And The Living Was Easy

Summers Past.

A drop of warm sweat meanders down my spine.

And I’m thinking basketball. Vest so drenched i could wring it, squeeze it dry, quadrangle floor so hot you had to play with shoes or blister.

I’m thinking long, hazy afternoons, a broad almond tree that was pirate ship, Tarzan’s jungle and so much more. I’m thinking chor-police, hide-and-seek and dabba futli over eight building compounds in the long twilight and no worries about being called home now, because the exams were over!

I’m remembering gazing ardently up into mango trees, willing the fruit to ripen, knocking down a few just to check whether, perhaps, that small size and green skin was just the tree trying to fool us. And then the grimace of perverse pleasure as you bit and found so-uuurrrr.

And going up to one particular friend’s house for water, because they had a fridge.

I’m smiling about 25 paise coins hoarded from errands, splurged on little plastic tubes filled with flavoured ice, where you bit through the heat-sealed edge and sucked – pepsis they were called, with a lower-case ‘p.’ Soft drinks were rare – they cost all of two bucks, who had that kind of money? – reserved for restaurant visits with one’s parents.

And that long, sweet last summer between school and college. Three months of utter irresponsibility only now and then sullied with the quaking terror of SSC marks day. Badminton in the still cool, early morning air. Racing off to the lending library to pick up the daily fix of books and comics, and then, lying with them on the cool floor, legs propped up on the nearest piece of furniture, lost in faraway places of the mind. An evening of six, maybe eight innings of cricket, and when bad light – well, no light, actually – stopped play, sitting on swings vacated by the little kids and those strange creatures, girls.

College hols, the games stayed, but there were new preoccupations too. “Summer clubs,” that delightful suburban custom – a month of semi-organised competitions and fun, sports, plays, singing, dancing, cycle treasure hunts. Begging the use of houses and terraces to sit and plan, madly practising and rehearsing, borrowing props, stealing ideas, siblings in different teams not talking to each other all summer.

We’d moved upmarket by then, to the golavala. Almost drooling as he scraped ice into a glass, packed it around a stick, anointed it with syrup and dunked it into the glass, topped up with more syrup and water.

And cycles. Everywhere. Extensions of our bodies. Taking us further than we could run. From one frenzied arena to another. And then racing down quiet back streets, outstripping dogs, avoiding night patrol cops, composing excuses on the way as to why one was so late. Thinking also of how, one day, we too would have motorbikes. Maybe even cars.

And the sudden discovery that there was something compellingly, magnetically, irresistibly attractive about those girls. Twilight hours spent sitting on gates and bus stops in hushed discussions of the relative merits of one lissome lass after another as they passed by on the way back from whatever it was girls did in the evenings. Crushes and lust and heartbreak analysed threadbare, but seldom acted on, except by the bold, much-envied few. At least they said they did.

Which led to the summer of learning how to dance. Feet used to pedalling and running and jumping now having to learn how to take small steps, you idiot, and don’t pull so much.

And the beach, yes, the beach. Contract busses hired, lunches packed, and away, two hours of ribald songs and laughter, to the relatively safe sea of Gorai. Hours in the water, skin wrinkled on the fingers and burnt on the nose and shoulders. Eyes looking, and trying not to be seen to look, at girls in swim suits.

But summer ended when college did.

Yes, there was a certain kick to playing adult. To office clothes, and an office bag, and doing lunch andmaking a salary. But that attraction wears off in summer.

Because offices don’t give you a couple of months of summer holidays. You have to pass kids playing in the street. You can’t pitch hopeful stones into mango trees. Sweat is a social handicap. There isn’t time to idle aimlessly at street corners. There’s only corporate games and posing. They want you to work in summer.

Well, yeah, sure, I can afford more than golas now, but somehow, somehow, I can’t help thinking the trade-off wasn’t fair.

Published in the Times of India’s Mumbai edition, Snaphot,in a slightly edited version (-: yes, Nina, i’m admitting to “slightly” now. 🙂
Snapshot was a weekly column that aimed to “capture that quintessentially Mumbai state of mind.” Sadly, TOI discontinued it.

Tags: The Times of India, Snapshot

Cinderfella

Travelling Late

I’m a Mediterranean kinda guy. I have black, curly hair, love olives, red wine and cheese and I know more about Greek and Roman mythology than about Indian epics. And I wake up about four hours after India does. Which can be a bit of a problem when one lives in Mumbai.

A gracious Providence has surrounded me with people who understand: bosses who permit me to start my day a few hours after everyone else; clients who considerately ask only for afternoon or evening meetings; friends for whom my tardiness is the provider of many witty one liners (and they think nothing of calling me at 2 a.m. because I’m the only one guaranteed to be “both awake and alone” at that hour); girlfriends who… come to think of it, there haven’t been that many. Hmm. Wonder why?

My awry biological clock, a pathological dislike of crowds and a strong parsimonious streak, have, while ensuring that I have a laughable social life, made me something of an expert on getting home in the wee hours, on the cheap.

So, last trains, last buses… they have become my lifeline, ferrying me back from the magazine offices and ad agencies that have underpaid me over the years, rocketing up the silent length of this stretched out city to my bed. But I write here of buses. And ’tis not because I love trains less, but that I love buses more.

Trains I use when I travel, not when I commute. There’s romance in the sound and rhythm of a train chugging through the night, long deep whistle blowing, strange stations with different local flavours of sweet tea and terrible coffee.

Trains get me home faster in this city, but when I look out between stations, my eyes pass over the same things they would have seen at more respectable times, only darker. And the stations are lonely enough to break your heart.

In a local bus, however, things change in the night.

As you wait for them, you have company. A bus stop is a fraction of the size of a railway station, so you’re in closer proximity to your travelling companions.

Beside you, mill workers stand silently, tired, second-shift men with blank eyes. Next to them, boy-men in black trousers and white shirts smoke cigarettes, laughing as they dissect the evening’s happenings at the five-star hotel they work in. Perched on the railings a pair of college kids self-consciously hold hands, whispering to each other, and you can bet they’re not talking about the late show they just didn’t watch. Off to the side, two waitresses from a ladies’ bar (they always travel in pairs), chatter like exotic tropical birds, ignoring with practised ease the male eyes that strip them of their gaudy plumage. Drooping against the slim metal pillars of the bus stop, a young couple, a sleeping toddler in his arms, hers weighed down with a large bag, balance the temptation of the taxi that waits invitingly a few feet away against the straightjacket of the monthly budget.

And a bus arrives, its engine sound unrecognisable from its peak-hour grumbling and muttering of stifled oaths at squawking gaggles of white Maruti 800s. Now it roars impatiently, complaining about the length of time you’re taking to get in.

The bus is in motion now, and the engine shrieks and bellows, like a class of adolescent schoolboys, voices breaking, greeting the last bell of the last period of the last day of term. It races joyously through the night, double rings from the conductor chivvying it past deserted bus stops, hurdling speed-breakers, vaulting potholes, its rattling windows joining the raucous symphony of loose rivets, while a solo horn raises its voice above the din to tell the world to getoutofthewayNOW!

Don’t fall asleep – unless you’re a regular whom the conductor will wake up. It’s your stop now. Move to the front of the bus, and quickly. The bus slows, you’re expected to jump off, not impede its progress by waiting for it to come to a complete halt. And as your feet touch the ground, it speeds away, making rude jokes to itself about your lack of atheleticism.

And you wish you had one measly glass slipper to throw at the baying mongrels that serenade your slow trudge home.

And when it’s really, really late? Heck, just hang around and keep doing whatever it is that’s kept you away from home till now. In just a few hours, the city will wake up again. Way before the sun comes up, there’ll be the first trains, the first buses…

Published in the Times of India‘s Mumbai edition, Snaphot, 31st May 2001.
Snapshot was a weekly column that aimed to “capture that quintessentially Mumbai state of mind.” Sadly, TOI discontinued it.

Tags: The Times of India, Snapshot