Memories of monsoons past: Madras edit (2014-15)

this morning as i sat in my room, put together a work email, a cool draft grazed my neck. it comforted me and transported me back to the July of 2014. my first day at the ACJ hostel when my brother in law had come to drop me with some paltry luggage and a some books.

the lightness in the air, charged with the buzz of anything being possible, the milieu of the hostel, people rushing in and out for classes, or casually lolling around in the corridors discovering so many new lives around.

i would later, probably a week later realise, that the air smelled of the sea, so strong, so potent, it could alter your being. it was July, the weather supposed to be humid, the air pregnant with so many infections, yet i chose to wear my hair down. no matter how much i walked, how much i smoked, stayed awake, chatted, nothing would be enough. i would still be unable to experience that moment in time in its entirety.

everything seemed vast, so full, replete with the promise of being able to conquer it all. it rained in Delhi for two hours in two days and the weather got so alluring, making bashful, blushing brides of us all. the clement weather making us more human, slightly more accepting of the present life and times.

i think of the numerous roads i walked, the niceties exchanged, the memorable jokes, the movies, songs, oh all those Tamil ARR songs. from nenjukulle to innum konjam to naan nee to aathadi aathadi. all the friends who generously lent me their playlists, and others not friends, who welcomed me to their lives.

my roommate, her effervescent chatter, those long conversations with her, getting drunk and plopping on each other's shoulders. the friends who stayed the night in hostel rooms, the nagging commenting by some, the vacation planning, all that taking photos, plotting about attending the theatre festival, purchasing marlboro lights, gutter market, coffee and biscuits.

all those orange bars, those afternoon naps after lunch and before class, the various threads of conversations with several friends. ACJ was the place where i experienced so much freedom for the first time. some friends became close, some got distant, some remain distant yet close to the heart, with some there are sweet mellifluous remembrances. a gamut of relationships, no matter how much i sang, smoked, drank, ate, chatted, i was always afraid i wouldn't be able to get a grasp at it all.

“If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.” — Chungking Express (1994)

the beaches, the handholding with friends, losing slippers to the waves, getting drenched each time and then walking to MASH to get some grilled steak and burger. the planned walks to SPACES, the friends with whom we went downstairs to give laundry, and others to whom we passed on our laundry from the first floor window, the mad mad rains, the crazy AS classes, the ever expansive, accommodating library, where i discovered a new something every time i went there.

revisiting these memories from a surreal past feels like entering the ambit of classes attended, ones bunked, ones planned for, i feel like leaving my world as we know it behind and experience a daydream made out of rich technicolour experiences.

“Sometimes you think you have forgotten everything, that the rust and dust of the years have destroyed all the things we once entrusted to their voracious appetite. But all it takes is a noise, a smell, a sudden unexpected touch, and suddenly all the alluvium of time sweeps pitilessly over us, and our memories light up with all the brilliance and fury of a lightening flash.” — Julio Llamazares

Some days from then resemble a wordless poem, some a verbose drunk evening. Seated in the backseat of my friend's sister's old Santro, as we drove around in Adyar, from a cafe to a vegetable minimart, I remember looking at the monsoon clouds from the window. They huddled up on the vacant canvas of the gray skies, as I romanticised them thinking, hoping, praying for a hard, good downpour. A pile of vegetables, a bundle of groceries seated next to me, some stationery items I'd bought on impulse jangled in my handbag as the musty smell of the earth washed me over.

a discarded kishori amonkar raag drafted in through the window, and my mind wandered back to the heap of memories from the summers before, dust laden photo frames, discarded poems, and a floating afternoon slumber took over my senses. my own breath ricochets against the interiors of the old Santro, the sound of the speeding winds caressing me, as the car pulls into god forsaken Tharamani dressed in slowly peeling paints. the college gate ajar, with the guards absent, my eyes look for something unknown, clouds gathered around the tiny college campus like dark circles. time had passed us without any alarm, times flowing by us gently like a river during summers. an empty boat, with these memories in its lap, wandering in the back of my mind, like a nameless ghazal, far yet familiar, distant yet known, looking for shores unknown and new, wading through an miasma of feelings.

i look through my notes, diaries from then, and i chance upon this entry:

The lamenting waters kept running up to me... Trying to kiss these shabby feet... They wanted to share the millionth love story that spewed itself in the ocean's waters the previous night... The mother who came asking the waters if she could give up on life... The school boy who failed the Science exam wanted the waters to embrace him open-armed... The father who lost his seventh job wanted to find a job in the insides of the sea... The sooth-sayers had now begun to lose all hope in humanity... The eunuchs were more wronged than ever before... The fish catchers were tired of the morose lives they'd made for themselves...

The students were happily glum in the oblivion of what awaited them... The old man had parted with the waters only to sing his heart out for the world that had fallen in love with his image.... The grand-daughter who was waiting for a bedtime story... The waters had a few of these and a zillion more tears warped in them. They rushed up to me, each second to throw some of those at me and never to get them back... I did pick them up, collected the chapped sea-shells no one would spare a second look at... Dug into the sand for leftovers from the lovers' last night who tried making up... Found in all.. in the waters, in the shells and in the sand, tricklets of me... Tricklets of us... Of our collective beings...

The waters were me, the thickets were found, the sea shells completed the dog-eared corners of my heart...the sand...filled the gaping holes of my vagarized existence.

some days in Chennai, i remember exploring the wide, cheap and mostly thrilling atmosphere of the pubs there. one last memory is from a pub loo, with a longish queue outside the women's washroom in the basement. the men's loo was empty (ofc), so I used the loo in the inside closet. when i came out, i found a man peeing. both of us too drunk to register anything, I tiptoed outta the loo and bumped into a girl outside, smiling at me. we gave each other a high-five, grinning, she complimented me for the hair (I used to get that a lot). there was another instance at a bar during the girl's night out, when a woman was crying inside the loo. i gave a tissue roll, pacified her and bitched about her boyfriend. it was a fleeting moment of very brief familiarity, wherein we found each other and could keep company.

these memories are all we have now, and before the day tires me out, i thought i put these together and send them out to sea. on that wispy note..

“Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?” — Bernhard Schlink, The Reader