Morning after Ill

The trains roll in reluctantly the next morning, clacking despondently on tracks that sag under their unbearable weight. That noble race of commuters rushes to catch them once again. Briefcases are as mighty a weapon as any in man’s eternal battle: for space, for land, for a window seat in the direction of travel. But today, the previous night’s events seem etched upon the warriors’ faces. These hunched penguins waddle towards the dirty dark green of the seats and sit down with a heave. Darkness is set heavy upon their baggy eyes; but one wonders if this is the result of terrorism or arduous daily routines. In times of crisis though, routines become a sought-after luxury; work more so.

The troops are off; they will lay siege to office complexes in the Island City in precisely forty-three minutes. The train ambles by three eunuchs sitting on the adjacent tracks, legs spread apart, with beedis in their hands, and people inside can eavesdrop on their discussion on the Taj. In a city of 19 million, your existence already counts for so little, that sitting on tracks is as casual as sitting in the trains that ply them. The faces around wear a blank look, as they always do. Beyond the metal wall lies the ladies’ compartment, ineffable bastion of femininity, blue-and-beige striped, where obese aunties with giant breasts sit alongside svelte but anaemic twentysomethings in frilly kurtis that clash spectacularly with their flared denims. On a busy day, accidentally glimpsing a beautiful woman is an objective pursued by many. Today though, the compartment is almost empty.

A man’s motives sit concealed just behind his eyes; their intensity or lack of it are a corollary to the man’s identity. Among the inert and blank faces sits one man; he is young enough to be Kasab’s classmate. He too carries with him a haversack, but is unarmed. Beyond the metal wall separating the two compartments, an argument escalates. One voice belongs to a woman, the other a man. The blue-beige fort has been infiltrated by a member of the red-beige army. The blanks look up; they are aware of the voice. Words such as bhenchod and randi boast of a ubiquitous presence in the minds of this city’s men. They are used for camaraderie more often than they are used to hurt. The apparent subversion of these friendly words to their more malicious but original usage is sufficient to get a rise out of any Mumbai man. Today, the men are full of thoughts, but empty on actions.

Their eyes stare straight ahead, they are too afraid to investigate, but too fearful to move. It is too much, too soon after the previous night. Their eyes begin to move. They follow the innocuous man with the haversack, the only one whose eyes have motive, as he gets up, afraid to the core of his being. The next station approaches. It is a determined gait, and the man slows only when the train lurches, balancing himself and then continuing. Beyond the little window and wire mesh separation, he peers over to the other side of the fort. A scabby, one-legged beggar continues to defiantly hurl curses at one of the women, and she responds in equal measure. The train has now stopped, new travelers pile in. The young man’s window seat, like everything else in this city, is quickly usurped. He bores into the blank eyes of the others, and sits down elsewhere in disgust.

Un-Clarivoyant

Brow furrowed, the portly man of about 52 looks up at the sky, in intense concentration. Looking down again, he chants something inaudible to anyone around but himself. Surveying me grimly, he discreetly adjusts his buttocks in a characteristic motion that I know from experience to be associated with farting. Readjusting his saffron robes, the man clears his throat and speaks to me, in broken English:

“You are gentleman. In some tomorrows you become greater man in professional!”

I nod sincerely. Govinda Kunalbhai Shroff, ‘Pamist, Asterologist and Oculist’ as the signboard above his chair proudly announces, then pulls out 3 charts, one of which has two large hands painted on it, while the others have a bewildering array of symbols and numbers written on them. They seem to be astrological charts, but they could well be anything else. Pointing vaguely at one of the charts, he continues,

“All is givan here. You meet sweetie soon! Are you writing-writing saab? I give full story of tomorrow in Rs. 125 since you’re friend.”

I gently turn him down, and gaze at one of about half a dozen pictures hanging on the tree trunk behind him. They are faded to bluish hues by sunlight, but on at least one, you can still make out Govinda’s wide grinning face, hands joined in greeting another, more familiar, turbaned figure. The picture seems morphed, although if so, it is clearly a professional job. Catching my line of sight, Govinda tells me very earnestly that he had been on good terms with the man in the picture since around 1973. “My first and bestest customer,” he adds.

I promise to pay him his quoted amount if he tells me how he came to be in such a powerful profession. I was surprised to learn that Govinda was a son of the soil, born and raised in Mumbai, with a cabbie father and a mother who died when he was quite young. At about 11, he began to suffer convulsions, and his father took him to a local baba who proclaimed that the boy had ‘gifted sight’. There used to be a long queue of visitors for the seer every morning, and he did his best to help those who came; mostly impoverished women suffering at the hands of alcoholic husbands.

Unfortunately Govinda’s father died of tuberculosis two years later, and the happy profits garnered by his gift eventually dried up. The seer’s eyes well up as he tells me this; he laments not having been able to foresee the epidemic before it took away his father. As I am about to leave, I hear sirens approaching. 6 Qualises pull up; the nearby magazine, samosa and DVD vendors begin hurriedly packing up, and Govinda does the same.

One of the havaldars walks briskly towards the seer and orders him to leave immediately; something about the PM’s cavalcade passing by. I hear the two arguing louder and louder, their conversation peppered with the choicest gaalis that would make even a firang feel desi. Glancing at the tree by chance, I suddenly realize who the faded picture is of.

"The sewers belch me up, the heavens spit me out, from ethers tragic I am born again!"

Sounds and lights have ruined us. People are not what we see and hear. They are whole, rounded, ambiguous, contradictory and any number of other adjectives that your average author could think of. They rarely possess the kind of stark dichotomy promoted by Batman or Friends, even if many of them try and consciously imitate it. In this city the people hit you with their break and make you feel like a child standing in the sea during a particularly stormy high tide. You fight their currents throughout your day. Their force tempts you into lying or maybe even falling back. But not as if you’re on a holiday on some pleasant beach, but like the contorted crow you saw, dead of electrocution on your whizz home in the train from your 9 to 5. But that’s Bombay. And you fight back against it, hurtling on.

Eventually you grow older, and you realize that you’ve been sucked into deeper water, and this time there is no one there to carry you back to shore in the comfort of their arms. Or maybe you’re just too big to be picked up anyway. You go deeper, and now the salt is in your mouth. You feel the adrenaline pump as you realize how perilously close it is to entering your nostrils and burning you away at the back of your head as it floods in. You think of all those lines about seamen who out of desperation and thirst drank seawater and went mad, and then the horrid thought hits you, just as the bottom of your head screams from the liquid rushing in: Madness is not in the drinking of seawater; madness is not in drowning yourself. True madness is the standing in the shallows as the tide wraps itself around your knees, pulling you in but pushing you over, and yet there you stay, firm in your naive resolve against the might of the water, the very same water that conquered Mumbai herself.

I have drowned now. But I am happiest in this alive.

With apologies to The Smashing Pumpkins,

Wittywanker