Aug-Sept cellphone entries

[Cellphone entries from late last month to now. It's all a bit disjointed. Been M.I.A a while because of internet fuck ups, typing on a borrowed laptop. See you again soon]

The days melt into each another, in the present and in memories, I can't pick them apart anymore.

The river swells to absorb the bits of wetland where the two elephants and herd of buffalo have their morning wash. The  single entity that crowds the metro, made up of turbulent cells, pushing-pulling, positive-negative, undulates as we pass over it. The nala over which our great civilization was founded welcomes the rain water to add new fragrance to it, like drops of attar desperately needed on a hot day. Old crank fights with students struggling with their bags, the other passengers take it upon themselves to resolve the dispute with sarcastic ‘buddha hai, rehne do’ understanding. It empties out at Noida sector 15 and I settle into the corner near the door, resting my bag on my hips like a child. The sky furrows its brow and grumbles warnings while everyone bitches about the traffic on the road, the traffic on the metro.

Our feet up, K and I looked over Khan Market from Oz. I’ve grown up here. Khan chacha, Amma, Anand (store) have seen me grow from a scruffy 14 year old hobo (actually causing snotty aunties in Sugar and Spice to gasp when they heard me speaking English), living off seekh roll, kurkure, Thums Up and cigarettes; to a scruffy 19 year old hobo who lives beyond her means, adding copious amounts of beer to that list.

My feet are now crossed at the ankles, hopelessly awake now that I’ve had a Thums up + coffee and the batti has gone, so I’m saved from my Opium (trade + French Revolution) stupor, to waking dreams of being a carefree debauched afeemkhor lady of leisure in 19th century Lucknow. Think Thomas De Quincey + Wajid Ali Shah + Marquis De Sade. I’m listening to terribly mediocre pop songs on the radio, smiling when “a-a-ashiqui mein teri” comes on, laughing at the rapidex radio jockeys on AIR and their best of the 80s type collection of “hard rock” and finally being satisfied when “Gal Mitthi Mitthi Bol” comes on. Call me an Amit Trivedi fangirl but he seems to be the only fresh sound in Bollywood music at the moment. Since the past week, I don’t have any music. So I’m compelled to listen to the sounds of the city which I usually drown out with my iPod. Chief of which being my parents watching Pavitra Rishta at maddeningly loud volumes. Horns, swearing, other people’s conversation, girls screeching, the ghadh ghadh of my rickety ceiling fan.

Eddie Vedder’s familiar gruff baritone comes on and takes me back to the ‘winter of Pearl Jam’, which is similar to my situation right now. 10th grade - no computer, not getting any studying done, alternating between frustrated, confused as well as being comfortable with my stagnation and reading books by candlelight (Trainspotting then, Sea of Poppies now). And just like that, to kick my ass back into gear, the light is back. Yellow Leadbetter’s guitar opening laments my situation. Chawal with makhan, agarbatti jalao, get back to work.


With my sense of hearing submerged in my own personal soundtrack (iPod has been charged!), I pass through the visual din of the city untouched. She now tries to overpower my olfactory sense. The funky cheese smell near Saket assails me, the fumes from the cars, food from roadside stalls (bhutta, I’m powerless to resist you), the smell of the day’s smoke on my clothes, the laung I’m chewing, the flowers around my neck, from which Vijayalakshmi, (the security girl at the Pragati Maidan metro station) plucks off a bud and smiles, taking in the scent. It started with her touching my necklace admiringly one day. Another, she looked at my “Beers of the World” tshirt and said “Apke paas toh puri wine shop hai”. Now I hope to see her every time I go. This sweat of bodies pressed up against me now mixes with perfumes, aftershaves and “garmi ki loo”. A child in a pink frock taps on the window, mesmerized by the red of the traffic below.

In a stationary car, my smoke is caught in a beam of light, merging with clouds of dust and looks like a film being projected. Silhouettes of workers walking get imprinted on my face, like hotrocked sparks that sting my cheek. In the rush hour jam of the morning, a goat stares at me from the backseat. Cramped like the cars at Kalindi Kunj. The stick figures on the footbridge are refracted in the poison heat. The whole place smells bitter like bicchu booti bushes in the hills.

Being tumbled around as the auto passes over the pockmarked face of the road leading to college. I'm determined not to let South Delhi extinguish my love for the rain. I have a sudden desire to play in the mud like when I was a kid. I want to feel it yielding under my fingers and mould it into little clay people. I'd cover my hands in its soft chocolate texture.

It’s raining again, pixel rainbows glitter into light on my phone. Ours is a city of extremes that showers us occasionally with endearing surprises. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by her gush of affection, but it's the thought that counts.


Thank you, cellphone, for facilitating my conversations with myself.