How are you?

What do you mean? I mean I know what you mean but I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that. How am I? Like the “W” in the word answer. Like the letters – U, E, U, E in the word queue. What’s that expression – French answer to this question? – comme ci comme ça. Like this like that. Like this. Like what? Like meaningless. Like pathetic. Like chaotic. Like not-good-enough. Like unoriginal. Like pretentious like I think that I am being all the time. And when I ask myself to be true, to be more “I” like in the word – I, I come up with same I.

How am I? You ask. Physically? Pretty sound. Have a slight head ache but who doesn’t. Mentally? As in if I am normal? Yes, Very. Thank you. Emotionally? Don’t ask. But then you have asked! Not well, my friend, not well. I am crushed. I am on a relentless ride of highs and lows. I have no clue how to stop it. There’s flood. There’s drought. Flood – when there’s too much happening at the same time and I am drowned in the haphazardness. Drought – when there’s too less happening over a long stretch of time and I am convinced that the end, despite being the inevitable entity, is never going to come.

Then living isn’t fun sometimes. Doing things I don’t like isn’t fun. Doing things that I like and then finding out that it isn’t as fun as I thought it would be, isn’t fun. Not doing anything isn’t fun. Just doing anything isn’t fun. But why am I complaining! I am supposed to be the lucky one! Be grateful, child! Be grateful! So, thank you for this life god, which you clearly created out of habit instead of necessity. Thank you for this.

But, yeah things are fine. This coffee is fine. My cellphone is fine. My laptop is fine. The weather is fine. The woman over there with the flowy red dress and the nicely tied bun is fine. And that group of school kids shouting over a game of UNO are fine. But how am I? I guess I am angry. Also sad. Also disgusted. Also disgusting. Also chaotic. Also ugly. Also clumsy. Also confused. But also alive. Also dreamy. Also calm. Also peaceful. Also inspired. Also amazed. Also beautiful. But then you don’t want to know all of this, do you? So, how am I? I am a careless and disproportionate mixture of fine(s). Of course, to put it simply, I am fine. Is there anything else we can all be?

~Musings from the coffee shop

The man in the boxer shorts

I wish I could tell you how happening my mornings are. I went to office in spaceship the other day. What? Didn’t I tell you my office is at moon? Or how I went on that long drive with Eddy (Edward Norton insists that I call him that) last Sunday morning.

But no, my mornings are woebegone faces of the broke industrialists drowned in enormous debts or politicians locked up in jails under the corruption charges that they didn’t really commit. I drag my legs to the bus stop through the dusty road and silently wait for bus like a goat waiting for butcher to get his knife. My legs, tied with so called responsibilities of building my own career and a respectable life and fear of what I might lose if I run away from this routine, find no pleasure in these morning strolls. My mornings are just outright bland like boiled potatoes that don’t even have a pinch of salt sprinkled over them. The only pleasure that I get is when the radio hits a peppy song and if, just if, I am not sleepy or grumpy enough, I might, just might, imagine myself dancing on it and a smile might peek from the back of the wall on my face for a split second. But music eventually fades away and I return to myself. I don’t mind being here – in my company, but when you make your grand entrance without being aware of it I realize how hard I had been missing you. You are the great rescuer! Breaker of chains from this mundane monotonous thing – you don’t know it and you would never but I will give you the credit anyway.

Sir, I don’t know you. It’s been a while since I last saw you and I hope you are doing okay. I am not sure if you have noticed me (though obviously I have) because I can’t really remember if we ever exchanged a smile or even a proper glance. But this is fine by me because you don’t seem like a person who care about these things. So, don’t mind me if you find me stringing along the words of praises for you. Because I cannot resist doing this. You are counted among the brighter parts of my day, one of the interesting elements of my fucked up mornings – Why would I hesitate from appreciating you especially when I know that this message would never reach you? That is how it usually works, right?

I am sure that I am never ever going to come across anyone like you again. Of course, there are people who are far more eccentric than you are but to me, there’s a class in your craziness! When I see you, I kind of brighten up from inside. Your odd sense of dressing is inspiring. Yes, and that was what that mainly drew my attention towards you in the first place. Your abnormality restores my faith in humanity. You, wrapped in a striped black blazer, your pink shirt, your Michael Jackson hat, your boxer shorts (that you are not embarrassed to show off) paired with calf length socks and your polished black formal shoes, are a walking story demanding to be told. No, I am not making fun of you. And I don’t think even if I am you would remotely be offended. You see – you don’t care. You being one of the rare gems who really knows how to do that. That’s amazing. Your consistency and commitment to maintaining your oddity doesn’t seem odd now. Everybody around is used to your misplaced presence; the guy at the tea stall, the sweeper who can’t stop smiling, the old spectacled beggar whose futile efforts to sell me pity are endless and in a way commendable, the lady whose weird way of walking makes me analyze my own in front of the mirror to confirm that I don’t walk like her, the lady who sells milk packets by the char-rasta with woolen scarf tied across her ears and below her chin looking oddly childish even though she must be over fifty, the fellow goats sipping tea and smoking cigarettes at the galla with their ID cards dangling over their necks and finally this borderline anorexic tall girl with a black bag swinging upon one shoulder, white earphones chords swaying with her steps, with her hunchback and messy hair hurriedly tied as a bow, spectacles unsuccessfully trying to cover her dark circles, her small tired face sometimes lost in thoughts and sometimes lost in series of stupid self-conversations, sometimes smiling, sometimes impassive, sometimes trying to mouth the lyrics of her favorite English song which she doesn’t really remember or a Buddhist chant ; none of these people find you odd anymore. If you become what they call “normal” that would be the thing that would be most abnormal.

Every piece of your clothing is a fashion apocalypse. The answer to why you dress this horrible way will always be food for my imagination. But the fact that it doesn’t deter you from flaunting them off is incredible! Every wrinkle on our face is an evidence of how your age might have taken a toll on you. And sometimes I can see sadness in your drooping eyes. Sometimes your impassive face seems like a potential threat of how at any second you are capable of doing anything, even something gravely dangerous. What is your story, sir? Is there any way you can tell me besides the conventional mode of communication?

An unnecessarily guilty glance

I  am waiting outside the juice shop, thirsty and tired, putting an enormous amount of expectation on a tiny glass of sugarcane juice that is yet to be served. My face is smeared  in pink and yellow and some other weird combinations. My arms are still tingling from what could have been a regretful sunburn after a long celebratory drive back to our city, to this shop.Despite the brutal tanning and dehydration, I can’t help but feel elated. And why not? I am drenched in festivity! How I adore this festival of hues! This craziness!

I am at my usual lost-in-thought state when I feel a light tug on my elbow – ‘Behen O Behen! Le Lona’

Annoyed, I turn around. A little girl is trying to sell Gulal to me.

I look at the packets of colours in her hands and I know I shouldn’t buy them. Those are the kinds of colours that should be kept away from your skin at all cost unless you happen to like rashes.I am tempted anyway. It’s Holi after all! Everyone needs to celebrate today! But before I could know it, I have dropped the idea again – Nahi, bacche, nahi chahiye. No child, I don’t want it.

Lelona. Please? – She requests again.

You can call her a beautiful child if you look at her carefully; Her brown eyes, that goes with her brown complexion, her perfectly aligned teeth, her straight thin nose and the innocence in her voice.I have come down to my knees. My fingers are now fondling with colours inside the packet I have. No, I can’t buy the so-called Gulal from her and I won’t. It is against my easily adaptable principles. But I paint both her cheeks green and greet her a happy Holi.

She is surprised. A smile brightens up her face. Suddenly, she forgets why she is even here! I offer her my cheek. She dips her small fingers in my packet and slather the colour over my face. Now, I am heavily dusted in green as well. Her smile has broadened. No one has ever seemed so happy just with these small gestures before.

I am smiling too. I try to feed in the details of her happy face in my head.You,little girl,are such a delightful lovely poem that I can’t even pen you down. Maybe someday when I am worth and capable of putting your beauty in words, I will. But for now, I still can’t buy these packets of pity from you that you still hold in your hands, that you are still going to try to sell to other prospective buyers a few minutes from now. And though you are still smiling at me and you don’t even want my money anymore, I just find myself letting out an inaudible and invisible murmur  – ‘I am sorry’.I know that you are not asking for my apology. You don’t want it. Actually, it’s I who really needs it – as a futile attempt to pacify my own confused conscience. I am sorry because I don’t think you deserve this. I am sorry because I can’t help you escape the circumstances you have been born in. I can’t save you from your parents making you sell these packets. I can’t send you to school and I can’t teach you either. And neither can I ever take responsibility for your better childhood or better future. Not that there is no way for achieving any of this, it’s just that I am lazy and I am running short of efforts to uplift my own life. Looking at you, I raise those never-to-be-answered questions to my fate again. Why you? Why me? They aren’t answered of course. As usual, they turn their backs on me. And then I turn my back on you after one last cheerful, apologetic and perhaps an unnecessarily guilty glance.