tap tap tap
this song, that video and in the midst of it all, the laptop conked off. I sit here with a borrowed one. An extra one. Key these words, after eons. Okay weeks, not eons. Cashless, moneyless, ripped off of my laptop, harangued by the slowness of my phone, touched by the tepid heat, after having showered twice in less than 12 hours, I try to gain access to lost words, memories from the weeks flown by when I made a conscious effort to not write.
what do I remember? let's find out while a new MSS recording of an old Ghalib ghazal loops on.
Listening to the flute adds meaning to most mundane and otherwise exhausting things. I remember making this mental note and nagging the much-abused urge to tweet this that noon when I was in an Uber pool making my way to work. The cabbie was an impatient fellow, reluctant to switch the AC on. The backseat of his WagonR was soiled with sparse paper bits, an unclean car my biggest turn off. I had requested him to roll the windows up and put the AC on when the app had indicated a new pickup. It was from GK1. The lane to the right of the famed Archana Complex that houses a few media houses' offices. The lane, reach in trees, like most other parts of the city had amused me abundantly on my way to the high court in the summer and spring of 2013. I had watched the ancient trees transfixed at their quiteness while "Manmarziyaan" from the movie Lootera had played on my Beats earphones. Their was solace in the song, there is solace in the song now. They, I hear now, are making a movie by the same title ~ 'Manmarziyaan'. Why do we fall short of words? Flummoxed I peep out of the car window to the sight of my new co-passenger waiting under the shade of a tree outside, what looks like his work-from-home-office. He sits in the front seat of the car, manoeuvring his phone from one hand to the other. The phones heat up first thing under the shrill, merciless April sun. He shoots a look of askance at me. "What direction are you headed to?" "KG Marg", I try to answer his query.
Woolly mouthed, he looks at me more curious than before. "Connaught Place", I reply in no time. "Hmmmm", and he looks through the windshield into the thickets of traffic blaring heat as if looking for a mirage. "Bhaiya awoke gaadi ka AC kuch kharab hai kya?" And they lunge headlong into a conversation about intricacies of the car AC and I am sat there, trying to read my newly bought Anjum Hasan book, wrapped in the thought that how is it that people store so much in their heads? So much about so many worldly things? And how I make do with such little this-wordly knowledge, not knowing much about how the smalls of the everyday mundane exchange themselves?
Do I know anything at all? But I do know the scratchy voice of Lillette Dubey lilts a bit and then swerves with a known joy when Ila offers to help with a meagre 3-4000 rupees in The Lunchbox. I do know how the squirmy eyes of the girl in Saajan Fernandes' neighbourhood lit up when he returned home and gave them their cricket ball back and advised them not to break any windows in the neighbourhood.
I will still try to put words together, string my meanings and my lived experiences into poured sentences every now and then. I will try to do what little I can with what these words are and how they come to me when I am on the road, looking for an auto or bargaining a mellow price for a big casket of fruits on a tepid afternoon outside my house, I will try to write and fight the soft nudges of laziness and of timidity. I will try and not give into the facile emotion of "what's gonna happen" and the poker-faced unimgainativeness of "this does not matter". I will write my non-fiction. I will try to set my failure at creating fiction aside, and indulge my senses and the working phone camera into giving me more to look into, and see. I will try...