Monday Contemplation 1

My new warped timetable has got me loving Mondays.
The house is quiet except for the Dev D soundtrack emanating from my tin box speakers, the bass is thumping, it makes the ornate silver glass with my pens in it vibrate. I'm locked in. With my incense, old books are re-read. Cigarette smoke and agarbatti smoke come together like disparate cousins who meet once in a while, affably. Ashes are transferred from the starry blue glass and metal candle stand into one of the several empty cigarette packets.

I had thought of writing about the moments of compassion from strangers in this "rude" city that give me a more tangible feeling of warmth than interaction with many familiars do. But when I sat down with my borrowed keyboard yesterday, I found I had nothing to say, so I spent hours on my balcony, in the heat, just listening to music, looking at the pale blue sky with the puffy white clouds and watching septuagenarians play tennis with surprising energy and boyish sense of competition.
The man in Ganga complex sits perilously on the edge of his window and smokes a cigarette. Often at night when I'm doing the same, I can see only the orange glow of his smoke in the distance, like a firefly.We form connections with people in the strangest ways.
Camaraderie with auto and rickshaw drivers makes my cynical heart melt. Swearing at rash drivers, bitching about the city (something that is the exclusive purview of Dilliwallas, anyone else doing it gets us riled up *cough*SuhelSeth+sidey film people*cough*, Kaveri knows what I'm talking about), their disapproval of  lecherous "chichoras" and their laughter when I hurl a volley of abuses at the culprits. The ones with the big pan stained smiles who take you in from the bawandar surrounding your college, when every other guy shakes his head and drives off - "Madam, do logon ko main kabhi na nahi kehta, students aur ladies". Drivers gather together in parks and play cards, people drink water from matkas kept out by considerate residents. The vibrations from the auto bind us together, we're go down straight roads with winding traffic like nothing can touch us. We're a beam of hot light, the same colour and warmth as when you look at the sun with your eyes closed.
The panwaris who give you free matches when you show them an empty wallet (and remember you the next time you stagger drunk to their shops with a 5 rupee note, to invest in one goldflake for the ride back). The chubby rickshaw wallah in the checkered lungi who pats his rickshaw expectantly everytime I walk past and is pleased when I'm too tired to walk back home. The sexy one with the green scarf and wiry arms. Bar patrons who remember your order and ask you how you're doing. The typical Delhi gesture of apology when you touch your heart and put your palm out, implying "dil se sorry" (I can't explain it but you'll know it when you see it) - something that we realized the other day at a club filled with the rich, the horny and the tacky. Total goldan bikinis and stelatoes. Finding connections at dinner parties filled with what you thought were strangers.
Angsty rock songs that you listen to in the metro when you've somehow managed to take a train in the wrong direction, despite taking the same train every day, you're being pushed inwards by an unseen force and some asshole has his hands on your shoulder. The part where Bonnie Chakraborty yells "Pare hat ja re" is when I elbow the asshole in the stomach, step on his foot and slither into the interiors of the train. I look up from my reading, two giggling girls give me the up-down, me with the hungover hair and two blue star stickers on my cheek. We go over the river, the two elephants are there, we pass the wetlands, the river is slushy and still, the cluster of ramshackle buildings are still in the distance. There is no time of day when this part of the city fails to make me feel good.