Tag Archives: life

Dervish

12 Jun

After nearly 6 weeks, I click a Word document open. The whiteness blinds me and I shield my eyes from its accusatory glare. The knot in the pit of my stomach is baby-sized now and ‘WTF’ flashes in large neon letters to the beat of a funeral march. Loo-ser, loo-ser, left, right, left.

In a bid to escape, I jump paragraphs. As if leaving a line behind will usher a stampede of ideas, a veritable troupe of trapeze artists who will fling themselves onto the safety net of this page, then loll a while before swinging wildly onward to another.

I stand in the ring. And I stand alone. It’s awful quiet when you’re all gone, I say to nobody in particular. There is no echo. And the knot is now making its way up to my throat.

A peculiar freeze takes over this warm summer day. First a bird’s clatter, then an insect’s hum. But this page, it isn’t moving. I quake, to give the Valley company. Only the Valley’s tremors subside. Writing needs to be more like mowing a lawn. A precise patch of L-shaped tasks, and then you’re done. Trimmed, neat, rinse, repeat. The knot decides it prefers the ampleness of my stomach. It slides back gutward, suspiciously fuller.  I continue to flail, in a cycle of panic and ambiguity. I would be happiest in an assembly line. Concrete, solid, done when done.

Noticing two straight sentences beginning with ‘I’ brings up concerns of ego injection. A lifelong aversion to navel-gazers jumps into the pool party that all my baggage decided to throw when I wasn’t looking. The knot’s moving heartward and the constriction hurts. I should wring the curtains and howl. Let me switch on the iron in preparation. And Purell my palms so the drapes stay white.

I can’t fathom potters or painters. Wash those hands, people. And eat with a fork. Ickiness makes me squirm.  So I sit myself down, after nearly 6 weeks, and click open a Word document. Its whiteness blinds me and I shield my eyes from the accusatory glare. But then I think of the options and soothe myself that at least writing is clean. The knot yawns demurely, cups its chin, and waits for me to begin.

Tags: ,

West of Madness, South of Peddar Road

17 May

I heard her before I saw her.  A loud, hoarse voice screaming expletives that would make a sailor blush. If you knew the busy street my parents’ home is on, you would be awed by the power of her lungs. She is crass, she is angry, and simply known as the not-so-friendly neighborhood crazy.

Back in the day when my parents were teenagers, hanging out with their ‘gang’ of 30 and going for summer swims to the Golwala pool, Daisy B. was a stunning young thing in her early twenties, with permed hair, immaculate make-up and outfits to die for.  The boys wanted her and the girls wanted to be her.  And admirers never left her vicinity. Dressed to the nines and aware of her power over the opposite sex, she led a life of promiscuous abandon, going through several lovers, brazenly flaunting her sugar daddies and breaking homes and marriages with nary a care. Talk of how men’s brains would turn to putty at a mere glance from her and how she could get any man to do her bidding abounded and provided the neighbors with much fodder for gossip.

Of course, for the old families who continue to live in our neighborhood (mine included), it was all her fault and no good was going to come of a used girl who refused to settle. She’s lucky to be Parsi, Jeroo said, rolling her eyes heavenward at her own fabulous fortune, or else she’d have been arranged-marriaged off, like those Hindoos do all the time.  Would’ve done her good, retorted Tehmina, to have a husband keep her in check, quite forgetting that her own Edulji wouldn’t venture any such thing with his opinionated wife. In a community of eccentric people, aberrations are more easily overlooked and Daisy B. went about her wild life without samaj, biradri or similar Hindi film constructs pointing their accusing fingers at her existence.

A generation grew up. And then another. And one evening in the year 2010, a loud, hoarse voice, screaming expletives that would make a sailor blush, rose above the roar of rush-hour traffic and floated into my fourth-floor bedroom.  There she was, a now-wrinkled woman with golden-brown curls, suggestively gesticulating toward her nether regions and screaming bloody murder at a man she accused of looking at her. I retreated from my balcony, shaken by the hysteria in her voice, and tried to focus on other things. A week later, there was that voice again, railing against a world that was out to group-fornicate with her.

The episodes began occurring with alarming frequency and she would rant and rave and verbally target anybody on the street, regardless of age or gender.  I (and half my zip code) was informed that I have ‘false boobsies’ while on my way to a workout. A passerby was almost beaten up because a group of men on the street believed she had been genuinely molested. People would stop and stare. Some men would scurry past, afraid to be implicated for merely being on the road home. Some would yell back. Most would just be stunned into silence by the lady in the frilly nightgown, who bought Coke and bread from the local vendor before turning on him viciously.

Efforts to reach out and help came to nought. Between my mum and I, we tried a social worker, relatives and a trustee of the Bombay Parsee Punchayet, but nobody wanted to get involved. I’m not sure how many of you know that a large part of my education and work experience has been in the mental health field, and it pained me to see someone so direly in need of help. Daisy B. lives alone now, after her mother passed away. Relatives and neighbors claim she was cruel to her and this madness is the cross she has to bear. Nobody is willing to entertain the notion that she may have acted in a harsh manner because of her illness. My cousin who lives in the neighborhood confirms that her behavior has expanded to screaming in buses and glaring at anyone she pleases, all the while going about her daily business. On some days, she is calm, walks quietly down the street, dressed up like the old times. She has no immediate family and nobody who can step in to help. Everybody I spoke with says she’ll only be taken advantage of if we take the matter to the police.

So Daisy B. is left to her own devices and everybody goes back to their own lives after the bi-weekly screams have stopped reverberating and the honking of jostling taxis has taken over the world again. I think of her occasionally, curled up on my ivory couch in California, and pray she is kept from further harm. But for the old families of my erstwhile neighborhood, this episode of karma beats their nightly airing of reality television. And life, twisted bitch, wins hands down against soap-saga fiction.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Unhurried

4 Jun

Soli the Kamakli lives right below us. Now before all you politically correct people pounce on me for calling someone less abled (kam = less, akl=brains), I must hasten to inform you that I am merely faithfully reproducing matters as they stand. And since you are unlikely to storm the almost 100-year-old Parsi bastion of high ceilings and cool corridors that is our common abode, demanding a change in title for him, you must be content with Soli the Kamakli.

Truth be told, I don’t know his last name. Nor can I hazard a guess about his age. He’s always been around, you see. Loping rapidly and uncoordinatedly to the door as we climbed up the stairs, peering out of the peep hole in silence, and then yodeling our names as we ran past, his long, comical face stretching even further into an eternal oblong.

Soli the Kamakli is a lonely man. He lives with Viru, his man Friday, who makes three additional salaries a month by renting out the extra rooms of the house to newly-arrived job-seekers in Bombay. He is also a rich man, the heir to millions and the owner of a South Bombay Parsi housing colony. It is widely murmured among the old families of the neighborhood that there lies a curse on the Kamakli family: no heir shall be able to enjoy his/her wealth. His mother inherited a fortune, but died crazed and clueless. Madness lurks in their genes, you can see it in the crackling dilation of their irises, but for us, Soli the Kamakli is a much-loved fixture who sing-songs daily as we go past, telling us we’ve forgotten him, of how the world has no time, asking after each member of our home, making us stop a while and smile and shush the twinges of guilt we feel about being such busybodies.

Soli the Kamakli is a young old man, an ageless creature of antiquity, a sane man in an insane world and a clock that cuckoos the slipping of time. It’s been years since school and college, so many of us have moved out, swapped continents, returned and traversed mind-zones, but our time-trained ears are still treated to the sound of shuffling feet, a peep-hole shutter being lifted and the precise hush before our name is warbled.

I don’t know why I told you about Soli the Kamakli. He is not a famous man, or even a clever one. He didn’t discover relativity or father babies that resemble gamboling puppies. He lives his long days in sky blue bush shirts and starched white pyjamas and worn leather slippers that scrape soothingly. It is strange to be aware of one’s mortality at 30, but I realize that life is seeping us by. And I want to cling on, just a little while longer, to a time when my name is yodeled twice daily and a flute-like voice declares I have forgotten its owner. The stairs won’t be the same without Soli the Kamakli. Until then, I’m making sure I get plenty of exercise.

Tags: , ,

Newer Entries →