Cobalt blue eyes. I knew they were black but somehow I felt blue – dark cobalt blue. He was sitting inside a bright yellow taxi, next to the driver’s seat – his eyes staring at me, piercing through me – daring me to dance – in that cold cloudy night.
“Kahaan jaana hai?” he asked.
I could hear him but almost could
not. I was somewhere else – lost in the bustle of man-made machinery,
interrupted by strange honks, punctuated with desperate curses of a child’s
distant cry, captivated by moving laser lights. The lights; they were sometimes
white, sometimes red and most often an unidentifiable blue that looked like the
arctic cold. But if you go too close to
it, you will feel wounded by its unnatural heat. They’re all moving. Faster and
more ferocious than any creature God has put on earth.
I could see insects, all kinds of
insects, crawling in lines – straight lines, crooked lines, broken lines – all
kinds of lines. I do not know what they feed on but they are so big they might
defeat you in a wrestle. Some of them are refugees running in a loop from one
shelter to another in a no-man’s-land, pushed and shoved with hollow begging
bowls up their starving mouths. Yet some wander alone without caring about any of
these lines. They walk alone – a very few of them, and you can hardly notice
them in the struggle of all these lines. Maybe they are the bugs, bugged down
by the histrionics of this Machiavellian machine that they find themselves
stuck in. Maybe, I too am just one of them – another immigrant bug hopelessly
searching for refuge in the conundrums of this alien civilization.
In the confusion of this loud and
flashing bright circus of man-made marvels, I looked up at the Prussian blue
sky. It had a faint crescent shape and was dotted with a few spare stars,
dazzling like diamond studs on a beautiful black face. The faintness of the moon was not
because of the few strands of hovering rain clouds, but the clouds formed by
exhaust pipes of the circus. I could see them again – the insects – only this
time they were wearing Louis Vuitton
shades, carrying Armani bags as they
walked in lines in their Gucci shoes,
soaking up the chimney clouds. The neon board across the road displayed ‘Elixir of Achievement’. And I was lost
again.
A sudden gush of cool breeze woke
me up from my amnesia and made me realise that I was on my way to where I came
from. It was getting late. I looked back at the yellow taxi and those hypnotic cobalt
blue eyes which had caught a grey hue by now. Like a spider web getting dense
and denser.
“Haldiram’s”, I said and stared back trying to clamber my way
through the web, to the core of its nest, to find out what the spider was
thinking. I tried scratching on the hard surface of his emotional veneer but I
couldn’t read a thing. Maybe the spider did not understand my language. Maybe,
I had not yet mastered spider-tongue to perfection. He kept staring at me as I
opened the back door and sat right behind, without waiting for him to say
anything.
He turned his head back, like an
owl, with a small earthen cup in his left hand that exhumed fumes of hot tea
and kept staring at me. Not into my eyes, but into me – as if he wanted to know
what I was – man or maggot, where I came from – mars or moon, what I really ate
– meat or mite. For a split second, I felt stupid by this stupefying scene.
And I decided to interrupt the silence.
“Haldiram’s pata hai naa? Airport ke paas?”
He said nothing and kept staring blank at me. There was this emptiness and the crawling spider in it. The void continued.
“Chalenge kya?”
This question to my relief cut
the numbness. And he finally spoke.
“Nahi sir, main chala nahi sakta. Woh aa raha hain”.
The man’s voice sounded gross.
Like the grunt of a pig. The kind of grunt you don’t hear but feel in your
spine. Or maybe, like the rotten engine roar of a vintage car, just to sound
better. I was reminded of Mr. Jigsaw from a movie series where he killed people
in the most psychotic ways, using machines he designed just for the purpose. He
kept his victims in chambers, and tied them, and clamped them, and stitched
them to those machines and yet gave them an option to live, only through an
ordeal of excruciating pain and plunder.
Somehow, I felt relief in the
pig’s grunt. As he turned in front, still holding the cup in his left hand, I
noticed something. His right hand was not there. It was cut off from the blade
of his shoulder. And the right sleeve of his shirt was folded till the elbow. A
few answers to my questions started gathering and immediately I was transported
to one of Jigsaw’s chambers, with rotting rats spilled like the vomit of an
addict, stinking like the foul burp of a cannibal, sweating like mating snakes.
And there was this pig, chained down in the centre, clamped to an iron chair. This
time Jigsaw had his victim’s right hand stitched to a part of the chair. And
the pig yelled and shrieked and cried grunting for help. But his only option was
to cut his right hand so that he could live – and be free. He could, but he
could not. He could not, but he had to. At this moment Jigsaw enters, and the other
door crunches open.
The driver stepped inside with one
of his legs jostling for some space underneath the steering wheel when the man
grunted again. “Haldiram", looking at the driver with
one of his eyebrows arched in a curious question.
The driver, with half his body
still outside, turned his head to look at me. A look to decide which family of
maggots I belonged to. Or, which city of moon I came from. Or which part of the
mite I liked the best. This time, I said nothing and waited. He sat behind the
wheel, revved up the engine and the car slowly started to roll. I saw a picture of goddess Kali, half the
size of my palm, stuck in the middle of the dashboard. It had fluorescent light
bulbs twinkling all around. This driver must be in his mid-thirties. With a rough
beard glued all over his face. I couldn’t decipher his partner’s age
though. Maybe he was in his late thirties
or perhaps, easily more than forty-five. I couldn’t care anymore.
The car was moving now and as the
world outside the window started to blur, I thought I should ask him how he had
cut his hand. Maybe he would say by an accident or from birth or by the Jigsaw. But the truth was I didn’t want to hear that
grunt any more.
As the cab started gaining speed,
three of us were the only souls who were still. And everything else passed by
like lightning. As I looked outside the window, the laser lights streaked past
- sometimes white, sometimes red and most often an unidentifiable blue. Insects,
lines, bugs, everything came back. I shuddered at the sight and almost
compulsively brought myself to the dark blue sky, which was calm and quiet. The
cool breeze of this darkness was feathering my face. There weren’t many stars
left by now, and the moon looked like a dusty relic kept inside a forgotten
museum. This relic, you can’t hold, nor can you keep. You can only see it and
feel good about it, or at the most feel ancient with it. The few strands of
rain clouds had by now collected in a bunch, and it looked like it would rain.
My lips followed the crescent shape and I smiled.
I remembered a shortcut
underneath a flyover, which would save me some notes. An insignificant amount may
be, but I preferred that route. It was through a dingy slum. There were no glittering
lights there to advertise the poverty – only the reds, blues and greens of some
uncultured, unscripted, vulgar emotions. There were no lines of insects, only
some leftover carcasses of their dilapidated dreams. There were no loud honks,
but an eerie silence of sanity. It’s dingy and it’s a slum – with no addresses,
no names written on any of the unsettled walls. I liked taking this route. I
liked seeing what most people won’t see. I liked being what most people would never
want to be.
“Yaha se right le lijiye. Shortcut padega”, I called out to the driver as I saw the flyover approaching.
“Right nahi le sakta saab, road kharaab hai aur light bhi nahi hain”, the driver shot back.
The driver sounded quite normal,
much unlike his partner. So I decided to persist. And I did. But he insisted
back.
“Election time hai saab. Mohammedan
area – total basti - bohut lafda chal raha hai. Safe rehna hi accha hai. Mussalmaan refugee log aapko pata hai na saheb? Bhagwaan jaane keedo ke jaise kaha kaha se aa jate hain? Aap samajh rahe hai na?”
I did not understand. Strangely perplexed, I did not want
to understand. I felt a sting. I do not know where. And I thought I should say
something, but the sting made me reluctant and I forgot what to say. The sting
hopped, skipped and jumped somewhere deep inside.
“I hope someday you will understand”, I mumbled to myself.
The car kept moving. I just stared
at the back of his head. I could see a pair of invisible eyes. I know they are
not there. But I want them. I want the spider. I want to snatch it. I want to
crush it between my teeth. I want to gulp it down with a bottle of poison. So
that it’s dead for sure, and it never comes back.
I looked outside the window to
feel the breeze. But I couldn’t feel it. All I could see or feel was something
very different, something very difficult – the sting. It hopped, skipped and
jumped still inside. The outside seemed like movie reels, moving faster than before
– they come and they go. Before I could realise they were gone. Something else
came again. I couldn’t make out. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t think. My mind was
clogged. I couldn’t breathe and I searched for the calm. I searched for the
Prussian blue, and the diamond studs, and the crescent shape. But everything was
hazy, unclear, faded and lost - except for the sting. It hopped, skipped and
jumped. Incessant still, it stung. And free from this sting is what I want to
be. I had learned, rather taught myself a truth – freedom is only another word
for control over the self.
The car turned right on the main-road
crossing and things started slowing down. The sting was in control, for now.
The window frame and everything outside it started making sense again and I
relaxed a bit. I knew that it was the final leg of my journey and I wanted to
feel the cool breeze for one last time.
I could see two coconut trees, standing
tall like two siblings – dark and handsome. It must have been decades for them
standing by the high-road, watching laser lights and smelling man made clouds. I
saw two kids – a boy and a girl. They were playing badminton under a halogen
lamp-post with two broken rackets and a crushed paper ball. It was about to
rain but they didn’t care. I saw an old, old woman. She was walking at a right
angle, with a stick to balance the extra weight and a head full of snow white
hair. One of the bugs may be, I thought to myself. I saw a banyan tree standing like a dead man
trying to cross a busy road to the other side. There were no leaves, only the crooked
branches waiting to catch the moon in an embrace. It had stopped watching laser
lights, and stopped smelling man made clouds, and stopped feeling sick about it.
I could see another person hugging the trunk of that naked tree. I do not know
what state he was in, but I could see him find solace in love.
The car pulled over just opposite
Haldiram’s as instructed and the moving
pictures stopped to a pause. Suddenly everything became still. Did I feel the
breeze? Yes. I did. I smiled and took out a note written 50 rupees from my
wallet. I handed it over to the driver and opened my door. Before stepping out,
I turned to him and said,
“Main aapko kuch kehna chahta hoon...”
I got out and shut the door. Both
partners were by now bending over in their own ways to listen to what I had to
say. I leaned a little forward so that my eyes were in line with that of my pig
and the dead spider.
“Main bhi Mussalmaan hoon”, I said. “Keeda nahi, insaan hoon.” – Like the clouds and the birds, the rivers
and the breeze, the moon that floats with us as we sleep in the coffers of a
new day. I am like the raindrops that will soon drizzle upon us.
The cobalt blue eyes looked blank
for a moment, perhaps in shame.
As I walked away searching for the
Prussian blue, it rained. I took a deep whiff of my wet earth, smiled to my
sting and kept walking in the pouring rain.
