Friday, January 28, 2005
Exit
Exit
A pox on the ex's of the world, she thought, and suddenly found herself giggling on the road at the idea, but then stifled her laugh after a moment's indulgence, becoming all too aware, amid shooting flushes of red on her cheeks, that a fat man with a balding pate and the door man at the store, where she had bought the full-sleeved striped shirt, had turned to watch her.
Of course, she had known that He was going to Malaysia for a long time. In a way, that was one of the reasons they had broken up. In a way, it had been far too much too handle even then, even that early, and the two of them had invented those reasons, those occasions, to look at each other, face each other across the bed with its triangular pillows as if it were some strange ocean that must be crossed and done away with - and they had decided to call it a day.
That's such a weird thing to say, she thought now, crossing the street - why 'call it a day', why 'broken up', why 'never saw each other again', why any of those euphemisms which signified the end of a bond that had threatened to swallow them both... she wondered idly all this, even as she opened the door of the cab and stepped in, and told the sharp-faced little cabbie which restaurant in Andheri he was supposed to take her to.
I never called it a day, she hummed, touching the steel lining of the cab window, I never meant to break up with him, though a part of me expected it to happen some day, I never did not see him again. He was always there, all through the two years we were supposed to have 'broken up'. Sigh. Maybe it should have ended that way, a long, long time back. Maybe I shouldn't have kept on expecting something to happen again, something special, something that would mean that the bond still remained.
But if I'm thinking about it now, still thinking about him going away, how can it mean that the bond is gone?
2.
They were playing something on the radio that made his passenger hold herself tight and sigh over and over, and that drew his attention to her. He was an ordinary little man, too short for his age, too stout for his size, too mild for his profession. Or so he kept on chiding himself about. He hated his wife, hated her mother even more, but was in love with this yellow-and-black cab that he plied across the vast regime of Bombay that he liked to think, in some small way, was a part of him. A part of his territory, a part of his fief. And he liked to think of all the people therein, in some small way, connected to him.
He was a self-important little man. He knew that too about him, but he didn't really care.
And that woman's silent sniffling drew his attention to her. So he looked into the rear view mirror and wondered what she was all about. She was like any of those women you saw on the road, too fair to be Marathi and so he guessed that she was one of those rich Punjabis from Delhi who had come crawling to the broad bad city to look for a job. Good family, he told himself, and he was happy - she was not like some of that other trash that came limping in from Bihar and Bangladesh and Uttar Pradesh, who would chew paan and stain the sides of his beloved cab, or steal jobs from the Marathis who were the air and soil and water of Bombay.
He was a racial snob in some ways, but he liked to think that he was a patriotic snob who cared for his people, other than the virago who bore my wife!
It was something to do with a child, of course. That's what all women were teary about. They mollycoddled their children, held them close and never let them fall or break. That was bad for them, he reasoned, because all things have to bend. Look at her - if her mother had ever made her work while she was young, would she sit there, at the back of my taxi and give these silly groans? Would she look sleepy-eyed at the man on the bike next to us as if he reminded her of some face she'd once seen in a dream, then? So there's a child at the bottom of it. A child is sick, a child is in trouble, and she's going there now, to make sure that the child is safe.
And he grinned to himself and sped past a red signal, hoping that the constable was too busy to pay attention. He may have been too mild for his profession (or so he chided himself) but he knew what it took to be a cabbie in Mumbai. He was no fool.
And so, his theory troubled him again, at the Linking Road crossing. If it were a child at the bottom of it, why would the damn song on the damn radio affect her so - they play only silly love songs all the time, or something to make you dance and wish you could pour a bottle of burning whiskey down your throat... It's not a child - could it be a man? The little cabbie nodded sagely, in his white uniform, still crisp and fresh after a whole day's work, and wondered why on earth he had not seen it earlier. Women were mad about men as well, he thought, and blushed when he thought about his wife at home. She was a beauty, with a tongue that snipped through air, and she could be a holy terror when she was on his case. To give credit where it was undoubtedly true, much of it was because of that old witch's prodding (which brought him back to the idea of women being devils about their children) - but women went crazy about their men, and that could not be denied.
Now he felt really proud about himself, and turned around to flash her a smile. "Madameji, shall I take the road under the flyover, or go from behind?"
She was not in her trance any more and was not looking out the window. She had expected the question, he noted, and answered a bit too loudly, as if he was deaf and had to be made to understand something. "Go from behind. It'll be less crowded." She flashed a brief smile and then settled back down, as if a major decision had just been made, and she was strong about herself again.
But that disturbed him once more. It wasn't just any man. It had to be somebody special. O good God, he thought and his eyes rolled heavenwards, was she pregnant and the father of her baby wanted to have nothing to do with her?! That would certainly explain a lot of things, and he wetted his lips, trying to hope that it explained nothing at all. Logic prevailed, however, and told him that his pregnant theory would straddle both the man- and the child-treatises. So it is a pregnant case then, and for a fleeting moment of mad panic he wondered what it would be like if she were to suddenly start screaming and have her baby right there at the back of his taxi, and he laughed in the next instant, telling himself that all of that was much too filmi for real life. Taxis and babies were a pole apart - two poles apart - and so he laughed again. She wondered why the strange man laughed like that, but thought it better not to ask anything.
But then there was the idea of it! She was pregnant, and she was sitting there at the back of his cab - obviously going through her fair share of repentance, but stil... some part of it shocked his conservative Marathi upbringing. But the Bombay-hardened self was not to be so effortlessly discarded either, and he joked to himself about how it seemed so completely out of the filmi celebrities’ filmi lives! She will run now to beg the father of her child to marry her - and of course, he will relent, fight with his mother (cold, stern, disapproving, like the bitch, his mother-in-law), the two lovers will be reunited, and their baby will have a safe, comfortable, legal life... !
He was an imaginative man. On the streets of Bombay, you had to be
"Lo, Madameji - " and he pulled the cab right in front of her restaurant, and watched her fumble out with a strangely lethargic haze over her. For a second, as she hunted through her purse for the change, he was tempted to reach out to pat her hand, smile warmly at her and say that everything would be perfect - but then she paid him and quickly turned away.
He watched her legs disappear behind the glass door of the restaurant, exchanged a matter-of-fact nod with the door man, and started the cab, feeling his beloved tremble below his touch as he shifted gears.
3.
"You're giving far too much importance to him. I wouldn't go, if I were you. Leave it with a simple phone call," Rucha had said, tossing her head of tight curly hair forward, over the bowl of chocolate mousse on the table. They were words that she had run over and over again in her mind, after that late dinner in Andheri, before coming here. But it was too late to change her mind, too late not to ring the doorbell now that she stood in front of His door.
Of course I'm giving him too much importance. I'm over him, I should be over him, I shouldn't be running every thing we did together in my mind like this, in my mind. He's over. He's a friend now, just a friend.
She sighed. And remembered Priscilla's quiet eyes, as they had coursed over her at dinner, even while Rucha's had widened with angry indignation. Priscilla never passed judgment, or did so while it seemed that she never did. She had screwed up her mouth at the goodbye-gift for the Malaysia-bound, but she had not said anything about him. She had met Him when He had dropped down to her flat some months back, she had liked Him, she knew that He was potentially dangerous, but she never said (in words) how important he was and how critical this phase was.
Priscilla had put her in the cab to Goregaon, and told her to take care of herself. "Give me a call when you get back home." Of course, it was unthinkable (and unsayable) that she should spend the night there, with Him. "Don’t worry about waking me. I'll be up."
She had nodded her thanks, and hugged Rucha, who had clung on tightly and said, "Please take care of yourself, baby. I hope you throw the damn thing in his face!"
But she liked stripes, especially the stripes she had bought for Him, blue with thin dark black centres, over a plain sheet of white that teased and hinted about something fugitive she couldn't quite fathom. She couldn't think of throwing them at His face, and so she pressed her index finger into the doorbell, so that soft, low, insistent buzzing filled her world.
"Hey! You came!"
Exhale!
"Hi, yea, I told you I would. I told you I would." Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn...
"So come in - that's right - hey, can I get you anything? Yea, you know Amit, right? Amit - Aparna - and yea, that's Nisha, I don't think you guys have met. Nisha-Aparna. So, what can I get you?"
"Hey, Amit. Nisha - hi. I had dinner, thanks. I'm quite full. So, you're quite packed, I can see."
"O, yea. These guys have been here from yesterday, picking up behind me (laughs). I dunno what I would do without them! Amit, you're not going to smuggle that CD away with you - that's going with me! Nisha - do something! (laughs some more) Shit - I guess this is it, huh, babe?"
(Aparna laughs) "I guess. But you knew this was coming. It's the best thing for you, remember? So, it's cool. You'll do great. (touches his arm) I'm sure you’ll do great."
"Yea, I know... but I'll miss all this. I'll miss Bombay, I'll miss back home in Calcutta. Will miss all of that stuff - and you guys!"
Amit: "Omigawd! Look at all the drama happening here! (laughs) Hey, hey, Mr NRI - that's enough out of you. You just get your greedy ass there and fuck some sexy chinks!"
(Amit ducks a cushion thrown at him by Nisha, who looks suspiciously sad about the departure, and Aparna wishes she could throw something heavier at him, like a boulder. Aparna laughs too, seeing that He is laughing now.)
Damn it - stop laughing, stop laughing! I wish I could claw your eyes out, bitch! "Anyway - I got something for you, babe. (thrusts packet out) I hope you like it (as he unwraps it)."
"Hey, wow - it's great. Cool. Nisha - don't you think it's cool? I love the colour. And, yea - stripes (laughs), should have figured you'd get something in stripes for me! (laughs some more)"
Nisha: "Yes, it's nice. Lovely colour... (murmurs something unintelligible) lovely stripes.. (more murmurs)."
Oooooo god, help me, help me. (smiles bashfully) Have I overdone it? Does he know? Has she guessed? O god, no, no, no, no, no, no… "I'm glad."
"So are you going home? Do you have a car or something? Why don't you stay over? Nisha and Amit will be here. We could have some fun."
Amit: "We're planning to hit the midnight buffet at the Radisson. Rich lady here (gestures towards Nisha) has daddy's little car, her very own Merc."
(Another pang, another giggle) "I won't be able to. I have work tomorrow morning. My boss will kill me. (to Him:) You know what she's like. I can't stay." Rucha will kill me!
"Awwww, screw that tight-ass. You can tell her, your maasi or somebody came down, and you had to stay over. No? You're sure? It would be a lot of fun... ?"
"Some other time," (he grimaces) He grimaced! "Yes, there will be other times, dumbass! So don't go all puffy-faced about it! Am sure we'll see you when you're this big hotshot! Then you'll come gloating about how good this is in Malaysia, and how good that is in Malaysia and -" (breaks into laugher, as everyone else does so)
"Shit, babe! I'll miss you! I'll miss you lots! (hugs her, takes her slightly by surprise) You take care, babe! You better take care of yourself for me!"
(Nisha shuffles uncomfortably on her feet)
"I will. I will. (smiles, brushes hair back from face, after the hug stops and they part) Ok, I have to run now. You take care - and call me sometimes." (pats His shoulders, then rubs them)
"I will, don't worry. (rueful smile on His face, as He opens the door for her) And I'll give your folks in Calcutta a call, and tell them that you're doing fine. Last I spoke to Aunty, she was worried that her baby daughter is all alone in the land of wolves. (laughs)"
"What wolves? You're leaving town! (laughs in the hallway - a tube light in the corner lights the place up well.)"
(Another hug.) "And do please wear the damn shirt!"
"(laughs) I will, babe, I will. You take care. I'll call."
It's over.
"What's important is how he takes the gift," Rucha had said earlier, "and it will all be in his eyes. So watch them, watch him closely. But please, please - don't read too much in it. Don't go overboard, please!" It had been confusing advice, and she had wondered what to do - whether to not read anything in it, or whether to stare at his eyes, with nary a blink, as he unwrapped the gift. In the end, she had done neither, her gaze had been somehow transfixed on his hands, as they had ripped the packaging apart and taken the shirt out. I didn't look at his eyes, shit!
"Be calm. Please be calm, baby," Priscilla had urged, rubbing her arm, over the dinner table. "You'll get through it in one piece."
I've gotten through it! Somehow, she knew she would - if only because Priscilla had said so. And because of the stripes. She had known that about stripes even before she had fallen in love with them. Stripes were safe. She exhaled. Tried to think of a memory, but nothing would float out before her eyes just now. It was as if some great big mental gap had formed. Tomorrow, they'll come, she thought, tomorrow they'll all come in waves and waves, and I won't be able to think of anything else, knowing that he's flying over some speck of ocean to Malaysia, and a part of me is going to wish that the damn plane crashes into the damn ocean. I'll cry tomorrow. But today, there was nothing. Nothing, and the realisation had its own subtle sedative for her.
She looked for a cab.
4.
He was an ordinary little man, too short for his age, too stout for his size, too mild for his profession. Or so he kept on chiding himself about. He hated his wife, hated her mother even more, but was in love with this yellow-and-black cab that he plied across the vast regime of Bombay that he liked to think, in some small way, was a part of him. A part of his fief.
He was sitting ramrod straight now in his cab, surveying the empty road around him, where the cab was parked. It was late, but a woman had come out from one of the great big colonies that lined the road like gigantic beehives. She looked around for a while and stood there. Remote, he thought, and he slitted his eyes.
The radio was playing a remix of one of his favourite film songs, and though he didn't quite care for all the groaning and moaning that seemed to be the staple of all the remixes they played on the radio, the original tune still held a vague attraction for him, like the memory of some long-ago pleasure he had partaken of and there was still a jolt of that thrill left in some new device he had unearthed. But the song was winding towards its end, and he was anxious to be gone from this place, he had to get back to Parel, and Goregaon was simply too far away to appeal to him.
But she would come to him, this night crawler who had crept out from beneath that vast worker colony. He was sure of that, and wondered what was taking her so long. She seemed to be thinking hard about something, and he ran over the usual suspects in his mind - something about a child, man-trouble, or... he chuckled to himself now - something like that poor pregnant bitch he had picked up earlier that night. She was pondering about something, but the call would come, he was positive.
Sure enough, she roused herself now, spotted the cab parked unobtrusively below the streetlamp in the otherwise deserted road, and yelled - "Taxi!"
posted by livinghigh 10:57 AM...
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