A visit to the clinic

This whole year has been pretty hectic, writing has taken a backseat and circa 2010 A.D has almost come to a close. I have been involved in a couple of other things both professionally and creatively. So let’s rest it at that.

Now you tend to realize the gravity of the population problem when you have to wait endlessly at the doctor’s clinic, but along with that agonizing wait also comes an opportunity to watch the people, who along with you, are waiting incessantly too.

The first thing that I notice is the sheer number of babies. All colors, caste and creed. Some staring intently at me and some staring intently at my blackberry and the naughtier ones who are trying to snatch it from me. They have no burden of behaving in a civilized manner and are probably behaving much worse at the clinic than they would probably do at home. Another baby meanwhile, with huge blobs of kohl applied on her eyes and a peck on the cheek, is holding my finger with both of her hands and looking at it with eyes as big as a pear. She was probably comparing the sizes of our respective limbs with my size seeming impossible to her, maybe she was also secretly trying to calculate as to when her limb would reach my size or equivalent. As the baby grew tired of wondering, she did the next best and put my finger in her mouth trying to bite.

As the mother was desperately trying to pull her baby towards her, who was still trying to cling to my finger, I was noticing other people around. Thankfully none were looking very serious at the moment. There was this particular woman who I think was from a small village or town as she had all proper ‘ghungta’ done with vermillion in huge quantities splashed on her forehead or whatever that was visible of it at that moment. The thing which never ceased to amaze me was that she was managing to hold two babies in one hand, vegetables and medical reports on the other and looking absolutely ill at the same time. It was pretty evident that it was the mother who needed a fair amount of medical attention but apparently she had her hands full with other things.

Along with the agony of waiting was the irritating sound of the blaring T.V which was playing some ancient movie at that time. The hero kept alternating between the elephant and Jackie shroff. But I had to admit that after waiting outside for one and a half hour and being forced to watch that movie, I was mighty disappointed when the compounder changed the channel for IPL matches barring us from watching the end of that pitiable movie which had somehow engrossed all of us including me.

My time waiting outside was almost one and a half hours and my meeting with the doctor lasted about 5 minutes. After coming out I took my medicines from the counter and left for home. As I was introspecting I realized that it was nice to have a look at ordinary people once in a while, observing them, learning lessons and observing those little nuances which make us one in this vast land of varying caste, creed and color, even if it meant being tried to be bit upon by babies who had no teeth.

Life goes on in the city as it used too.

The Realization

He walks, but you mostly see him run in the morning. He never exercises, but when you see him you realize that he hardly needs it. His words can probably melt a woman’s heart, but all you can hear is his own heart panting.

This is not your metro-sexual model on a jogging trip on a big green sprawling garden.

This IS your average mumbaikar on the run to catch the office bus/local train.

This situation is repeated daily in the life of this particular mumbaikar. As his office timings have changed he is still in the fine tuning mode of maximizing his morning slumber vs. catching the office bus. He does not make it usually, but he says to himself that things will work out eventually and catches an auto-rickshaw. It costs him around a hundred and fifty odd bucks for a one-way ride most of the time.

He realizes that it is a sorry state of affairs and that it cannot continue. But he takes out his wallet, checks the cash and leaves his worries for another day.

The next day he makes it, the following day too, but not the third day.

He has been observing this particular girl for a better part of the week. She is not pretty and neither is he eying the girl as he is already committed. But he has no choice as they cross their paths daily, albeit in the opposite direction, on the foot over bridge.

In the meantime he misses the bus three times out of five in a week.

As he is traveling in the auto, suddenly it dawns upon him that there is a connection between him, the girl, the foot over bridge and the office bus.

Maybe this realization came because he was reading too much Dan Brown, Frederick Forsyth and John Grisham throughout the month. But maybe he had suddenly experienced his faster than Darwinian rate of evolution with regards to his observation skills. He reasonably surmised that his observation be put to test as the meter in the auto touched a hundred rupees.

He got up early, wasted less time and he knew he was in time to catch the office bus. As he was walking towards the over bridge along came that girl, he saw that he had crossed her while he was more than halfway towards the length of the foot over bridge. He caught the bus that day. The next day, although not deliberate, he succeeded in getting out just in the nick of time. He saw that girl again, this time she had the lead while they both crossed, he missed the bus.

Throughout the week he had put his idea to test, and he came to realize that whenever she had the lead on the foot over bridge he ended up missing the bus and paying a hundred and fifty odd rupees.

One can keep time here without looking at the watch, he said to himself.

Glowing in the warmth of his new found revelation he crossed the girl the following morning, this time he being in the lead, and gave her a small but genuine smile.

Why had he smiled is a mystery to the girl even today.

He makes it to the bus usually nowadays.

Life goes on in the city as it used too.

Home again

Bombay

City of dreams

The more I find reasons to hate it, the more I realize how unique this city is, how this city is like no other. You may hate it, you may abuse it but the soul of the city never hits back. What it does though, is slowly engulf you around with the same soul you curse and find faults with, and lets you breathe it ever so slowly, and within some time, before you realize, you are in its magical spell forever.

I had gone to Gurgaon for fifteen months, could never settle, the economic crisis filtered down into my professional and personal life and my subconscious like a little scared child asked me to run back to Bombay where I knew, it will find sanctuary for sure.

So with a new job I came back here. The difference in me almost immediate. I have started,writing again, to listen to music again, to crib about the water problems again, to loudly abuse fellow passengers in the local train again etcetera. I was slowly becoming whole again because I was home again.

Welcome back! The city says, and I silently oblige.

It's good to be back.

Dusting off the old.......

I am terribly busy. I want to blog, there are a lot of ideas running around my head but unfortunately I cannot find the time. I have also shifted to a new place, so that too is a new set of problems which I shall elaborate some other time.

Since I cannot write anything new at present, I just thought of dusting off my shelf and link some of my old articles which time has forgotten. Hardly anybody parses through a whole blog (with the kind of hectic life that we have made for ourselves!)

I have linked some blogposts of mine which I think are interesting. Although it is not necessary that you feel so.

Just sit back and enjoy a ride through time.

Intolerance

A visit to the marketplace after a long time

Long walk to freedom

The Smell of Phenyl

Another day in the train

The official guide on cracking the kbc

Bread

New Delhi Railway Station, 6:15 am.

A Sunday ruined. Instead of sleeping late and give my body a well deserved break, I found myself outside the railway station on a cold winter morning. The temperature outside was 6 degrees Celsius.

Coming from Gurgaon did not help either. I had a hard time reaching the station as I had to juggle between two buses, a rickshaw and a cycle rickshaw as well.

In between all these disappointing scenarios, I somehow managed to reach New Delhi station an hour ahead of time. It was a relief as I had managed to stick to my schedule and make it well in time. But with that came the agonizing prospect of facing the cold for one full hour. I had prepared reasonably well though as not an inch of my skin showed anywhere. Monkey caps, gloves, shoes and every other sundry winter item were on me at that moment.

Due to increased security measures no one was allowed inside the station premises. Not that it would have helped in any way but it still would have given a meagre protection against the bitter cold outside.

I decided that the best thing I could do was to have a nice and warm cup of tea in a small tea-shop just outside the railway station and so I started walking in that direction.

Nice store for a small shop. Apart from tea, there were sandwiches, burgers, chips etc too. Pretty crammed up that place, but good to see on a cold winter morning. I took tea and sandwiches and started munching of them merrily, trying to shake away the cold that was slowly engulfing me from all sides in that open space.

As I was busy alternating between gnawing my teeth vigorously and sipping my tea, along came a man. He was wearing a cotton shirt, a tattered turban, a tattered blanket over his shirt and ‘dhoti’ which fell till his knees. He was wearing sandals but no socks.

Just seeing him made me feel cold from my innards. How could such a man be oblivious to the cold surrounding him? But I probably realized he must be a ‘mazdoor’ (labourer) from the nearby construction site.

All I could see was that he had a five rupee note clutched in his fist. Nothing else.

He came near the shop and surveyed it, corner to corner. His eyes going from the chips, the still ceiling fan to the boiling kettle. His surveying stopped when his eyes landed on a loaf of bread.

‘Chai kitne ki?’ (How much for the tea?)
‘Do rupaiye’(Two rupees)
‘Aur ye paav?’ (And this piece of bread?)
‘Pandrah rupaiye, ise mat dekho, tumhare bus ki baat nahi hai’ (Fifteen rupees, don’t look at it, you will not be able to afford this)

Till that time his arm was in motion upwards; the arm in which he had clutched his five rupee note, in order to give the shopkeeper the exact change. A single load of bread (paav) costs three rupees around these parts, and the tea was for two rupees. But his arm's upward motion stopped on hearing the ‘paav’ was for fifteen rupees. His mouth fell open, amazed as to how could he be charging this loaf of bread for fifteen rupees? His hand slowly came back to its original position and once again clutched the five rupee note.

I could see in his eyes that he was shocked and was in total disbelief. His only hope of morning tea along with a single loaf of bread earned with honest labour was also taken away by this greedy shopkeeper. He was probably thinking that the shopkeeper had not thought even twice to cheat an ordinary ‘mazdoor’ like him.

He was so completely broken that he did not even ask his question again. He just stood there, with an angry look in his eyes, the eyes in which now there was no hope. The whole idea of surviving this daily grind, especially in this cold winter, was just a laughable joke to him now. With those angry, but empty eyes, he just turned, looked back once at the ‘paav’ and then started walking the way in which he had come.

I noticed that the ‘mazdoor’ had started shivering while he was walking back. Maybe it wss the cold which was breaking his indomitable will slowly but surely. The five rupee note was still clutched in his hand, probably hoping that this meagre amount would be appreciated elsewhere.

What had happened was that the labourer had mistakenly taken the burger for a ‘paav’. But he could not see the filling inside the two loaves of bread from the position in which he had stood. All he could see and understand that it was an ordinary ‘paav’ and the shopkeeper had cheated him out of that too. He had come fighting the cold, he had come fighting against all odds of surviving each day, and he had probably fought even for saving this five rupee note. But now that he was ‘out of the game’ he did not have the will even to ask twice.

The shopkeeper also did not bother to explain thinking that he was an illiterate man and would not even have heard the word ‘burger’.

The mazdoor never came back again to the store till the time I was present.

Such are the circumstances of the ordinary man in his/her daily life. Some people have lost even their basic need, and that's hope.

The hot tea no longer could warm my body because my soul had turned ice cold.

I left the tea and sandwich there unfinished. It was time up by the way and I left for the station.

It was time up not only for me but for a lot of people nearby.