Incompleteness

A series of fractions will sum it up the easiest.
Question marks, half-measures
and the odd, half-bright spark.

A systematic sequence of etcs and et als;
one ellipsis after another,
everything in an untiring loop.

Like a mathematical derivation gone awry midway
and refusing to make sense
in spite of covert adjustments.

Or an essay that winds its tedious way around the point,
or along it, or beyond, or close
without ever really getting to it.

One picks up the threads easily enough, doesn't one?
But before they can be woven in
they usually tend to run out.

Slow & Sudden

You take a while
getting accustomed to.
Strange,
As familiar

As you are new.
Teasing. Throwing challenges
My way.
Daring me, gently

To get used to you.
I meet your eye;
Wonder
If I chose you, or

The converse is true.
Like black coffee,
Bitter chocolate,
And ungodly hours.

Tentativeness that
Melts into habit
Halfway
To eternal addiction.

Damned if I let you
Grow on me
Unfettered.
Damned if I don't.

Before I know it, you are
An acquired taste.

Monkey Business

"Whoa! What? Wait! Wait!"

He took off, waving three A4 sheets in my face. Three sheets that I had scribbled furiously on since dawn, driven by the sort of urgent creativity only a deadline looming large can inspire.

My tutorial assignment on Foreign Trade in India between 1920 and 1945.

There was no escaping them in Residence - and in Allnutt South in particular. The backyard shared a wall with the Ridge, and Allnutt Gate opened onto it. Monkeys were not just a part of the general landscape. They were the landscape.

What a rotten, rotten way to begin the week.

The tute was already three days overdue. [Why else do you think I rose at 4 a.m. on a dewy October morning?]

The monkeys owned the place. No two ways about it. They would brachiate into the backyard with abandon, timing their entry with that of the first ray of sunlight. And then they occupied infested the trees, the grounds, the staircases and the corridors. In all fairness, they didn't do much to bother the Residents. Not much, if you didn't take into account the shrieks that rang through the block every time a girl suddenly found herself face-to-face with a grinning monkey around a corner, or the regularity with which T-shirts and dupattas went missing from clotheslines.

But a tute? What monkey wants a tute?

Come what may, that assignment had to be handed in that day. The next two days were University holidays, and for all the credits that the tute was going to fetch me any later than that Monday, I knew I might as well not bother finishing it.

It had taken me the better part of three hours, frenzied rummaging through my notes, and vast amounts of imagination to produce about 1200 words on the topic. Because it was so eminently an eleventh-hour job, I didn't have time for the draft I usually made before writing my assignments. It was okay, I thought, busily highlighting key points. The tute would go in today. That was all that mattered.

I unscrambled myself out of my armchair, yawned, stretched and breathed in the morning air. Fresh. Good. Now that the job was done, maybe I could take a nap before class began at 8.40. Sleep was catching up with me again. It is interesting to recall that I smiled as I thought that it had been a good idea to choose the verandah over the room to write my tute in. Because it was the last time I smiled that day.

And, of course, because I thought it was a good idea.

Every time you ran into a monkey in Allnutt South, you were guaranteed to be left wondering exactly how the creature managed to make you feel like an intruder in your own block, outside your own room - assuming, that is, that the panic at seeing those teeth bared in a rude sneer left any room in your head for wonder.

I left my tute, glasses and pencil on the window ledge, and went into my room for some water. When I stepped out, it took me a moment to register that the ledge looked different. Figures, I thought, still sleepy. The monkey hadn't been there when I had turned to go into my room.

The what?

All sleep fled.



What was a monkey doing here? And those sheets it was clutching couldn't be...they weren't...

"Whoa! What? Wait! Wait!"

He took off, waving three A4 sheets in my face. Three sheets that I had scribbled furiously on since dawn, driven by the sort of urgent creativity only a deadline looming large can inspire.

My tutorial assignment on Foreign Trade in India between 1920 and 1945.

"This can't be happening! Undo. UNDO!"

So I wrote a long, long post – about three pages, if not more - about my love of travelling and why I find train journeys particularly entertaining. I rambled about how we live slices of different lives as we travel through the country from one city to another. I talked about the joys of being address-less and unreachable. I rattled on about how humanity is at its quirkiest, idiosyncratic best when 72 random people are thrown together for 10-odd hours, sometimes more. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. And because I am compulsively neat and organized and a darned perfectionist, I had to justify the alignment of the paragraphs. Of course I did. How else could I rest easy? So I selected all the text, and then Murphy decided he needed entertainment, so my finger slipped and hit the spacebar.

And Blogger, which usually spends about a minute thinking things through when I want to save my work, promptly, efficiently went ahead on its own, and saved a draft that contained nothing. Not even a label.

If I didn't write about this, at least, I'd never get any sleep tonight. So think about me while I'm away - I'm going home for a few weeks :) - and I'll spend some time on the train thinking about the post that almost got published.

Between Lives - II

Blink.

She was standing outside a shrine in the midst of towering mountains. Something that looked suspiciously, wonderfully like snow lay in haphazard patterns on the slopes. All around her, people huddled under blankets rented at a hundred rupees a night. The air was thick with smoke from wood fires, the crisp fragrance of pine cones, mild wisps of incense coming from the direction of the shrine and the chants of a million shloks. She had never felt this way before...utterly calm, completely at peace. She closed her eyes, breathed in the night air. A drop of something cool and wet dripped gently onto her cheek. Rain? Dew? A teardrop? Who knew? She stretched her arms wide, trying to hug the universe, the mountains and everything in between. Her fingers brushed a passer-by, startling him into exclamation. She smiled, a little embarrassed, a little apologetic, and inexplicably free. She would come here again. She would.

Blink.

The monastery did look out of reach. No, out of bounds. But that was not because it was situated right at the peak of one of the highest hills in the region. The trek, she could manage. She enjoyed the rush of thrill and peril that a trek gave her. No, it wasn't the height. It was the peace. The way the monastery was completely at home amid the fourteen shades of green - she could see at least that many from where she stood - on the hillside. Beyond it all, the sky was the colour of a baby's eyes. There was something about the monastery that whispered absolute peace and pure simplicity - the simplest sort, the most difficult to find. She knew she would feel welcomed when she stepped in. She only wondered if she deserved the peace. Well, there was only one way to find out. Flinging her satchel over her shoulder, she began the trek. And every time she faltered or hesitated, every time she felt she had lost her way, she would accidentally glimpse the glint of sunlight off the ancient brass bell over the door, or the vivid red and yellow of the bunting against the emerald of the mountainside. She knew she was meant to go there. She knew.

Blink.

She had been here before. She had been here so many times, she had lost count. She knew the pale blue and mild purple of the mountains. She knew the tiny shack at the beginning of the trail. The wizened little man there, who sold tea for six rupees a cup (milk and fuel were hard to come by, as he often explained in defence of his prices) also insisted on selling her a ticket. She couldn't get there without a ticket, he warned her. She wouldn't be allowed in. She wondered which place he was talking about...but she never wondered too hard, because she knew, just knew, that she would get there in due course, ticket or no ticket. Sometimes, she gave him a hundred-rupee note in exchange for a crumpled square of paper with illegible writing on it, just to humour him. At other times, she would head on without bothering to reason or haggle. She knew of the lake at the centre of the mountains. Deep, blue and placid, the lake could only be reached via a steep precipice whose nuances she sometimes found herself familiar with, and at other times regarded with vague dread. And she knew she would have to wait at the ledge for the others to catch up. So she waited.

Blink.

She looked down the ravine and into a page out of Sleeping Beauty. The castle rose out of the dense green foliage - the densest she had ever seen - its turrets gleaming in the moonlight. Tall, arched gateways and curving stairwells. It ought to have seemed sinister, she supposed, but it had too much of the touch of the fairy-tale. Parts of it protruded from the leafy lushness of the valley, and the remainder played hide-and-seek. Even from the edge of the ravine, it was difficult to miss the marble smoothness of the walls. Somewhere close, a waterfall gushed down the slopes and snaked past the castle, disappearing into nothingness beyond. Suspended over it all was an eerily perfect, buttery moon, bathing - literally bathing - the scene in shimmering, creamy silver. She wondered how much of it was fact, and how much she should credit her imagination with. All fact? All imagination? She wondered.

Blink.

She closed her eyes, opened them and closed them again. Life, as they knew it, was waiting to be resumed. Life, as she knew it, was busy weaving mysteries. It scared and awed and thrilled her. She couldn't wait to see what it was. Meanwhile, she continued to live life as they knew it. She lived.

Blink.

She smiled.

A Question Paper Called Life

"If you've written all you can in an essay during your exam, and can't think of anything further", my favourite teacher in school, Mrs. Moss, used to say, "move on! Don't just sit there waiting for divine inspiration! There are other answers to be written!"

Advice that I took seriously. It was difficult not to, given how animated she became whenever she talked - whether it was about history, literature, life or just general examination advice. Her eyes would sparkle with enthusiasm and genuine love for what she did, her hands did some explaining of their own...and her smile was one of the loveliest I had ever known. It still is. When Mrs. Moss taught you, she played Cupid between you and the subject...and you fell for it for life.

Coming back to moving on instead of sitting around waiting for divine inspiration, well, that's a great approach to life. When you've done all you can about something and cannot think of anything further, no matter how hard you push your gray cells - who knows, it is time to move on. It made a lot of sense to me back then. The question would read, "What is your stand in the Nature v Nurture debate? Elaborate with special reference to Caliban in The Tempest." And even when you're as obsessed as I am with literature and its layers of meaning, there's only so much that you can think of when you are asked to pen your thoughts within, ideally, 20 minutes, for 12 marks. I could argue this all day with a friend...but put me in an exam hall, with a clock tick-tocking away at eye-level and three unattempted questions and forty remaining minutes staring me in the face...and you'd have a literature-loving, well-prepared twelfth-grader grappling with an impossible mix of surfeit and spacing-out.

It still makes sense, though, doesn't it? For every crisis, every decision and every situation that life hurls at us with its mercilessly regular playfulness, we fall back on what we know already; we rummage for past experience, wisdom, knowledge or plain facts and figures that can help us make a decision or find a solution. Sometimes, we have the luxury of thinking our decisions through. More often than not, we improvise and hope for the best. On other occasions, without a single clue about what we're writing, we fill seven pages. All the time, we're hoping we will fetch ourselves a 12/12. When we know the answer isn't so great, we hope for a 7 or an 8. And there are still three answers to write, and only 40 minutes to go.

But it always works out in the end. In fact, it works out better than you imagined. But for that, you've got to complete the paper. And to complete the paper, you've got to move on once you have written all that you can in an essay. No use sitting around waiting for divine inspiration, as Mrs. Moss put it. There are other answers to be written.

All I Ask

I'll believe with all my heart

till I break it believing;

and then I'll believe some more.

I'll keep all the faith

I can keep, and then some -

I'll keep it like never before.

I'll give it all I have

and do all I can,

and fulfil every arduous task...

I'll walk as far as it takes -

sunshine and rain don't matter

So long as I know where I'm headed.

I'll fight all the fears;

be as brave as I can

and face every demon I've dreaded.

I don't mind waiting

forever and for always.

A promise is all I ask.

That night, the moon rose full and bright.

For a total of twenty hours of studying, that wasn't such a bad exam, I thought as I pushed open the door to her room. "Can we go out for a while, please? I'm hungry."

"Good idea", she put down the slim volume she was reading. "Where shall we go?"

"Let's try that food at Sethi's that I was telling you about."

Half an hour later, we were walking back from Malkaganj, having agreed, the two of us, that all that we needed to round the evening out was a chocobar each. Walking down the pavement towards 32 UB, we thought the evening seemed eerily still. Breezy, busy, bright - but still. Something made me turn my head and look back at the gate to HRC. The sun, a sort of molten, confused orange, was hanging undecidedly over the trees.

"That's weird", she commented. She was right. Most days, the sun's packed and gone by that hour, and the moon's beginning to show.

He materialised out of nowhere. Right outside McDonald's. In each hand, he held a piece of bamboo, carved in the shape of The Buddha's countenance. The ornament was hollowed out at the centre, about two inches deep from the top. This hollow was stuffed with soil, and a tiny sapling planted in it. The complete effect was almost comical, and still, there was something so beautiful about the ornament that I took it - almost grabbed it - from his hand.

He looked at me with unusually, unnaturally bright eyes. He was about my height, hair unkempt, dressed in an ordinary pair of trousers and a shirt. Slung over his shoulder was a black jhola, embroidered with some kind of glittering thread. A third bamboo ornament stuck partially out of the jhola.

"But this is beautiful!" I couldn't help exclaiming. "What IS this?"

"It's a vase, madam. Unique. Hand-crafted."

"But how long is this plant going to live?"

"It will live, madam. All you have to do is water the soil every two days."

I looked at him dubiously, and turned a similar gaze upon the 'vase'.

"What if this plant dies? I'd hate a plant to die in my possession." I've always been overly sensitive to things of this sort.

"Why will it die, madam? One hundred and fifty rupees only."

"You're joking!" she gasped. "One hundred."

He adjusted the jhola over his shoulder. "Al...ri...ght."

She delved into her pocket for the money. I asked her to wait.

"You know what, please take this back. I love this, but I don't think it will survive in a hostel room. And what if I want to take it home? It will never survive the journey."

"Please, madam, you're my first customer today. In fact, you're my first customer here. I've never been here before."

"I'm really sorry", I said, ignoring her disbelieving look, "I'd hate to buy this and then see it ruined."

His face fell. But he managed a polite smile. "Oh, never mind, madam."

With that, he was gone as suddenly as he had appeared.

I turned and saw the sun sinking lower.

"What about that ice cream?" I tried to sound brisk and practical. I didn't know why I felt so disoriented and...sad.

In silence, we walked up to the Kwality cart, and asked for two chocobars.

"You know what", she said, "I can't believe you let him go. I can't believe you asked me to put my money back in. It's so obvious you loved that thing. And that poor guy's so disappointed too. What were you thinking? I'm going to go look for him."

"But wait!" I interjected, then, on an afterthought, I added, "alright, let's go."

I didn't wait to examine the sudden impulse.

The evening wasn't getting darker by the minute, the way it usually does. I wondered why.

We walked the length of Bungalow Road and back. Then we stopped at the junk jewellery guy's. "Excuse me, have you seen, uh, a man here? Carrying bamboo articles? A man with a big black bag?"

"Oh, that man", the vendor said, "yes, he walked down this road. Kept walking straight ahead. He must have reached Malkaganj by now."

We looked at each other, two minds with but a single thought.

Hurrying to a rick, she said "To Malkaganj, please, at the intersection."

"Why are we doing this?" I said aloud, more to myself than to her.

But we both knew the answer. We must.

Again, I didn't pause to ponder the impulse. Neither, I'm sure, did she.

We rode up to the intersection, keeping an eye out for a dark man, 5'5", with a black jhola on his shoulder and two bamboo vases in his hands.

Nothing.

We clambered off the rick at the intersection, and began asking around for a man answering to his description.

Nothing.

It did occur to me, for a fleeting moment, that this was a bit of a ridiculous, far-out thing to do. What was the big deal anyway? It was a vase. Unusual and beautiful and unlike anything I had ever seen, but a vase nonetheless. Funnily, as soon as that thought came and went, I intensified my search.

Nothing.

Tired and inexplicably dejected, we began to walk back to 32 UB. The sun was gone when I tried looking for it over the HRC gate.

"I don't get this", she said, for the tenth time, echoing my thoughts. "We took barely a minute at the ice cream cart. How fast COULD he have walked??"

"Oh well, we've just made the deadline", I said, referring to the 7.30 pm curfew our hostel imposes, as we rounded the bend near McDonald's and 32 UB loomed into view.

"Hmm...", I could tell she was preoccupied, even as I busied myself checking my shoes for grime. I hate having to wash them three times a week.

Suddenly, she stopped dead, jerking at my hand. "What?" I looked up, only to meet two very surprised, almost stunned eyes, which rested on mine for a fraction of a second before looking away, diagonally behind me.

I followed her gaze.

There stood the guy, talking to two men standing by a scooter. One held a vase in his hand. Our vendor was holding the other. Right next to the entry to the hostel. Our hostel.

We hurried towards him, and he spun around. "Yes, madam?"

"We looked for you everywhere. Everywhere! We walked up and down this road twice over. We went all the way to Malkaganj!"

"Oh", he looked apologetic. "I walked around a bit, and then I came here."

"We'd like to buy one of those."

"I'm sorry", he sounded even more apologetic, "I just sold both of these to these gentlemen here."

She stared disbelievingly at the vases, now in the strangers' hands. So did I. "So you have none left?"

"None, I'm afraid."

"Oh. Oh, ok", there wasn't much we could do to conceal how deflated we felt at that.

"Are you going to come back here?"

And unbeknownst to both of us, each of us was wondering why it mattered so much that we couldn't get it right away. It didn't matter why it mattered. It only mattered that it did.

"No", he smiled quietly, "I'm not sure. But maybe you'll find me at the end of Bungalow Road tomorrow. At noon."

"Alright, then, please bring one of these with you. We'll, uh, see you tomorrow."

"Yes, Madam", he adjusted the jhola in a now-familiar gesture, and began to walk away, leaving us a little dumbstruck. Then he turned around and said,

"Isi ko kismat kehte hain."

That night, the moon rose full and bright.

Let's talk

Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for truth.

Something that put the warmth back into a freezing January morning for me -

Teeth chattering, I found myself a seat on the train to Kashmere Gate. Wandering idly from the route map to an ad for cough syrup to the pane opposite - where I tried, for the hundredth time, to look for my reflection amid a myriad of blurred images - my gaze fell upon two passengers, right across the aisle from where I sat.

One was a tall, spare man, twenty five years old, thirty maybe. Tucking a pen into his lapel, he was drawing his beige jacket tightly about himself, pride written all over the gesture. Next to him sat an elderly gentleman with a turban and white whiskers, his head resting against the glass partition. Even as I sat there watching them, an animated conversation began.

"They kept asking me to hurry," the younger man was saying, proudly, "and I still managed to dress up! Look at this jacket! Let's have tea when we get there."

The older one smiled affectionately. "Tea can wait. Finish your paper first."

"But some tea would be nice! See how cold it is!" the younger man protested.

The turbaned gentleman pointed to his watch. "There's no time!'

"I'll drive us home!" the other was visibly excited.

His companion couldn't help another fatherly grin. "No, that's OK, I'll do the driving."

"I drive fast!!"

"No, I'll take care of the driving. Think about the paper. There will be lots to write."

The train stopped at Civil Lines. A neon-lit advertisement for a recent Bollywood release all but obscured the wall facing the duo.

"Look!" the younger one pointed eagerly, "This one? Shall we go for this one?"

"Write your paper first, let me drive you home, and you can go for as many movies as you please!"

The younger guy sat there, sulking. His companion patted his shoulder. Like magic, the smile was back.

"You will come with me, then? After the paper? Can I drive after the paper?"
"We'll see."

"Tea? Please? Five minutes for tea?"

The next station is Kashmere Gate. Change here for the Red Line. Doors will open on the right. Please mind the gap.

I cast the two a grateful glance and silently wished the younger guy luck with his paper, whatever it was. Cheerfulness, affection, patience, enthusiasm, understanding - things we could all do with a little more of - are independent of words, really.

This duo, for instance, seemed to be doing just fine with sign language.