Of delayed trains and an early breakfast at Denny's

I met Anna Pianzola in the summer of 2004.  Some people would say that this isn't a long time ago. Maybe it isn't. But with time ever slowly accelerating as I enter my 32nd year, the past is receding away faster than ever, like it has been for the past few years, like it will be tomorrow ticking faster than today, everything seems so long ago and worse.. concocted. But I digress.
I met Anna Pianzola with her grey irises symmetrically strewn with black shards of Veneto glass on the last train back from Nikko on an August Saturday night.The Tobu line train to Asakusa at the fringes of the madness that is Tokyo to be precise.
It maybe summer in the plains, but up in highlands of Nikko, fog was rolling in, and the train with dew drops sticking to it's sides like beads of sweat on the back of a particular lissome lady who will remain unnamed , settled with a sigh. People more anxious than usual (the last train has that effect, much like when you decide to marry for reasons other than love) hurried in to catch a seat for the three hour ride back into the Tokyo night.
I found a seat by the doorway of the last carriage( I've managed to find a seat in the last carriage of most trains in Japan). Just before the train was scheduled to depart, two women came running into the platform with their day packs slowing them considerably. One woman was much taller than the other. The shorter one was Anna. They got in as the station master politely apologized into his tinny Tannoy for any inconvenience caused by the slippery stairways and that the doors would shut for a departure in the next minute.
As the train departed, a drizzle ,which soon turned into a sleety downpour with raindrops splattering the panes and them slowly sliding away backwards like helpless panicking lovers,  clouded the countryside.
We only got as far as a few kilometers past Shimo-Imaichi when the train slowed down and eventually squealed to a full stop. Shortly a tremolo voice (very apologetically) announced that, there had been a landslide and the tracks needed clearing. A crew was on the job and he'd report the progress periodically. Or that was what I thought he announced (my Japanese was laughable then, it is merely bad now).
An old, heavily made up lady donning a green surgical mask with her picnic bag and her older mother in a wheel chair stood leaning against a pillar next to Anna with a deep frown on her forehead. I walked up to her and offered my seat. She refused at first, but was happy to take up on my offer once I insisted. Her mother, in the wheelchair, insisted I take a lion's share of the almonds she had in a pouch.
Fair bargain. But more importantly, there I stood next to Anna (feeling like a creep, for this subterfuge, but in my defence I probably would have given up my seat even if it wasn't for Anna) and for the first time studied her from close quarters. There were drops of the rain nestling in little pockets in her tightly pleated brown hair. Probably twenty and Italian (Guidebook one carries gives away a fair bit. Hers was a 2003 Japan Rough Guide in Italian). Freshly waxed arms, clear skin and those eyes . Her companion was Nordic and what humour writers would call big boned.  But this isnt about her. It's about Anna.
"How long do you think we'll be here?", Anna asked her big boned friend.
"Couldn't for the life of me figure what the guy announced", she shrugged in reply.
"There has been a .land..landslide", I stammered and weakly interjected.( Opening lines have never been my forte and sadly never will be)
"Oh, that sounds bad", she said with the searching look of a person who'd only just seen the person who'd spoken to them.
(Over the years since, I've known many women who have perfected this to an art form, and I've learnt to be a little less disappointed with being an invisible presence to pretty women).
"Did he say by how much we are delayed? We have a train to catch from Asakusa", she continued.
"He said, help was on the way. So I guess, we shouldn't be here for too long."
"That's good to hear.", she said, as that constant wingman of mine, uncomfortable silence, slid in between us.
.
?
.
"You travelling in Japan", she asked after a while.
"No, I am here on business for a few months", I said, hopefully,with a not too audible sigh of relief.
"You are Indian, aren't you?", she continued.
" Yes. Been here a couple of months now. And you? I guess you are Italian"
" Yes. I am. And my friend is Swedish. We met in Tokyo and are travelling together. I just finished a semester at med school in Torino."
"A doctor then."
"Not quite yet. I am planning to move to the US on an exchange program, so I guessed I could use a holiday before that"
I'll spare you the details of the small talk, though sometimes small talk is all we have. We were there for the rest of the night after the worsening weather made clearing the debris, the driver announced, increasingly dangerous. The lady in the wheelchair had run of almonds. She was probably wishing she hadn't been as generous as she was with her gratitude (But at some point in all our lives, who isn't)
Anna and me talked through the night as her Swedish friend pretended to be consumed by a deep dreamless sleep. We talked of the war, volcanoes, sakura, sake, home and for some reason soaplands and Mishima(who I'd just discovered)  .
I most admired her for her fortitude in the face of the certain to be missed prebooked train connection. ( One doesn't just miss a train, in Japan, it can mean having to skip one's next vacation altogether). Admiration is an admirable and a very convenient projection of many unarticulated emotions.
At twenty two(I'd like to think I was younger , but sadly not) ,many a confused Indian adult of my era didn't understand, or didn't want to , or was too squeamish to consider consequences that intimate conversations in a warm last carriage of the last train could spawn.
Articulating desire tastefully, burdened by nonsensical, though hopelessly binding self imposed moral codes , is still a challenge. Then, one just didn't try.
So there we were at three in the dead of the night, meandering around long conversations without dead ends, me not being certain where it would take me(or us?).
Eventually at four , the train started to move and this made me anxious. I could sense the same in her, but I can be easily accused of seeing things that aren't if you knew me well enough.
Nothing breaks a spell like daylight. Dawn heightens the spell, only for the daylight to bring it crashing down with the attendant clarity and reminder of things to do like breakfasts to be had, clothes to be laundered, trains to be caught.
We reached Asakusa around five in the morning.  She had to go on to Ueno where she'd left her bags in a cloak room and then head to Kyoto.
On the platform, we exchanged email addresses and phone numbers and made promises to meet the next weekend at Asakusa for the annual fireworks which she said she was looking forward to.
We never met again. Promises made on railway platforms are rarely kept, very unlike what happened in a certain Linklater movie.
A couple of years later, out of the bleeding blue, she wrote to me asking how I was and asked me to visit Turin for the winter Olympics. This was the first I'd heard from her since we last saw each other. At twenty four, I knew a dead end when I saw one. I never replied.
That morning after Anna and her big boned friend left for Ueno by taxi, I decided to take a long walk through the familiar bylanes of Asakusa, now devoid of the usual throngs. I went to the shrine passing under the gate of thunder, Kaminarimon, and made a wish at the offering box and then went looking for a Denny's because pancakes drowning in maple syrup are the answers to most of the world's problems(not that I had any problems I intended to solve with their aid this early in the morning)
And, oh, my wish was answered a few years later, so maybe there's something there.

Of once pretty palaces and bells that still chime

A quiet but insistent knock on the door woke him up. The ceiling fan was still creaking like a clipped metronome. The curtains were flapping soundlessly to the beat. It was an old curtain, washed many times over. The sun shone through the outlines of a faded rendering of a tiger roaring mid leap on the calico.

The knock again.

He stepped off the bed.The clock needles said 9:40 or was it 8:40. 9:40. The floor was cooler than it was yesterday. He opened the door.
"Breakfast closing at 10. You want something?", the 15 year old Marathi receptionist,concierge,cook of the Gangaram Hotel, Bhuj asked him.
"Scrambled egg and toast",he said.
"Wanting tea or coffee?"
"Tea. I know the farmers in Vidharbha are in the red, but go easy on the sugar"
"Jee sir", he smiled."Wanting hot water?, Cold day today, one bucket for twenty rupees"
"Ok.Bring it up after my breakfast is done. Will come down in a while"
"Maria madam already there", he said with a smile and walked back down to the kitchen.

Maria Joao was at the table reading the paper framed against the doorway. A gentle drizzle had started sometime not too long before.
"Good morning",she said adjusting her shawl which she had wrapped around her shoulder.
"Morning. Late start?"
"Yes. Will take it easy for the next couple of days.Plan to leave next week to the weaver village"

Maria was from Portugal. A graphic design graduate learning block printing techniques from the local artisans in the villages around Bhuj.
She spoke slowly, rolling her syllables with care.Also, she was pretty.
They had met at the dinner table the night before.An Italian photographer and a tall Dutch woman on a Sabbatical who were there for dinner were not to be seen.
They had talked of Sicily and Sicilians and how Maria's sister had wanted to marry a Sicilian she had met. In the end she decided not to, after meeting the prospective mother-in-law.
He had never been to Sicily. He wanted to go to Sicily.

"What about you?",she asked.
"Yup.Lazy weather day.Plan to go down to the Paraag Mahal a bit later in the day.
"Hmm.. was there with some friends a while ago, but the entrance charges for foreigners is outrageously expensive."
"Any good?"
"Creepy, if anything..",she said after much thought.
"We'll see..", he said, sipping the milky tea.

It was nearly two when he decided to go to the Palace complex. The hotel was right next door to the walls. The air was moist and the streets wet. Every now and then a droplet would land on the back of his neck. He followed the wall until he came to the gate.

A sign pointed to the right "For buy ticket".
A signboard said that the Palace was built in the 1879. Italian Gothic. A functional Bell tower.One of the three functional British era bell towers in the country.

All around were signs of the Great Bhuj quake, which everyone mentioned once in conversations he had had since he was here .Spidery cracks on the facade. A lopsided tower.

The palace was closed till three. The rubble from Bhuj quake had still not been cleared from the complex. It had over the course of the nine years blended into the forlorn, though not entirely depressing surroundings. Pipal trees were starting to take root among the fallen bricks. The bricks were redder than usual because of the rain. A disused well with a pulley lay to one end. A truck load of sand had been carelessly dumped nearby.
A little girl was busy tunneling into the sand with both hands. Each little hand carefully extracting a scoop of sand from either side in tandem.After every scoop she took time to smoothen the walls with her little palms. Every three or four scoops she wiped the sweat from her sandy brow.She paused for the while to check either end. Soon they would meet. She decided to take it one end at time now.

He decided to walk around until someone arrived. Soon someone arrived.
The gatekeeper.

"What time does it open?"
"Check the board. It says three"

The girl had completed her tunnel and after a pat down on the insides stood back to admire her handiwork. She was now deciding on whether to make a new tunnel to the left or the right of the current one.

"Whats inside?", he asked the gatekeeper.
"See for yourself. Just another 20mins to go".

A red sedan which had seen a brighter coat of paint rolled in. Tourists. A newly married couple got off and the man said something terse to the driver.Honeymoon.Both had their shades on. It was cloudy, so the whole world probably looked like an under-exposed photograph to them.
They came down to where he stood and asked the gatekeeper for the tickets.

"Look here.", the gatekeeper said pointing to the signboard.
The wife pulled at the husbands arm as he glared at the man through his shades. They soon found a convenient fallen pillar to take each others' pictures on, with the rubble as the backdrop. Shortly the husband walked over to him and asked if he would be "So kind as to " take their photograph.
He said yes. He took two photographs. One with the shades and one without.

They walked back together to the door. Shortly a man in an old uniform walked down to the desk at the gate with a steel box in hand.
Soon, the palace was open for business. The gatekeeper stared into the rubble with a disturbed expression for a while and then walked to the well to smoke a beedi.

The palace was as Maria had described. The corridors were wet and slippery. The couple was on their way out by the time he entered the main hall. Obviously, the decor and tenor of the place didn't go well with what they had in mind for a honeymoon. He now had the entire palace to himself.
He went into a room with a stuffed tiger whose fur was now starting to get moldy.There was one room which obviously was the bedroom with full length mirrors. The silver coating had worn off in large patches. The furnishing was distinctly European. He walked into the once definitely magnificent durbar hall. More tigers, buffaloes and antelope heads. Two buckets had been placed to catch the water leaking from a damp patch next to the crystal chandelier. Big drops sploshed into the almost full buckets every once in a while. The stained glass windows fresh after the drizzle filled the far end with dewy light. Red.Blue.Yellow.Green.

He loitered around the hall, looking for a good angle to photgraph and gave up after a few attempts. He walked up the stairway to the bell tower.The bells rang every fifteen minutes.One chime for each quarter and then ringing the number for each hour. Soon it would be four. he scrambled up the stairs to be in time. On the roof at one end was the Hamirsar and a cool breeze was blowing in from there. The tower had been hastily patched up and held rather precariously with assorted scaffolding and pillar support. He walked up the claustrophobic spiral stairway and stood above the assortment of bells, ropes and gears.
Sure enough, at four, the gongs rang out, the oiled metal and wood creaked, the ropes were pulled and with a rearrangement of gears to chime out five strokes the next hour, the tower fell silent.
He stood for a while staring into the tiled roofs of the palace watching pigeons dart in and out secret cubbyholes and cracks left open by the quake.
The sun was now out. He wondered if the tunnel still held up with the dampness fast drying away in the western Sun.

He stood there for a long time. Soon he heard footsteps. A balding head popped out of the stairway followed by a girl in her late teens in a dress she would start hating in a while. After another few minutes, a matronly woman of forty panted out of the stairway and she stood against the railing catching her breath. He walked down the stairway and went back to the entrance.

The gatekeeper was still standing by the well.
He walked down to him.
"So how long have you been working here", he asked.
He shrugged and threw his stub into the well and lit another one.
"Longer than I care to remember."
"Is the palace maintained by the ASI?"
"Nope. The trust runs it. The Maharaja's trust"
"They dont seem to be doing much from the looks of it"
"My grandfather was a halwai in the kings kitchen. He used to say that the King had an ugly queen but a lovely palace.He should have seen it now"
"Hmm... There's water leaking in the darbar hall"
"I placed the buckets myself", he said,"The present Maharaja is a mad man. Ego. Britain, France, America had all said they would pay to renovate the palace.But the man wont listen. He says, he will bring the palace to it's rightful place but not with an Englishman's money. Baawala ho gaya hai sala" ..and after a pause "Poori duniya Baawli ho gayi hai" and walked off.

He stood by the well for some time. The red walls were now glowing, the water slowly drying.
He turned to walk down back to the town.


The little girl was nowhere to be seen. All that remained were two tunnels with damp,darker sand on the entrances and a lazy dog sunning himself on the heap.
Another sedan pulled into the gates and passed him, splashing his shoes, riding over a shimmering early evening puddle.

He cursed silently and walked to the gates. "Poori duniya baawli ho gayi hai"

Scandal in the Wind

From the Political desk special correspondent

MAYAWATI GOVERNMENT INSTITUTES SALVADOR DALIT AWARD FOR STATUE MAKING

Under fire following the recent Wikileaks' release, Ms.Mayawati's government has gone on the offensive to reverse adverse public opinion with a slew of measures. The Wikileaks report had accused Ms.Mayawati of, among other things, being MAYAWATI.

The Uttar Pradesh State government has announced the institution of the Salvador Dalit Award for excellence in the field of sculpture and iconography. The awards will be judged by an eminent panel headed by Ms.Mayawati. It is expected to be a single person panel.
The award will be given out every year on the occasion of Ms.Mayawati's birthday to the best Mayawati statue sculpture and will include a free trip in a empty jet to a choice of location of Ms.Mayawati's rally in the past one month.

Addressing a rally of 100000 strong people patiently waiting in the dusty heat of the Cow belt for their promised biryani, 500ml desi and a Maya themed Barbie doll, Ms.Mayawati stated that the move will galvanise, what is arguably, the state's biggest industry and benefit the poorest of the poor.
The announcement has also resulted in the increase in the stock prices of the Reliance Industries, who had acquired the biggest marble quarries in the neighbouring Madhya Pradesh just days before Ms.Mayawati's institution of the award. Company spokesperson denied any links between the two events and the same evening issued a denial for the denial to keep all bases covered just in case.

In the press conference following the rally, when one of the press corps indicated that she was obviously misappropriating the name of the famous European artist, she promptly accused him of being anti dalit and said that like Salvador Dali, she was widely misunderstood and misrepresented

Her suave aide-de-camp Satish Mishra, then disconnected his call to the US Ambassador's residence and interjected that, like Dali, Ms.Mayawati shared a Surrealist view of the world. He also reiterated that he had been misquoted in the Wikileaks report and said that all he said was that Ms.Mayawati had a “strong, authoritarian steak” sent to her by the Texas chapter of the BSP(TBSP, often mistaken for Tablespoon in party literature) on the occasion of her birthday.

Ms.Mayawati's birthday is in addition to being a significant social event in the UP Administrative services calendar is also a very important source of income for Lucknow's bakery industry. The economic churn associated with the event is no less significant in comparison to what is experienced in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras or Rio during the Carnival weekend. Unlike Marie Antoinette, Ms.Mayawati on her birthday means business when she says “..let them have cake”.

At the end of the conference, she released an audio CD compilation of songs sung by leading artists of the day,from around the world, in her praise. The album features Elton John's rendition of "Scandal in the Wind", Chantal Kreviazuk's “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and Bappi Lahiri's remixed version of “Blue Suede Shoes”.

Party insiders indicate that Ms.Mayawati had stridently demanded that the famously dead Michael Jackson be convinced into contributing to the album. After, much grovelling and convincing on the impossibility of the situation, she grudging accepted that he would be unavailable, but not before accusing him of being obviously anti-Dalit for not being a part of the historic compilation.

Salvador Dali, for obvious reasons was unavailable for comment.

The Immigrant

Moussa bin Said lit his last cigarette for the day. This pack had to last him until tomorrow. He inhaled deeply and watched the match he carelessly flicked sputter briefly in a puddle from the afternoon rain.
Strange, he thought, the evening paper hadn't predicted any. The paper had even said, it was going to be a bright sunny day.
Well now that he thought of it, the papers had predicted an Algerian victory over Egypt in the African Cup in yesterday's game in Algiers. They'd got that wrong too.

The rain wasn't a bad thing at all he figured as he took another deep,satisfying drag. The sun was out now and the remnant barely cohesive film from the brief downpour made the leaves look greener and the Sacre Couer more ethereal than the usual 4PM light made it look.

He watched the Japanese tourists pass by, Nikons in hand, clicking everything in sight with accompaniments of exaggerated sighs. They were the easiest to peddle stuff to. All he had to do was thrust a replica Eiffel Tower into their faces, and say "2 Euros, Arigatho" in his gruff baritone with a slight furrow on his shaggy brow. This usually convinced them to buy one from him.
The Americans too were good bets. One of the paradoxes he never understood. The Germans were the most difficult, followed by the Chinese. He had trouble telling the Chinese from the Japanese when the first waves of Chinese started coming in to Paris in the early nineties. He'd learnt eventually.

He let this bunch go undisturbed though he had made half of what he usually did because of the rain. The old man who played his harp on Saturday evenings on the stairs was slowly making his way up among the evening throng coming up to watch the sun set over Paris and watch the world(yeah.... the world in the literal sense) stare into the evening sky.
He took a last deep drag and then with gentle deliberation exhaled ringlets of smoke into the evening sky. The butt joined the match without a sound and he watched it get gradually soggy.

He leaned on the railing, turning his back to the relentless horde on the courtyard on their way to the traditional photo op. He could hear Malouda trying his persuasion skills on one of the Japanese. He was new, just come into Paris from Abidjan.Just like he had all those years ago, as a fourteen year old. He and his mother.

His mother was now dead. One of the few regrets he had was that he had no photographs of her. He no longer could recall what memories of her were creations of his imagination and what memories were real. She called him Pasha. Emperor. He smiled and for a moment, he almost recalled her profile conjure itself in his minds eye with startling clarity before fading way into a maze of half formed images and words.

A voice behind him meekly said a feeble "Excuse me". Japanese, he smiled to himself as he turned to greet the owner of the voice. She was university student with a non descript bespectacled face and a slightly disheveled hairdo. "How much for the Tower?"
He smiled again. Picked one of the cheap replicas (Made in China) and gave it to the student with a look of genuine benevolence, which only time can bestow on the faces of old men, and said to her. "For you. I take nothing". The student looked confused. She slowly extracted a 5 Euro note and stood there.
Moussa, bent and packed the remaining towers into his cheap plastic bag whose zippers needed a replacement. He emptied his days earnings into his mother's camel leather pouch, his only inheritance. He got up,put on his cap and heaved the ring of trinket key chains onto his arm.
The student was still standing there with the tower in her right and the money in her left.

He turned and walked away down the stairs. He passed the harpist Jacques. They exchanged a nod and he stood there for a while listening to the sombre notes. He turned upwards. The student was still standing there. He smiled. She smiled.

Some days..are better than others, he thought. "What the hell..".. he lit another cigarette and headed down the hill to a place he called home, but was not quite one.

Kashmiri kahwas

early evening sunlight,
thoughts of kashmir,
he sipped saffron laced tea

Of long gone Summers and taking the wrong train

Minmaya!! That was the name he was looking for. He had spent an entire Saturday and a bit more, but yeah, early Sunday or late Saturday, depending on the kind of person one is, he finally managed to roll out the syllables painfully encrypted in the depths of his sub conscious. 2:10 AM.

It was a name from four summers ago, not too long ago, many would say,again depending on the kind of person one is... but he had grown old in the meanwhile. Four years... "Older than I once was, younger than I'll ever be, but that's not unusual" as Paul Simon would say.... The summer of 2007, was preceded by a long winter and a longer more painful spring.

He had decided the summer would be his epilogue to the story of his last one year. A year he made choices, including a choice not to make one. Choices that defined him, more than any event in his 25 year old life. 25 is a nice round figure. He never understood why 25, not 24 and 26 are counted upon as significant take-stock milestones. Was this a result of the decimal system? What ages did the Romans deem significant ?

Mimaya became a little paragraph in his epilogue. A dead end on the JR Tohoku line. A point of must return. He had left Tokyo's Ueno station early in the morning at 5AM. Changed seven crossing the torturous spine of the Japanese mainland, all to reach Aomori in time to catch the 1130PM ferry across the Tsugaru on to Hakodate.
Crossing the sea, gave him a metaphorical finish line. To start a new race all over. To be done with the race he had been running all along. A race he had lost, but like the athletes trailing the winner and runners up, just pointlessly kept running to reach the ribbon which has been breasted and subsequently trampled upon by a horde who already finished ahead of him. Flying didnt give him the same feeling. It had to be a boat. A break in the medium not dimension.
Reaching Kanita three fourths of the way, he felt confident enough to hop on to the train heading north, without asking the ever polite station attendant of the final destination.

It was a little toybox of a train. The kind railways put in at the fringes of their network. Fringes forgotten by people but alive as numbers in the budget sheets of a Rail company. But none the less important to the two people every square kilometer who live in these fringes. People who plan their entire social lives around a timetable at the neighborhood railway platform(yeah not station). Soon, he was passing through cabbage fields (reminded him of Chekov's Soviet), little platforms with people sitting on benches on the platforms not to catch trains, but to catch up on conversations and sunshine. The train, hesitantly gathered speed, knowing surely that she had to stop in the next minute or two and then she gave up hope at the slightest tug at her brakes,stopping to drop off a lady and her unmarried 35 year old daughter here, a milkman there.. He could not see the coastline, but he could smell the sea. A smell not unlike the sea of his home.

It was a good two hours where he sat looking out of the window, acknowledging or ignoring fellow passengers depending on how much he liked them when he saw them on the platform as the train drew in. He never listened to much music on the road..or on the rail. He never managed to finish a book on the road. He needed long pauses in motion to be able to dispose of a couple of chapters. His books always got back badly dog eared from a trip. Not from use, but being shoved into a rucksack which seemed to have enough wiggle room when the trip started, but now was strangely refusing to accommodate.

A little into the afternoon, he rolled into a quaint little town called Minmaya and yeah, it didnt take him too long to figure that he would be going nowhere for a while. A traveller can easily know by the sounds the train makes at the last stop. It's like a collective sigh of an audience after a rather boring lecture one has to sit through more out of politeness than heartfelt interest.
He asked the station attendant(ever polite) in his pidgin Japanese. He always took care to use the pidgin version. He had learnt that the moment, one asks a question in fluent Japanese, one gets an answer in fluent Japanese, and it aint easy for him to keep count once that starts happening.
He got a suitably "yukkuri hanashitekudasai" response telling him what he had suspected.

This was the end of the line. Would you like to stay?
No.
Then why are you here?
Wrong train.
Wrong train he says,haha.Where do you want to go.
Aomori.
Aomori?Haha. Go back to Kanita.Haha.
Well, haha.When does train leave?
In an hour.Are you sure you dont want to stay?Haha.
Well, haha.

And there he was in a little town, a town he would have liked to settle into a quiet retirement like the one the station master was looking forward to..or not. A town, where time was measured not in minutes, but in seasons. Four springs old, three summers ago. He sat on the bench watching the train. She was in a deep unshakeable slumber, like people who sleep with no sign of life.
He knew then, that he would miss the ferry. Five hours in a day is a tough little stretch to make up for when all one has is a Seishyun 18 ticket and a lot of time to kill. He made peace and waited for the train to wake up.

Minmaya.

Looking back, four summers hence,with the benefit of hindsight he realised that reaching Aomori in time for the ferry, would really not have made any difference. His obsession with the prize was strong enough for him to disqualify winners, move the finish line and ....may be he still races against ghosts for prizes long won.

Minmaya was just another bend in the track. A nice little memorable bend from four summers ago.
He uploaded the blog entry, switched off the lights, opened the curtains and faded away with hazy images of deer at sheer gorges, volcanoes with jagged cones, a shop attendant who rented bicycles next to an onsen, who served milk in bottles....and the prize.

Of Sundays and Hemingway

The sound of the TV filtered into his room, and he stirred to find that the sheet he was lying on was a mess .He was now sleeping on the mattress.He smelt the coir or he imagined that he did. His bed was always a mess when he got out of it. Sunday.
He shaved his week-long stubble, wiping off the lather instead of washing his face. A hurried breakfast. A quick shower.

The sky was cloudy and the curtains were drawn.A Cuban movie was on air. Lilting Spanish with English subtitles. Old Chevy cars. Sounds of Viva José Martí . Framed photographs of Che and many cries of Compañero. A light house, a bearded speleologist and a Labrador named Champion.
Something reminded him of Hemingway. A vague Cuban connection. He had read his "A Farewell to Arms" a week before, interspersed with rambling walks and moments spent staring at the Arabian sea. The book, the sea and the approaching monsoons only had made his melancholy take deeper shade of blue. He wondered what it would be like to spend a week, or a couple in Havana.
He stepped out into the cloudy day, with a Maugham that he had started the previous night. The Maugham remaining unread for the rest of the day. He had a bunch of photographs that needed to be sent out and an entire afternoon to kill.

The Italian Cafe was almost full, but one could also classify it as almost empty depending on how long one spent there. South Korea and Greece were playing their first matches of the World Cup. It was a re-run of previous nights match-up. He knew the result. Korea-2.Greece-0. One goal had already been scored before he had entered the cafe. He spent a while waiting for the second, before he zoned out with an Ethiopian filter coffee.No milk. A couple of German student tourists sat next table. His attention piqued whenever he heard a familiar phrase. He was reminded of Stuttgart, a rainy evening waiting in the drizzle for an old friend, followed by an evening of Bier at the crowded local pub. Wichtel.
They left unhappy after they found something wrong with their bill. The one with the spectacles, noted down something, probably the expense tab in her notebook with a pencil.

He chanced upon a photograph of an old friend unexpectedly in the midst of random link clicking on his Facebook page. A woman he had not seen for more than a year. The unmistakable asymmetry of the smile, punctuated by an upper left canine which just chose to grow in a different direction to her upper right. Symmetry as a virtue to describe beauty was overrated..but then were so many other things too.....
It seemed strange to him that another pretty woman he was reminded off was also someone he'd met off chance, with two front teeth which parents silently and unnecessarily worry about without letting their children know, but the children know that the parents don't want them to know.They added character to her animated face.He was not sure if she was the first person to have used "manifestation" in a conversation with him. Itreminded him of Pulp Fiction.He fished her name out of the ether, smiling to himself at what search engines could do. A short message was sent.He was again reminded of the impending monsoon and a city he loved.

In, the meanwhile, the TV had switched over to the England-USA match. He didnt care much about the proceedings and went downtown to his favorite bookstore. He picked up a James Joyce, a Hesse and Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. It was 4 when he walked out and the clouds made way for the evening sun. The streets and the people looked prettier in the light. He made way to a department store which he knew had a quiet cafe where you could see the people on the street, but the people could not see him. He had been there once and he had happy recollections and a bunch of photographs of the evening.

The umbrellas with the Coffee shop logo had been removed from the balcony. they were there the last time he was here.He settled in for the evening with the Hemingway.

Santiago, the old sailor and Manolin,his apprentice discussing DiMaggio and how they rued not inviting him onto their boat. The dreams of lions on the white sandy beaches of Africa. Santiago's intuition that his luck would turn tomorrow and he would catch his big fish. His mast and the sails of the skiff patched with bags of flour.

He was interrupted by a waitress eager to clear his table. His coffee mug was not yet empty and it was quite an awkward moment, when she lifted the mug to put on her tray and found that it was half full. He brushed her off with a silent wave and she made an embarrassed and hasty departure into the kitchen.

Santiago and his skiff, moving effortlessly into the Gulf away from Havana with the current. Santiago and his skiff and his fishing lines cast precisely and baited with sardines and tuna.
Santiago and the marlin. Santiago and his brother.

The evening was metamorphosing into night, unobtrusively. The pigeons were putting in their final shows of formation flying. Swooping gracefully over the evening skies before returning to familiar roosting spots for the night.

Santiago locked in a battle of attrition with the marlin. Santiago, sees the purple and silver marlin. Santiago kills a dolphin for dinner. Santiago. Hail Marys.Our Fathers.

A group of friends were spending their evening making conversation with lots of interspersed laughter. One of them, wore a pink shirt over which she pulled over a shawl when the wind blew hard. Her shoes were pink too, and she dangled one on her toe tips when she crossed her feet.

Santiago reels in the marlin. The first shark. The harpoon is lost. A couple more sharks. The marlin is devoured. His noble friend, far nobler than those who would eat him. His friend whom he had killed with treachery. He rued going so far out. ..All for nothing.

More people walked into the cafe, the chairs were soon all taken. He was the only one sitting alone at his table. A couple discreetly stared at him from the doorway wishing him to get out.

Santiago ploughed into his shack, leaving his marlin..or what was left of it after the sharks were through on the beach. Manolin found him in the morning. Asleep. He cried. He went out for the newspapers of the last three days . Baseball results.

The couple must have wished hard enough. He woke up , put the book into his bag and went out into the street. He had his marlins to catch and a cake to buy.........

Silver moon and Peace

"Shiloh Angoubi!", The name rang out of the megaphone loudspeakers placed at the four corners of the circus tent, each connected to the microphone by a confusing profusion of wires ..like distant cousins who dislike each other, yet held together because none wants to disappoint the sentimental family matriarch.
In a nation of Raos , Kapoors and Singhs, she always had to enunciate her Manipuri name atleast twice before people pretended that they'd got it. Inspite of the the harsh loudspeaker, she was pretty sure not too many of the two thousand people in the tent seated spread over thirty rows in little arcs of lazy expectancy quite figured out her name..or even bothered.
", on the tightrope ....", the voice continued.

She kept telling herself that there is a first time for everyone. Another inner voice responding that no amount of encouraging cliches would help her, and that now what happened to her would be beyond her control.
Was it really beyond her control?
She shook her head in a futile attempt to throw off the little women clutched to her head, the voices...... Maybe that did help.......

She could hear the dusky Moushami Sheikh, the 41 year old artist, whose realm she was treading on for the first time, somewhere below the safety net.
Moushami, who never missed her prayer...her eyelids lined with kohl and her eyes with sadness. The cat calls and whistles had started to wane away inspite of her last ditch attempt to use the semi transparent nylon bodysuit which she borrowed form Elena, the alcoholic Russian trapeze artist.
Two years ago, she had been told that Shiloh would be her understudy to whom she would pass on the secrets of the rope, and this was the day she had been dreading.
The circus would no longer need her, and the world where she came from, no one who dared wear a semi transparent nylon body suit would ever be allowed to fit in. She wondered if her eyes betrayed her inner thoughts... that she wanted a big hole in the ground to swallow her, that she almost wanted Shiloh to fail.

High up on the pole, Shiloh mechanically flexed her toes inside her rubber soled shoe.She rubbed her sweaty palms on her new silver frock, which had been thrust into her dressing room by Gupta, the manager. The uninviting nylon only made her sweat more.She gripped her balancing pole and put one foot over the rope, trying to find the sweet spot, waiting for her mind to zone out before she put out her other foot into the point of no return.....
Another ironic voice told her that she was already at the point of no return.

She'd fallen a hundred times over with a little more than a sprained neck and a sore ankle which enabled her to get a week long break from her training routine with Moushami...
It was the falling now bit that she was petrified about. She'd heard endless pontification about how failures are stepping stones to success and other similar blah blah.
Life had taught her that there are some failures which mortally wound......Which bleed for a long time, which no tourniquet can quell..
She had a feeling that this would be one..She falls today, she'll never be able to walk the rope in front another audience ever.

The tent lights dimmed, the white focus light turned on her, which made her silver gown shimmer, like a moon in the distant Manipuri skies, Moushami sighed, a circus quietened.... Shiloh put out her other foot on the rope.. her master, her slave.

That night, Moushami slept in peace........

Of Empty Streets and Simple Complications...

He continued walking in the misty drizzle. The tiny raindrops, almost apologetically, gently landing on his face, and ever so slowly mingling with their brethren on their random traverses across his cold cheek. He didn’t particularly like to face up to the idea that the next five days would be spent pecking at a keyboard in an antiseptic office, but the weekend wasn’t much of a respite at all from the jarring futility of his excuse for a life. He wondered which he hated less…. The weekend won…But only just…

Weekends were something he had always looked forward to as a kid. The promise of a couple of days break from the rigors of the unimaginative and institutionalized, almost ritual boredom called school…. Looking back, he tried to remember when the concept of the weekend stopped being a novelty and became a tooth in a wheel, mindlessly being driven by an iron chain with a will of its own. Somewhere between the time he’d sleep walked through school and found himself in a university, he hadn’t planned on getting into in the first place, he quipped soundlessly. He tried pinpointing the exact point in the crowded timeline, despite a voice in the back of his head trying to reason with him about the meaninglessness of the entire exercise. After a relatively short battle, the voice won.

The rain helped. It kept people in their homes, leaving the streets and the little puddles for him to negotiate in a calm he so loved to have around him. He allowed himself a rare smile. Not rare, because he didn’t smile too often…Nope, to most people around him, there couldn’t be a happier man... It was rare, because it didn’t have an agenda…
The voices made sure that these moments were far and few in between though.

Although he had lost his religion somewhere along the way, he believed in a certain interpretation of cosmic justice, almost bordering on the concept of Karma.
The only way he could explain his present situation was through this means. A certain part of him, told him that this was an escape route the mind sought to explain seemingly random connections between unconnected events. But there are times when a refuge in such “reason”, however farfetched can make life so much less complicated. Also, the “reason” gave him hope… He had been a good man, a confused man but an honest man in the last couple of years that he knew what exactly he was up to…or so he thought. Yet life had dealt him the cards, from a deck, he desperately hoped in hindsight, had been shuffled one more time. Using his definition of cosmic justice, he reckoned that he should be in the black sometime in the future. His not so distant past’s bad karma should be annulled by the events in his all too recent past. Maybe not entirely, but certainly in the near future…..
The rain suddenly morphed into an angry hail of thick raindrops…He looked up …He smiled again… Not a bad weekend he muttered and kept walking.

Misty Window Panes

The rains started sometime when he had fallen asleep on the couch, the hum of the air conditioner lulling him into an uneasy sleep. He nuzzled his head on the pillow, trying unconsciously, to cradle it into that sweet spot.
He was woken up by the distant rumble of the approaching thunderstorm,feeling a vague uneasiness. A throat parched and with a heavy head, he placed his bare feet on the cold vinyl floor and felt the chill run up his spine pushing him into the realms of wakefulness. He walked across the room and ran the water from the tap into his favorite jet black cup. He liked the cup. He drank half the cup, suddenly no longer thirsty, unhurriedly emptied the remaining half into the sink.Watching the water etch its way across the metal at the bottom, disappearing in a half murmured gurgled sigh.
His eyes adjusted to the dim light, he went to the window sill and pulled back the curtains,just a bit, and rested his head against the cold glass window. The sky was a tortured canvas of grey with the last rays of the sun, desperately trying to hold sway from the far horizon. The rays were fighting a losing battle. The lightning bolts streaked across the southern skies, lighting up the heavens in a flash of cosmic brilliance followed by the rumble that shook the glass against which his cheek rested. He stood there for a long time, staring unblinkingly at the rain drops falling off the sill. A steady patter almost in sync with his silently beating heart. He stood there until he could not longer see with his breath condensing in a translucent mosaic on the glass. He stood back and painted a squiggle on the misty canvas with his finger. He spent a long while admiring it,until the squiggle disappeared into a meaningless sludge.

He sighed and wondered, what if he had not taken the chances that he took, in the blind belief that whatever the outcome, he could rest assured that he did all he could?
With the benefit of hindsight, he thought ...it would have been easier not knowing.....

He closed the curtains tight and walked back to the couch and snuggled into its deep cushions hoping for sleep to wash over.

Silent Illusions

The evening mist, the glistening dale,
In the twilight,shimmers her veil.

She smiles beneath, the heavens sigh,
The curls askew, the twinkling eye.

The silent gaze, the fleeting illusion,
Its all a haze, a frantic delusion.

The setting sun, the hue on the horizon,
The fading sound of a distant clarion

The night sets in, the pole star bright,
Her veil still shimmers, the face still alight.

The dancing shadows on her face,
She stands framed against the star knit lace.

The timbre of her voice,drowns out the noise,
A mere mortal, Did I ever have a choice?

Will the veil ever be raised?
Will the heavens ever be shamed?

I wait in the hope of the promised moment,
I ...shall always be her unheard lament

Puppets Galore

What are men,
but puppets on a string

Contemplations, every now and then,
Dya hear the hollow ring.

Hours go by, days fly by,
Lost in asking, who am I

A conjured image, a stifled sigh.
Chagrined delusions, a yellow lie.

Do I dare visit my spring ,
In the autumn of my life.

What memories that shalt bring,
How bad could be the strife?

Lost in the whirpools, sands of time,
Innocence lost, a vocal mime.

Just puppets on a string,
That stone in the sling,
By my fingertips... I barely cling ...

The Joys of Sadness

Saturday October 21, 2006 - 07:48pm (IST)

A heart not bared,
For he not dared.

For all he cared,
A hope not shared.

Betwixt hope and fear,
He hoped for his vision to clear.

He then saw the Princess dear,
So far, yet so near.

Faltering words, his thoughts askew,
He decided , a man anew.

He told her , and the next moment he knew,
The sad twinkle in his eyes was not morning dew.

A moment captured,
He enraptured.

With trepidation he ventured,
Pearls and Crystals, albeit a heart shattered.

The hope still lives,
Despite the many webs she weaves.

With memories of the sparkle of her mirth,
He hoped for a miracle.......or a rebirth.