A Half House

 

The dying year had inaudibly moaned in the clatter and chatter of the New Year Eve’s celebrations:

You salute the rising sun and the upcoming fates,

And dump the rest as mere names and dates.

But my burdened self on death bed (or in labour pain?) sighs,

'Dears, you forget those fallen promises amidst these hasty byes!'

 

But there were not too many takers for the dying year’s hymn, the soon-to-be-past calendar entry and swiftly it was January 1.

The crowded was intoxicated by a promising future:

This foggy, cold midnight says,

The next sun will have fresh rays

that will warmly gloat over the wrong shades

bitingly, filthily draped around the beleaguered, beggared, deprived mass of flesh,

Tomorrow it just won't be mere trash!

A beginning it will be, all new and fresh!

The New Year had struck its first second on an exceptionally foggy and cold night. The drunken revellers around India Gate had enough of shouting, blabbering, clamouring, jostling and even dancing to have their share of forced fun under the dimmed yellow glaze of mercury lights. It was young India, metropolitan India, celebrating the New Year eve with the enthusiasm and expertise of the Western world. The motley mix of crowd was singing a welcoming hymn for the arrival of the New Year. They also said a hasty goodbye to the year that was just gone. Premature welcome notes and hasty obituaries are seldom feasible. But human frailty rarely takes on the feasible things by instinct because unfeasible things appear too common; and feasibility teases with its daunting impracticality. The year that was gone did not matter much now; the year that had taken birth meant everything to everybody. Lost in the boom and bang of welcoming festivities, nobody appeared to pray for the dying year. We rejuvenate and kill our time; we do the both. All energies and intentions focussed now on enlivening a fresh time. There were but some souls that were trying to recall how much she or he was to be blamed for the past year’s death. Even in this little group there was still some exceptional soul or couple of souls at the most who still carried lifeful memories, all fresh and alive, of the last year. The last one or two such odd people did so because the present might have appeared too gloomy to them to participate in the futuristic revellery.

She stood alone in the crowd, looking more backwards unlike the rushing forth, firecracking stampede around her. Like any other young girl enjoying the freedom in the crowd, she had tried her best to sway to the exhilarating tunes of the time. She was beautiful, tall, slim and dove-eyed with Kohl in her eyes, a presentable replica of the famed Bengali beauty, much in demand and taste in Delhi. She had manners, culture, custom, education and a seductive nose ring to add to her interesting persona. She was a casual drinker but today she had not taken drink. She wanted to stay fully in senses to feel her situation as it should given her condition. She was both maker and the breaker of the self. She had this realisation and appeared ready to accept all the good and the bad that life offered her now. She had had her decent share of fun and education at the JNU, the prestigious institution where taboos do not subdue basic instincts and the young souls unyoked from blindfolding curiosities about the opposite sex have full enjoyment and lofty education. Now on this densely foggy cold night, she seemed more to reflect back than looking forward to an interesting new year. One could easily see that she was terribly alone in the crowd. Leaving the pleasantly agitated crowed, looking almost without any tinkling in her heart at the firecrackers busting the foggy cloud, she silently left the place to reach her rented double roomed apartment.

When she reached her place, it very well appeared as an abode well suited to a married couple. An unknown person would have immediately dubbed it as the place--a sweet home--of a married couple. There were insignias of traditional cosy Indian domesticity. Yes it looked like a sweet home. The bed, the kitchen, the living room, the household items, everything gave full inkling of a happily married life. She had done her cultural and caring best in accumulating the vases, the colourful living room rugs, the sofa coverings, handcrafted cushion covers, aesthetic lampshades, attractive tapestries, the curtains, the artefacts in the showcase, the little study in a corner with books, etc. And the now redundant guitar! He liked playing guitar after his busy schedule as an economist with a big accountancy firm and she had gifted it on his birthday. It was a good one having taken her full month’s salary to bring a smile on his face.

All the stage and its setting appeared the handiwork of a wife rightfully decorating her home. She but was a girl, not a wife. The place was just double roomed house, not home. Now it was fractured to even lose its tiny house stature; it appeared just a half house and that too meshed up, like a storm had terribly jostled a nest in the high branches of a date palm, tearing away half the sinews, leaving behind a gaping hole. The man who had generated that wifely care in her, her live-in partner, her heartthrob from the JNU days, a Punjabi youth in excellent in debate and academics and much more in rugged looks, had vacated his share from her carefully woven family set-up. His family continuously insisted on getting him married in the traditional Indian manner to a Punjabi girl of more suitability. Like the famed educated Indians’ instincts to keep the both worlds to themselves, he had dilly dallied for three years—the time during which she brought the best out of her as a partner, as unofficial wife—and ultimately moved towards the family, the last year piling up more bitterness and fights, finally resulting in the little thing of the break-up. To her but it was more than a break-up. She had nurtured her domesticity like a perfect wife. She worked in the editorial department of an academic publisher, came back all tired up after the head-eating work on manuscripts, cooked delicious food and kept home like any traditional Indian working woman does. Her domesticity, her little world but was not safe. After all, there are always all types of odds against the live-in relationships.

She had felt that vacuum building in him. She had tried to be more affectionate, more caring, tried her best to pour the last bit of her physical charm during their lovemaking, but all these alibis irritate a man who has decided to look the other way, who is just looking to justify his decision to separate. The more she tried, the more it created issues. After that he had started shouting more and more over more and more little issues. She was having palpitations about the impending disaster. She knew she was fighting a losing battle. She but loved him, and hated him for his slippery convictions, and as a last ditch effort had forced him into sex—which had become a rarity for the last few months and occurred only of her initiative—even though he was still ranting about a trivial issue. She had hoped to douse the storm of his anger in the feminine folds of her receptivity. But it had been all of a punishment and nothing of lovemaking. The very next day he had left while she was in her office. When she came back it was a house that had been hit by a storm, too shocked to feel the pain she just collected her leftovers. There were vestiges of the past they shared. In the pair of bathroom slippers, in old trackpants, t-shirts left behind perhaps with the instinct that it was her duty to put away the garbage things. There were many things left behind, most of these being of no use to him anymore, including she.    

She could not sleep once back in her broken nest and just dumped herself in the rocking chair where he did the same during the happy times. She just vacantly stared at the scores of artistic souvenirs they had exchanged as replica of their love. The first day of the year opened its eyes outside and she fell into a tired doze of sleep for an hour and got up with a shudder. Getting afraid of her pathetically brooding and suffering self, she realised a modern self-standing girl was not supposed to be broken like this. It was a presumption. A difficult concept to hang onto at this moment, but she forced herself into believing this. It was a fresh day, first day of the year. Like sun was struggling to cast its first ray behind the fog, she struggled to force a ray of normalcy into her life.

Being normal means having breakfast, she realised. Habitually she went to make the toast like he liked it, realised with a shudder that he wasn’t around, tuned herself to make it the way she liked, ate without much thoughts, mechanically. She was but eating her own bits of individuality to help her rise on her feet. And she did rise. She had to move ahead and for that at least today she needed to be outside to discover herself, to find a little purpose to cling onto. She needed a foothold to keep at least hanging down the cliff and not fall into the painful depth. She just left home, aimless, destinationless; just to go through Delhi. The idea just caught her in the fall from the precipice and she found sympathy and solace in Delhi, the good bad Delhi that had made her and broken her. The same Delhi was beckoning her.

   

Walking through a poor locality in Delhi was revealing. Bigger miseries perhaps make you cope with your own cuts a bit better. A little kid aged barely seven or eight came pulling a rickshaw carrier. It was loaded with empty plastic cans and the lad was just going almost half way down on each side to complete the paddling circle. More child self-bread earners washing dirty plates by a kulche stall. So early in the morning and instead of getting breakfast before going to school they were earning their own survival tit-bits. Littlest of children taking a bath at a public tap after the late night stint at the eating point where the midnight revellers had left a trail of dumped sorrows and excreted pleasantries. Childhood almost withered in them. These were the men boys. Getting their skins hardened with antisocial strains; fed by the scorns and abuses of their merciless masters. Well Delhi has so much to cheer about, but far more to ponder about sadly.

She had always nonchalantly passed by this side of Delhi, like any other self-possessed educated better placed youngster in Delhi. With a wounded self, she felt their pitiable condition now. She had received some calls from a woman from an NGO working to educate poorest of the poor. ‘Ma’am please sponsor a child’s education! Please help us nurture a future!’ the lady would almost plead and she politely, trying her level best to subdue irritation would always say no. After all the NGO sector in India has been maligned by the mandarins who carry out business like any other profession in name of charities, funds, donations and what not. She could very well recall the lady telling her that they would share all the details including the family photo of the child getting education with the help of her charity. She saw a tiny bit of purpose in like: To help a poor child in getting education. She resolved to call back the lady as soon as possible; surely today afternoon only. From being almost a dead log of wood, immediately she felt like taking a course, a bit more control of herself.

A cow—dung-smeared and fed on garbage diet, lip-serviced worship and myth—was busy eating the stenchful muck of a colony’s garbage house. Deprived of the entire mythical aura it appeared a big pig just munching the leftovers. A well-off gentleman stopped his car, pulled out a chapatti, offered it to the humble and forgiving creature and fulfilling his quota of religiosity and grabbing his share of blessings sped away. Hats off holy mother! Even though we have forced you to eat garbage, you still give us a chance to fulfil our fleeting religious duties. She stopped by the cow. A beautiful girl standing by a pitiable cow at the garbage house. A few people even stopped to watch this odd spectacle. She felt the cow’s woes. The famed animal in Hindu mythology, the beholder of Hindu pride, the catcher of Hindu votes in communal politics, and who cares really whether it eats excreta-smitten vegetable leftovers tied in a ploy bag. She had always felt deadly scared of the stray cattle. Under the surge of sympathy and pity, the fear took a back seat. She approached the dust-binned holy mother as another wronged person. Her presence was unnervingly clean, perfumed and scented. Even at her uncaring worst she appeared clean and polished in her most casual dress. For the first time in her life she touched a cow. She touched its head. The cow seemed to look around for some offering, the holy beggar. But her touch was even more gratifying. Their eyes met. Hers sleepless and dreamy without Kohl. He had always told her that she looks a sleepy goddess without the kajal. The cow’s forgiving, forgetting, mellifluous dark pair gazed into her painful self. Their sorrows met, melted, and soothed each other. She just kept on caressing the dark grey head raised before her. She had tears. Possibly the cow had even bigger tears. She saw the dirty trail of eye secretion down the corner of the animal’s eyes. A trail of sorrows born of the cocktail of myth, legend and religion. The Muslims would very much like to eat beef; the Hindus on the other hand want her to live eternally even if it meant living alongside a pig in the gutters.  

 

The mundane realities of a still more common world had taken her in their strides. She just boarded any one of the buses to any of the places in Delhi. A poor man’s daughter, beautiful in her own way, was singing in the bus. The slate pieces tucked in her fingers chimed with melody as she sang a beautiful melancholic Rajasthani gypsy song. When it came to rewards, the peoples’ reaction made it appear like she was begging. She felt the badness of this world: A girl, an artist, a poor man’s daughter singing amidst a crowd of the relatively well off citizens and they just taking her to be a beggar only who asked for unearned money. She had seen many such spectacles in Delhi and these did not mean much to her like they do not to any of the better placed people around. After her performance, the girl walked down to gather coins. Literally everybody seemed to have enjoyed her song, but almost nobody seemed eager to give a coin. ‘We do not support beggary,’ they famously chime. The child artist’s little bowl having a few coins reached her seat. Today she had the heart and time to feel the beauty of the act. ‘The act was better than many of the cinematic bullshits that she watched in multiplexes at the cost of many hundreds,’ she realised. Without listening to any nay-saying calculations by her smart brain, she felt her hand going into her wallet and a 500 rupees bill fell weightier than any coin into the bowl. Many eyes turned towards her and took her to be a mad person. ‘What has happened to this girl,’ somebody muttered. ‘What has happened to me! I have felt the pain that you do not!’ she shouted to everybody and nobody. They were shut off at her revolt. The little girl artist touched her feet. She smiled at the tiny figure and put her hand on the little head. A pair of eyes smiled most genuinely at her.

 

The bus was plying over the Yamuna. ‘We are the polluters. Just see the rivers of kaliyuga we create. The poison, black, muddy, slithery, foul-smelling monster creeping into the guts of our holy rivers! Where is Yamuna? No it’s not here! We have killed it,’ she could not help ignore the pathetically suffering sewage moans of the dead Yamuna. There had been so many joyrides in his car earlier, over this very bridge, over the same suffering Yamuna. She had never seen Yamuna like this. Yamuna to her like most of us flowed uncomplainingly carrying its load of shit and myth. She cast a glance at the vast stretches. The riverbed was dry, just two black rivulets serpented across the sands like a snake couple carrying poison and fanged proximity. It was a deplorable sight, the suffering, stinking Yamuna. It was a stinking hell, undoubtedly. She had a look of sympathy for the poor Yamuna. It appeared just a big drain of mucking filth and sewage. During the Monsoon, the rains kiss its dirty, pugnacious, purple-faced layer and provide the facepack, the nutritious sandy waters from the hills. For a brief time Yamuna captures back its riveting river glory. A new avatar, Yamuna the holy river, but for how long? Just for a couple month at the most! After that it’s again the same sad drainage. The name but prevails; from the road and railway bridges people throw coins. It blesses them, or at least they feel blessed by the uncomplaining mother, all forgiving, all pious. ‘Jai Jamuna mai!’ a very old hand put all life force to toss a coin into the beggary Yamuna’s bowl, starved of reverence, starved of rains, full of sewage. The Bihari beggar lady balanced herself in the fraction of a second as she stole a Namaste to the river and nearly avoided a fall on the bus conductor who immediately demanded money for the ride in the bus. The woman just had a toothless sheepish grin to give him and he retorted, ‘You have money to throw in the river and you do not have for buying a ticket!’ It was a whiplashing reprimand. Before he could carry on with his rant, the young single woman rose from her seat and bought a ticket for the old woman.

 

She was seeing across the gloom inside her. There are many things to look around your feet when the bigger world above your head loses its meaning temporarily. The sun had also partially succeeded in cutting across the foggy facade. It was a silvery noon having some vestiges of the dark cold night. But it appeared more optimistic for the sun might smile any moment.