Another day at YP!!

It was 5 o’clock on a Wednesday evening and it was pouring cats and dogs yet again. Dark clouds and my life have become like a body and its shadow, wherever I go it follows suit. The splashing raindrops enmeshed with the rays of the bulb in the room created magical sepia hues on the glass door. The dullness outside was in stark contrast with the bright, chirpy orange little office we have in the garage. And for once I was extremely happy to be on this side of the door.


Usual meetings one after the other kept us occupied. While Ishita spoke to me and Sanya about matters of grave importance. There was Nitya talking to her Fac gang and Ashutosh about posters and publicity. We reshuffled. Ishita now addressed Nitya, while I sorted out ‘Call for Entries’ for the Film Series with Ashutosh. Nitya left with her gang of girls all set for her next Fac workshop on Sexual and reproductive health rights on friday at Venky (also known as Sri Venkateshwara College). Ishita departed to bathe and get dressed for an “official” meeting that night. Then entered Diksha in a “not-so-happy-kinda-pissed-off” mood. The reason? That she was returning from Aryaman’s meeting with the Afghan students and got drenched till her waist in pools of muck, poop and dirty water. It was a sight to remember, we all burst out laughing and snorted in order to control that laughter. But then she joined in. The ability to laugh at one self is not something that many possess but it should be something that be inculcated as it makes life easy for us and those who we interact with.


Sanya restlessly told Diksha that she had to pick her sister up from the Airport hence they should reschedule their fundraising meeting later, and with that she too left. I incessantly searched for envelopes like a dog does for a bone in a pile of trash especially those which would fit A3 sized posters in them for it had to be couriered to Film Schools. But not finding any, I decided to get the posters and the other documents printed to be brought at the staff meeting at Pritha’s house the next day, while Ashutosh would buy the envelopes and courier the mails. It was a chiaroscuroic picturesque moment with people hustling and bustling in the room like a film reel in motion. All this while in the other side of the room, Diksha hurriedly was editing my Covering Letter and YP’s short profile and mailing it to me.


Just as our conversation was warming up her phone started to ring. Guess the ring tone… it’s the Cuppycake Song!! “Yes, I am shutting down the computer and leaving the office, will be there for dinner in a bit…..” and so she turned off the computer, switched off the lights and we stepped out while Ashutosh who was supposed to lock the office, apparently shut the door and forgot the lock inside. Quite a smart move I must say! So in he went and did the needful. In the meantime we waited outside shivering in the cold winds and freezing rain.


The two of us, Ashutosh and I, urged Diksha to drop us at the nearest auto stand and we thus seated ourselves in her car. She drove past the labyrinthine passages of Def. Col. and dropped us at the market. We searched for an auto, seeing one we went and sat inside, the “auto bhaiyya” refused to go as usual. Reason? The engine was filled with water and hence the vehicle won’t start. We kept sitting for a while and then being hapless decided to walk, for only God knew when the rains would stop. Walking, treading, jumping, hopping, slipping, sliding, falling,… yew…...gross...the same pool of muck, poop and dirty water enwrapped my jeans and water poured from above to make it look even from all angles. My laughter on looking at Diksha in that very state a few hours back reverberated at the back of my head, and history (pretty recent one in this case) was repeating itself and i was the scapegoat this time (we both were) but I couldn’t even feel pity for either myself or him. Drenched completely we proceeded on our pilgrimage of reaching home, but the autos refused to take us, and the buses stormed past us. Finally boarding an auto we were somewhat relieved. Ashutosh was to be dropped midway so he hopped in too. And all the while the auto moved, honked, was stuck in the traffic and moved again… the YP talks continued…..!!

METRO RIDE

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

~ Ezra Pound

Ever tried taking the metro to commute? Well one doesn't really have a choice when that is your sole means of transport to travel from one end of the city to the other. Life has become much easier though and traveling much smoother with the insertion of metro rails into our city life.

The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th century Black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists who were sympathetic to their cause. The London Underground is both the world's oldest underground railway and the oldest rapid transit system. It is usually referred to as the Underground or the Tube and it began its operation way back in 1863. The Kolkata Metro, first to ply in India started its operation only in 1984, and twenty years later was followed by New Delhi in 2004 which has a combination of elevated, at-grade and underground lines.

Enough of historicising the Metro. But ever wondered that the pregnant metro has a whole new world to offer, almost a microcosm of our own world up here. The routine metro ride to the Delhi University and back is so routinized and by the clock that i never can sense or feel as to exactly when i woke up, freshened, left my place, boarded a bus or an auto, alighted and boarded the metro and reached my class. It becomes so regularized like brushing your teeth that you can never reflect back on it, almost like a zombie you travel. But is it so? Not really, because your sensory perceptions are at work and your mind registers what your eyes observe.

The millions of faces we encounter daily, hooting-scooting, hustling-bustling, almost as if in a whirlpool of maddening rush, all appear faceless in the sense factory products, the same stuff packaged separately. Those eyes look at you, questioning, searching, condemning, remarking, condescending, praising, appreciating, superimposing all in their minds but nevertheless looking at you through and through. Yes the GAZE...the very gaze that makes you awkward, uncomfortable, almost as if being naked amidst a crowd of onlookers. The men and the women look for the same things, for instance how revealing your clothes are, and if permitted men will strip you down literally with their gaze while women will strip down your consciousness for not conforming to the norms, for not covering your so-called "honour", for letting the hawk-like men to prey upon them through their very gaze. Or something as baseless as judging other people by the kind of clothes they wear. But then this is something typical not of the metro but the culture where we hail from, and will be found rampant even on the streets, in the bus, at any and every place, be it public or private.

Coming back to the sub-terrestrial world of the metro, it's almost ghost-like panoramic atmosphere, "The Wasteland" that Eliot had spoken of, Dante's "Inferno", the Hell, all juxtaposed. The blank expressions of the faceless millions haunts and surfaces to our minds each time we try to reflect at our experience inside. And amidst the memory of the hoards of people, surfaces that one face which has or might have a strong resemblance with someone we know or assume we have seen somewhere. Déjà-vu, as it is known, the same face we have seen we might see again reinforcing the strangeness of how strongly we think we know the face, those very features but just can't place the person behind it. Perhaps someone from our past lives? Maybe...who knows! Everything is possible. The workings of the human mind and the subconscious is a real mystery.

The world within the metro is like a parallel world, a surreptitious universe running beneath our very feet, lying underneath cocooned by the earth around.

And each metro ride is associated with some or the other memory - whether cracking jokes and bursting out with friends, bitching and back-biting, observing the onlookers in solitude having nothing better to do, reading that favourite novel, plugging onto the I-Pod, a brief conversation over the phone, brushing up the notes, last minute preparations before the exams, trying to catch a glimpse of that cute guy sitting across, or just trying to brush aside one's disheveled fringes being reflected on the glass pane on the doors and windows. Memories...memories... every day, each metro ride has a story to tell, only if one bothers to listen.

The Inexplicable

Quite often I wonder

How my life is all asunder,

Am I the epicenter

Of a world decentred,

Or just a remainder stub

Swirling in the whirlpool of a tub!!

Throwing a glance at the looking-glass

Often I imagine “Oh what a pretty lass!”

But mirrors are meant to lie

To make your self-esteem high,

For when realities strike

And life’s clocks go on strike,

We are thrown back

Into the dingy corners of our mind’s shack,

Our dreams, desires and all that jazz

Are meant only for us to heave and spaz,

Erased are the goals of accomplishments

Dead are the hopes of all fulfillments!!

Intrepidly treading in perdition’s vale

Racing through my fading memory’s lane,

I see in a distance a flickering ram of light

I pursue and chase, as if a mirage in sight,

The sun angling the ram’s shadow on the sand

The contoured silhouette is but of a man,

I look up and stare blank to reassure my surprise

It was indeed the man of my dreams, I could surmise,

Joy-stricken I skip, jump and rush to catch him

Only to realize it was all but a dream,

The vale, the ram, the man, his shadow and dusk

Was only a peeled dream, a stripped desire, a desiccated husk,

All that remained was a feeling of pain

Injecting me all over again.