Of Stories Behind Yellowing Walls

The constant reluctant whirring of the fan added to the drone of the usual unmindful sounds of an office which seemed to be in the throes of decay. Or so I thought.

The building reeks of a history drenched in centuries-old urine and the pale yellow walls of the staircase with peeling paint does nothing to distract even a painfully detached mind from the obvious conclusion. The freshly painted chalk white walls with the blood red sills on the outside are apparently to delude people who make the mistake of stumbling upon this ugly concrete giant, I thought to myself.

Have I mentioned the little puddles of mud and still-wet phlegm struggling against their own viscosity that welcome you from the non-existent front gate (whose existence once upon a time can be deduced from the still standing tall and erect posts) to the entrance? I still remember the first time I stood at the main road looking at the path leading to the entrance and then quite miserably, at my golden Kolhapuris. Not a very good first-day-fresh-into-summer-hols intern insight. Sighing audibly to impress upon the important looking men nearby the highly repulsive state of mind I’ve been induced into, I stepped inside the threshold of what would be my own personal little piece of inferno for the next couple of days.

The first thing that greeted me was the usual sense of apathy. Well, for that matter it’s the only consistent feeling that is to be encountered at any point of any random day. So much so that the absence of it leaves me in a nervous breakout of cold sweat.

“Dada, is Sir in his office?” Look of apathy.

“ Umm, can you give me last year’s case registry?” An apathetic slight movement of the neck muscles to indicate the impossibility of such a herculean task.

“Is there any place I can SIT?” The apathetic glare that follows sends me scurrying to the safe haven of the stinking staircase where I can at least pretend to be busy with my darling little savior of a phone.

The first day and my mentor arrives breezily apologizing for being late and a second and a minuscule fraction later, announces of my apparent meeting with the Chairperson. Ah, finally someone of authority.

The next hour quickly climbed the mental chart of “Moments I Would Not Want To Relive. Ever “ and since I’ve made my intention pretty clear I’m not going to the nitty-gritty’s of it. All I can say is that it involved a lot of what, how, where, who and incessant dismissive shaking of heads. The best thing about the Chairperson’s room was:                  

1.        It was painted a shade of pale beige with no such resemblance to yellow.
2.        The clock was just behind his chair which made it possible for me to steal quick furtive glances at the minutes hand rather than dare to bend my head slightly towards my wrist.

Finally, my mentor, realizing that I had reached the end of my answering spree zest, reminded the current villain of some appointment with a women’s self-help group and boy, was I pleased. Not just because I can once more taste my sweet succulent freedom but at the look of apparent revulsion and ‘tsk tsk’ muttered under his breath as my inner soul sang tunelessly at this sudden change of circumstances. Karma, I tell you.

Apparently, as I came out, the past one hour in the CP’s room had made me a celebrity of sorts. The moment I had settled myself comfortably in my mentor’s room, the person next door came buzzing in dying to know about the distinct level of humiliation I had been subjected to while someone else seemed to be having quite a nerve-wracking coughing fit near the door at almost the same moment. I gave my most pitiable ‘puss-in-boots-sad-pleading-eyes’ look and probably out of sympathy or empathy or just the horror that I would start a wailing fest without a moments delay (being a woman in a sexist world has its advantages too!) he brushed them off while offering me consolation somewhere in the lines of old men, talk way too much, etc.

Detecting a crack in his temperament I decided on a generous dose of the damsel-in-distress maneuver. And did it work wonders! I hopped out early afternoon dreaming about the typical starched rice with huge dollops of ghee and the customary mashed potatoes with boiled eggs that would be waiting for me at lunch back home. The early start to the weekend restored my faith in humanity again.

And now, sweating profusely in this dull, dusty and yes, you guessed it right, ‘yellow’ room going through the almost-at-the-end-of-their-tether registry’s and trying not to disassemble the entire load not out of fear of being reprimanded but rather of stirring up an army of dust and most probably hidden insects in the unknown crevices, I do not feel out of place anymore. The apathetic look mastered, the dust ignored, the smells consciously and willfully and compulsively blocked, I had probably become the flag bearer of “The If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em” society!

Sigh! (In audible heavy-hearted tone)……

Home bound and beyond

The light breeze ruffles the orange creped taffeta curtains as the curling steam from the hot cup of tea follows the trail of the breeze. It was an unusual Saturday, the kind which carries the essence of a lazy Sunday. The never ending flow of tea, the feeling of lethargy emanating even from inanimate objects and the general afternoon siesta that is alluring. Nothing that can surprise anyone today. Life is placid yet content. But time and the excess of it sends us off to a spiraling emotional retrospective temperament.

Just a week back the journey to home or rather the place I call home. Home seems to be a disparaging reality now. Where is home anyway? The place I was born in, grew up in seems so far removed to the place I’ve come back to. The rose tinted sunny memories seem to me to be figment of my optimistic imagination. Or maybe I’ve become inalienably cynical. Maybe it was always like this and I staunchly refused to see it. My perception was always a matter of my conditional will anyway. The warm fuzzy feeling that home induces is replaced by the inexplicable sadness of facing a reality that doesn’t leave a sweet taste of reminiscence behind.

The train rattled homeward bound. The excitement palpable as familiarity crept in. I couldn’t sit still as soon as I saw the old battered yellow board announcing the station of Srirampur (Assam) in thick black letters. The station passed in a whiz as the exclusive Rajdhani deigns to stop at a few stations. Suddenly the exclusivity doesn’t seem so comforting. The safety ascribed to such exclusivity seemed stifling and unnecessary. All those exhilarating train journeys that I grew up reading felt unreal. I always wanted to see it, taste it, feel it and write a firsthand account of it. But I’m left with fragments of thoughts of how things would be rather than how things are because the thick glass shields and the strong iron doors are built for the comfort and security of yours truly. Because you can look out but they can’t look in.

The past twenty four hours in the jostling train was spent either in stretching in my supremely comfortable lower berth gazing away into nothingness or trying to accommodate my sister and her never-ending chatter. Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” lies on my lap but even the tautness of emotions during war cannot evince my interest away from the vast green fields dotted sparsely with cattle and a few workmen toiling in the evening sun. Not one of them turn their heads to the approaching train. For them it’s routine but for me it was a childlike fascination. Hemingway lost to reality.

The concrete structures and their sudden appearance tells the tale of the city I belong to. The sad part is it is not a happy story. The euphoria about last night’s Supermoon in the dark abyss outside the little yellow circle of light from the reading light that the railways had so thoughtfully provided and the soulful voice that broke the quietness of daybreak in some interior village of Bihar as they welcomed the new day by the morning prayers of health and prosperity cut through your skin and pierced some unknown recess of my emotions where it cradled and warmed my otherwise indifferent heart. But the euphoria is replaced with a sense of un-belongingness. The slums as we enter the city is like a minuscule insect that pierces my skin and starts a random journey underneath it.

My sister sees my look of disbelief and unable to curb her maternal-elder-sister tendencies, puts a soothing arm on my shoulder and gently chides me to look away. The swamped houses that have six-seven members living together, the odd child playing in the blackened mud with a trail of flies buzzing irritably around him as he tries to nonchalantly adjust to their continual interference, the husband pouring cold water in one swift movement all over him from the red bucket with the broken handle in an attempt to what we call a bath but the surrounding flies and garbage rolled in colourful plastic bags of where the multitude of variety is discernible left me with the distinct feeling that the bathing the man undertakes will always remain incomplete.

I tried to shrug off the intense disappointment I felt as the train drew to a halt. Consciously replacing each distasteful picture in my memory with those of home, my bookshelf which I would invariably find dusty, my childhood bed where Ma would pile up clothes to be given for ironing, the scent of incense sticks wafting from the Temple, the smell of Jac Olivol that is intrinsically linked to Deta and childhood memories of bygone winters, I alighted from the train.

After one week, the rain swept away the pretenses of normalcy that fell like a house of cards. All I’m left with is my cup of tea which has turned cold and the sound of pen scratching on the surface of paper and of course the disillusionment with Hemingway.