Winter this year, I feel, is like a long expected guest who
has sneaked into home when I was out for some quick work. I have been
impatient, like many others in the city, looking at the calendar, watch, sun,
moon, wind, stars and innumerable dress codes that adorn the streets of the
city, searching for the signs of its arrival. It befooled me once again. I had
just stepped out for a few days and by that time it was in. Once I open the
door, winter jumps up at me calling out ‘surprise’, tickling me with its
drizzle fingers. I embrace it rather reluctantly for I do not like surprises
like this. These ghostly appearances within the darkrooms with faces glowing at
the reflected lights of computer screens or television screens fill me with a
sense of dejection. I try to present an easy face, hiding my discomfort in
having encountered with a cheeky surprise. Winters have never been so before.
They used to come dressed up for me; dark chiffon lined with fiery orange in
the morning, grey gowns in the afternoon and red silk in the evening. Night
they used to be natural, sending me inside the duvet unnaturally clad in
several layers of woollen. Winter used to dance naked for me. This time it
behaves like a rogue.
I come out of a metro station along with many scurrying
towards workplaces, shopping ends and eating joints. I have a book to pick up
from an upmarket book mart, which I had ordered a month back. Holding myself
together I hit the street and it starts drizzling. In this city, people love
water because most of the year it remains dry. Show the picture of a sea to
anybody who is a natural inhabitant of this city, they will throw up their
hands and run towards it. Anything that resembles more than a bucket of water,
send the citizens here into a holiday mood. That is the sense of the citizens
who lived in landlocked areas. While people from south run towards hills,
people from north rush to sea sides. On the seashore, a north Indian adult is a
child. You get to see men in skimpy underwear managing their enormous bellies
while rolling along the retreating waves. Women get drenched in their hapless
daily wears inviting more lechers than they would have had they been wearing
swim suits. Art of art is concealing art. In beaches, in India it becomes true.
Democracy ends where gender begins; that is the rule of seashore. I have
digressed enough.
I look for a place of shade so that I can protect myself
from getting drenched. But I think only I am looking for a shade, rest of the
people are walking merrily as if they do not discriminate between sunshine and
rain. Suddenly I realize this city street has no awnings. If at all they are
there, the owners of the shops have rolled it up to their necks so that people
will not over crowd before their shops barring the view of the street. I turn
by body in forty five degree angle and walk along thinking that holding a palm
over my head and turning the body sideways would keep me protected from the
rain. It is a foolish belief that most of the people do, exactly the way they crinkle
noses to prevent an ugly smelling from hitting the nostrils or cupping the palm
over the ears to hear something clearly or even opening mouth while applying
eye kohl. Some foreigners stand like cardboard cut out pasted against the walls
wherever a little bit of awning is jutted out. I hurry past them and reach the
book store and it seems to be a bit overcrowded for its size. Rain. Rain has
brought more customers even to a bookstall, I imagine. The attendant in the
shop greets me as he knows the purpose of my visit and immediately hands over
the book. Your Radio Benjamin, sir. I thank him, make the payment and come out.
It is still raining outside. The cold has increased. I do
not want to move my body sidewise again. So I wait in the corridor that leads
to the inner lane of the market. Suited, booted, gypsied and pepsied people
come pass by each one making a competition with the other in looks and
affluence. Fat stray dogs taken care of by the shopkeepers and the animal
lovers from the rich neighbourhood, sleep around wearing jackets firmly tied
around their obese bodies. An one legged young boy approaches me with some bead
chains and pleads with me to make some purchases. I tell him that I do not have
any use of those chains. He hovers around me for some time and finding no
kindness oozing out from me hops away from there. Another young man comes with
two rotis and starts talking to the dog in jacket sleeping next to my feet. My
mother has made it butter. Please eat it, he says. Then he breaks the bread
into pieces and places it before the dog. The dog gets up unwillingly, smells
the crumbs and goes back to sleep. He is too full and feels like a garbage bin.
We exchange glances and go back to our worlds.
It is raining still. I see people holding very large
umbrellas, under which you can start a wayside food stall. That big umbrellas.
In our villages we hold small umbrellas. In cities people hold big umbrellas
because they don’t want to get drenched at any cost from any side. There is a
different psychology to it. It is a social marker. Big umbrellas show your
bigness. You can carry a big umbrella in the boot of your car. Office going
public cannot carry such umbrellas. Those who carry it show their affluence.
Above all, big umbrellas occupy more space in public and big umbrellas and big
cars serve the same purpose; occupy more space in the public domain so that you
can show your importance. I see an umbrella shop at a corner. I go there and
ask for the price of umbrellas. Shop attendant opens a big umbrella with a
flourish by switching on a button. It slowly goes up and covers a four feet
diameter. Rs.750/- He says. I shake my head. He opens a small one; the plebeian
types. Rs.450/- I put my hand out under the sky and the drizzling has
decreased. I do not want to make an invest in that umbrella. So turn my body
once again in forty five degree angle and reach the metro station. Winter
follows me like a shadow clad in greys.
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