Tales told Twice

10 Jan 2022.

Morning flight from Hyderabad to Mangalore. The 2nd leg of a trip during Covid. Amongst a bobbing mass of mask covered faces, a mop-head darted out and startled me. Curly unkempt hair, thick glasses, a hoodie two sizes big for him. I put him in his late twenties. Air pods, a travel-worn back pack on his skinny shoulder, impatient.

I put down the Michael Ondaatje I picked up from the airport book shop. I was one among the few who could find a seat near the gate where every alternate chair had a haphazardly stuck red tape warning travelers to keep away. The mop-head stood aside and looked eagerly at the seated passengers, obviously looking for someone. He rushed past me to another side of the waiting lounge. I think I caught a whiff of stale Creed Aventus.

20 minutes later, I was inside the aircraft with my colleague who got busy with a pack of “Nut case”, a flat tin holding roasted cashews. Mr. mop-head was standing far ahead, cramped under the luggage rack, still looking for someone. Who could that be? A co-worker? Family?

We both found the answer soon enough. A short girl holding a travel pillow entered the air craft looking as frantic as the boy. Mop-head snatched his mask away and his face broke into a smile. She ran into his arms and the hug was long and tight. I looked away. The flight steward looked on with a smile, I noticed.

But not everything went according to the plan of the couple who just met. Their seats were apart. Throughout the journey, mop-head (I don’t have another name for him) would occasionally pop up from his seat to look back and smile at the girl who sat further behind the air craft. Why wouldn't the crew notice their predicament and swapped a seat so that they could sit together? It was obvious that they wanted to.

The sun rose on my side of the plane and semi-blinded me. Cotton clouds on woolly legs stood up to spy on what went on inside the steel bird. I started munching on a few borrowed cashews from the “Nut case”. Mop-head got up, walked towards the end of the aircraft and found the girl at her seat.

Why am I watching them?

The short flight ended sooner than I thought. As the crowd spilled out to board the shuttle bus, the young couple walked together, holding hands and talking loudly. My colleague smiled and pointed at them with his chin. May be he saw a younger self in them.

Since we were a group of four, it took us a while to gather our luggage. As we headed out, the couple was standing outside. They were still holding hands but very silent.

It seemed like they had to go different ways. The girl was picked up by her family (I think) while the guy continued to wait for some one. The car with the girl inside rolled out and his eyes followed the vehicle until it disappeared beyond the bend on the road. He adjusted the weight of his back pack and did a little spin on his toes. He looked tired and his hair was in his eyes.

On certain journeys, the beginning and the end are inconsequential. They are the fixed part of the itinerary. The part that offers no surprise or adventure. In between, lies the undiscovered and the unforgettable: distances, last minute runs, reunions, laughter and good byes. If it isn't for that middle part, the journey would be ho-hum.

In the end, you may take a bus together or hop on different trains. On another day, you may return to the same port of origin. Or not.

In the event of that happening or not, we wait in our heads.

Our destinations are within us.

Wishes

 Wishes.

January’s pimp.

The customary word, whored around every 364 days.

As we clamp down on everything we truly want and let conformities spew messages copy pasted from poor memories and fresh search results.

May this new year bring you prosperity, paradise, promised lands.

May this year see me scaling heights, trimming fat, wearing new masks.

I wish you more of it all. Things that may or may not happen irrespective of what control you have over them. Lines forgotten already as I move a stubby finger to the next message under the scroll of death. Like a server on over time serving diners who come for free Wi-Fi but hates the service.

I wouldn’t care. But I wish you would. I wouldn’t call. But I wish you would. I could be there. But I wish you were here. 

I will wish you a gold canopy that covers your town when it rains. Or a cloud that snaps out of your palm when it is sunny. I will wish you an ocean when you are thirsty.

Flying unicorns, rainbows in ice cream cones, smiles from dispensing machines.

Wishes.

Well past it’s bedtime.

😈

Tear-off calendars (written on 16 Nov 2021)

Before the roads had white lines in the middle, much before the street lamps got their steel legs, from the days when bicycles had nothing to do with a workout, when rains were an excuse to modify game rules, when a glass of milk was always two mouthfuls too much, a trip to the market was an outing.

Next to a recycled tin holding pens, surrounded by the debris of smooth rubbery matrix from worn out pencil erasers, next to a pile of dog eared secondhand comic books and a forlorn flower vase hosting an empty wasp nest, coated in a thin film of dust, stands a faded coffee mug with fresh memories from a farewell.

Beyond the train of thoughts, lost in the scents of long gone car perfumes, in the sound of grateful alley cats, around the curb painted blue and grey, scalded by tea in a paper cup, is a message waiting, still unsend.

Around noon (written on 29 Oct 2021)

 There is an unidentified bird at my window sill, its iridescent crest shining in the light. It pecks at the glass and looks sideways at something I can’t see. I grabbed my phone involuntarily. 

A few moments later, it is on Instagram and my friends are looking for adjectives to write below what I wrote.

“Hello beautiful!”

We think we know.

The sparrow. One among the eight eggs, it didn’t have it all to itself. Inside the cramped light shade on a lamp post, there were five left after a sudden downpour. En route the first flight, a naughty kid with a catapult got another one. The remaining three endured 2 winters and one especially long summer. A territorial myna and a sprightly kitten looking for some action, got two more before the next winter. Another day, the lonely bird found an open flat window enticing. That indoor sortie would have taken its head off, had it been late to notice the ceiling fan. A huge shop window where the glass was invisible, stale biscuits stained with rat poison, a web of kite string among tree branches. This world had prepped trap doors for the bird around every corner and almost every day.

Evening.

I roll down the car window to order a cup of chai. Through the steam and general disdain, I notice that girl. She has pretty eyes. I pause for a second and heard myself saying...

“Hello beautiful!”

What do I know!

Moments, not days (written on 10 Oct 2021)

 In your head, do you have a library of moments from another day?

Gave away the bigger piece of grilled chicken, wiped your hands on your shorts and looked away smiling. Didn’t bother to brush your teeth, had soda to wash your face and sipped chai from the same cup. A story where a campfire burned your fingers, group hugs were tight and the next morning was cold under a tent.

The movie sucked, the air conditioner smelled funny and the popcorn was loud. The music was deafening, seats were hard and the floor was dirty. The hero was handsome, the story was lame and you forgot what happened in the end. Holding hands, thinking of nothing, laughing at the ads.

Drove over the curb, parked in the wrong spot, let the engine run. Played the same playlist, feet on the dashboard, peanut skin in your hair. Windows were down, wind was around, and people weren’t. Pushed back the seat, dropped your drink, found a coin. 

The dates are forgotten. The adaptive value of some moments, never. Within its purview, the mind decided to keep a few of them and erased the date tags.

You would have forgotten the moments too if it didn’t matter. But a piece of sky from another day extends over to this day. Along with it a portal to another time. A time from a decade ago, or a year. May be a day from a bygone week. Like a fridge magnet. Stuck on the memory wall. 

It could have been in June or in the middle of July. When the days were hot and the nights were tepid. It could have been at the bottom of November. Or no time in particular in April. 

Such moments are always alone. There aren’t many of them in one bunch. If they were alike, you wouldn’t remember them. Just the moments. Not always the date. But if you do remember that too, it’s because you wrote it on the other side of the fridge magnet.

Zeitgeist (written on 3 Aug 2021)

I drove through the same streets another time. Visited the spaces where I once stopped and rolled down the windows, or rolled them up. Places that are special with wistful memories clinging on to its invisible skin. A turn on the road I managed with one hand and two conversations. 

A traffic light turned amber as if it recognized me.

With most of us, our first times occupy some special place in our memory's velvet lined trophy case. The first time you tried a tequila shot, jumped out of a plane or met someone. We remember details, most parts of it in vibrant colors. Time probably slowed down with us in it, though we weren’t paying much attention. Perhaps we were too busy thinking, trying to make sense of it and take in the experience. Years later, we talk about it, making up for lost details with our imagination. 

People, poems and practice have us all convinced that the first times are special. “First times” will drink up from these narratives, prop themselves higher than those that came later, and subdue them with their romantic reputation. Unaware of this, we raise a glass to the audience and start our stories like the rest; "It was my first time…."

Truth is, our first wasn't always our best. And a lot of details are lost in little gullies of confusion, excitement or simply due to passage of time. The first friend we had is long lost in the pages of oblivion. My first love is a story too silly to recall even in the company of a few drunk friends. Your first job rarely makes it to LinkedIn. But we are creatures of habit. We are desperate to convince us and others that those moments had tremendous influence in making us who we are today and transformed themselves into reference notes for later. Bollocks. If at all it did anything, it simply rewired our brain to believe that it didn’t really matter and there would always be another day, another person, another freshly drawn pail of water to drink from.

Like many others as I waited in life, there were repeats of moments gone by. Each one so special that it made the older ones get a bit fuzzier around the edges. I can readily recall the second and the third in all its detail now, the color of the sky on the day and the smell of the air. Fresh, real. The people, as close as they could get. It doesn't matter on which page of life they are recorded. But it matters that they are chronicled. They were, are important.

And another decade later, some of these would get a little fuzzy too. A story narrated amongst a bunch of drunk mates may or may not feature those moments. However, a few would make it to my memory case. In the absence of a few forgotten firsts, a second or a third would look good in velvet.  Red, green or amber.

Favorite things (written on 21 July 2021)

 Back home, I had my favorite chair at the dining table. I still have.

I don't remember the day I decided on that particular spot or why I chose that specific chair. Even when we had guests at home, that chair was kept vacant for me to go join everyone else at the dining table. It was "my chair". Did you have one too?

There have been occasions when "my" chair was given to somebody else. It wasn't just anyone. It had to be someone important. A very close friend who was invited for dinner, my favorite cousin, or someone else who was simply special. I have to admit that there was also some random guest who would have plonked themselves on that chair before I entered the dining room. As I grew older, I learned to forgive them and have my meal in silence.

As time passes, some of those objects over which we had a certain ownership and emotional attachment, still remain. Perhaps not a chair. However, if we let another person briefly enjoy that space, it is a conscious decision. And a big one at that. A gesture that went beyond the act of sharing.  Now it could be your car, a piece of clothing or a perfume. If I have shared such a space or an object with someone else, it meant that I shared a very personal corner of my life with them. If I offered my car key and asked you to drive, I didn't do it because I was "too tired to drive". Only a select few get to use them. Or, maybe just one. The chosen one. An act of sharing that you may not disclose to the rest of the world. 

If I ever allowed you to take up my special seat at anytime, I wanted you to.

What was something special you shared!

In conversation with Chucky (written on 16 July 2021)

 

Would I survive this? 

Chucky didn't treat that as a close ended question. She decided to put me through a rather circuitous performance of what she thought was the answer. She gave me "the look". First, with her face tilted to the left. Then to her right. That is when you know that a cat is curious. Now that she had all my attention, she dropped a paw, ears forward. I dropped my nonchalance. And the tea cup; almost.

She spoke in a way only we both can understand. You know what I am talking about.

Sitting in the shaded corner of the kitchen, she stretched. And became twice the cat she was. Have you ever seen a cat doing it! Her walk-around length is at best 45 cm, plus some tail. Once she stretches, she could be at least 3 ft long. Chucky is all cat and the rest elastic, I think. So, she stretched and placed her good looking paws right in the ray of sunlight coming through the glass door, a good 2 feet away from her. (remember the green tinted glass door?) In the sunlight, her smooth fur coat looked surreal, like an explosion of white silk. 

What does that mean? May be I should reach out a bit, little more than I usually stretch?  Or, is she trying to tell me that I need to get out from the shade and brave the light? Perhaps both. What is wrong in giving someone multiple messages in one little big gesture!

As if the first lesson was over, she sat up with her inimitable feline grace and started grooming herself. A paw went up and down her face a few times, as her pink tongue kept the activity well moisturized. Nowhere to go and no one to meet but there she was; making sure that she looked good. I ran my fingers through my sparse stubble. In the unclear reflection on the kitchen door, I looked like the grinch in trousers and tee. I guess the second message was loud and clear. My cat just told me that I need to get my act together.

Oh yes; the rule of three. There has to be a third one, right? To bring this to a conclusion?

Chucky knew.

She  rolled over, folded her paws like flippers and looked at me. Face upside down, all funny and adorable. She knows that she is irresistible in that pose. I could hear her purr. It said "I love you, no matter what". You should listen to her purr. Her love sounds like a tiny motor with a clogged exhaust. I heard myself smile. I scooped her up in my arms and held her close. Chucky laid a stiff paw on my face and told me; "you can't kiss me now".

Teachers are like that. They keep some stuff for another occasion.