Street portrait

The warm evening sun is the best for photography. Seated on a wheel-equipped platform just large enough for him, the man with only stubs for his legs has been watching me. It has not occurred to me to take a shot of him, for fear of violating his dignity. But he beckons from his spot on the tiny traffic island and asks me to take his photograph. There is no indignity in his demeanour; without hurry he smoothes out the checked cloth on his seat, moves the matchbox, beedi packet and coin bowl out of sight behind him, sits bolt upright and squares his shoulders for the portrait, as a car honks impatiently behind me.

“We’ve met before”, he says after approving the outcome of the shot. “You were here on the night of the Ganesh visarjan, right? Don’t you remember, we had a chat?” Now I do remember, embarrassed it took me so long. He smiles as he sees the recognition on my face and we shake hands on meeting again. Then I step back through the invisible glass pane to return to the security of my middle class life.

evening sun –
something in my eye,
a gnat I think

On song

There are no tickets for this concert, no scramble for good seats, no angry glares in the direction of invisible people who haven’t turned off their mobiles. I can listen to it from my bedroom, but it’s much nicer to do so sitting in the uncomfortable white plastic chair on the back porch. The small feathers on the magpie robin’s throat rise and fall with its song.

There are scientific theories about why birds sing, but listening to the clear stream of notes, I’m unable to imagine that this bird is doing it for anything other than sheer joy.

velvety caterpillar

the magpie robin

cocks its head

Heartbreaker

The two small girls sitting in the grey-brown dust are playing something like pat-a-cake. The one letting the dust trickle between her fingers is wearing a dress that’s a bright shade of red. The one watching is wearing nothing at all and her hair is a bleached shade of brown. It’s the colour of malnutrition.

sun and clouds

the little girl snuggles up

to her mother

Pavagadh

None of it is unfamiliar – the crowds; the religious merchandise; the instant photo studios with their garish backdrops presided over by a vengeful Mataji; the tired donkeys standing with bowed heads and swishing their tails to whisk away the flies from their sores… Yet on the misty Pavagadh hilltop everything is new, simultaneously fresh and timeless. In the middle of this bustle, a man is fast asleep on a rock outside the entrance to a temple. A fading sign above him proclaims the powers of Jungle Baba.

A little girl with a golden Jai Mataji headband stops to stare at the sleeping man. A short while later her mother comes rushing back and scoops her up in her arms. The stream of devotees flows past uninterrupted, upwards towards the Mataji’s shrine.

half mist half drizzle –
a half-eaten garland hangs
from the cow’s mouth

Ice cream

Although he sighs to himself every so often, the old man – hands folded in his lap and pen neatly clipped to a shirt pocket that betrays the outlines of a mobile phone – sits patiently enough. The boy is completely immersed in his little plastic cup of ice cream. Once in a while he surfaces to look up for approval, and the old man nods and smiles encouragingly.

When the ice cream has begun to melt, the old man takes over the flat plastic spoon. The boy’s white-rimmed mouth is always ready even before the next spoonful.

The old man’s shirt pocket lights up. “Yes yes”, he says to the mobile. “We’ll be home in ten minutes.”

evening breeze
the langurs on the wall
watch every movement

Schoolache

She was among the prettiest girls in school, one of at least three I had a secret crush on. One day we collided in the corridor outside our classrooms. I feigned annoyance and called her stupid, she merely laughed her tinkling laugh. For one long moment we looked each other in the eyes before returning to our separate lives.

stuffing my satchel –

the suddenness
of the school bell

Ice cream

Although he sighs to himself every so often, the old man – hands folded in his lap and pen neatly clipped to a shirt pocket that betrays the outlines of a mobile phone – sits patiently enough. The boy is completely immersed in his little plastic cup of ice cream. Once in a while he surfaces to look up for approval, and the old man nods and smiles encouragingly.

When the ice cream has begun to melt, the old man takes over the flat plastic spoon. The boy’s white-rimmed mouth is always ready even before the next spoonful.

The old man’s shirt pocket lights up. “Yes yes”, he says to the mobile. “We’ll be home in ten minutes.”

evening breeze

the langurs on the wall

watch every movement

Treasure

Sanjiv always contrived to sit close to us on the school bus. Since he was two years younger, we called him bacchu. To make up for this handicap, he let us in on the secret of the treasure on the roof of his house. Having obtained our half-hearted oaths of secrecy, he told us about the block of precious stone, worth at least a million bucks. We didn’t believe him, of course, but we didn’t completely disbelieve him either. A million bucks is a lot of money.

When Sanjiv’s family moved, we asked what had become of the treasure. He hesitated for just the slightest moment before confiding that his father had buried it somewhere, and was going to reveal the spot only when Sanjiv turned twentyone.

“What if he dies before that?” someone asked.

a metallic fly
on the bus window
blue
or maybe green

La Dernier Metro

The millipede is black with regularly spaced yellow markings. Its resemblance to a train at night is enhanced by the smooth way it glides along the ground on its many wonderfully coordinated legs. Suddenly I am transported back to a night many years ago.

A couple of minutes out of Neral station very little was visible other than the fading station lights. Though my father was sure of the general direction, the narrow paths across the slushy ground were difficult to pick out in the feeble light of our torch. “It’s just ten minutes from the station”, my father kept insisting, but we blundered through the darkness for what seemed like hours before my father exclaimed AH! All our torch showed us was a bunch of trees, but they were mango trees. Two minutes later we were knocking on the door of the owner’s mud-and-wood house. The kerosene lantern-lit face that appeared at the door abruptly went from suspicion to delight, and half an hour later we were polishing off the last of the bhakri and smoke-tinged vaal.

Later at night my father and I sat out on a charpoy under the mango trees. “That must be the last Karjat local”, my father remarked as we watched the near-empty train glide through the darkness. “La Dernier Metro” I think now, decades later.

The hug he gave me before I fell asleep that night was perhaps the closest this matter-of-fact rationalist man who was my father ever came to expressing what he never put into words.

flashing fireflies
the silence broken only
by crickets

Karvandha entrepreneurs

Dried karvandhas, with their sour-tangy taste, were a standard item on offer at Neral station, ten paisa a paper cone. My father decided that fresh karvandha juice might be a good idea. We spent hours sitting in the river washing and sorting the berries. The unsatisfactory ones we simply chucked into the water, which had the additional benefit of distracting the little fish that came to nibble on our toes. Whenever I got bored of the whole thing I dived for pretty stones, and very soon I had a good collection.



By way of market research we tried selling the juice at the station. Acutely embarrassed, I never once sang out “Karvandha juice karvandha juice, small glass fifty paisa large glass seventyfive”, the way I was supposed to. I merely thrust the glasses in my charge silently towards the bars of the train windows. As far as I was concerned, if anyone was keen on buying the deliciously pink-violet liquid on display, nobody was stopping them from asking what it was or how much it cost. I sold two small glasses the whole of that afternoon.



riverside
bulbul chatter
from the berry bushes

Driver Shaikh

Naturally, we liked the jolly drivers best, the ones who joked with us or just smiled silently to themselves when things got a bit uproarious on the back seats of the school bus. When one of these popular drivers was dismissed, we were shocked and upset for the day or two it usually takes children to get over things that don’t directly menace them. There was a hushhushness about the whole thing and we never found out what transgression had taken place.

Driver Shaikh was not one of the popular drivers. Always stern-faced under his khaki turban, he tolerated no nonsense on his bus. It was only much later that it occurred to me that he wore a turban because he was bald.

Driver Shaikh was employed by the institute my father worked in. One day he came home to pick him up in one of the institute cars. “Your father is a noble man”, he said to me out of the blue, nodding for emphasis, as I loitered at the gate waiting for my father to come out of the house. I had no idea what he meant. My father was just…my father.

When Driver Shaikh died of a heart attack, I was inexplicably sad.

two uniformed boys
drop their bags in the mud
I remember to smile

Rainspotting

Had they been well off, they wouldn’t have been on a scooter in this rain. The pater familias is wearing a raincoat with a peaked cap, the woman holds a pink umbrella and does her best to shield the child squeezed between them. The man is completely protected from the rain, yet every few seconds the woman readjusts the position of her umbrella to cover his head. The dark rain spots on the back of her blouse are coalescing into a deep red patch.

The man’s attention is focused on the road.

rumble of thunder

the scooter swerves sharply

around a pothole

Rain

It’s the lightest of drizzles, steeply slanted by the wind. The rain drops come dancing down along erratic paths, almost like snowflakes. The ground is as flat as can be, the street as urban as can be, but I am gripped by a feeling of being in the hills, a misty sense of mystery.

grey sky

an egret rolls and pitches

with the wind

Abruptly the rain intensifies. Soon it is coming down hard and straight. My umbrella is an open cocoon suspended in a timeless rush of water. Somewhere there is the muted sound of a car horn. A bus sloshes past spraying water, and I have a cartoon vision of grinning faces pressed to the bus windows.

In a moment the bus is gone and there is only the noisy silence of the rain.

watching out for puddles

very soon my shoes

completely soaked