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a clown in a rickshaw ocean
A new rickshaw wala abandons his rickshaw in the standstill traffic to go and get a paan.
He stands and listens to the cross-legged paanwala complain about his wife while he sucks and chews and masticates the betel nut and sweet coconut in his mouth.
Then, with a red mouth like a clown and dusty feet in chappals, he heads back to the sea of rickshaws. In that ocean, he cannot find his own.
He curses. His home place of Jamshedpur is nothing like this goddamned crazy city full of traffic.Traffic starts to inch forward maybe a hundred meters ahead. His passenger starts to worry, where is he, she is already late.
He swims through the ocean to reach her and swings himself into the rickshaw like an orangutan, swiftly starting the rattling engine. They lurch ahead just in time.
He feels relieved and a little bit heroic, and smiles a paan-stained clown smile at whoever will look. The children in the next rickshaw on their soft mothers’ laps laugh and point at him.
wonder in house-searching in bandra
I talked to Ashutosh on the phone the evening before I came to see the room.
“Well, the thing is that I already have two people who are interested in the room, but they don’t like cats. Do you have any problem with cats?” he asked. I assured him I liked cats, that I’d come in the morning to see the place.
I arrived at 9AM the next day at the century-old colonial bungalow near Rizvi college. Ashutosh had already phoned before I left the house:
“How long will you take to reach? Shall I put the tea on?”
He greeted me with a namaskaar as I slipped my shoes off, stepping over the threshold inside.
“The thing is,” Ashutosh said, “I have actually just gotten four new roomates. They’ve just come yesterday.”
Confused, I didn’t say anything, but followed him into the front room.
“You can meet them if you’d like.” He smiled, and pulled open a cupboard door.
Inside were four beautiful new kittens, nestled peacefully in a row against their mother’s body. She was beautiful, much more apparently serene than a human is when they have given birth only 12 hours earlier. The group of them were collapsed together on top of a grey towel.
The little ones’ stomachs were wet and sticky from being born. Mummy had bitten off the cords. Their eyes were closed.
“She had been whining so much when she was about to give birth… I think she was insisting that I leave,” Ashutosh laughed softly. “She didn’t like the male energy. I invited my neighbour to act as her midwife.”
Only hours old, the baby cats already wore beautiful patterns in their fur. They meowed as mice would speak, in high voices, and struggled around blindly.
The details of them were already beginning to be clear: their whiskers were brown with white tips, noses soft and damp, their tails ended in points. They were precious and helpless and already loved.
Each as they want, choose or feel forced to do.
Vehicles carrying animal and human lives line up at the junction of two major roads. They are in a staggered row, depending on each driver’s anxiousness or impassiveness to get going as soon as the light changes. The drivers lean back in their seats and spit to the side.
There, each person is doing as he or she chooses, wants, knows, thinks or has done before. They are at an intersection on the road, at an intersection and crossroads in life.
In one rickshaw is farmer and his son and their goat. They live in a dairy colony in Gurgaon but had gone to collect their goat from Bombay central, first arguing with a taxi wala and then rickshaw wala.
“My rickshaw is new,” complained their present driver. He was uneasy to pollute his brand new rickshaw with the smell of a dirty goat, at least not so soon! But was won over by a bribe. He, like those dyeing fabrics in Dharavi or those folding paan leaves in Mahalaxmi, is doing what he has been born into.
A child pushed a miniature merry-go-round made for children between a rickshaw and a cab, leaning with the whole of his weight and all of his skinny self to make it move. The paint was chipping off of the merry go-round: its colours were faded and the whole thing was not as joyful and fun-looking as it was originally intended to be.
The little boy is doing the only thing that he knows how to do, except for also being able to curse back at the rickshaw walas who curse at him for cutting them off. He came voiceless to Mumbai four years ago from a village in another state, but now his Bombaiyya Hindi is perfect.
In one taxi is a gaggle of Bandra babes, girls going out on the town. They laugh and pass around an illicit cigarette. The driver eyes their bare legs from his mirror as the cab jerks to a pause. The girls are too drunk on their beautiful young lives to notice.
They are doing what they want. How delicious.
A Sunni Muslim man sits on a motorcycle next to the cab. Behind him and sideways is his wife, peering at the world through heavily-lidded, kajal lined eyes. She’s hiding every lovely part of herself except for these eyes, and these she shows off.
Her sisters are more like the girls in the taxi, dressing modestly at home but sneaking off to flirt with older boys on the weekends. But for this married woman, honoring the tenements of her faith is more freeing than skirts or blouses could be. She is doing what she chooses to do.
An elderly couple stands at the curb beside the rickshaw with the goat, waiting to cross the street. Sir has placed his cane in front of Mam to prevent her from being too close to the traffic.
Mam’s fingers smell like the cilantro she rubbed between them at the market. She’s carrying a bag of ripe tomatoes and onions, unperturbed by the alarming price increase.
Sir was born in another time and place, slept by the highway and worked in tea stalls before succeeding in his entrepreneurship. No reason to have servants, to do everything differently now that things are different, he reasons. And so still, he walks to and from the market with his wife every evening to select the vegetables that she will cook for dinner. He thanks god that he does not have to worry about onion prices, that actually there is very little he has to worry about anymore. They together are doing as they always have done.
When the light finally changes everyone moves forth: some are faster than others to gun their engines (having had more opportunity or inspiration) and some slower, but each does move ahead.
All except for an orange tabby cat that is rust-coloured with dust. She had been wandering in front of the vehicles until the engines roared to life again. She jumped and hightailed it to a place on the roadside where there was a very pleasant texture of ground: round pebbles in soft dust. Rather than running the race with the others, she’d rather roll over there to scratch her sides.
in between
An Indian consulate is a fascinating place. It’s like a circus without animals and without a master of ceremonies. Everyone is performing, something, but they don’t know why, and they don’t know who they are following.
At the Indian consulate, I received my visa on a friday, on my third visit to the consulate that day. At first, I did not go at the right time. Then, there were too many people, whole Punjabi families, and I had another appointment. I was advised to come back in the evening by the doorman who i have gotten to know so well.
“Is baar mujhe MIL JAEGA ye visa!’ I joked with him, laughing instead of crying with anxiety.In the evening, the crowd had not diminished in the least. I waited, waited, and picked up my visa at the counter after a woman rifled through the filing box, after a man could not find it.
A little girl, waiting with her family for their PIO cards, ate a syrupy jamun from a sweetbox and tasted honey on her tongue.
At home, I woke up and slept without a plan. For today, for tomorrow. Sun came through snow-covered branches, through my window, and fell on my bed where I was.
Tentative friends asked me to come to this event or party, or even just to come over for tea, on whatever day. Tentative, I agreed, because it’s not like I had any other plan planned. But I shouldn’t have said I’d be there, because those days my moods couldn’t be counted on. My desires and energy levels couldn’t be depended on. I should have known that I could not be depended on, should have stopped saying that I may come here or there when it may happen that I stay home.
Days assumed a structure. I woke with parents to eat breakfast. Then, they run off to work, or, on the weekends, outside for yard work. It was saturday morning at 8:45, and dad went out to shovel snow off the walkway. I was up by 7:30, rushing out of bed for no reason.
So my dad shovels the snow, and I am languid on the couch. In repose. Having nothing pressing to do, I am not pressed. My same body that was once so active, frantic in its obsession to keep moving, is now content to rest against cushions, or roll around on beautiful heated hardwood floor.
In Bombay, I’d have left the house in the morning while everyone was asleep, and then have come back at night when everyone was asleep, slipping my flats off at the door and tiptoeing to my room. I ran around then, and lie around now.
How rich and at ease am I.
On a sunday in the pre-departure area, people were waiting to go to Hong Kong. Wealthy Punjabis and Chinese were nursing their infants and eating A&W french fries and starbucks lattes.
All of the airport-waiting people are addressed over the loudspeaker in English and Mandarin. Everyone speaks in a hum, hmm, the flight is delayed. Hmm, what does it mean for our connecting flights.
The Punjabi men looked smart and prepared. Shined shoes, trousers, sweater vests under sports coats, neatly-wrapped turbans. Some of the women already wore beautiful Indian finery, with heavy cardigans and wool shawls on top, chiffon dupattas draped over their greying braids. Some will change later, shimmying out of their tracksuits in the tiny airplane bathroom to change into beautiful salwar kameez, to greet their families once they reach Delhi or Amritsar or whatever their final destination is.
One man was becoming fed up. Others had left their bags in the seats across from him, and then went off to buy skittles and a magazine. So then, the man was half-heartedly defending these people from otherswho wanted those seats; it is crowded; this is unfair.
The man was anxious, when would they come back? Where does his loyalty lie? After all, he doesn’t know any of these people!
“Getting ready for Christmas?” smiles a tentative acquaintance when we notice one another in a cafe.
“Yes, I am! And you?” I trill, not feeling to explain that I won’t be here for Christmas, where I am going, for me, Christmas will not really happen. Why won’t Christmas really happen? Because. Why don’t I feel to explain? Because.
I may have tentative plans for the day that involve a long walk, many errands, writing a letter or an article, and end up spending the day in a cafe simply sitting and watching life. Or watching life from an even safer perch, through the window in the front room.
I may have tentative plans to recline all day and dream, and then get up and run six kilometres, and then come home and empty the dishwasher and prepare an elaborate dinner, just because.
Because of this incongruency between plans and outcomes, I do not make so many plans and just allow a natural deroulement of events.
Every fifteen seconds, someone enters the cafe, cracking the door and bringing a breeze. Everyone inside wears their coats and scarves, and their fingers, tapping on keyboards, are ice cold.
I am the richest person in the world in Bombay.
I had forgotten how beautiful this place is. In the way the light falls, the cars rock back and forth as they inch forward and avoid hitting the people, rushing between vehicles like fish in different currents.
I have never in my life seen such a will to live, not only live, but thrive and continue and love, against all odds.
There was one woman in the street who was only flesh and bone. She maybe weighed all of eighty eight pounds, but she carried a load of fifty pounds. Maybe for hours. When she puts down that load, she will pick up another: that of caring for her full family.
My relationship towards life has never been so tumultuous. I have never loved the world so much, never felt so angry towards it, so worried, inspired, or so cared for. I have never been as beautiful, as ugly as I have been here. There is no other place in the world where there is so much faith, and so much faith misplaced.
On cambie street bridge, I savour tidbits of conversation with strangers, as they feel like whole meals. The only sustenance I have in terms of understanding, of recognition. With a stranger, you cannot take as much, but you also do not owe as much. Yet. While neither here or there or anywhere, what a relief to talk to someone new : who doesn’t know you, doesn’t expect anything from you. You don’t have to explain life or circumstances to a stranger : thank goodness, because you might not understand any of it yourself!
In the plane, it was dark and everyone watched movies. Someone opened a window and the light came in from outside the plane, a shock of whiteness, brightness.
When the power for the Tvs failed, everyone was struck by not being able to know had many hours had elapsed, how many hours were left. In the flight, or in life.
A dad told his little boy,
“If you could run as fast as the plane goes before it takes off, you would be able to fly, too.”
The babies that were crying have settled. The toddlers that were running up and down light-studded aisles are asleep, tousled hair falling on their mother’s shoulders as they lean. Everyone slept and the creases in their faces were softened by the gentle yellow light. Everyone appeared younger and more tired than they really were.
Vishal is Maharashtrian, an HSBC information security manager, and a community centre cardio classes afficionado. He told me,
‘Only the people who have dreams can go to Bombay.’
‘There is a lot waiting for me there,’ I confided in him, ‘And now… I am coming.’
From Bronwyn, to Bombay : “It is only I who love you, insanely.”
First off, I will not say ‘Mumbai meri jaan,’ because we both know that I am yours.
I have been away from you for too long!
You didn’t notice when I left, you were preoccupied with other things. At the very moment that I swung my bag into the overhead compartment on a London-bound plane, there were teenage lovers kissing in Phoenix Mills. A birdwala was feeding his peacock-coloured sparrows in Crawford market. In an expensive old building near Nariman point, a family had gathered to watch as a Brahmin baby took his first steps.
My leaving was no different from these happenings, and all of the other happenings in your spaces at that time.
You didn’t notice when I left, and you will not remark when I come back. Anyways, someone is always coming or going from Bombay. How many come and go and stay every day?
You welcome everyone. You don’t care what their last name is, how fair-skinned they are, or what scandals are in their family history. You don’t care if they come empty or full, lost or found, thank goodness! If you discriminated like some places do, most of us would not be able to come at all.
I will stay in your spaces and won’t make a mark on you, but you will more than mark me! You will define me. And now I come to you again, to try my luck at life. Like so many have done and like so many will do.
They come for money, for protection, for opportunity. For a name, for anonymity. You don’t know their names; they make no difference to you. But you give each what she or he comes for. As quickly as they can receive, you give. In hope, in money, in happiness, in children, in rain, in whatever else could be desired or expected or wished for.
You, Mumba Devi, are a goddess. But you make us humans feel as though we could do anything! And this is what makes you so powerful. You do not offer equality or even respect, but you do offer hope and opportunity, unlimitedly.
You are so beautiful and give so freely, but, no other place has been known to demand so much.
In Taslima Nasreen’s book ‘French Lover’, a French man says to his Indian lover Nila:
“You do not love me. It is only I who love you, insanely.”
How many slaps in the face have I taken from you, from your officers, your people in charge! But I come back to it every time!
I have been turned down at the visa office, discouraged at the consulate, delayed at the airport. Every force that you have tries to drive me away from you, but still I am stubborn, and I manage to find my way to you.
So able and so fiercely independent, I have never been in a relationship as unfair as ours. And how funny it is that you so encourage and celebrate all of those qualities in me, and yet push me away so much!
But I am your devoted lover, and I feel that you don’t mean it. So I will forgive your hurtful words:
The visawala, when he said ‘You have no option. We cannot grant you a visa on any basis.’
The doorman, when he said ‘You will have to come back again. (and again, and again…)
The university, when they said ‘It will take a lot of time to gather everyone into a meeting, maybe next month.’
I am dedicated to you, and you are passionless towards me.
I say “I love you” and you say “I don’t care… but yes, you can stay here.”
You say take it or leave it, and we take it.
I have a lot of hope.
You, Bombay, are not created by your people! They are created by you. And now that you have beaten everything out of me by not allowing me to come to you, I am an empty cup. And now that you will finally allow me to come to you, I am running towards you like a maniac to drink water.
I will forgive you, and every force that kept me from you. And I will run into your arms. And this time I am confident that you will receive me, with as much love as I have for you, if even just for a moment… because I (and everyone else in any unfair relationship) live for that moment.
Because the dreams that you offer to me are worth more than any amount of time, money, anguish or difficulty that it takes to get me to you.
Yours faithfully, in love,
Bronwyn
