The 'Garden'

Silhouettes of moulting pigeons on window sills and balcony walls. Disembodied voices and noises. Stray feathers underfoot. Welcome home.

The process of settling-in continues, and I walk quietly past the tiny groups of children playing in the pretend-garden- a decent size for a crowded city- and the area around it, in front of the board that prohibits playing in the vicinity. This is one ‘law’ I wouldn’t want upheld. Can they really advocate boxed-up, claustrophobic childhoods to save a few measly window-panes at the cost of the yellow sunshine and pleasantly stinging raindrops that they once indulged themselves with?

Yet another elevator. Very small, painted a dark glossy brown, four walls scratched with unremarkable graffiti and closed without a glimpse of the outside world. (Is this how they carted people to Auschwitz?) You might well be shooting into space or plunging down to Hades, not knowing if the earth stopped turning or a Cormac McCarthy-style apocalypse struck- safely suffocating in that narrow little box, you would develop a lifelong aversion for elevators. How different it is from the sky-canopied, peopled area outside.

The elderly sit out on the benches in the ‘garden’. Two young children run by. “Saku Behn! Kem chho?” calls out an old man in a blue T-shirt and green cap. The children run to him, giggling. The little boy ask for chocolates.

“Didn’t I give you two today? One for you, one for her?”

“Just one?”

“Yes, only one chocolate per day.”

“So will you give us more chocolates tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow, but the day after. I’ll have to go and buy the chocolates tomorrow, you see.”

The boy looks askance at the old man. “You need a whole day to buy chocolates?”

“Yes.”

With the implicit trust and simplicity of childhood, the boy accepts the deal placidly, and runs off as his mother comes to take him home. The girl goes along.

Twilight clouds linger in the sky. Play time is almost over. The thrilled shrieks and the bicycle bells gradually cease as darkness envelopes the garden and tired parents come home, bent with the burden of responsibility, casting their overwhelmed shadows on the sunshiny happiness of ignorance and carefree childhoods. Parents who believe in advertisements that say, “Your child watches TV. Your neighbour’s child knows who invented the TV.” Stinging, cruel.

A few more hours, till Sleep weaves her magic and takes all her children into her dream-clad arms.

Conversing with a City

My first trip on my own through the tree-lined streets of Bangalore- I’ve travelled the route earlier with a friend, and I’m not nervous about being out alone. My knowledge of Kannada borders on the negative, but languages aren’t barriers, are they? The buildings aren’t remarkable- there is nothing much to distinguish them from those in another Indian city- and as the bus whizzes past the flyover, I look curiously out the window, hoping to find something noteworthy.

The bus drives past small grey booths marked ‘Subway’ in unnecessarily cold letters- flights of steps lead downwards into unknown tunnels. I want to get off and explore- but I haven’t yet mustered enough courage to go traipsing through the streets on foot. New places are tantalising, though, and I wish I could take a bus whose destination I was unaware of and go off into the unknown. Sadly, incidents like the Pune rape serve as a reminder of the ugly reality outside the cosy comfort of your house- or hotel room- and of the lascivious predators lurking around, fangs bared, eagerly waiting to maul unsuspecting young prey. When you’re on the roads, snap out of the world you’ve created for the hours when you might need company in solitude. Books go only this far in teaching you what you need in life- the rest comes through roughing it out.

Temples rise out of the unbroken lines of shop fronts and houses. Masses of people press into the compound of St. Anthony’s Church this Good Friday, heads bowed in contemplation and prayer. Trees relieve the monotony of concrete- look up at the violet, yellow and pink blossomed canopy and at the whitish-blue sky through the netting of the leaves. Rainshowers have breathed life into the air. I remember that night, the roads slick with rain, a thin streak of unnaturally white clouds inching towards the moon, a moist breeze setting the branches into a slow, soft dance of their own.

Cities talk to you. They make conversation with you, absorb you and give you memories. They superimpose on what you’ve left behind and overwhelm you with their presence. Accept and make friends with them, and you live in danger of stagnation. Despise them and turn down their advances, you end up a restless nomad, once again made to go in search of that one perfect place to pitch your tent at. That thin line in between is what you seek- where you’re comfortable with the city, and not overly in love with it. Where you live like this is forever, and can still leave at a moment’s notice.

The city lies outside the walls of my fortress. I’m waiting for it to speak to me.