#scurf104 old*** dispatches from Kovai

old scribbles from November, as I smoothed over and matured into a December in 2016, alone (well...) in Coimbatore

Napier days.. I'll share the beauty, give me some comfort... please. I visited a children's library today. And it had some very pretty nooks. And choicest collection of books. Outside the windows it looked like decay.. Inside the readers kept reading... The rain couldn't be photographed.. So I looked for beauty on the walls and the paintings that adorned the library...The rains did not stop. Not for once. Sadness was re-emerging... Beauty lost its sheen... soon everything was shrouded in a pregnant lament pause. And before I knew, I was drenched... A hollow, seeped, soaked sadness clasped me from within... And I was all but a visitor paying some attention, lending a couple of listens to the void within.

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New bottle today and a mixed day. Pretty worn out cafe corners to keep me going. First self-cooked dinner in the new house. IMPERMANENCE is the only constant.

My new workplace is a single storey building. A small hunched office, pushed back in time with some of the finest brains running the place. The office is home. The tea makes me feel alienated. I like my cup of tea over any other on earth except maybe honey lemon tea and of course Maa's brew of chai. This noon as I made calls to strangers to help me find a flatmate, I looked out of the window that breaks the flight of stairs running up to the first and only floor. I saw the sun shine its way gloriously through the tree leaves, a light wind caressing them. I remembered that it is November.

I think of Kanpur, my hometown where I spent a good seventeen winters. And it all rushed back to me. How on Saturdays after lunch and Sundays from late morning hours we would gather all our reading and studying materials with a chauki or two and with a chatai (netted floor mat) and climb up the stairs to the terrace. The humble structure of our house is sheathed by a terrace that during winters used to be our paradise. "धूप निकली है, चलो जल्दी छत पर।" Maa or bhai or I would say scrabbling up the steps. The winter November sun meant so much, dearly precious to me - as it was in those hours that I could snuggle up to Maa, hug her, kiss her, fight with her or simply just sit next to her mug a lesson or two while she would sit there knitting a sweater or scarf or pull-over or a pair of socks for either of us. Papa loves his afternoons just as much till date. He would join us after 3:30pm and then we would all head back downstairs... Maa would prepare tea for her and dad, and boil milk for bhai and me.

I miss childhood. I would want to be there for a brief ambivalent moment - if only to hang around in levity to see them - that family of four co-exist harmoniously in under the lambent November sunshine. I tried cupping the sheen today, it was impossible to clasp it, it was possible to live those moments though....

*

This is how leaving looked. The cabinets, ajar, make me look within. I search for something inside that was never mine. I leaf over pages of notebooks I filled with stories and names that were never full-enough for my mouth. I tasted the feeling of sinking into quicksand. The apartment lift always carried in its womb, the fear of getting stuck in the middle of someone's nowhere. Trembling knees and wide apart toes sank my being. I looked and looked, I couldn't find anyone. All I had were words. They never abandoned me.

*

I woke up well before the crack of today's dawn. An arranged pickup car with a driver arrived at my doorstep.

"vannakkam madame"

"Hello sir"

I didn't bother looking at his face. It was 4:45 am and I was fidgety about not knowing the language and venturing into the suburbs of the town where I work. I noted the car plate number. With no one to tell it to I shoved it into a WhatsApp chat group that was once resided by seven people. All of them left. I liked visiting cemeteries and graveyards. I stayed. Kept revisiting the hollow vacant boulevards of the chat window. 

I am on the way when I shift my glance from my left to straight out of the car through the windshield. 

It's a boulevard - coconut trees line the road. I think of the innumerable road trips I've done with my family. Across what was once a whole Uttar Pradesh which did not disintegrate into Uttaranchal, Uttarakhand, etc.

I think of the time I stuck my tongue out of the passenger seat window after eating Litchis. Nothing less than two kilograms of litchis I had settled for then. And I had them all sitting inside the car on the freshly upholstered seats of my father's first car. 

It was the millennium year. Mela had released. And we were driving through Dehradun. Of course we didn't stop in Dehradun. Papa never had a thing for tourist spots or regular hours. Wee hours and non-descript towns were his thing. Probably still are, given the unaccounted kilometres that I see on his wheel's metre each time I go home.

We drove to and around all the lovely places, wrapping four villages some times two towns in a day. Stayed in government guest houses and seldom ate out. Fruits were our thing. They're still mine.

I think of all those travels and I think of who I told them last of. A Telugu boy. And I think of how we had collectively driven in the rented Zoom car and lamented the loss of trees on long stretches of roads. He spoke fondly about the two hundred kilometre drive from his home town to the nearest mega city his family would take almost every fortnight. And I remember noticing a glint in his eye as he narrated to me stories long and short and abruptly cut about the travels that were undertaken. We drove from Lonavala to Bombay that morning.

I think of the road we drove on and the roadside food we ate. Boiled corns. He told me about an aunt who had cancer and how she survived. He also told me how his family was related to some big politician or actor, but he didn't bother and I don't remember much of it.

I also recall our rides on scooters. In Goa. Last year. Again palm trees lined the road. I remember seeing the road in the movie Guzaarish. We were tired and exasperated but I remember we performed everything as a unit. Eating, peeing, drinking water - one at a time, while one watched the other's back.

I return back to this drive in Coimbatore-Pollachi road as the driver pulls over and shows me a ship-shaped building. A marine training centre and college. I think of my first ship ride. I was three and all I remember is that I fainted in the ship and my father had rushed to get me a bottle of milk.

I guess I will call papa today and tell him that I rode on a hot air balloon. He will be happy, but then he will pass the phone on to Maa or he'll hang up one minute into the conversation. We lack in words. We don't communicate. We like peering out of the window and worrying about the electricity bill.

*

Dear Celine,

I'm writing to you from the other side of the woods. This letter is to find you in the twenty fifth winter of your life. It's your father's birthday today. Did you wish him? Pick up the phone presto. I want to tell you that all is not fine out here. But you're making it through pretty fit and fine up until here. You're out of the corporate job circle, you have all those titles (you didn't even think of) to your name, your parents are in a peaceful fine place and you traveled to Greece with them. There's a surprise too. Guess what, love did not fail you. You found someone on your tour in Paris and brought him home to meet the folks. Settled, all began well. It's the times of changes and of movements and of deep deep introspection that you're going through. You're crying more, and you're drinking less. You're not smoking — you're keeping fit — these are going to be constants for life. Your brother fared out well in life. The niece is in Argentina. Ha! See? You own your body. It's the nows that are worrying your scattered little brain but you're made for bigger stuff and you're going to make through this with so much sheen and shine, you'll not believe yourself. So I tell you, do one thing tonight — drink that can of wine, gobble that blueberry cake and walk for a while. Stay in the moment, float if you can. This instability is going to last a lifetime — your life is going to be one hell of an earthquake. Brace for impact!

Remember me,

Wish you the best of what you deserve and of course cannot handle when it's bestowed upon you!

~ c

2067

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***these dispatches are old, but i’ve re-read and edited them now, does that make a difference? i think not. share?