lot happened. Perhaps the setting wasn't right for us because if I were at your place, I wouldn't have stopped there or taken my hand away. You worry about me being in love, but here I am telling you that I have been taught never to fall in love. I haven't even come close to falling. Women have come and gone, using me as I customized myself for them. Funnily, I was never paid. Right now, a striptease is in order. Just take away that mirror from this room because I don't like to see me again.

When you wait

When you are infinitely waiting, time loses its significance.

"When I was fifteen and you thirty, and your toes ran up my shin, you could control my heartbeat. You could make it go faster, and my mind race through smooth, reflecting corridors at breakneck speeds. You controlled me. You controlled the rush of blood to various points, you controlled how frequently I had to go relieve myself of my bursting-at-the-seams libido. That particular act by you, running your toes up my leg under the table (something they casually refer to as a footsie today) was enough to make me want to marry you, proclaim my lifelong love for you, and make love to your utterly white legs in the bright neon light. To your legs because then I probably didn't know what lay between them. I mustered up the courage and ran my hand up your legs one day after bath. You seemed to enjoy the journey as my palm caressed its way up to a crucial point and then suddenly held my hand. It was like holding up the red flag to an already delayed train. It was lust, you were convinced despite my all-out attempts to make you believe otherwise. To me it was love and I had already waited long enough."

At fifteen

…

Life brought your toes up my shin

Like the message in a bottle came to the shore

When I ran myself up your lane, though

Was it time for you to reason or run?

"And then, the permutations of age brought me to twenty-six and you became twenty-three or so. It was still you though, this time thrown in together with me at a crucial juncture of our lives. Traveling salesmen don't have it easy, and as we rode my scooter from one client to another in the summer, it was just us clutching on to each other for comfort. If my sales dwindled one month, you covered up for me, and I did the same for you. You were way smarter, just like you were ten years back and I happily became your sidekick. We traded clients, covered up for each other but nobody minded as long as the sales figures didn't go down. I knew I couldn't live without you but couldn't tell you so. You told me ten years later. Ten years too late, don't you think? And why? Your black Peshawar eyes still dance my blues away."

A button-less shirt that can hardly cover a bust, I wanted so you don't see the tears

Your voice through electricity, comes crackling,

I miss you, so do I, but what can I say?

Today definitely is not our day.

"I silently listened to your stories. The age gap had somehow been moving like an undecided scale. Now you were perhaps ten years younger, or more. I felt older, wiser. Wisdom can get you there, you know? If you weren't a teenager with a perpetual blood rush, you could still get it. The attention, I mean, and there you were, longing in your eyes, coming straight at me, making me feel heady, young, ready to hit the treadmill. You needed my advice, counseling you to cope with your trauma, holding my hand and keeping it on your chest to listen to your heartbeat. It had gone slow, with pain. I felt pain with you, silently listened to your stories. Coffee, ice-cream, known and unknown streets, your hand in mine, my grip on life silently slipping away.

It was my turn to talk one day. You kept your phone away."

I was here, promised to be

For a longish period of time,

But then giving has its day.

The road takes a U-turn, eventually

"But the map said another way?"

Maps have given way to GPS, dude, maps have given way to GPS long back only you didn't know about it. How will you? Stuck in your love stories, unfinished, you hardly had the time to catch up.

"And today, your hand on my lap is warm and inviting. It has a language of its own. You like reading me, you say, but then I hardly write. You like the way my mind works, but the only inlet you have is this blog, so that's hardly representative. It is trash, didn't I say? Your hand finds its way to my heart. It hasn't stopped yet. It has raced with you, slowed down with your pain, sobbed uncontrollably with your departure, and has slowed down for me now. Keep it there for a while as I pick up my pieces from the virtual world. Scattered also has a pattern, someone said."

As I walk in a trance,

a million pieces of light dance on the floor

would have called it a disco

had they not been showing me the way

around my life.

Of Gemini Minds

Who is that man in the red tee? He isn't particularly handsome, but has this really infectious smile. It is such a clean and disarming smile, you can't really not smile back at him. His eyes would get smaller, the crows feet would get prominently stretched, and his uneven teeth would peep out of his otherwise thin lips. He has very average features, but altogether they make an attractive picture. I caught myself not just smiling, but thinking about him even after he had gone.

Will he ask me my name? Will we meet again next week at Dr. Sushma Rao's clinic? Why does that man need therapy? He might be a single parent, but seems to be in control of himself. So why? Has he come to pick up a date? A psycho therapy workshop for single parents who're not being able to cope with things is a good place to pick up a date, isn't it? He hasn't done too badly for himself either, on the first day. He spoke about the trauma he went through when his wife died in a freak accident. And I could see two other ladies giving him the looks. I remember his account very vividly and kept wondering if I had come here to pick up a date as well? Haven't I? I am being able to cope pretty well with my single status because my mother has volunteered to step in and look after my Trisha, who's only two, but why did I want to come here? Poornima suggested Dr Rao. She felt I was going into depression and suggested I come for therapy. It is a workshop and the first day we took turns in talking about how we became single in the first place. We were not supposed to show any sympathy towards the person talking, the light would be focused only on him or her, and they would be made to talk to the darkness, pretending nobody was around. Weird, I thought. How true will the accounts be? Will they all be truthful? I, for myself, didn't talk about the absolute truth. I didn't tell them the real reason why Shobhan left me. I made up a nice story and put the blame subtly on him. I know it wasn't his fault at all. I was tired of him. I perpetually want to move on and I made things so impossible for him that he had to leave. He didn't want to go, but then, how long is love? For me, it has never lasted very long. Have I ever fallen in love ever? Do geminis fall? What is the name of this guy in the red tee? How will it be to make love to him? He has strong arms. Strong arms.

I woke up from my stupor with a shudder. What was I thinking? I didn't even know his name for god's sake! He is Three in the workshop. I am Four to him and to the others. I was impatient for the next session. Next Friday.

P.S. One spent his entire time today staring at me. A very handsome man with a hoarse voice. What was his problem? Why can't I remember?

The next Friday came and we had to put ourselves in each others' situations. Strange situations, really because how could I, for example, think that I am a man and my wife has left me? I was put in One's shoes and I had to play-act his part. After a while it started feeling good as the gender divides were broken and I started feeling very much like a man who's been spurned by his wife. One doesn't have a kid, so it is easy, but it was difficult to cope with the hurt. Today we were asked questions, and when Three (in a blue tee today) asked me questions aimed at One, it was a strange experience:

Three: So, how did you feel when your wife left you?

Me: I felt bad. I was in love with her and had absolutely NO clue that it wasn't working for her. What hurt most was how abrupt it was.

Three: Did it ever occur to you that you perhaps brought some arrogance into the relationship with your good looks? (he stared deep into my eyes now...is he complimenting me? is he referring to One being handsome?)

Me (this was difficult to answer, posing as a handsome man!): I can't help being handsome and, by the way, where did you notice the arrogance? I was just doing my job as a husband. I used to buy her flowers, I took her out regularly, and even went with her to her concerts.

(We were given a lot of details about the characters we would have to pose as, and I did my bit of homework. One's wife plays the violin and often had these concerts at various places in India and abroad. She has even worked with Dr L. Subramaniam and Jean Luc Ponty, so I could see where the breach must have come from. One wasn't possibly as intellectually inclined or capable as her and probably couldn't provide her any stimulation or useful company. But being in his shoes, I had to defend him.)

Me: We married knowing our vastly different backgrounds because there was love. I can't appreciate Carnatic Classical music and she knew my limitations. But then she doesn't know about software either. I am one of the best programmers at Oracle and even have five patents in the US for my work on the Oracle 8 database. So the basic premise was love. If it had worn out for her so soon, she could have told me, given me a hint at least? You can't just walk out on someone just like that? I still can't believe it."

This entire exercise was very emotionally draining. We all had to shelve our own problems, read up about the other person, enact his/her role ignoring the fact that the person being discussed is present in that room, in the darkness, probably fuming. There were many gasps and grunts, and at one point when Three was enacting me, I protested. He had read me all wrong. He kept talking about how I pushed Shobhan away. I didn't want to agree with that, but Dr Rao asked me to sit quietly. Was this therapy? What shit was this? How could Three read into my mind so well? How the hell does he know that I was the one who drove Shobhan up the wall? Oh my god!

I hated him for this. I wanted to hit him on the head. I kept thinking about Three the entire evening and late into the night. Who is he? Why was he so cocksure? And as my tablets started taking effect the hatred turned into reluctant lust. I noticed his thighs today. And when he stared deep into my eyes, I could feel something stirring in my tummy. My friend Sohini says her tummy hurts when she's aroused. I was not thinking of him, I wasn't aroused. You just notice these things but then you don't really act on them, do you? One asked me if I really found him handsome, to which I said he should actually ask Three about it because it was him who brought it up. How irritating. No wonder his wife left him and is perhaps composing music in Luc Ponty's studio, sitting naked with him. Serves you right, you prick.

The classes were going on fine for many months and we were even given our real identities after that exercise on Trust. We were made to fall backward trusting the person behind us to break the fall. It takes a hell lot to let go. I waited for my turn to be held by Three and when I fell backward, he held me firmly from behind, making my knees buckle. He is Pranjal, an Assamese. He told me about the accident but wasn't very curious about my husband. I asked her why he assumed I was the one who drove Shobhan mad and he said he was just playacting and that unless he added some color, it would have got really boring. Should I tell him the truth? Never.

He has asked me out next week. We will go to CCD Jayanagar, perhaps. He says he will come over in his jeep and pick me up sometime in the morning. He wants to drive around aimlessly and also mentioned that he might "abduct" me, which I didn't understand quite. This wait, this anticipation is so exciting, I end up shaking my leg a lot. I do that when am excited. Don't you? I can't show him my excitement. Was I too hasty in saying yes? What will he make of it? What have I said yes to anyway? Nothing. He says he wants to abduct me. Does he mean keep me for good? Gotta wait and find out.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ding dong.
"Hi, you're late."
"Yeah darling, what to do...the same bullshit routine...how did your Friday yoga classes go?"
"Oh those, Shobhan? Boring, as usual. Sushma is like good, but not brilliant."
"Hmm...why go then?"
"Just need to do something on Friday evenings, don't I? Did you get the veggies I asked you to?"
"Yeah, but I couldn't find those fat aubergines...what are those called? BT Brinjals?"

"Daddyyyyyyyyyy" a little girl runs into the room and straight into his lap.

"Oh Trisha baby, my woogly baby...lemme rinse me hands first?"

(conversation fades)

The Yellow Manila (a repost)

It was a lazy morning and all I could think of doing was to sift through stuff gathered over the last couple of years. And out came the yellow manila that I'd almost forgotten about. There was a picture of her draped in an orange sari and many other paper memories. Photos of some missions in California, some even looking like an old South Indian temple. Especially that of the Mission San Antonio De Padua, the third of California's 21 missions.

She'd scribbled descriptions of all the articles on post-its behind the postcards and photographs. There was one paper napkin she'd saved from our visit to Lori's Diner. Neatly folded and as white even after being mothballed in the yellow manila for more than two years now. That evening at Lori's Diner we ordered one banana split, which, when it arrived, had us gasping.

It was a very big banana.

And then there were these unused BART tickets that she never used. Just so I could save them as memories. All this prompted me to shoot off an e-mail to her. As I waited for a reply, I thought about the last evening we spent sitting on abandoned railroad tracks facing a lake.

"Why didn't I meet you in school?"

"Yeah, that would have been nice. You'd have been this tall girl two classes my senior, on whom I'd have had a crush. And we could have gone biking in abandoned wastelands."

"Why abandoned? Why not on streets with cars? Or people?"

"Then I wouldn't have to share you with anybody else's gaze. I could watch you in peace."

"Oks, let it be abandoned wastelands then."

We didn't speak for a long time after that. She was dropping me to the airport that night and I still hadn't packed.

**********

I didn't get a reply to my e-mail the next day. The message came back saying there were permanent, fatal errors with the address.

Bovine Confidence

When I dated her, I swore that I will make her drive a truck one day. It was almost like a mission I had taken up with a lot of conviction in the dictum "anyone can do anything." In my case, this anyone was someone who had forgotten to ride a bicycle, so you can guess the gradient of this uphill task. Cycling and swimming are things you never forget, and this anyone in question had forgotten the former and never learnt the latter even after two floral costumes and gallons of chlorinated water in her system. To make her drive a truck? Hopeless. Some literature students also mentioned that I will be left hapless, a word am yet to find the meaning of.

The first car came and went after four years. She never tried it. The second one was a relatively new jeep, which she tried driving a couple of times. She managed pretty well given the jeep's steering sends you zero feedback about the road and the brakes lend you no confidence at all. I was getting hopeful that one day from the jeep she will graduate to a truck. I was proving people wrong and would take videos of her at the helm, with the jeep doing most of the driving. Driving this jeep is like taking your St Bernard out to walk and letting him take control of you, so sometimes I wondered if she was driving at all or just sitting there, pretending to.

But she was the driver indeed, as all her four licenses (from four different Indian states) stated with authority. It is criminal to have more than one license in this country, but you can have as many as you like. This probably explains why she makes a U-turn every time there's a cop on the road. Once at this junction the traffic lights weren't working and the cop was managing the traffic. When he gestured towards us, she made a sudden U-turn, pushed the smallish car in the right lane onto the median, and sped back towards home. I realized most of our weekend outings would go waste if all we did was to go a certain distance and turn back because there were cops on the road. I took over. And she went to the passenger side.

Our child, who watches most of his classmates being ferried from home by their driving moms, was waiting to show off a jeep-driving mom, but that was not to be. Using the cops as an excuse, she gradually forgot to drive, like she forgot how to ride a bicycle. Unbelievable, but true. I tried reasoning that we should keep only the local license in the jeep and put the rest in the locker, but her fear of cops probably has something to do with her being a criminal in her past life, as her mother poignantly observed from the rear seat.

Meanwhile, people from the past, who had pitied me for having taken up such an impossible task, started showing up on various social networks. Some were fat, some were beautiful, some divorced, some married multiple times, and they were all suddenly curious (after having found me in the virtual world), how I was doing as far as buying a truck was concerned. I argued for a while that a jeep can also be called a truck, but that was what we had initially settled for years back when a truck meant a lorry.

I was generally burnt out with all this drivery I had to do and one fine day just dragged her to a car showroom and made her buy a car. The smallest available because she had forgotten how to handle the breadth of the jeep and wanted to start with a small car. Easy on the pocket in the long run, frugal, and peppy, so we were generally happy. Although it was a step backward (jeep > truck being the logical progression), I welcomed it with open arms. Finally someone is going to share some of the burden of driving and she can soon move from the small one to the jeep to eventually a truck. And then I will show my Facebook friends what a gentleman's promise really means. And she started driving.

First with a lot of trepidation, seat pulled to the front, eyes glued to the road, one foot on the clutch, one hand on the gearknob, one husband by her side. The husband in turn had one hand on the handbrake and the other held outside the window to warn all the other vehicles of a potential disaster. But gradually the husband learnt to relax and even breathe at times. One hand came in and the other one came off the handbrake. She moved from one gear to another, and settled for an optimal third, which can take you everywhere inside Bangalore pretty quickly.

All this while the little one was watching this progress from the rear seat. And yesterday when she did a 30 km stretch through relatively crowded roads from the south to the north of Bangalore, he decided to make a suggestion about how to handle the impatient, honking drivers behind you.

"You have to have the confidence of a cow, mamma."

"A cow?" I could almost see her eyebrows taking on this weird shape at this bovine hint. "What do you mean?"

"A cow, simply. What else? Haven't you seen how they don't budge from the road even if you honk? That's confidence. You should also ignore those guys honking behind you. Just like a cow."