You and I

we are like stars, 
you and i;
not that we shine
but in that
we stick to our own systems
that happen to be 
in distant galaxies. 
and yet,
on hot summer nights
or cold and frigid twilights
sometimes,
when all else eludes my drowsy brain
you step into the train
of myriad thoughts juxtaposed therein,
as dreams.
and almost always that you do,
i awake with a start
and question myself
who was that again?
the unspoken pieces
of our 'ship brief
come back to haunt me
as i splash cold water
all over my eyes.
and then i find
that you've receded
to your remote galaxy
and all's well in mine.

The Best is Not Enough

As he looked at the crumpled note for what must have been the fiftieth time, Raju heaved yet another tremendous sigh. It seemed to me that his lungs would burst if he kept doing that. “Maybe you should have some water. Or go back home and rest”, I suggested.

“No sahib, I wouldn’t be able to do that,” he replied in a low voice.

“Raju, my name’s Anand, not sahib”, I reminded him yet again, knowing it was futile. He looked annoyed.

“Well, you are in a fancy suit, and you have a fancy title adorning your fancier office desk, so you must be a sahib,” he replied, not without some rancour.

I wanted to say, “But Raju, we are friends, remember? We used to play gully cricket together, not so long ago.” Instead, I keep quiet. It is obvious that the passage of time has implanted a far greater divide between us, than his dirty clothes and street talk ever did, when we were children. Raju made a move to look at the note again, and I hastily plucked it out of his hands.

“This will be needed for further investigations,” I explained.

“Hah. Investigations. What will you be investigating, sahib, that you already don’t know?” he sounds very sarcastic as he says that. I don’t blame him. He has lost his closest friend, the one person he could perhaps call a brother and get away with it, and here I was, talking about investigations into that soul brother’s death.

Raju, Karim and I grew up in the same city. We lived in the same neighbourhood, except that my residence was a lovely bungalow with a huge garden, while theirs were shanties in a neighbouring slum. Raju’s mother worked at my house as a maidservant; she would bring Raju along on school holidays or when he complained of tummy aches or chills. That is how I got to know him. And Karim. Karim was Raju’s neighbour in the slum. He was roughly the same age as Raju and I, but infinitely more mature. A quiet boy, he was always gentle with others and more or less a peace lover. While Raju and I squabbled about incomplete overs bowled, or lbw decisions, Karim tried to restore peace. He told me once that the only thing he even wanted, was to improve his station in life.

“I have had it with this poverty and this hunger, Anand bhaiyya. I want to do become rich. Do you know how?” I was all of thirteen. I gave him some sage advice about studying hard.

“Do you think that will suffice?”

“But of course, look at my father. He is a renowned doctor, and he is rich, isn’t he?”

That seemed to settle whatever doubts Karim had. So while Raju whiled away his time playing truant at the government school they attended, Karim laboured diligently. He wasn’t a scholar by a mile, but he persisted with his hard work and managed to finish school with a decent score at the final examination. His mother suggested that he take up driving lessons and continue with their family tradition of becoming a driver, but Karim wanted to do better than that. When he asked me for advice, I suggested that he study some more. By then, we had outgrown our passion for gully cricket, and rarely ever met. There was an air of awkwardness, and the innocence that accompanied our games and camaraderie in childhood was amiss. Nevertheless, a college student myself, I advised Karim as best and in the only way that I could… to continue to study and work hard. In retrospect, I wonder if things would have been different if he had never asked me for advice.

Three years and a lot of hard work later, Karim was a graduate in commerce. When he came over to tell me the good news, I had felt very happy. At that time, I was a trainee in the police department, having cleared the public service commission exams. Karim had more questions for me. This time, they were about potential jobs for a commerce graduate. I had not the faintest idea, so I suggested that he register at the employment agency. That was the last time I saw him in person. That was two years ago. Today, all that there is left of Karim, is a shattered body lying in a morgue. And a crumpled note that was found next to it, on the railway tracks. I steal a glance at it, and by the end, the tears flow out without restraint.

“I tried hard ammi. I tried so hard, and I tried for so long, to give you the best. I tried my best, ammi. But that was not the best for any of them. Had I known that a college graduate is as hapless as a school dropout when it comes to gaining employment, I wouldn’t have enrolled at college, ammi. I wanted so much to become rich, and a successful person by my own merit that I decided to give it a shot. I am so sorry I didn’t listen to you and become a driver instead. Perhaps I would have saved myself from the disappointment of being rejected countless times because of my inability to speak fluently in English. This college degree that I had hoped would be our saviour, has become the biggest headache in my life, ammi. I hate going to the employment agency and repeating my sorry story about being a commerce graduate to the sahibs in there, every time. I wish I could give up on the degree and the dream ammi, but unfortunately, I can’t…. And so I must go, ammi. Because I haven’t got it in me, to be the best that these people want. My best is not good enough for anybody, ammi…”

The Unfairness Of It All

Unfairness. Everywhere I look, I see that monster rear its ugly head. I see it in the eyes of the hungry child begging on the streets. I see it in the limp of that beautiful girl arduously making her way down the over bridge. It taunts me when I spot an old couple walking down the busy road, holding on to each other as they try to stay clear of the rush hour traffic. Unfair. Life is so very unfair, I decide.

The hungry beggar boy thinks living in a two room shanty and having three meals a day is the biggest blessing of them all. He currently lives in one and has two meals a day; just a little more effort, and he’ll get to his dream spot, he figures. Does he think life is unfair? “Well no, look at some of those other kids who don’t even have a home to go to. My mother works in three houses, and feeds me lunch and dinner,” he says, not without a hint of pride in his voice.

The pretty girl with polio shrugs noncommittally when I repeat my query. “Unfair? Why do you think so?” I am tongue tied; I don’t know how to ask her the obvious, without articulating it, and somehow, I feel she would be offended. Except, she seems oblivious to something that obviously must be causing her discomfort. Or is that a perception of my mind? “Well you know, having polio might have been a dampener,” I venture. “Oh that. Well, it was so long ago, and it’s not polio by the way,” she goes on to give me the name of some other condition, which I can’t recollect now. “One learns to adjust, you know. And one forgets that one has a disability, until someone comes along with a reminder,” she continues, almost with a hint of reproach in her voice. “I don’t remember having felt that it was unfair; uncomfortable, yes. Unfair, no.”

Wow! These people must be Gods. How is it possible not to perceive the unfairness of it all? The old couple looked at me as though I had lost it. “What is this, young man? Some survey, or some joke?”
“Oh no, I was just…. You know… a little curious…”I falter.
“And why do you think life is unfair to us?”
“Oh well, at your age, you should be.  sitting comfortably at home, and someone else should be doing the running around for you. At the very least, you should be driving around in a car, instead of walking, especially when it is so hot” I reply confidently.
“Have you ever considered that this is perhaps what we want? This running around, this walking and holding hands, this companionship?” he pulls at his wife’s hand and they shuffle down determinedly.

“That guy is surely crazy, eh, Radha? Imagine stopping people and asking them such weird questions; nobody in his right mind would do it.”
“Ah yes, Manohar; I think so too… Looks like a fine young lad too. Poor thing, life can be so unfair!”

I notice the old man and his wife look back at me and steal glances before shaking their heads and moving along.

Beautiful Today, Gone Tomorrow

                                                                                      I

There’s a stream that flows through my parents’ farm, a good distance away from the farmhouse. It is of the classic fairy tale variety, with sparkling bright water that gurgles over smooth pebbles and myriad jagged stones as it rushes on merrily. The banks of the stream are no less picturesque with wild flowers blooming in abandon amidst lush green grass. My parents don’t go there often, encumbered as they are with the chores around the farm and the house. The fact that they aren’t growing any younger probably adds to their reluctance in straying from the routine and giving in to idle whims. That stream caught my fancy the first time I saw it, on a visit to their newly purchased farm a decade ago. I was mesmerised by the beauty in and around the stream, and I felt cheated at not having been privy to this bounty when I was still a child.

Each time I sat on its banks, I would pour a bit of myself into the stream. One time, it was the agony of a breakup with my then partner. On another occasion, it was the joy of becoming a parent. I have lost count of the umpteen times when I vented my anger on the various people in my life, into the stream. Each string of abusive words hurled into nothingness would bounce off the jagged ends of the stones in the stream. Each stray tear that fell off my cheeks and into its gurgling waters, blended my angst into its sublime beauty.

                                                                                        II

My parents are long gone, and the farm house looks old and tattered. The people in my life have receded to its periphery and I find myself quite alone as I steal my way to the banks of the beloved stream. My fifty eight year old eyes and their twenty year old twin companions must be playing tricks with me, I decide; for the water seems lacklustre and there is no enthusiasm in its journey over the pebbles and the stones as of yore. I miss the sound of the gurgle, and the glint of the sun as it hit the jagged edge of the stones in the stream. The edges have all smoothened, and the water seems older and wiser as it proceeds carefully and listlessly down the beaten path.

I cannot help but wonder whether the years of listening to my diatribes and woes have taken its toll on the stream. Beauty, like everything else in life, needs nurturing, I surmise, as I walk slowly back the pathway to the farmhouse.  

Escapades

                                                               

The sun beats down harshly on my back, as I labour in the fields. Any moment now the skin will peel off my back, I muse. I dip a towel in the water in a bucket placed nearby, and wrap it around my bare back. I can’t begin to describe the relief that sets in; it is so exquisite in its wholesomeness, that I think that this must be the grandest pleasure available to man. Given that I am a poor lad farming on a semi parched piece of land in rural India, there are very few pleasures that I am privileged to. Love and belonging are not on that list. They disappeared the day she walked out on me. Tears threaten to stream out of my eyes when I think of that day, and that moment; and this happens infallibly, each time I revisit that dark corner of my memory.

She was all I had, and I was all she had; or so I used to think. The meals she cooked were made extra tasty by the love that went into their preparation… or so I imagined. When she walked out of the house each day, I felt a deep sense of loss; but I would comfort myself by the knowledge that she would come back to me in the evening, when the cruel sun had set. Only, one evening, she came back to leave forever. When she told me she had to leave, I was dumbstruck. I don’t remember asking her why, but she had explained nevertheless. She wanted to have a second chance at life, she said. One in which she wouldn’t feel fettered by her bond to me. She wanted to feel young and free again, and to feel loved. She reckoned I would survive.

As she walked down the curved path leading out of our tiny hut and onto the fields yonder, she had a spring in her steps…one that I had never seen before. Maybe she had really found love. And I wondered at the power of that newfound love, because it had made her oblivious to mine. She had said she wanted to feel loved, when all of my life, I had done nothing but love her and trust her blindly, as only I could. At fifteen, I had lost my mother forever. And all that remained were memories; but memories don’t bring pleasure, do they?

The coolness of the soaked towel on my sun drenched back though, is a different story altogether. I believe I could work like this forever, if only to have these brief moments of reprieve.

Do you see what I see

                                            

                                                                          I

Do you see what I see? Do you see the misty mountains in the distance, the trees looming yonder, and the green grass under my feet? Don’t mind me asking; sometimes I feel the need to validate the authenticity of what I am seeing. I need to reassure myself that everybody sees the world the same way that I do.

I see the world through my twin’s eyes and I wonder how she would have seen it, when they were still her eyes. I wonder whether she saw the same shades of red on the lilies in the valley as I do. Perhaps the whiff of steam escaping from that cup of hot tea ensconced in mother’s hands, held her attention for as long as it does mine. Perhaps she would have seen the faint twitch on mother’s lips as her mind goes on a wayward journey of reminiscing and sorrow. Or maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe I see too much, because of the joy of being able to see again. When I stopped seeing things, I was only four years old. Today, I am twenty three. Nineteen years is a long time. A very long time during which, one can forget a lot of things. Like how it feels to lie awake at night and count the stars in the distant sky; or watch a movie on the big screen. I have vague recollections of doing both, but I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels to be able do these random acts of seeing once again!

I must arise from my position on the small patch of grass abreast our humble homestead in the beautiful hills, cross over to the threshold and pass yonder, all the while careful not to make any noise that could break mother’s reverie. I try and avoid her as much as I can these days; just as she avoided me for most of my childhood. When I was blinded by a stray accident at a very young age, everybody she knew, berated mother for not taking me to a hospital sooner than she did. She claimed ignorance of the seriousness of the injury, and the pressures of tending to a young family on her own. Minutes after Mahima had closed her eyes forever, I asked mother whether I could have them. Mother never replied, but the doctor did, and even before they took her away for the last rites, I was wheeled into surgery. Everybody I know berated me for devouring my sister, my own twin; mother stopped talking to me altogether.

I have but one life to live. A life that stopped being colourful too soon. I could not live like that forever, not when the stars in the sky beckoned me in my dreams, and the beautiful heroine’s dusky eyes from a long ago memory seemed to penetrate my unseeing ones.

And so we carry on this song and dance of pity and guilt, mother and I. She leaves a portion of the meal in the vessels, while I clean the dirty clothes and utensils lying around the house. The pain in this house is palpable; I am sure I’ll be able to touch it sometime soon! It is that real and alive. There are many things that have been said, and many others that have not. I wonder if we can ever forgive and forget. Surely, she sees the tears flowing out of her precious daughter’s eyes? So what if the cheeks they grace are dark and ugly? So what if the hands that wipe them off are bony and flawed? Surely, there is something in these cheeks, and these hands, that remind her of Mahima. Or perhaps they don’t, because Mahima was beautiful; I can see as much from the picture that hangs on the wall. But surely, she must remember the kicks in her burgeoning belly as she carried her twins; they were not from the pretty Mahima alone.

I see so much now, and not just what her eyes show me. And I am glad I can see as much as I do, for all these things put together are the building blocks of the remainder of my life.

                                                                            II

 The cup of tea in my hands has practically changed seasons in the half hour that I’ve held it. From a fiery summer, it changed into a wet monsoon and thereafter to a frigid winter; much like my life has, in the forty years that I’ve lived it. The carefree childhood is long forgotten, and the brief marriage is but a distant dream. My twin daughters, one fair and beautiful, the other dark and plain, were the biggest constants in my life. Mahima with her ready smile and hearty laughter, a spritely child, so full of life! Poonam, the little baby who crawled late, walked late and spoke too soon. What she couldn’t do with her legs, she overdid with her little mouth. She could talk up a storm even before she turned one… or maybe two. I don’t remember. But they were such a joy to have around me in the dark days following my husband’s desertion. The dainty china doll and the rugged rag doll; a motely pair, if ever there was one. And yet, they were mine. They were all I ever wanted. They are all I’ll ever want.

Poonam’s little unseeing eyes stared in the direction of my voice when I sang them lullabies. How heart breaking they were, those little pools of blinding darkness. They followed me around when I tinkered around the house, darting hither and thither with every little noise I made. It is surprising how much a mother sees, when her little one cannot. Mahima made up for her sister’s blindness by taking her around wherever she went. She would tell her of all the sights along the way, and little Poonam would smile every now and then at her twin’s descriptions. Our life was not idyllic, but we were happy; there was never any doubt about that. Mahima and Poonam spent their evenings talking to each other, while I fed them rotis with daal. Our dinner was always the same, but the girls never complained. Mahima did complain about my prolonged silence at the dinner table, but Poonam didn’t notice it I suppose. She never complained about anything; not about the noises I made while working on the sewing machine that sustained us, not about the lack of colour in her life, not about the unfairness of it all. In a way, that gnawed at me. I wondered what she felt, on all those long drawn out mornings when she and I were cooped together in the house, while Mahima attended school. I couldn’t talk much because of all the work I had to do, but she never complained. I wonder why she never did.

 Mahima’s accident was a bolt from the blue; no, that is decidedly an understatement. No one could ever understand what I felt, when they told me she would lose her legs. I crumpled. I stopped talking to the children. I had never been much of a talker, I had preferred listening to them talk. And now, I didn’t know what I could talk to them about. I failed Mahima in her moments of deepest anxiety. I failed to comfort her. I did not tell her that she would be fine. I forgot to remind her that she was still there, and that there was a life worth living; a life that was hers to keep. I failed her and so she decided that life wasn’t worth living; she decided to put an end to it. Just like that. On the same hospital bed where she lay, recuperating from the accident. And all that I can remember thinking of was, what good was the education, if it could not have shown her the possibilities in life? My uneducated, invalid, ugly daughter was still alive, despite all the heavy odds against her. She had never thought of ending it all. And yet Mahima had, after a fortnight of being a beautiful invalid. I could not mourn Mahima’s loss; I believe I had no feelings left in me. I had been mourning all my life and the latest blow was just too hard to deal with.

Poonam can see now. What relief it gives me, the thought that my talkative little baby can finally see. I have heard some of the harsh things that people said when she received Mahima’s eyes. One of these days, I’ll have to tell her how happy I am that she finally got to see the colourful world from Mahima’s childhood tales. I hope I can snap out of this silence soon. I hope I can embrace her, and kiss her soft, dark cheeks. I long to take her scarred hands in mine, and hold them close to my heart. 

We have played this song and dance of silence, pain and mourning long enough. I believe it’s time I welcomed her home. For it must all be new to her. I hope it will be almost like old times. I think I’ll enjoy teaching my baby to live, and see the wonderful things around her the way they ought to be seen.