Breaking the fast

The sun has set, but the sky is still far from dark, and closer to the ground there are fairy lights strung across a crumbling wall. At the first food stall, I have to rack my recalcitrant brain for a few seconds before managing to remember what the dish I want is called. “One plate of halim”, I order, relieved that I don’t have to point dumbly to the huge pot in which it is simmering. The sparse pieces of meat are more symbolic than substantial, but the halim is warm and soothing and wonderful.

Two long rickety tables have been set out on the pavement, surrounded by closely packed plastic stools. Every stool is taken. At one table are the men and boys – unseparated – at the other the women and girls. There is little talk, everyone sits solemnly watching the plates of food materialising on the table. Poverty is stamped not only on the clothes of these revellers; their silent faces too speak loudly of too much work and too little food.

Suddenly, one girl’s face lights up as a plate of kababs makes its appearance.

red reflections
a truck rumbles noisily
down the wet road

No country for fireflies

That brief stab of light in the darkness – I’m sure that was a firefly.

I’m sure it wasn’t. This is no country for fireflies.

Beyond the garden fence, there is the sharp little sound, like a tiny explosion, of a match being struck, but most of the light is trapped in the smoker’s cupped hands. Then the beedi takes over, its red glow waxing and waning in the dark.

midnight –
without a moon
the silence deeper

Nostalgia wins again, hands down

The sweets aren’t all that great. In fact, they’re kind of bad. I suspected that they might be even when I bought them. But they were so attractively packaged, each of them in the plastic box sitting in its own private, differently coloured, brilliant wrapping, that my consumer resistance never had a chance. And it wasn’t only the powerful magpie lure of the bright colours. No, more than that, there was the fuzzy childhood memory of the magic of standing in front of a tantalising assortment of brilliant sweets, and the exquisitely pleasant agony of having to make a choice.

If there was any hesitation before I bought that box of sweets, it was infinitesimally brief. That irrepressible child wanted them and had to have them, and I knew there was no point in trying to resist. Now the box sits in my ant-proof fridge, and I look at it approvingly every time I open the door to its coolness. But I’ve eaten only two of those sweets so far…

Mickey Heals the World

“Mickey Mehta wants to work together with you to Heal the World. Will you join his cause?” the Facebook sidebar asks. Now here’s something I can’t resist, so I promptly go to Micky M’s Facebook page, which announces “Someone is changing the entire World Today. Click to see who”. My distrustful mind stops me from clicking – so much shady virus and spyware stuff on the internet, after all – but I’m willing to make a guess. Mickey Mehta, working together with all of us?

See, it isn’t only Anna Hazare. There are other selfless heroes and messiahs too striving for our salvation. Is it too much to ask that we lend our support if we don’t have broad enough shoulders ourselves to take on such a heavy task? Heal the World. How wonderfully smoothly that rolls off the tongue! Sign me up, Mickey dada!

But one second – Mickey Mehta? Somehow that sticks in my craw a bit. Sounds too much like Mickey Mouse. Surely his parents didn’t commit as rash and irresponsible an act as naming him Mickey? Then again, the name itself is clear proof that Mickey is an honourable man. After all, which self-respecting scamster would have chosen a name like Mickey Mehta? I mean, seriously, if you were some huckster, what name would you choose – Mickey Mehta or, say, Baba Ramnarain or Ustad Rampuri or pretty much anything else?

Yet I can’t help wondering what his real name might be – Mikhileshwar? No, that would have been Mithileshwar. Mikesh or Mikal? (Well, there are some odd Gujarati names out there, you know.) Mixtup? (OK, sorry, I have no business making fun like this of the serious business of naming.) Mikado (maybe he was born in Japan or something)? Micro (low birth weight maybe?) Mikamber?

No, I’m just not getting anywhere with this. Maybe he’s just plain Michael Mehta – after all, if there was a Michael Madhusudan Dutt, why can’t you have a Michael Mehta? Whoever you are, Mickeybhai, I do appreciate your volunteering to take on this onerous job. I don’t know a lot of people who would do that. In fact, I don’t know a single one.

But still – MICKEY Mehta? I’m sorry, but I think I’ll just wait and see a bit. Please don’t misunderstand, Mickeybhai. And if no Donald Desai comes along in the next few days, I'll be signing up with you for sure.

Dusk

There is just the faintest tinge of blue in the grey evening sky. The drizzle is so faint that I have to wait for a few more miniscule stabs of coolness on my skin before I’m sure it’s real. The movements of the black and white cat in my neighbour’s garden are so slow and deliberate that it’s tempting to think it too is under the spell of this crepuscular timidity.

But there’s nothing faint about the bee eaters. Though their trills are not loud, they have a bell-like clarity. Flying in purposeful squadrons, they flit back and forth across the sky in their untiring search for insects. And now the rain drops have become a little bigger and make a soft sound on the leaves…

dusk
an early cricket
announces itself

International Day of Births

I’m beginning to find it difficult to keep up with this birthday thing. People are having birthdays ALL the time, all over the place. It can get a bit overwhelming. I mean, I have nothing against birthdays – if we didn’t have birthdays we wouldn’t even be here to comment on them, right? But couldn’t the whole thing be done in a slightly more systematic and organised way? Like look at the UN – they have an International Day or Week or even a Year for, say, the Girl Child or Political Refugees, and we can all say sympathetic things about them then and forget about the whole thing the rest of the time. Couldn’t we have a similar arrangement for birthdays? If we can have one Anti-Tobacco Day a year and lay off the smokers for the rest of the year, why can’t we do this with birthdays too? See – supposing we had an International Day of Births as early in the year as we can, say Jan 2 since Jan 1 is already taken – then we could get it over with at one go and live happily ever after for the remaining 363 days of that year. And if we're all agreed on Jan 2, we could just send everyone New Year-cum-birthday greetings at one go. On The Day of Births everyone would have a huge noisy rambunctious whale of a party, and the neighbours wouldn’t even complain because they would also be having a huge noisy rambunctious whale of a party of their own. There could be Birthday Groups of friends or families, where everyone could take turns hosting the party, sort of like carpooling.

Now doesn’t that sound like a good thing to you? Not much chance of forgetting anyone’s birthday, big-time saving on time and effort wishing people round the year. And best of all, parents could finally relax about gifts and back-gifts and putting up a better show than those uppity parents of their kids’ friends because everyone would be too busy celebrating their own birthdays to be able to go to anyone else’s party, and then go around afterwards saying how the cake was too dry and how they know a better event manager who would have done a much better job…

Good idea, no? What, you don’t agree? Well, then I’m not going to send you a Facebook gift on your birthday, so there!

Our Man

“Our Man” was a much-used term when I was in college. It was usually applied to friends when they starred in not very flattering stories. While Our Man anecdotes tended to have more than a hint of schadenfreude, they were rarely malicious. Though gleeful, the schadenfreude was generally affectionate, if such a thing is possible.

“So Our Man is standing there on Sayaji Rao Road, all nattily turned out and all. Right opposite Bata’s, just next to those trees where the roosting mynahs shit on you in the evening. Our Man’s eyes are popping out from ogling the girls. There was a whole busload of them. Tourist season, after all. Then suddenly Our Man looks down at himself. Maybe he felt a cool breeze or something in the lower region. So he looks down and notices that his fly is open. You should have seen Our Man’s face!”

Those kinds of stories. Our Man of the moment, more often than not present at the telling, would weakly protest the exaggerations, or try to ride it out with bravado, insisting that the apparent embarrassment was actually deliberate, part of some subtle plan his friends could not be expected to understand.

We all had our turns at being Our Man. In time we were obliged to become Men, just plain men with jobs and families, ambushed by respectability, and Our Man stories faded away. But somewhere Our Man still lurks, and pops up at unexpected moments…