In Ahmedabad it is not cold yet. Blame it on global warming.
Years ago when I was here in this state of Gujarat, as a student I used to take
a lot of pleasure in wearing jackets and sweaters because it was so exotic to
be seen oneself in such clothes that were quite alien to your dressing pattern
when you were living in a tropical place. Hot and humid days condition your
body and a little bit of cold would pleasure you like a good foot massage. And
you look good in sweaters and jackets. You prefer to keep them on even when you
are feeling hot from inside. Today the climate has changed much. If at all
people wear winter clothes here it is only because of some nostalgia or by
habit; just the way you panic your train chugs into the platform or your flight
is announced. You know very well that you have a confirmed ticket and your seat
is assured. Still you panic. It is habit.
I go for walking wherever I am. It used to be jogging in the
beginning. Slow and steady running, lungs refusing to cope up, silent visuals
passing by you in a steady pace, unknown people crossing you or overtaking you,
then the harmonious rhythm happening between your breath and the movement of
legs. You become one and the same with your jogging. You can run kilometres without
realizing the fatigue. You feel good when the breeze touches your ears and your
shins feel the hardness of earth. Then one day your knees rebel and you shift
to brisk walking.
So I go out of my hotel room. Though winter has become an
old memory here, silk like darkness carries a whiff of cold in its invisible
pores. I don’t find a park in the vicinity. So I choose to walk in a side road.
I walk, dogs stare, milk mans cycles by, old people come out of darkness,
graves of unsung Muslim saints spring up from nowhere, birds chirp, women was
dirty vessels, devotees frantically beat their gongs, motor cars smile in their
sleep, trees stretch their branches and a baby cries in a cradle. I feel
someone is walking with me. I look around and see none. The feeling is so
intense that I start talking to that person. I tell that presence about all
those people walking at the same time in roads, parks, walkways, treadmills and
in dreams in different parts of the world. I tell the presence about the amount
of calories being burnt and mention about the fat and calories waiting on their
dining tables to be consumed by them. I smile into a grey morning that has just
pushed its limbs out of the blanket of darkness.
A dog looks at me keenly as it sees me talking to myself.
But suddenly it remembers something and goes back to its puppies. She knows
that these days people talk to others over invisible phones as if they were somnambulists
making tele-conferencing. The road narrows down and I reach shanty and from
there I reach a clearing where there is a temple and a few people who have just
swarm out of their deep blue sleeps. They look wet by dreams and beaten by
currents. Unseen words drip from their hairs. They speak to each other in
hushed up tones.
I walk back as I feel that I am not welcomed in that area. I
look a perfect stranger. I walk fast and the presence is no longer with me. I
try to talk with the presence again in vain. I emerge to the main road as if I
were coming out of a forest. The roads are already busy. Motor cars ply, shops
open their eye lids and look out and with the pupils drawn up they look like
blind people staring at the morning with some unknown purpose. My stomach
rumbles and I feel like having a cup of tea. I walk along the main road looking
for a chai laari. One is opened but the stove has not yet been lit. I walk
past. I see an old woman sleeping on the pavement with her belongings kept
within a thermocol packing tray. It must have been protecting a television set
or a fridge. Now it is her home. Four walls made up of thermocol. Her sleep is
sound as if she were a queen living inside a fortress protected by huge walls
and armed eunuchs.
One chai laari is opened. The stove is lit. A pot on it
steams. I ask the young man whether tea is ready. He picks up a milk pouch,
cuts it open and pours it in the vessel which is already steaming. He gives me
a smile and says yes. I stand there waiting for the first tea made by the young
man. He has a young wife and two small kids. She smashes ginger pieces in a
small steel vessel. Children eat some obscure biscuit. They seem extra obedient.
The family looks very content on that pavement. A cot where the children sit
and a few bundles summarise the worldly belongings of the family. The young man
picks up an iron chair and places it for me on the pavement. I sit on it like
the king of streets with no kingdom and no courtiers. And I feel a lot of
happiness.
The young tea maker works like a magician. He throws a few
spoonful of sugar in the boiling milk. Then he places a cloth over a steel
vessel. He pours the thick solution which would be filtered in as tea over it.
Then he pulls the four corners of the cloth to the centre to make it a sort of
bundle and lifts it to the air. It looks like a pouch full of wet and hot
secrets. The he takes out an iron pincer and squeezes the pouch. Tea that looks
like muddy water hisses into the steel vessel. I think he would pour a glass of
tea for me from it. He does not do it. He takes out two spoonfuls of it and
pours it on the floor. It flows into the dirt below the lari. The he takes two
small steel cups. He pours a glass of tea in it. Then he pours a glass of milk
in the other cup. He walks across the road. And pours both on the concrete road
divider in the middle of the road. Then he looks up to the rising sun and makes
a gesture of supplication.
Immediately, all temples become irrelevant to me. All kinds
of places of worship look nothing before that road divider. It looks like a
majestic old tree or a totem pole lay horizontally. Road is his temple. Sun is
the one that shines it. And at the pavement he lives with his family and tea is
what brings him his humble subsistence. And what better offering could be
offered by him to the gods of road where tired people come for a cup of tea?
Which god he needs to worship? I feel overwhelmed. Soon a thought comes to my
mind. Why did he waste those two cups of tea and milk? He could have given them
to some poor needy people. But I rubbish my thought. It could be a very
humanitarian act. But what about this idea of worshipping the unknown forces
that rule his life, that keep him and his family safe?
He pours a cup of tea for me. I take it in my hands as if I
were receiving a ritual offering taken from the feet of a deity. I drink it as
if I was worshipping something that I don’t know yet or perhaps would never
come to know. How is the tea sir, he asks me. I try to discern the taste? How
does it taste? I don’t know. But I say, it is good. I pay him and walk back to
my hotel room. Under my jogging shoes, all religions and the organized places
of worship crumble like those nameless biscuits that those kids eat.
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