A Valiant Man

The trip to Ahmedabad had been uneventful,  pleasant even. Dad and mum, in their eighties now and Sakina were with me. After a halt at the Shrines of Syedna Kutbuddin Shahid, we rested and prayed. I was almost relaxed because this was the final leg of the journey. Dad walked slowly with the help of a walking stick. Afflicted with degeneration of the knee cartilage,he walked with a great deal of trouble. pain was a constant that he battled with pain killers.  

We reached the platform at about nine p m. The train was scheduled to leave at ten. Concerned a little about time i anxiously scanned platform l where the train was supposed to arrive. To my horror i was told it would only go to Platform Five instead. The coolie, with our considerable luggage started to run ahead, sakina in his wake. I started to hurry the parents towards a lift which would take us up to the footover bridge. Crowds notwithstanding we struggled slowly along. Dad must have been equally anxious, but was calm, concentrating on hurrying as much as possible.

After what seemed an interminable wait for the lift, we alighted on the footover, only to be faced with the prospect of a long stretch of corridor to take a lift down to the platform. Nine thirty. We were just descending on to the platform. Nine forty. We were finally on the platform with the train alongside us. B 2. B 2. Almost obsessively my mind repeated those words. The number of the bogey we were supposed to be in. Panic stricken we turned left and struggled along amidst the teeming crowds, Sakina was nonstop on the phone hurrying me on. All of a sudden i stopped. To my horror i realised we were heading right instead of left. Towards S 2. Panicked Ileft the parents and raced in the opposite direction, abandoning the folks, reaching the right bogey in a flash. Swinging up, my daughter took one look at my face and took off to find the folks. I collapsed on the seat, my entire body trembling with the surety that they would miss the train.

Five..... Minutes to ten. Anxiously peering from the door, i got a call. "Ma, put your head out. Do as i say. Fast." I did just that. Miraculously, dad's head emerged from the door of the adjacent bogey. Mum was pushed in literally, followed by dad. Finally in flew my brave daughter. Just as the whistle blew and the train started, we sat stunned and laughing almost hysterically. We had made it.

Sakina it seemed had the sense i lacked. Having flown across the entire platform, she had located the folks, and got them to climb in the nearest bogey. Then. pushing people aside, brandishing one of dads two sticks, she hurried them along until they reached B 2.

Having caught our breaths i anxiously turned to dad. Only allah knows how his feet must have pained him, Only Allah knows how tired he must have been. But nary a word of complaint from him. He kept reassuring me that he was fine. Everything was fine. Any other old person in his place would have blasted me off. Not my dad. That is the stuff he is made of. 

Wardrobe Malfunction !

Wardrobe Malfunction...Ah. Those words ! Man or woman, those words jumps out into the consciousness. Images of women clutching at falling dresses assails the voyeur in most all of us. But ah, gentle reader, this one, this blog is about malfunctions of a different kind. One only Indians are afflicted with. Bemused ? Don't be. I refer to the Indian dhoti. As worn by Indian men.

All of sixteen, I was. Travelling with an old highly possessive aunt, who glared at every male who happened to even look our way.  We had just landed at Ahmedabad station with only about fifteen minutes to catch our connecting train to Mumbai. Off we raced behind our spritely coolie, or raced as fast as her old legs and panting heart could carry us. Holding my hand firmly in hers, we trotted along, when suddenly she realised that a man was calling after us. Aunt looked back, consternation giving way to indignation as he waved at her. Clutching my hand tighter still, she forbade me from looking back and tried running faster still.

So off we sailed , trotting as fast as we could behind the coolie, with aunt darting killer looks at the now desperately running after us man.  In spite of myself I looked back. What I saw made me stop in my tracks . Skidding to a halt, dragging aunt also to a stop, I pointed behind us. Pulling at me,  her ranting stopped midway. The poor man's dhoti was caught in aunt's trailing purse. Clutching at his rapidly opening dhoti, the man gave a hard tug, dislodging the errant edge of cloth caught in the hook of  her purse. Glaring at her he whirled away, muttering expletives under his breath. A sheepish aunt tugged at my hand as we carried on towards our train. This time I trailed behind her. You see I was trying to run even as I clutched at my stomach, I was laughing so hard.

The rest of the people travelling with us thought us to be quite mad. Aunt and I. Every few minutes we kept bursting into giggles, aunt wiping tears of laughter rolling down her cheeks now that we were safely ensconced in our train.

Fast forward to 2014. My daughter had just joined college.  The admirable thing about this college was that many differently abled students were given seats.  In her first year, she was highly excited about a guest professor from abroad who would be giving them a lecture that day. He was an Indian and proclaimed himself thus, by his attire. A dhoti and kurta.

Anxious to meet him, she and a friend waited at the gates to catch a glimpse of him as he entered.  Expecting a venerable old man, to their consternation, in strode a youngish man in his thirties. However for some reason he seemed to be rushing in behind a student. Looking at their watches, they wondered why he was hurrying so much when there was still a good fifteen minutes to the lecture.

Their wonder  turned into peals of  quickly stifled laughter as they realised the reason for his haste.
Ahead of him walked a blind student in whose cane was caught that time bomb of a garment, his dhoti.  Fortunately, they reached the foyer where the student halted with the  harried professor in his wake. Catching hold of his shoulder, he made polite conversation with him while surreptiously  pulling his errant garment together.

So gentle reader, now you know why the Indian male abandoned this garment altogether. The imagination boggles at the plight of a local train jam packed with males wearing dhotis and trying to emerge from it with both dhoti and dignity intact !

Yours.. Mine.. Who's...???

The station, Mumbai Central, was its usual chaotic self. Locals,(as in trains) thundering in with throngs of people hanging on for dear life. The masses on the platform desperate to get in, surging ahead. Like grains of sand being brushed off, the train shed its passengers, amongst who was me. Heaving a sigh of relief, straightening my clothes and patting my hair in place i took a second to catch my breath.

Ahead of me people raced towards the exit. Joining them, i wondered why they were veering off into two branches, left and right, much like a  fast flowing river dividing into two before converging to  spew its waters or humans , into the ocean of people outside. Moving involuntarily to the right, thoughts racing faster than my legs, some part of my brain registered shock, horror. The obstacle that was dividing the river was a body. The body of a young man, lying inert on the platform. Withdrawing into myself, more emotionally than physically, i too prepared to race past. Curiosity , inherant in every human being, that which makes us look even while we withdraw  from a situation, a kind of latent guilt at not involving oneself, made almost every person going past, look at the man before rushing past. I, too, found myself looking down as i reached the man. A stranger, a drunk, a victim of violence an almost everyday occurence in our city. I expected to  witness all of this. What i saw, stopped me short. Jostled from behind, yelled at even, for stopping , i dropped down in front of the man. 

The child playing in the mohalla, was a boy of about six. A beautiful child. Gold brown glistening hair. Eyes of the same color. He played quietly, all by himself, running a small car around in circles. His mother, of whom he was a splitting image, sat across keeping a close eye on him. From my perch on my gran's home across, i too sat, reading a book. Compulsively my eyes would be drawn to him now and then. He was that pretty a child.  

After a few days of familiarising ourselves thus, i  exchanged smiles with the mother. I could see that her life revolved around him mostly. She never tired of sitting outside while he played, she fed him with the single minded devotion of a single parent. They would emerge together from the home whenever she went out, and return together. The house they lived in belonged to her mother, who was now too old to do much, except heave great sighs at the misfortune of having  her daughter return after a divorce. The daughter who ran her home for her, who had lived with her for most of her life, except the past eight years or so, was perceived  a burden. In those days, divorces were frowned upon, spoken of in hushed tones. Destiny was cursed, tho, and a home offered reluctantly to the woman, who was divorced and whose husband had abandoned both mother and child to marry again for love. Or lust.

I built up a rapport with both the mother and child. At seventeen, and  vacationing in the back of beyond town of Palanpur, i was studying and in total sympathy for her. The child was delightful. We played hide and seek, catch and cook and marbles. I would buy him biscuits or share a baraf gola with him. He would sit in my lap happily slurping away at the gola, while i hugged him and held him close. Why and how do we develop an affinity for some ? A latent maternal need ? Whatever. He was so easy to love, such a delight to talk to. Such a happy, good, little boy, who, if you loved him, would love you right back.

After the summer holidays were over for me, i left Palanpur. The next time, i returned was a good decade hence. As soon as i stepped into Gran's mohalla, my eyes sought out the lady across. How was the little chap. Surely a handsome teen. Truth be told, he was the one i had thought of often. How was life treating the mother and child ? How were  the two ? To my  great disappointment, the house was locked and barred. Looked uninhabited and ramshackle.

As soon as i could, i tackled Gran. She told me that the mother had remarried. The child she had loved, with all her heart and soul, she had left with her old mother. As time passed I continued to glean information about him. That he had set up shop in Madras. That he had married. Then disturbingly, that he was extorting money from his dad. That he was into drink. He see sawed between ups and downs. At some point he had cleaned up his act. Got married and had kids. I continued to get snippets of news. For a while he was stable. The wife and kids gave new meaning to his tortured life. This didn't last for long however, as he lapsed into drink and even worse.. drugs.

Absorbed in my own life, i relegated him to memory. Having come into some kind of contact with his dad, now married to a distant relative of mine ( his third wife) I knew he was a sober, responsible man. Guilty about his child,( he now had another son ) he bailed him out as often as he could. Sent him to rehab.
The wife, tiring of his misdeeds, left with the kids. Divorce meant he was foot loose and floundering once again.

It was his eyes, that stared at me now. His eyes from his lifeless face. I accompanied the police to the hospital. From there i contacted his father. Unable to come himself, (or was it unwilling to come?)  he asked a distant relative to complete the formalities. The timing was a kind of revenge he had taken on his dad. His half brother was getting married on that day. Dad. And Dead. Ever notice how only a small vow..el.. separates the two.

Two of us. The distant and the not so distant, for had i not always cared..., we took him to the masjid, from where they buried him. I wept then. Wept for a life not wanted, wasted, abandoned. Even by those who had given birth to him.

A Distant Past

 The view from the wimdows was panoramic. The sea, with its vistas of waves.. Ebbing and flowing, horizontally, stretching out endlessly, lay on one side. On the other, there were the skyscrapers. Stretching vertically, again endlessly up..Naina stood at the window, staring  out with unseeing eyes. An eagle soared in the skies, majestically, master of both land and sky. It swept over her head, as she stood. Its wing span, a huge brown blur, broke her reverie. With a start, she came back to the present. Ravi, lay on the bed. Slight snores indicated that he was fast asleep. Nearing the bed, she sat down beside him. Her face softened as she looked at him. In repose, at least, the frown lines were erased, giving his face a boyish look, belying his forty odd years. Tenderly, she touched his soft, black hair, sweeping it gently away from his face. If only, she thought to herself, life had been as idyllic as she had envisaged it. She loved him. Always had, since she had been a little girl and they  had lived and studied in the same neighborhood. When he married Divya, her whole world had come crashing down. Calling upon strengths of reserve she didnt even know she had, she attended his marriage. Died a thousand deaths seeing the elegant but shy bridegroom, so in love with his wife to be.  But even then she had known, somehow, that if she waited long enough, he would be hers.

In her heart she knew. Destiny would not be denied.

The years passed. Was she still in love with him ? She didnt know. All she knew was that she couldnt have stayed in the same city as him. So Mumbai became her new home. Time blurred her images. Of him. Of herself as she had been. Young, heart broken, with zero self confidence. Mumbai, that detached jungle, had been the saving of her. She got absorbed, its tentacles wrapped itself around her and the highs and lows of the stock market, the skills she learnt there put her back on her feet. No affairs for her. Her passion now was her work. As the years passed, she grew. Older, wiser, wealthier

No time for love. Parental pressures not withstanding she was not willing to give up her working life for marriage. At thirty five, everyone including herself, had given up on her getting married.

The day had been a very busy one. The markets had been on an upswing. She looked up as she heard her name being called. Then slowly rose to her feet. He stood there. Much the same, only more handsome with age. The callowness of youth replaced with a casual insouciance. Eyes riveted she could'nt tear them away from him, as he wended his way to her office. They stood smiling at each other, before he drew her into a hug, impulsively.

She dressed carefully that night.  It was her first date ever. With him. She got her reward when on opening the door, she heard him draw in his breath sharply. "You are still the most beautiful woman i know.." he said softly. "Liar." she reproached him.  "But I will admit its good to hear that from you.
You never saw me that way before."



Maybe distance does make the heart grow fonder. There we were, sitting across each other over a candlelight dinner. Friends from decades.. Yet strangers. Youth then and a mad passion, albeit one sided. A culmination of sorts, after two decades. The conversation flowed easily, like it always had between us. The difference now was the palpable undercurrents, the shaking of my knees, the slight tremor in his hand when he touched mine accidentally. Oh yes , a hitherto absent chemistry was in the
 air.

Reluctantly I asked about his wife. Then stopped him from answering. This evening was mine.. Ours. I was indulging a fantasy.

The night ended with him in my bed. But not quite as imagined. In the bathroom along with nature's call I  attended a  longish call from one of my investors. Emerging in my room I found
him fast asleep. All I had to do was to get in beside him. So why was I whiling time. Why was I not making the vital move.

He moved so that his back was now turned to me. I stared at him, the whole concept of having a naked man in my bed was so alien to me. Did I really want him there ?

The next day we sat across each other , yet again. Unfinished business I lied glibly. I'm really sorry. Maybe we could have dinner again sometime ? When he was next in town ? His eyes bore into mine.. My steady gaze must have convinced him for he left. I switched on the computer. Good gosh! The market was also cartwheeling towards the magic 25000 mark. I pulled my chair closer to the console. Im my heart was a strange kind of surge. Of pure happiness. I was the master of my ship.. The sole custodian of my destiny.