Palanivel

Smoking was no longer allowed on campus. When Palanivel felt like a cigarette (or simply bored), he clambered onto his rusted bicycle and began the five-minute ride along leafy avenues and tracks. Once at the side gate, he rested his cycle against the inner wall and made his way through the revolving iron grill, emerging in a magical instant from wooded island of learning into sweltering sidestreet of petty commerce. He looked in at Murugan's shop and asked for a couple of filter tips. He then stepped back from the counter, where assorted customers had their arms outstretched, money in hand, trying to catch Murugan's attention. On the wall just outside the shop was mounted a soot-blackened lighter. Palanivel leaned in towards it, cigarette in mouth, and clicked a switch below as the familiar orange-red glow appeared. He stood upright and inhaled, stepping aside for the next man in line with the easy camaraderie that is born of shared weaknesses.

Palanivel set on a ledge. In some ways, the new rule was a blessing. At the very least, it gave him an excuse to get away for a few minutes in the afternoon, when the oppressive, soporific heat made it impossible for him to keep his eyes open and his back straight when he sat in his usual seat on the fifth floor of the library. As a clerk in a reading hall that housed esoteric journals and reports and publications of other institutions, Palanivel seldom had much work to do during the day. In the evening he had a little work returning to their places the handful of books and magazines left lying on the tables. He had joined the library seven years ago, had risen, literally, from noting visitors' names at the entrance on the ground floor to his current position on the top floor, with several steps in between. He saw dreams of students coming to his curved desk and asking him to help them locate a specific journal, to understand the subtleties of the Dewey Decimal System - a system that, after monthly training sessions and years of experience, had become second nature to him. But none came. The few who made the trip up to the fifth floor brought their own books and notes, using the hall purely as a quiet place to study. The occasional scratching of a pencil or creaking of a chair across the floor would divert Palanivel for a while, but he was acutely aware of his own redundance - nobody came up to him and asked for anything. The only exceptions, he thought, smiling at the memory, were external researchers who had come to the library in search of some specific material. On such days Palanivel's withered spirit briefly unfurled itself as he shuttled around the shelves, spoke animatedly on the phone to his colleagues downstairs, and led his visitors across and between various reading rooms. But such days did not come often.

Palanivel stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, and stood up. He tipped the ash off, disposed of his cigarette, and mounted his bicycle.

The gadget that wrote

(March 2006)

He sat at his worktable, looking with admiration at the wonderful piece of gadgetry that had been entrusted to him. He wiped a drop of sweat off his brow and continued to wipe with his oil-tinged cloth the semicircular array of metallic levers. In the background, the little radio that he had assembled one dreary weekend made whirring noises that resembled a popular song. Naresh brought out a slim box from a drawer, and from it, a carefully preserved ear-bud of dubious quality (he had bought a pack of hundred at a traffic signal). He dipped it in a bit of anti-corrosive fluid and began to clean the little serrations that crowned the aforesaid metallic levers, smiling to himself as he realised that he could recognise a laterally inverted letter in his sleep. Here, in the loop of a 'b' was a small clot of dirt, which was causing smudges of ink on the paper. There, nestling in the hook of the question mark, was another grain of dust. Having cleaned all the letters, digits and punctuation marks to a sparkle, Naresh oiled the rails of the carriage. He pushed the carriage left and right, making sure the motion was smooth, until the little hammer at the bottom of the rails coiled itself and struck a Ting! to signal that the end of a line had been reached. He tried the knobs on the carriage; he made sure the keys at the front were sparkling white. Give him one of these works of art any day, he could repair it no matter what was wrong with it. The pang of joy he felt when one of them went back to its former days of glory, typing line upon line of sparkling text on a clean white sheet of paper, in this, the age of ever-cheaper printers!

Airborne

(June 2005)

Captain Sharma looks out ahead of him. The glass window in front of him is shaped like a horseshoe, stretching out from behind the plane that joins his eyes and curving ahead, a couple of arms that meet three feet ahead of him in a clasp just above the shiny black nose of the aircraft. The runway is a taut grey-black ribbon, streaming backwards. He holds on to his controls, and feels, not for the first time, a bizarre sense of kinship with the cowboys he has seen at rodeo shows in the American Midwest, riding giant animals, clutching at their horns. The screens, knobs and dials before him merge in a dazzling melange of flashing colours that blinks, twists and bobs about at a pace that becomes increasingly frenetic. Meanwhile, the sound of speed emanating from the tarmac becomes more and more insistent, until the combined aural and visual effect is one of some ridiculous symphony of machines. Captain Sharma would not be surprised to see row upon row of little machines in evening dress waiting to applaud rapturously at the end of the movement. What he does see, through the corners of his eyes, is a landscape that becomes increasingly blurred – trees, isolated buildings, hillocks. Then he takes a deep breath and lifts the controls just the right bit – until the mammoth machine turns its shiny nose up at the tarmac like some high society snob, and then begins its dizzying ascent. The city becomes smaller and smaller until it is a modern-day Lilliput, and Shirish Sharma sits back, smiles, and removes his special goggles. “Great going, guys,” he says to the eagerly waiting men standing behind him. “This game is a sure winner. Why, even Disneyland would buy this from you.”

Jean in Paris

(May 2005)

It was an especially hot day by Parisian standards, the temperature hovering around eighty on the Fahrenheit scale. Jean Maigny squinted up at the clear blue sky with a few silvery-white wisps of cloud floating about, and, as a drop of sweat formed at his brow, wished that it were a little cooler. Around him were ranged fifteen thousand people, three towering walls of humanity glaring at him, and one more behind him. Some of them seemed very excited, and some looked stiff and bored, as if they expected to see nothing new today. The younger people revelled in the sunshine, their faces covered with zinc cream, while the older lot carried elegant white umbrellas. High up on Jean’s right was a sleek cabin, all glass and silver-grey metal. Inside sat a couple of men in suit and tie. He could barely make them out from where he sat, but a closer observer might have noticed that one of the men was suavity personified, while the other was a tad grizzled and looked very uncomfortable in his Savile Row suit, like one who has spent much of his life in T-shirts running around in the sun. Jean looked down at the bright, orange-red clay and the neat white lines that ran all over it, making right-angled patterns.

For a few moments his mind wandered back to his neat little cottage in the countryside where he relaxed in his free time, lying in his hammock and gazing up at the Pyrenees. A slow smile began to dribble across his face. Then another drop of sweat made a plop! as it fell delicately from his brow onto the tip of his nose. Duty calls, he thought. He glanced down at his watch, then leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. ‘Mesdames et Messieurs, silencieux s'il vous plait.’ The busy hum that had been travelling around the arena like a thousand bees in concert suddenly ebbed, and trailed away in a hush. The defending champion served.

Udit and Rohit go the Hills

(May 2005)

Udit and his friend Rohit motor along the Himalayan road. In the winters, says the driver of the tourist van, the slopes are covered with snow, and one can ski. He rattles off a list of Hindi films that have had scenes filmed here. Almost instantly, Udit can see in his mind’s eye a young actor scream, “Yaaaaa-hoooooo!!!” and land on his knees, making furrows through the snow, his hair flying in all directions. The road is lined with tall pine trees, and the air is clean and fresh.
They come now to a clearing. There are a number of vehicles, and the hillside calm is mildly challenged by automotive cranks, whirs and honks. From this point on, they must go on foot or horseback to a peak from where they will have, they are promised, a breathtaking view. Being – well, we won’t say sissies, but city-bred, they hire a pair of horses, paying a brisk businessman sitting in a tin booth. They clamber onto their mounts clumsily, getting a foothold on the stirrups after many attempts and cringing slightly at the equine smells that waft up to their nostrils. They are led up the incline by a couple of Pahari horsemen, subdued but skilful. They are not of the talkative tourist guide variety; in fact they barely seem to be comfortable with Hindi, preferring their own mountain dialect.

The view from the summit is, alas, no match for the wondrous description that preceded it. It is, instead, a touristy spot where they can buy or rent any of a number of things – views from a telescope, photographs of themselves in local costume, popcorn, chips, cola.

Slightly weary but with a sense of accomplishment (one more item on the sight-seeing list ticked off), Udit and Rohit clamber back onto their horses. The descent is trickier, the hooved animals having to grip the soil with every step. “Somehow, I’m enjoying myself more now,” says Udit, inhaling a lungful of clear air as the conifers began swaying ever so slightly. As Rohit nods, he is aware of a lilting melody. Closer inspection shows that it is his horseman who is singing, softly, a Pahari tune. “Zor se gaiye, bhaisaab,” Rohit says, nodding encouragingly. The other smiles self-consciously, shakes his head, looks at the ground, looks at his fellow horseman, grins again, then suddenly musters courage and breaks into song, loud and clear. The music seems wedded to the environs, and the hillside reverberates with its joyfulness. The hills are alive/ To the sound of music, remembers Udit, and likewise the city duo is alive to the experience of the hills. Further joy awaits them as their guides branch off on a dirt track to reveal a small shrine shrouded by branches. It is hewn from stone. Its antiquity and beauty are soothing beyond description.

As the party comes closer to its starting point, Udit feels a rush of gratitude for these two men who gave him a glimpse of what he had actually travelled a thousand miles to experience. He tips the horsemen generously though not lavishly. They seem embarrassed, and murmur their thanks.

Udit and Rohit walk off, contented and full of the essence of human goodness. As they get into their van, they see the horse owner emerge from his little booth and stride towards the two horsemen. He puts out his hand in an impatient gesture. The tip, Udit’s offering of gratitude, is produced and placed on his palm.

Tranquillity!

(May 2005)

He sat at his desk, eyes closed. The room was large, shaped like a trapezium, and the desk was along one of its parallel walls. Further along the wall ran a cabinet, rich teak, stacked with books, CDs, cassettes, and a music system. A warm, intricately patterned rug covered the floor before the cabinet. The only light came from the table lamp, a shimmering, suffused yellow that swam around the contours of the room and its furniture.

On the desk lay a CD cover, a blue sky in the background, and a magnificent, gleaming black grand piano in front. Bluethner, it said, proclaiming its make in stylised light brown italics just above the gleaming keys, black, white, black, white. As the room resonated with notes from the piano, he could almost feel the keys in the picture move; he saw the pianist’s hand rise with a flourish each time there was a rest, a gap, between notes – the back of the palm curving upward first, then the delicate fingers leaving the keyboard in a languid, graceful movement. Tchaikovsky – Klavierkonzert, said the CD cover. The melody was slow and poignant, the deep bass notes near-spiritual.

So he sat at his desk, eyes closed.

A strident, insistent Tring! ran through the room. The notes from the Klavierkonzert shuddered.

He sighed, switched off the music, and reached for the telephone.

Rickshaw Days

(December 2007)

The rumble of the auto-rickshaw would sound first as it entered the compound, and as it circled the large elevator chute that rose to where a series of corridors intersected in mid-air four floors up, the dry, crunchy sound of its horn would pierce the stillness of the morning. He would rush down the stairs, socks in hand, hunt for his shoes, slip them on, and run to the dining table, where his mother stood next to a bowl of cereal and hot milk, insisting that every last flake and every last drop be consumed. He wolfed down his breakfast, sticky and porridge-like now, his heart beating, praying that Rickshaw Uncle would not honk another time before he was ready to rush out. When he finally flopped out, school bag hanging from one shoulder, water bottle dangling by its strap from the opposite hand, his heels jutting out of as yet unlaced shoes, he was glad that he was the first to be picked up on this route, so that the other boys were not around to see his invariably clumsy start to the day.

Like an embroiderer’s needle, the rickshaw traced out an intricate route, stopping at five or six different houses and housing societies, at some of which two or three boys got in at a time, making the journey all of a sudden noisier and much more crowded. The smaller or thinner boys invariably sat on the little wooden plank that was attached to the iron bars that separated Rickshaw Uncle’s section of the rickshaw from the boys’, facing the main seat. On cold, windy winter mornings, one of the boys would bring a blanket that everyone would share, if not entirely equally. On such days the most prized position was ‘up’: one of the boys would climb up to the horizontal board just behind the backrest of the main seat, knees drawn up towards the chest, savouring the warmth until the rickshaw hit a pothole and one or two strands of hair got caught, for an instant, between the rickshaw’s synthetic hood and one of the iron bars over which it was drawn. Rainy days were equally challenging; on days when the water came lashing in at a wind-driven angle, Rickshaw Uncle would unfurl the tarpaulin screens that were suspended at either side of the rickshaw, and the boys would hold their noses theatrically as the screens, damp, began to emit a gradual stink.

The conversation, naturally, depended on the time of day. In the mornings, the boys were often subdued. Hair combed, ties neatly in place and shoes polished, most of them were preoccupied with the day ahead. Those who had games or swimming in their timetable for the day would be in sports uniform. To one boy, however, the youngest of the lot, the day of the week meant nothing whatsoever. He would climb in, hang his waterbottle on the rickshaw metre along with everyone else’s, and begin to narrate his latest joke: ‘There be’s a man…’ The mood was considerably lighter in the afternoons. The day having started early (if not bright), school gave over by early afternoon. Ties were now loosened and swung all over the place; shoes were scuffed up; bags were lighter by the contents of a snack box. Some of the boys ate sliced guavas leavened with a mixture of chilli powder and salt. Others ate samosas, bought at the canteen, or ‘bullseyes’, black and white striped peppermints.

One by one, the boys were dropped off at home, some of them running off with a war whoop and some trudging tiredly towards home and a meal that could not hold a candle to salted guavas and bullseye candies. Just as he was the first to get on, he was the last to get off. ‘Be early tomorrow,’ Uncle would say to him sometimes, kindly. ‘Always aim to be ready ten minutes before I arrive. That way it won’t be difficult.’ On other days he would go off on little monologues, as if he sensed that now was the time he could talk without every remark becoming fodder for a joke. He threw out the odd reminiscence, and sometimes made general philosophical comments. Then it was time for the last stop. Inside, a hot lunch of rotis, dal, rice and vegetables: outside, the sound of the rickshaw, and another school day, fading away.

Jade Theatre

(November 2007)

Jade Theatre stood at the mouth of Peak Road. It was where an ever-busy flyover, named after a politician but routinely identified by the name of a film studio that had been located in the area, sloped gently downwards and merged with the city’s central road. Every car, bus, autorickshaw and bicycle that used the flyover in the northward direction would have to decide its course when it reached Jade Theatre. The road split into three at this point. The two rightmost ones led to semi-residential localities; the one that led straight on from the flyover became Peak Road, widening as one went north, flanked by trees and elegant colonial-era buildings, some in good trim and some crumbling, and ending up in a melange of shopping malls and office buildings.

Jade Theatre was a landmark. You said ‘One Jade’ to the conductor when you got into the bus at the other end of the city - or you asked ‘Will it stop at Jade?’ Nobody from Rakesh’s generation had ever actually been in the theatre, which was now defunct. His mother recalled going there decades earlier, when it had been a functioning theatre - in the local sense of the word. No plays were staged there; instead films were screened. It was a ‘cin-ma theatre’. Rakesh’s mother would never forget the time she had watched a continuous screening of a slick English thriller. You bought a ticket and walked in at any time, she said, and watched the movie from whatever point it was at; you then sat where you were, and the movie started all over again, so you could watch the part you had missed. It occurred to Rakesh that of all the ways to watch a movie, this was not the one he’d pick first, but apparently it had created waves at the time.

Jade was the bus-stop where he hung out with his friends after school, waiting for one of the many public buses that might take him in the direction of home. Tucked away in an alcove across the road was the theatre itself, its name running across its windowless facade in cursive letters. Behind where the boys stood was a row of mammoth hoardings advertising the latest Tamil films, so striking in their lack of aesthetic sense that they figured in a prominent encyclopaedia as an unfortunate emblem of the city Rakesh loved. The mouth of Peak Road was abuzz with activity. The air was shrill with the honks of automobiles and the revving of their engines, and the shops abutting the road sold all manner of things, ranging from electrical appliances and hardware to general provisions, from bicycle parts to ‘Saivam’ or ‘pure vegetarian’ food. As Rakesh sat on the iron railing with chipped yellow paint under the roof of the bus-stop with his friends, sheltered partially from the unforgiving near-Equatorial sun, he could be guaranteed of at least one bemused-looking traveller coming up and asking whether bus 45J or 78A or something else stopped here. Before answering, he would sigh and wonder why it was so difficult to look up at the rim of the shelter, where the route numbers were painted in black letters on a once-bright yellow background. Buses would now arrive from Peak Road in twos and threes, the boys straining to make out the route numbers in the distance, until all of a sudden, just as they were deep in conversation about yesterday’s cricket match or Michael Whitney’s antics on the the latest edition of the Australian TV show Who Dares Wins, the 15A would materialise. A mass of people would spring forward like termites from the woodwork and rush to the entrances in the front and the back. Rakesh would tighten the strap of his schoolbag, bend to pick up his sticky lunch-bag, cursorily nod to his classmates, and make a dash for it.

Jade Theatre was demolished recently. But schoolchildren, office-goers, petty traders and sundry other citizens still ask for bus tickets to Jade, and wait at Jade for their return journeys after a hot day’s work.