Whisper of Steel

How much is a zillion? I think I know after a visit to the Imphal’s Ima Market – the women’s market as it is called. Zillion is the number of fish sold at the market, along the streets around the market, and at the entrances and the exits.

For a vegetarian, it is a living – or is it dead – nightmare. Very dead, beady eyes staring up at you sullenly, mouths angrily open, scales that shine in the sun in silver melancholy. Occasionally, the startling sight of a fish leaping up in the throes of its final agony as it is kept in two-cm deep water, meant to keep it barely alive.

And the smell – it is the kind of smell that has even my fish-crazy North Indian friend go green at the gills and black out and lie sprawling on the wet floor. Really! Truly! Literally! She is probably the only one in the entire market who had a fish-eye view of the palm-covered ceiling of the market yard. No one other than the prone fish has the time to look up.



But then the other things in the market are as overwhelming as the piles of fish. The colours of Manipur are vivid, varied and vibrant. Traditional clothes that hang from the wooden pegs, stacked neatly like towers of wool and cotton. Knives, spices, handicrafts, trinkets, jewellery, dolls, fruit, vegetables – everything.

The women sit in their alcoves, their square of space on the endless platforms that are rowed up along the breadth of the market enclosure. The thatch-covered tin roofs shut out the sun, who nevertheless peeks through the walkways in between, slowly seeping through the roof edges and dripping through the gaps in the ceiling. And the light takes many hues as it bounces off the million things that clutter the market.

And the rainbows reflect in the faces of the women. So that, the most colourful are the women themselves. Crinkly-eyed, rosy-cheeked, dapper in their shirts and wraparound sarongs, the women preside over the market with resplendent poise. Their greetings, their smiles, their thank yous and their pleases are all like the graceful motions of a peacock.

But these women are not just all silk, spice and swan down. They are strong and steely too. Numbers show every second household has a drug user or a positive person. And it is the mothers, daughters, sisters and wives who are standing by them, helping them to find their moorings.

The women’s market is not just a traditional hub, it is also a contemporary process for the women to earn for the family, to sustain the economy and to ensure some semblance of order in a society torn by many insecurities.

The serenity in the faces of the women belies the turmoil inside. Their indolent posture belies their sheer dynamism. And the sights, smells and movements of ordinariness in the market belie the simmering layers beneath.

Ima markets of Imphal are a study in non-militant feminism. Of women power sheathed in daily life. Of human spirit breaking through the cobwebs of obscurantism. And, of unknown shades of colours you thought you knew.

Moonlight On The Cesspool

She walks with a swing. It is a gait that has been achieved with much imitation and practice. It is meant to be provocative but somehow makes her look like a school girl doing a mock ramp show.

The tinseled sticker she wears for a bindi catches light whenever she turns her head. And the long chains dangling from her ears sway whenever she gestures, whenever she looks around – which is like, all the time. She is just like a little sparrow.

Her mouth is a small cupid’s bow, with an almost imperceptible downward tilt at the corners, an indication of some untold tragedy deep inside her.

But, wait! The tragedy is not untold. It is visible to every man who walks past her on the street corner. It is visible to everyone who has seen the girl grow up. Yes, they remember! She once dressed in robes made of jute packaging bags and sooty rags. She now dresses in slinky jersey kurtas or shiny, slippery, bright-coloured sarees.

Her hair on a good day looked like the straw that she slept on in the night. And her eyes were red rimmed most of the time, because of all that crying. Now, she wears her hair in a fancy do and her eyes are shielded under a heavy coat of kajal.

There was a time when she slept behind the bus stop, on a running parapet that adjoined a wall, painted everyday with stinking urine. She never noticed the stench. After all, she used to be so exhausted by the time she reached her night shelter. And she shared the parapet with some of her friends. Friends that she made while begging.

She still shares her bed. This time with a new man every night. Sometimes, more than one.

She is Chitra. Age: 23. Height: Five feet. Occupation: Sex work. Address: Bus Stand in one of the world’s holiest pilgrim towns. Family: One daughter, father unknown.

Chitra has dark eyes, lanky hair. And a voice like a child’s. The girl grew up but her voice never did. It is still the childish tenor that one vague day in the past called out to her mother across a courtyard somewhere in a village. It is still the same trill that reverberated around the mango orchard when she whooshed in the air on a swing.

The voice is the same. And the girl is still a child. A poster child for Tragedy.

The days when she wandered around the village streets, bought biscuits at the village store, went late to school and got spanked are hazy memories. The day she flung a slate at a teacher and injured her, the day she ran away and got into a train to an unknown destination is the only link to the past she has.

I was a baby once, she says. Once? Isn't she still?

Chitra is a fighter today. She fights for the handful of rupees that she has to somehow earn everyday. She fights for the space on the barely curtained corner at the rear of the bus terminus. She fights for her baby to have a less raw deal than she had. And she fights for dignity. Just like other people.

I met Chitra. I met a child who lost her childhood. I met eyes that are pools of sadness, sentinels for her safety, camouflage for what she does not want the world to see - all at the same time. I met innocence, brutally violated yet somehow intact. I met the ugly side of life. I met my Guardian angel who saved me from being Chitra.

And I met my image in mirror that refuses to acknowledge the existence of Chitras in my cosy little world.

Corny love poem

Unlike the love stories, this is real...written all by me

And sent to someone...with disastrous effects. He's since migrated to the West African Republic of Burkina Faso.



I would have seen you in the Babylonian legend
In Egypt, in the palm tree's deep angular shade
We must have patterned the Mediterranean sand
And soaked up Africa's gossamer green woodland

We must have dabbled in the hues of every sunset
And walked every path that was wind-swept
I remember we scented the pages of history
And drew new lines on the palm of destiny

How can you say we met only yesterday?
How can you say you tread just once this way?
How can you say this is our time only now and here?
How can you believe you are human mere?

Did it not occur to you in the misty winter’s yesterday
Did you not see my life in flowers dotting delhi’s kings’ way?
In the steam from the tea cup ensconcing our oh-so-short day?
In the wakeful dreams and the dreamy sentience?

That we have not met yesterday but you were always there
mingled in the drops of rain, in volcanoes afire
In the red stellar circles around distant planets
And in my each breath and my soul and intellect

So we have not met just now, my dear love
You were always there in the fragrance of flowers
And in the belief that there is a sheer touch alive
Between two beings across eras, eons and miles

Remains of the Day: Three Love Stories (?)

She was a butterfly
Around the garden she flew
Colourful and capricious
Red green yellow and blue

Just 23, she was at an illogically intense age. And it was an accident waiting to happen.

They worked at the same office. First day at work, he swept into the office. It was his habit to open the door wide…totally wide…and walk in without breaking stride. And he walked right into her mind…without breaking stride…into her consciousness, her heart. Seems clichéd? Well, 23 is cliched.

But the problem was he was not 23…...far from it. And he was far from her in so many more ways…as she discovered gradually. No, he did not lie that he wasn’t married…not possible when they are working together…nor that he is the father of two school-going kids…They made an unlikely pair…he tall dark rugged…she fair petite…but then no one knew they were a pair…not even themselves.

It’s just that knowledge about him did not prevent her from loving…and losing. They had a million cups of tea together…they took a thousand midnight rides through the city…they shared a hundred letters….he said he loved her…the first time ever he loved a woman.

And that was all…no exploitation, no deception, no commitment. Is that a love story? Or is it a freakinfukkinstupidrelationship?

She said let’s just let it fade out….easy…slow…and gradual…but suddenly he remembered he was 34..that he was married…that he was a father…and he said break…now. And what a bloody mess it was. She still bleeds from one corner of her heart…

Now when she sees him on the street suddenly, all that she can notice is that his hair…the thatch she had loved so much…sports so much silver.

The other corners have not learnt their lessons well.

She was 27. At an age where experience does not get better than impulse.

He is a Kashmiri. Is it the extremities of geography that attracted them to each other?

He barged through closing lift doors one afternoon and gate-crashed into her life. Why does she have this tendency to love people who walk in uninvited? Weird.

He is so handsome…and such a crook. She knew from the first moment that he was a rogue…and yet loved him….guess u know her a little by now.

She saw Himalayas in his eyes…and apple sweetness in his smile…he was soo handsome…

And then he vanished…just like that…again…what was lost? Nothing really…no commitment…no more in the relationship except exchange of sentiments…

What was that? Was it love or just freakin-fukkin-stupid-acquaintance-at-convenience? If only she knew…

She was 35…at an age when one becomes blasé at even being stupid…

It is the virtual space…she does not know him…has never seen him…or heard him…it is just red words between them…and an intensity that came more from the late hour than from any real feeling.

The monsoon night’s moist noises…the cool air heavy with the fragrance of rebellious jasmine…the remaining traces of a youth fast evaporating…whatever was it….the red words became the Truth…..the Obsession…the Preoccupation.

She wanted more…he gave none…She sought personal touch…he shunned even virtual presence…And she ranted and raved and then bled quietly…and he just watched….when he had the time…

What was that? Was that love or just a freakin-fukkin-killing-stupid-adult-delusion?

Three Love stories…..are there more coming? God forbid…

Jaane Chale Jaatein Hai Kahan!

I watched a clichéd Telugu movie called Johnny the other day. Singularly unremarkable except for a scene where the hero takes his cancer-stricken wife to Mumbai for treatment and rents a house there. They are in an upbeat mood until the woman opens the window…and sees a massive cemetery right outside…the way her face falls and the sheer frustration in the hero’s face are priceless.

The helplessness we feel when our loved ones are beyond help is a pain that is impossible to describe. Apparently, no one I know noticed that scene but for me it was as real as my waking nightmare.

The effect is quite physical on me. First numbness and then an overwhelming weakness. As if I just wanna sleep wherever I am. And that is the beginning of my sleepless nights and hungerless days

When my mother was wheeled into emergency after a cardiac seizure, my life came crashing down all around me. Nothing seemed important. Nobody else mattered. It was she and she alone who filled my entire being. And how subjective physical pain is! It was her pain alone. Thank god, she came back to us. And saved us from becoming orphans.

It happens to all of us. We lose some, come close to losing some. Everyday life suddenly becomes irrelevant. It is as though that one day, one moment of trauma, stands alone, detached from other parts of life. And that moment is filled with regrets and inadequacies.

Heartbreak seems so much easier when we know what losing a loved one to death means. Because, when people go away, we can never make amends.

That’s why, thirty two years after my father passed away – a hazy figure since I was just a baby - I now know that time does not heal some wounds, it just shows us afresh how deeply permanent they are.

Rhyme of the Rain

How it pours, pours, pours,
In a never-ending sheet!
How it drives beneath the doors!
How it soaks the passer's feet!
How it rattles on the shutter!
How it rumples up the lawn!
How 'twill sigh, and moan,
and mutter, From darkness until dawn.

When it is like the tender touch of a baby’s hand on mother earth’s yearning cheek, it is a drizzle. When it sprinkles down fragrantly like a burst of cherry blossom, it is a shower. When it cascades like a silk curtain swaying gracefully in the wind, it is rain. And when it unceasingly flows down from the heavens like a heart-broken beloved’s tears, it is a downpour.

It teases, it taunts. It plays, it punches. It dances, it drives. It nurtures, it crushes. It gives life, it washes away hope. Rain.
Rain is the elixir of life. Rain is the tears of heaven. Rain is the nectar of gods. Rain is power unleashed by the sky.

Rain is white, silver, blue, black. Green, brown and violet. When it mingles with the earth, it is red and brown. When it drenches a tree, it is green honey. In the night it is black Indian Ink. In the dawn, it tinkles like silver anklets.

Across Andhra in the last few weeks, Rain Lord arrived in all his glory. Trumpeting thunder, flashing flags of lightning, the swoosh of winds and the rumble of dense clouds. The parched world eagerly drank up the monsoon.

And at Antarvedi, at the confluence of the mighty Godavari with the sea, the sky bent down to meet the ocean...the ocean surged to meet the river...the river embraced the earth as it went to meet its destination and rain hung from the sky like the pearls of a queen's crown.

We climbed into the light house perched right at the edge of the madness, angry waves rebuking the tower. The steam from the tea cups of the tower attendants mingled with the curtains of mist that wafted in from the sea.

Wind howled in the tower and I stood at the window. ...a mere teeny weeny dot in front of the mammoth cosmic drama where elements talked to each other, argued, fought and made love.

sleepwalktalk

I have just constructed this. Let me think and then come up with posts. Why have i done this? lot of time on my hands, i guess.

somnaloquist sleep-walker