It’s a Girl!

The Moment

I looked into his moist sparkling eyes. There were wrinkles around them. He appeared to smile, but I couldn’t be sure. Sleepily he looked around, not recognizing anyone…anyone but me. After all, we went a long way back. He felt familiarity in my touch and began drifting off to sleep again. I put a blanket around him, it wasn’t as warm as he was used to. I noticed he slept with his mouth open- in a toothless, almost comical smile. I realized there were so many things I didn’t know about him even after all this time.

He looked very peaceful in that sanitized environment. Complex gadgets beeped all around and nurses and doctors walked scuttled about. I don’t know how long I stood there just looking at him, waiting hoping he would talk to me like all those hidden conversations we had. For nine months, in those stolen moments, I spoke to him and he knew my every heartbeat.

He suddenly woke up, yawned and looked at me again with big sleepy eyes and I realized that the journey had only just begun, for me and my baby…

The Retribution

The rain was beating down hard on the parapet, loud enough to drown out muffled screams. He hurriedly rummaged through the cupboards and upturned every drawer. There had to be money hidden away somewhere! Old ladies like her didn’t go to the bank so often. His experience told him there would be a wad of cash stashed away somewhere.

He searched frantically for what seemed like forever and all he found was three hundred rupees and an expensive looking watch. He finally gave up and walked to the door. On the way he glanced once more at her curled up body on the kitchen floor, lying motionless in a pool of blood. Her eyes were still open, a strange bewildered look on her face. She seemed almost alive, the trusting old woman.

She held his attention a moment too long and he didn’t see the broken vase lying on the floor. He tripped over and hit his forehead hard on the shoe rack. He was conscious long enough to hear a sharp crack and the warm trickle on blood running down his cheek…and then he sank into the blackness.

 

Love Story

‘Next Station: Bandra’ said the recorded notification system of the local train.

She climbed into the crowded compartment with her father. The compartment was too crowded to afford either of them a place to sit and in the jostling of the crowd that followed, she was pushed further and further away from her father and landed up right in front of him. She looked up at him, slightly uncomfortable at the proximity and in a moment their world changed. In that one unexplainable moment, it was like a star was born in a faraway galaxy and world stopped moving. The heat, the dust, the crowd all blurred into the city that sped by outside and they both just stood there looking at each other. There was something in the way she leaned into him when the train curved sharply on the tracks and the way he stood firmly before her. And all of a sudden, the next station came and her father pulled her away from him and she was lost in the crowd. He remained there, stunned, as the train began to move again.

‘Next Station: Santacruz’

The Wait

That evening he came home knowing he would paint his masterpiece. Relics of his past hung in every reputed gallery in the world, and yet he knew he hadn’t found the one. A lifetime had been spent waiting of the masterpiece. Now it was time.

As the sun sank behind the cluster of busy homes and hardwood trees, he lit a candle by the table. The blank white canvas stared at him, waiting to be painted upon. The whiteness was meaningless, mute and unthinking. The drying paint on the palette having long resigned to its fate, waited to be touched by the brush. And the brush rested listlessly in his hand, waiting to be lifted again. And he looked out of the window, waiting for his inspiration.

By morning not a drop of paint had touched the canvas and the brush lay on the floor. Once more he looked at the blank white canvas, but now it spoke volumes. It spoke of the endless wait of the night, the unused canvas, the untouched paint, the paintbrush on the floor, the inspiration that never came…and yes it was a masterpiece.

 

Forgiveness

I sat there for a long time. Unable to move. Unwilling to move. It was dark now and the rain was beating down harder. I cold wind was blowing. I knew the porch roof had leaks. It would be all wet now. He knocked again…

“Please! I beg of you! Please let me in. Help!”

I felt dark. Like someone switched off the lights inside me. And it all came back again. I didn’t remember if I had cried back then. In retrospect, maybe I did. It was all hazy and yet, painfully clear. It seemed to be very cold in those days, even in the summers. I would often be alone in the afternoons, when others kids would be asleep. Their mothers wouldn’t let them out to play.

I would sit about listlessly, with the few toys that my mother would get on the way back from work. Cheap china-made dolls from stalls by the roadside. I never really remembered when it first started happening. All I could remember was the touch. The raw, hideous touch of his hands. I probably didn’t know what was happening, but there was instinct, the most primal there was, which told me it was wrong.

He came back often, sometimes several times the same day. I would try to run away, but he would always stop me. There was a smell of dust on him. Dust and alcohol. And despite his stupor, he was always to strong for me.

I could still smell the dust in nightmares sometimes. Now I could hear the howling wind…

“Let me in!”, he cried again. I could hear the pain in his voice. “I’m bleeding! Please!”

It was this voice, this very voice that I would dread. It was a voice that would change a lot too. When my mother came home, often late at night, he would be sweet. He m\would make sure the alcohol wore off. Sometimes he would even bathe. He would be clean. I never felt the same way in those days. I would wash myself, my clothes, several times. I would spend hours in the bathroom at a time. It was only less time that I had to face him. Despite my blurred memory, what I could remember best, or worst, was this dull pain. It was a pain in my heart. Beneath my little ribs, a nine-year-old heart used to cringe, squeal and throb with that dull pain.

“I’m in pain! Please listen to me…let me in…it’s…hurting….They stabbed me….took everything away….i can’t go anywhere…please let me come in….only for a few hours. I’ll go away”. His voice broke in through the cold shrieking of the wind.

I now stood with my back to the door. I couldn’t bring myself to forget. My mother come to know eventually, when she came home early. What happened after that, I didn’t know. She sent me to my room. I sat there for a long time. Trying to listen to the muffled noises outside. Then she came back and let me out. We never spoke about it. I discovered he had left with his things, never to come back, till now.

“I will die here if you don’t help me.” His voice was feeble now, almost like a polite request, like he was asking for more tea, please.

For one small moment, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I turned around and opened the door. The cold wind came in with the smell of dust and alcohol…

The city that was…

The word “terror” means a lot more today. It began to mean a lot to me not on the day the attack happened, but recently, when I witnessed an attack of another kind. It was a week since then. It was the Tuesday of the Peace March at Gateway. I was reluctant to go there first when I heard about the huge numbers gathered. Why add to their troubles, I asked myself. But then I heard an acquaintance needed help distributing some leaflets there. Something about starting an awareness group. Well, I believed this was a little more constructive that lighting a candle and wishing terrorism flies out of our lives, so off we were to Gateway.
Seven of us from Wilson College walked upto Gateway with a simple placard in our hand. It read-“One Month from now, will you still care?”
We walked all along Marine Drive, crossed over at Oberoi, past Mantralaya and to Regal. Everywhere people looked at the placard with curiosity, to say the least. On the way I also witnessed an odd phenomenon. Generally people on Marine Drive sat for hours on end, staring at the water, the setting sun, the city skyline. Today it was different. Opposite the Trident, people sat the other way. To hell with the sun, broken glass was the new tourist attraction of the city. TV cameras still rolling and Mumbaikars in every shape and size available were speculating where exactly the terrorists were taking people hostage that day and which window the commandos shot at. Even as the police and the management struggled to piece the hotel together, onlookers enjoyed themselves.
I feel ashamed of my city and its people today.
Gateway was another story altogether. There wasn’t an inch of empty space to stand on. But just as I was filling up with pride to see so many people wanting to make a difference, a chill ran down my spine. Forgive the cliché, but a huge contingent of hotel management students marched past me screaming and shouting slogans. They were followed by many more such parties. Anti-Pak campaigning seemed to be the theme of the day. It was scary, to say the least.
We stood there, three of us, as the others went ahead, squeezing through the flood of human bodies. I use this word because most of them there were incapable of being called people…living, loving,thinking entities. It was just a lot of anger manifesting itself in so many people. I couldn’t find any peace in this peace rally.
Film stars gathered, so did the press. But I increasingly began to lose sight of the objective of this meet. Were we here to vent our frustrations? Were we here to shout swearwords to the citizens of another country? Were we here to belittle ours by singing contrived and superficial salutations? What were we doing?
The ‘PEACE’ rally took wearing-patriotism-on-your-sleeve to a whole new level. There were flags everywhere. Mindlessly people waved them and screamed obscenities to Pakistan and our own politicians.
I felt scared. I felt this city scarred. There was no place to put this anger away. Even elderly, wise-looking ladies and gentlemen were spitting bile. My city was no longer the place I loved so much. It was no longer a place where people were at peace with themselves…and we speak of peace in the world.
I cried that day, on the long ride home. I crossed the whole of south Bombay and up to Santacruz. I mourned for the city that was. I cried for the peace that never will be.

She…

She woke up suddenly as if from a nightmare. She looked around; the streetlight outside her window cast an obscene orange glow on the room. Then, just as suddenly, the silence of her surroundings began to scream inside her head. It was a silence she hadn’t known for a long time. An eerie calm…
For as long as she could remember, her nights had been full of men. Men of every shape and size and kind. They all needed one thing from her and she came with a price tag. The whole thing was nothing more than a business transaction, nothing less than her way of life.
Human rights, exploitation, cruelty, women trafficking, were just big words. They didn’t mean much for a life on the streets. Now, as she stood by the window seeing the road below, she remembered each and every one of those men. Every face, every smell, every touch. It was all imprinted in her memory. But for them, she was just a faceless stranger. A faceless body that was meant for their pleasure. She knew that, and as hard as she tried, it was a fact she could not deny. But neither could she forget them and often they haunted her. Even on those rare times when she was alone at night. But somehow, she didn’t see them as her perpetrators. She never thought that she was being used or wronged. The matter was as simple as fruits on sale, only here, she replaced the fruit.
But the previous day had changed a lot for her. Some NGO, in an attempt to ‘save’ girls like her, got the police to raid her brothel. They were then sent to a home far from the city to be ‘cleansed’ and made fit for claiming a respectable position in society. Calm and sophisticated women, in crisp cotton saris spoke to them for hours on how they sympathized with their condition and how together, they would make the world a better place to live for them.
And then he came. His wife worked with the NGO. He had come to pick her up. His six-year-old daughter sat in the backseat of the car. He came up to each of the sex-workers and politely sympathized with them. As he spoke to her he didn’t notice her staring straight into his eyes. He didn’t remember this face. He didn’t care. He, along with his picture perfect family, drove off in the car. His daughter stared at her through the rear window. She remembered the car, she remembered the backseat…
For the rest of the day she kept thinking about him. She had been with him twice and he didn’t remember her. She had always believed that her way of life had been the best for her. Today he reinforced this belief. And it all seemed fake. The promises the NGO made and the life that was laid out before her. At the dinner table, they spoke about how women should be respected in society. She looked at the food kept before her and thought about his wife. The food would be eaten, whether it was laid out on china dishes at a luncheon or served in a steel bowl at the street corner. There was no difference.
That night she made a decision. She packed her things in a plastic bag and quietly stepped out of the gate. The night air was still and warm, as if someone had switched off the wind. She paused for a moment before walking back towards the city and its lights, and its noise and its people and its men…

Tyger Tyger, Burning Away!

It’s almost been a very long time now since the last tiger roamed in the wild. The jungles don’t exist anymore. The balance was upset. The apex predator, a natural indicator gone, herbivore population explosion, deforestation, climate change, global warming,….., the list goes on. There are very few of us left today. We thought we’d make it, but the technology we created wasn’t enough to insulate us. In fact, that is exactly what did us in. While sustainable development is still just a bookish idea, we’re endangered, and edging dangerously close to extinction. Yes, we the humans. The web is upset, and nature is getting back at us. Natural disasters, epidemics and an environment on earth that is hostile to life forms. There are fewer of us than was ever imagined before, and we too are dying out. This is it. They say your entire life flashes before your eyes just before you die…

2008: A few weeks ago, it was discovered that the tiger population was just over a thousand individuals. And that too, is an official estimate. Don’t we all know what a notorious reputation “official estimates” have! So while state governments are in denial mode and most of us anyway don’t care, the stripes are gone for good. Even if they do accept the figures and make genuine attempts to “Save the tiger”, how possible is it? The gene pool has already been reduced. Even if we can make the species go on for a few more decades, it won’t be long before genetic mutation gets the better of the tiger. In breeding will lead to cubs being born with defects that will make survival in the wild even more difficult. They too will be gone some day. All the tigers. Just pictures left behind, to teach the kids. In those pictures, somewhere among the stripes, she’ll look at us again. A blank stare.

The 21st century: I remember standing in the Shahu Palace of Kolhapur. It’s a museum today. There were glass cases full of stuffed animals. One particular case had several tigers. There were cubs, males, females, almost every size. I remember being told that killing a tiger was considered a sign of valour for the royalty.
Picture this:
A hunting party vs. a solitary animal
Men armed with guns vs. a tiger armed with nothing but its own ill-adapted body
Men on elephants vs. a tiger on foot, soft velvet paws
A planned murder vs. a struggle for survival
… and valour they called it. I remember those eyes looking through the glass. Those dead eyes. A blank stare.

The 20th Century: independence, many were to discover, didn’t come cheap. I live in a village in India. I don’t know what freedom means to me. It hasn’t brought me anything. The forests were my land. It was taken away from me. I know I need to feed myself, my family. When people are willing to pay money for poaching, for buying fur, bones and almost every part of the tiger’s body, I don’t hesitate before I shoot that animal stuck in my snare trap. But I remember that face, which haunts me sometimes. As if it were saying something to me. A secret message. A blank stare.

Late 19th century: “Buffalo calves were tied in the jungle as bait. About fifty elephants were sent out to circle the place where the tiger was likely to conceal itself. Then, when the ring was ready, orders were given for a couple of elephants to go inside and find out where the tiger was hidden. The tiger which remained encircled for such a long time usually got enraged, charging at the elephant that went near it. In the beginning it’s exciting, but after a while, the tiger becomes exhausted and lies down… With two or three rings being made a day, I have seen hundreds of tigers being shot.”
-Maharaja Bahadur Banali’s Acount in a Manual on Tiger Hunting.
I came across this account while I was watching a documentary on the British Empire. This documentary also went on to say that in just ten weeks, Viceroy Lord Linlithgow’s hunt killed 38 rhino, 27 leopards, 15 bears and 120 tigers. The visuals were shocking. Men standing over the corpses of scores of tigers. Congratulating each other for having brought home another rug. A rug with a blank stare.

There are centuries of memories. I have seen the tiger. I killed it. I will pay for it. I am the last Homo sapien left on earth. Possibly the last in the universe. I look up at the blank, cloudless skies. Just as blank, as the blank stare.

A Tryst With the Gods

It was a fine morning. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and a handsome young man was walking through the ravines in the Chambal valley when suddenly- Dhishkyaooo! A bullet from Dakoo Bhairo Singh’s gun pierced the silence and the man’s chest muscles. Dakoo Bhairo Singh curled his eighteen inch moustache and grinned a 440 watt-yellow-toothed-smile.
About four hundred miles from all this, with nothing to do with Dakoo Bhairo Singh or the unfortunate (but handsome) nameless junior artist of our story, I was in a train, on way to college. In perfect oblivion of all that, I was sitting in the first class ladies compartment, staring out of the window at the dozens of residents of this city who live in toiletless homes and use the railway tracks for a variety of purposes- the earliest in the day being the smelliest. The sights and smells however managed to distract me from the perfectly offensive obscenities scribbled on the seat before me. Besides, odours from the woman sitting next to me were fiercely competing with those coming from outside, to the extent that I was contemplating suicide by holding breath.
Amidst the odour mania, general train squabble and the faraway, inaudible roar of Bhairo Singh’s laughter, Dadar arrived. Along with several other women (and their respective smells), she entered. Not a word escaped her mouth but all women showed signs of reverence to the “Western Railway” badge she wore. Automatically hands reached into pockets, purses, wallets and other places of storage (ahem) to bring out passes and tickets. I too conformed to this glorious tradition.
She looked at the tattered document I held out and then at me. After a tense moment she finally uttered, “Expire ho gaya hai!” My world was shattered. Those three words spelt doom. But not much could be done. At Elphinstone Road she led me to the Station Master’s office, or rather a dingy room which resembled those used by the armed forces for torturing POWs. Other passengers looked at me with sympathy, contempt, ridicule and Thank-God-I-Wasn’t-Caught looks.
But what could be worse than getting caught the very next day after your pass has expired? I was soon to find out, when I was made to empty my wallet, pockets and bag for money to pay for a fine of Rs250. I had a sum total of Rs.170.25.
The station master looked at me, as if to gage if I was a seasoned railway rules offender. He waited and thought. Finally he made a slip of “Extra Luggage” for Rs.165 and issued a ticket back home for me as I waited there like a criminal in trial for murder. Finally he smiled a 440watt-yellow-toothed smile, picked his nose and handed me the receipt and ticket ( using the same hand of course), but personal hygiene isn’t high on the list at such times.
I ran out as quickly as I could and silently thanked the railway gods who had smiled upon me. The situation could be well described by the Hindi films of yesteryears when the hero came out of the blue-grey metal (or thermocol) doors of Central Jail. Relieved and broke, I made my way back home, with a vow to check the expiry dates on railway passes in the future to avoid any tryst with the Railway Gods.