THE CURSED COUPLE

The couple relive a nightmare

A jinxed existence of despair

Perhaps long known

But ignored

In the spur of the sublime moment

Of fervent desire

The couple have forsaken

The rosy days

The fragrance of romance

Of togetherness

In the lap of the blue hills

The star filled nights

When the crescent moon

Descends from

Her silver throne

To grace the union of souls

The couple with a dreadful sin

Of marrying out of kin

Lurk around in shadows deep

Like a pair of fugitives

In fear of being seen

And slaughtered in the name

Of honour

By their own kith and kin.

ANONYMITY

I mingle with the crowd of hasty steps
Famished eyes, furrowed brows
Fearful hearts, floundering souls

I get diffused in their pain
Hunger, angst, stress, denial, deprivation

As I am one with them


But we do not hold Hands
Or touch hearts
Stranger we walk side by side
Isolated islands of muted voices
Of grief untold, sorrow unshared

Chasing are we a haloed mirage
Of flaming passion, lusty temptations
More fragile than the brittle
More precious than the priceless
Half truths of knowledge and perhaps existence

We are all united in our mission
But plod alone the paths of survival
In a meandering labyrinth
Of cascading failure

We do not stop by, smile a nod
In recognition of our mutual loss
Apparent profits and at times calculated withdrawal

I am happy and so are they
In our make-believe worlds of blissful ignorance
And bask in the glory of anonymity
Thy name perhaps is freedom

METROSCRAPE

Today I was unusually late to office. Reason metroscrape. The train next to ours, on the same track, conked off. Then the overhead wire at Kashmere Gate(KG), the main junction, broke down. As a result, the train which takes twenty minutes to reach us to KG took an hour. At KG, one has to change over to the underground blue line metro to proceed further. But today there was an almost stampede like situation at the underground station. Though there were constant announcements by DMRC informing the public about the cause of and apologizing for the delay, the public became unruly. People were pushing and pulling each other, trampling on female passengers, shouting, screaming and jostling as soon as a train would arrive. Fact remains that DMRC did its level best to increase the frequency of the trains so that the peak office hour movement could be managed and the delay due to technical snag could be made up for. But it was a one sided effort as the public refused to cooperate with the Authorities. They would not even allow the inside passengers to come out of the train! Where a little bit of patience would have helped a lot, the angry impatience and mob like behaviour of the public worsened matters. Being a Friday, the crowd was much less than usual weak days. But panic ruled and indiscipline prevailed to the extreme. At last, failing to board the train from KG, I took the train in the opposite direction, went to Civil Lines Station and boarded the train to Patel Chowk from there. It took me four hours to reach office which normally takes one hour fifteen minutes.

I was just thinking proudly the other day that metro has given quite a new culture to the city and the city dwellers. But today I am forced to think just the opposite. As Mr. Sreedharan said in one of his moving speeches, "Delhi is not yet ready for metro," seeing today's man-made crisis, I agree with him hundred percent that Delhites are yet to learn to behave in critical exigencies and are truly not ready for the metro yet.

A CRADLE SOFT WISH

The road that dashes by the side of Sai Baba Temple and hits the traffic signal half a kilometer further down and turns waywardly towards CGO Complex, I am talking of that junction. The left side is free at that signal point. But some scatterbrained driver will invariably halt or park a bus or a car so that the turn is blocked and you are stranded for at least five minutes. And these five minutes are so precious when you are in a hurry to reach office on time! Today is no exception. The auto wheeling me to office plunges in a race against time but alas comes to a rakish halt at this point. This time it is a Honda City, brand new, straight-off-the-showroom, shining in the dazzling sunlight, its inflated rear side plonked at a crooked angle disallowing a left turn. Impatience mixes with something else, an apprehension. Soon the traffic light beggars will gherao the auto whining, pleading, and nagging for alms. I hate it. It is not that I do not want to help the downtrodden! But giving alms signifies encouragement to apathy, joblessness, social degenerates who hate honest, hard work. Fuming and fretting silently, I steal a glance at my watch, peer ahead; my eyes suffer a rude jolt as they hit the shimmering rear of the Honda City once again. I am about to steal another impatient peep at my watch when a skinny, bony arm sticks out inside the three wheeler. I follow the arm - slightly disfigured, just an over shooting length of calcified stick which gives way to the rickety mound of the cringing shoulder on which is tilted a small cherubic face with a pair of round black china balls in a sea of blue, a set of perfectly shaped milk teeth gleaming in the daylight and pale cheeks an inch hollow but glistening in unearthly merriment. A few stubborn strands have fallen at a naughty angle on his forehead which add an impish glow to the face. He does not say anything but just smiles shyly pointing a small soft palm frilled with little snow flakey fingers curling at the tip. The way pampered children haggle mutely with their mothers to buy them a Milky Bar out of turn. He is a novice. Naïve to the trade! He hasn’t rehearsed his lines well. Hasn’t picked up the whine yet! He just smiles and tilts his head further so that it almost bumps into his ball and socket.

A scrawny body refusing to hide under a button-less shirt and a pair of oversized shots which seems to dangle from the fragile circumference of his thin waist! An irresistible urge to clasp the baby fingers and pull him inside asking”Chalega, school, padhne?” Just a few stray moments. The signal changes colour. The Honda City shows off its burning brake lights. My carrier purrs into action. I unzip my bag hurriedly, fumble for my wallet, rummage in it blindly, scoop out whatever comes my way and shove it in his hands. He does not look at the crushed, crumpled notes. He just smiles. He is happy. The happiness pours out like sunshine through crevices of the mischievous glint of his eyes, pallor of his cheeks, the white innocence of his teeth. An unhurried pause in the revving up scurry of movements! A few seconds! He is gone!

It’s a bright morning. Very bright! Everything around refracts the glitter of the post rain sun. But the dazzle does not prick my eyes. There is a veil of mist which surrounds and deepens as I blink. Suddenly, a breath of breeze blows in from an unfamiliar direction crooning craftily a lullaby into my ears. A lullaby which sounds uncannily familiar! Words resonate eerily in the sonorous voice of Nidaah Fazli Sahib. The unforgettable lines aptly epitomizing the remnant of the moment just swished by:

Ghar se masjid hai bahut door chalo yun Karle
Kissi rotey huey bachhe ko hansaaya jaaye!

A TALE UNTOLD BY TIME

I see him quite often trudging his way through a maze of unknown faces in the metro station. Our timing coincides perfectly when I am a little late than usual. He maintains his time around ninish every morning. At first I thought he was a student. A dark, longish face, close cropped hair, medium height, he drags his right leg along in a pronounced limp. He dresses well with matching shining boots and a rucksack rests peacefully on his back. He lumbers on threading his way efficiently through the crowd. Sometimes he halts on his way and lets the mad rush pass by. I observe him often – straight backed and proud.

Two days back it so happened that I got a seat in the train by a stroke of luck. As I gazed around, I found the boy standing right in front of me. I gestured to him and offered my seat. He looked aghast and said “No please! Never mind.” A deep, strong, confident resonant, well modulated voice! A mesmeric moment of melodious notes! More so may be because I have an ear for music, the rendition sounded sonorous and soothing to say the least. The faint but firm stress on the “please” restrained me from insisting further. I realized that I had made a mistake in concentrating on his handicap. We are all mutilated and tainted, aren’t we? In thoughts and deeds if not in appearance or attire!

He stood their looking like a mutinous child with his back turned towards me. His body language made me feel guilty. Did I do anything wrong by offering him a seat? Did I hurt his pride? Should I have treated him like all other passengers? Did he feel angry or embarrassed at my obvious display of kindness? Did he take my kindness to be pity? Would it not be against etiquette not to have offered him the seat? These and many more questions tormented me and still make their disturbing presence felt in my mind.

I grope in the dark for a suitable answer. I still do. An answer matching the rich diction of his unspoken words, his unpublished, unpublicised rebel with himself and the world which will not go down anywhere in the annals of history in indellible golden prints amidst a galore of pomp and show but which cumulates and consolidates in silence the day to day human efforts and endeavours against all odds - physiological as well as psychological, cerebral as well as social. In the mundane Draconian drudgeries of life, a flickering flame of hope.


Thus goes the tale of an ordinary man.
Who rejoiced in rain and against time he ran.
And made his presence felt
In the timelessness of time.
In silence, in words, in deeds,
In thoughts, may be not so sublime.
But still he tried, he pushed, he cried..
He toiled, he survived, he foiled, he surpassed.
He burnt and rose from ashes, he learnt
Perhaps his Heart to defy.
But he refused to be by-gone, lost in memory.
Forgiven by sorrow, forgotten by time.
He was one amongst many and many amongst one.
The connect divine in the multitude that thronged
The scampering paths of life.
He is, he will and shall always remain
Just an ordinary man.

CITY DIARY

Ours is a country where the traditional and the modern, the mundane and the bizarre, the primitive and the contemporary, all co-exist side by side peacefully. Some of the examples are:

(1) A bullock cart demurely parked beside a Ford Icon at the traffic signal waiting for the lights to change,

(2) A trawler carrying rows and rows of mean machines snaking through the crowded roads and an arrogantly upright frost - free refrigerator on a thela gadi trudging side by side,

(3) A pretty girl perched on a rickshaw with the latest Nokia mobile phone glued to her ears talking incessantly,

(4) An SUV crammed with burqa clad figures swathed from head to toe and faces covered; pairs of kohl laced eyes the only visible body part scanning the cityscape eagerly,

(5) A figure in body hugging jeans prostrate before the deity in a temple,

(6) A young girl in a short top ringing the temple bell religiously while her naval stone winks in the sunlight,

(7) A boy with punky hairstyle and studs shining on earlobes devoutly murmuring a prayer from the "Hanumaan Chaalisa",

(8) A matronly traffic police woman in her neat uniform and shining boots flaunting a big sindoor bindi burning on her sun-tanned forehead - a symbol of marital bliss,

(9) An exact replica of a branded outfit being sold by a street hawker at half the price in front of the authorized show room of the same brand,

(10) A young girl in jeans and short top with head covered by the hijaab,

(11) A female DMRC guard checking the passengers with a hand scanner while the bangles on her wrist jingle with the rhythm of the movement,

(12) A rustic woman with her face covered by an arms length ghunghat staggering ten feet behind her husband in the moving metro,

Many more like this accumulated in mind's memory bank - snapshots clicked hurriedly through cursory glances while travelling - recorded here without malice just to share glimpses of a city characterized by paradoxes, contradictions, thesis and anti-thesis - a picture post-card of a society under transition.

TALE OF A MOLESTED CITY

Suddenly Delhi has woken up to the forthcoming Commonwealth Games. Trenches have been dug (Don’t ask me why; most probably so that we may jump into them and hide in shame when India fails to win even a tin medal in the Games). The potholes have been made bigger by haphazard raking. The pavements are being widened. Dividers are being erected. The roads are being narrowed (scaped is the official term). All the stadia are being renovated. Over bridges are being put up and DMRC is being pushed to complete the “metro-morphosis” of the NCR on or before time. Though, I don’t think it needs to be goaded into action as it is the only system right in perfect order.

But the moot point here is that all these things are happening all at once just a few months before the commencement of the Games at the same time, by a stroke of preordained divine plan, also eerily coinciding with the monsoonal deluge (though the rains are playing truant off and on). As a result, there are “happy” puddles and water logs all around delaying the completion of the mammoth task of overhauling the city. Not to mention the “euphoric” mishaps and accidents for the aam junta stumbling into gaping manholes and man-made gorges and ravines beneath merrily meandering streams and coagulated water bodies. Not to mention the soon to be triggered off water borne diseases in epidemic proportions. Not to mention the indefinite claustrophobic imprisonment amidst never ending traffic jams. Wrath of Nature? Or eternal human folly?

All this for what? Just to make the capital look upbeat and updated to international standards (with its faltering electricity and water supply system)? I am told that all these arrangements are for our “atithi devo bhava” who’d be arriving in throngs flooding the city a few months hence. For the convenience of the videshi athletes who would have found it immensely difficult to tread on the undulating, dented walkways of the rajdhani.

In the meanwhile, Ms. Dixit continues to enjoy an insulated existence within her Secretariat which looks more like a five star hotel from the exterior (I have never had the good (?) fortune of visiting the interiors) rather than an office premise of a country which has just recently scraped past the stigma of the “Third World”. On the other hand, the common man looks on helplessly while the taxpayers’ money goes down the drain.

The breaking news is that the city is going to be brought back to “normalcy” soon after the Games is over. That is what I have been told and people are talking about in agog wonderment(I hope they are all wrong). This means the roads which are now being sleeked will be widened once again to accommodate the every increasing insurgency of vehicles on road and the pavements now being widened will be brought down to shape so that the quintessential Delhites do not loose their age-old habit of tight rope walking between bumper to bumper traffic. So much so for the beautification of the city! A colossal waste of public resources and human labour.

At life’s crossroads, it is sometimes very difficult to choose between what is easy and what is right. In this case, instead of mauling and molesting the cityscape again and again, the easy way out would not only have been economical but advantageous too.

No road scaping should have been undertaken. The ankle spraining potholes should have been retained, as it is, if not made bigger and ghastlier in size and shape. While our desi athlete bhais would know how to circumvent the black holes of life, sorry , road, out of years of rigorous practice, the videshi counterparts would invariably bumble into a few. Result - muscular sprains, ligament strains and orthopaedic disorders of varying degrees (God forbid!) thereby inevitable detention from Games leaving an opponent free competition and an easy win for our country. Medals and accolades do not otherwise seem forthcoming through proper channel i.e. the right way. I think that must be the secret plan as well since MCD and NDMC have reportedly given up on meeting the deadline.

Correct me if I am wrong in my surmises since I am just a hapless layperson of this country and would be extremely relieved and overjoyed if proven wrong ten times and over again.

Ciao