Hello

The flight was taking an abnormally long time in boarding. She stole a peek into the main cabin. Some seated, some on the aisle and some in between. This confusion always made her smile. It was just a two hour flight and such an emphasis on finding the right seat, the right level of comfort, right blend of tea, right..right..right...wrong. It was wrong of her to stand there and amuse herself, when she should  have been helpping her fellow flight attendants in the boarding process. But she was so comfortable inside that little cabin, away from public scrutiny. She crinkled her ponity nose and decided she might just as well pretend to get the snacks ready.

'Reo, say hello to this young lady here.' coaxed her mother. ' Hello', a weak little voice called out from somewhere down and behind her mother's tall  frame. She hated this buisness of 'say hello' to every stranger in the house. And there were so many strangers in the house... all the time. Infact to Reo, everyone was a stranger. Her father, her mother, her little sister. In a way she liked stangers. In all of her long life of five years, she had developed this habit of looking at strangers from behind heavy drapes that hung in every door and hallway in their house. She would be perfectly fine in those drapes, had her parents not asked her to come and say hello to them all. It took away all the magic. And they all started to appear ordinary and she lost all interest in them. There was something terrible about hello.

'Sir, a bottle of drinking water'..' No mam, no charge'...'Yes it is complimentary'..'..Shortly sir'...She kept  saying as she was making her way along the aisle serving the first and the only set of complimentary beverages hoping for the flight deck to announce departure. She did not see the effects she had on the passengers. Deep set, dewy eyes flanked by wispy curls that escaped the tight hairdo on top of her head made for a very pleasing picture. Her blue outfit only added to her tall slender frame. And it would shock and maybe even displease her quite a bit, had she known that the reason she always managed to finish her service in minimum time with almost no complaints, was not so much for her efficiency as a flight attendant..but because of those dewy eyes and shy little smile she wore so very casually, as she tilted her head ever so slightly while serving her passengers.

Ron travelled light. But that never solved his problems with in-flight carry on luggage. His huge camera-lens kit always had him wrestle with airlines authority. Especially the long lens. It was his life and problem. And he was always double checking to make sure he had not knicked or scratched it. He had bought the lens with most of his savings, as employee of the bank job he had held and despised for the three years. Yet he had persevered at the job. This was before he decided to go into photography full time. Taking risks and failing. Multiple times. But this was one job he did not mind doing...even if it meant no monthly pay checks. Today he was a freelancer. He got paid a decent amount for his work. But the best part of his job was the joy he felt when he was taking pictures on the streets. It evoked in him emotions he could not express in words. Yes, he wasn't the best photographer in town. But he loved his job. That is more than almost anyone in town could claim. However, this wasn't on this mind today as he quickly walked towards his seat on the flight. He was quite the last passenger  to board this flight and while hurrying through secuirity he thought he had knicked the lens. So the moment he had dumped his bag into the overhead compartment he began to check the lens. He was trying to look at something far away..as far as..maybe.. the end of the aisle which allowed him to see all the way to the closed cockpit door and the drapes of the cabin reserved for the flight attendants..

'Reooooo'...her mother was calling for her from somewhere three flights of stairs down. She did not reply. She never replied. Everyone knew this. And yet they always kept calling out her name.  She preferred being 'found'. That took time and stalled household work. Sometimes for hours. Yet when she was finally 'found', and she smiled a shy wispy smile from under her thick lashes, it seemed to whoever was looking for her that, they have indeed found the most precious being on earth. But she was always here...just out of sight.  She never knew why no one was upset and was always smiling in relief after her efforts of hiding out, and she might have been a little sad, had she known that it was that shy smile and dewy eyes that did the trick.

Ron looked through the viewfinder. Did he just see someone about to dissapear around those blue drapes at the end of the aisle? Were those the most soulful and kind-of-lost pair of eyes, he had ever seen? No maybe not. He now looked above the viewfinder. Reality did have a way of getting distorted when viewed through the lens..

She was just about to go into the cabin after serving the first and only round of water, snacks and daily newsnpapers. The flight was going to take off after all. These encounters with strangers always left her very flushed and she was always happy to get back to the cabin, even if for a short time. But just before she heaved the breath she unknowingly had held, she thought she saw someone standing up in the aisle...with a huge...was that a lens? She turned.

Ron thought he saw the most beautiful creature he had ever seen? Reality, this time around, was certainly not distorted. His eyes were drawn to her squared shoulders. Her slender tall frame emphasized by the stern outfit and hairdo. She was walking towards him. A shy smile crinckling the end of her dewy eyes under the thickest lashes.. he had ever seen?

She had to ask him to take a seat and have the seat belt around him. The flight had to take off. Somehow as she was walking over to ask him to oblige, she saw the lens and the kind-of lost-look on his face. What was about this stranger that was so familarly endearing, yet ...there was something not very   ordinary about this man. Standing there awkwardly with a long lens among all other now-seated passengers. The overhead bin where he had put his luggage, maybe, was open-- looking more open than it was, among the rest of the closed off white bins. He appeared to be searching for something. But was..that lost kind of look directed towards her? Did he look at her through the lens? She smiled, more to herself. What silly idea. Why would anyone look for here when she was here, anyway. She had a tingling feeling of been 'searched for'... being 'looked for'..she found that old odd feeling of wanting to be found stir up from somewher deep in her and yet quite far away. She did not know but she was flushed. A bit of color creeping into her high cheekbones. She was quite out of breath when she finally reached him. Her shy smile broadening just a wee bit more...Ron was smiling too...

Just as she was going to ask him to take a seat...her eyes caught the his name on the airlines tag. It read Ron. Short and precise kind of strokes. He was the very first one, she had seen who actually  who wrote his name on the luggage tag the airlnes issued. The luggage must be really important to him. He was certainly not your ordinary stranger. She looked at him full in the eye, smiled and was just about to ask him to take his seat, when Ron, finally managing to get out of his slightly dazed state and saw her so close, with slightly parted lips as if she was going to say something. He had not probably realized she was walking towrads him. Awkwardly he felt relieved. He smiled one of his charming smiles and casually, said,

'Hello'.

She kept smiling..but did her eyes darken a bit? ...she asked him to take his seat. She closed the overhead bin over his seat, turned to head back to the cabin once again, making sure everyone was seated and buckled, overhead bins closed. She noticed the one over his seat looked exactly like all the others. Closed and ordinary. There was no magic.

Reo drew the drapes across the cabin.

Did he see a hint of sadness..as she was pulling the drapes across that cabin?

Ron thought for a bit and then reached for the in-flight magazine. The blue curtain looked pretty firmly drawn. It was going to be a very long two hours. 

The party

Zi was having a party tonight. It wasn't a big affair. Just a few friends over for a night of  drinking. His wife was in town and it called for some wining and dining. It was planned as a non- fussy affair with no goal other than getting drunk. As Wri would say, 'let the good times roll'. Some good time it will be. For one thing the party prevented the confrontation he had been averting for the last...3 years. They both knew to what he owed this unexpected visit. None wanted to talk about it...not yet. But then there was the morning after and the afternoon and the evening... The next week seemed to stretch forever. For now Zi forced his mind to think about the task at hand. Uncorking the wine bottles. He could hear the water in the bathroom slowly being shut down. She would be in the tub. Zi concentrated even harder to the simple task of uncorking the cheap wines he just bought.

Natashya was soaking in a tub of hot water. Her back ached after the long flight from... She closed her eyes. She pushed the thought from her mind. Her feet ached..her head ached. A night of partying was the last thing on her mind.  And that ached more than anything. But she did not have much say. She rather give in to the general wish then make a stand.  She had been away from the university for a long time. 3 years and 4 days to be precise. It might be a good chance up with him. They had dated briefly during those first years. More importantly they had been soul-mates. Sharing everything..thoughts, griefs, aspirations, bits of failures. Till they shared the bed that fated christmas eve. They both had too much wine and then one led to another. And after that they stopped sharing ..first went the bed followed by the grief, failures and finally they ended up as strangers living under a roof. Till she got a scholarship and that was the end. They both knew it had been coming. It still hurt to give him a hug at the airport. She hoped then that the next meeting a few months later would be better.  It never happened. She knew why she flew home after 3 hours.  And it was not to meet him...

The phone rang. Alexei stopped stirring the potatoes. He had already made quite a mess. Hard luck that it was going to be a part of the potluck party he was to attend in an hour's time. He did not find anything remotely lucky about it. 'Wriiii, get it, will ya', Alexei shouted. Oh yes Wri had left...almost 3 years now. He still had to get used to that.It had been nice with Wri. He smiled. Wri. Half made messy potatoes had been their favorite. As was silent movies, cheap wines, dark ales and long nights.  Or was it? He doubted it now. He did not do so then. They seemed to share the same love for the wrong things. The freaks. That is what friends called them.  Then she happened. To Wri. And that night at the tavern, he broke the news to Alexei. He was not sorry. He had seen it coming for a long time. The way Wri had averted his gaze as he told him of his move overseas. Alexei knew that it was not for the coveted position of Assistant professor of social Anthro whatever. And he had not stopped him.

'Hello', the heavy voice answered her. Martha always liked it when she heard that voice. Russian accented. Reeked of laughter and liquor and of all the good times in that house in 28, Graham St.  Alexei and Wri and Natashya. It had been only with Alexei that she had kept up.  Her husband...she had to. And she was here to meet him. But  she knew it wasn't so. It was more like catching up with Alexei and Wri..and Natashya. That house in graham st where they all moved in as  young grad students. Where she met Zi. Martha could not wait for them to turn up. Oh yes. It was not going to be only Alexei. Wri had  left town that day and never set his foot back. Natashya was never to confront truth when faced with it. But Alexei had remained. He was a good excuse to defer that conversation with Zi.

A man lit his cigar and stood in front of the house. A woman was talking on the phone. She looked...happy? He sure was in that house. He walked away in the drizzle. Life had been ..well life. He had this party to attend. Not many people. Just a few close friends.

Natashya finished her shower. She pulled on her jeans and a tube top. She looked  about ready to meet Wri.

Siri...

It was a foggy morning. So 9'o clock seemed like very early. And not just to Tee, but it seemed to her the whole house..in fact the whole town had decided to set back the clock a few hours. There was really no hurry, she mused to herself. After all, they all would be hurrying to the same things they hurried to everyday, only to find out that everything could have waited..another few hours, at least. Back home, this would not have been possible. But here in this old, almost antique house, in the far east corner of the world, everyone could pretend for a little.

There was a knock on the door. It was an old wooden door, the brown color replaced by a light version of black? It was flat and without any carving, things, which was such prominent features on the outside surface of the door. And Shejdi was knocking on that surface of this door. Tee smiled. The knock implied that there was an nicely sweetened, a bit over maybe by her taste, tea in a white cup balanced somewhat at the edge of a matching white saucer. In the center would be two tea biscuits. Those yummy biscuits..why couldn't shejdi bring her the whole box? It took some effort on her part to get out of the quilt in which she had wrapped herself while sitting by the window..looking at the narrow lane, two floors down, through the rusted iron bars which ran vertically through the rectangular empty space bound by the top and bottom wooden bars. The temptation was too big.

Hand wrapped around the cup of tea and nestled back in the very long arm chair by the window, Tee reflected on how Shejdi's life might have been...

Clank clank clank clank sounded the bell on the cycle. Siri almost started running from the kitchen down the long hallway making a beeline for the main door. The milkman was here and any time the local fisherman would be here as well. It was already 9'o clock. And brunch was not even halfway ready! The fog had clouded the sense of time of everyone. But the train times and office times would not stop. And it was upon her to have the entire household--a staggering 20 people, excluding the servants-- ready by 10.30 A.M for their daily activities. It was not such a daunting job to her. Only, she seemed pressed for time which always got the better of her. Well almost. In half an hour her father-in-law, a businessman who held office in the morning room of the big house, would ask for his brunch. Quickly his eldest son, Siri's husband, and his brothers and their sons-- a priest, a writer, a clerk, a student and many assortments of jobs-- would want their , sort of, 'elaborate' breakfast before embarking on their daily voyage. At least so it seemed...

...to Tee, when she heard of such stories from Shejdi. To her, whose regular morning started at 7.30 AM with a cup of coffee and cereals, this was unreal and oh-so desirable. Almost in a fairy tale like reality. Things she knew instinctively to be true yet not comprehendible.

Siri was not beautiful. A quality prized then, more than now, if a girl had any hopes of landing a good husband. Literally translating to marrying into a reputed and well-to-do-household. She was not even born to a rich set of parents. Reputed, yes. As a child, which had lasted a mere 16 years, she never thought of these things. Except when her father used to muse over her marriage prospects. Siri knew she would be married. She looked forward to that day. Neither with hope nor with remorse. Just as a kind of reality which you accept without really questioning it. For she knew, it would be a fine one. Almost happy. That was more than many could ask for. And She was happy.

Happiness in way that you, me or Tee would not understand.

Siri's childhood days were spent running along the river bank calling out to her brothers to take her along on the boat ride. Of looking at the boat sullenly with tear filled eyes when they left her out. Returning to her books and poetry and dreaming of the days--days she knew may never come and without much longing either--when she would take that boat and travel to those places, educated people called Spain and Java and Borneo. She liked foggy days and rainy days...days she had to spend indoors without craving to be outdoors. On such days she would paint or, think...simple thoughts of nothing and everything.

It was mid afternoon when Tee let herself out of the room. The hallways were pretty deserted. The children maybe had made their way to school and the men to the offices. The big house looked like a ghost the feeble afternoon sun. The doors on most of the rooms along the hallways were latched. She loitered downstairs into the kitchen. Shejdi was there. Busily cooking up for the evening fare. She looked up and saw Siri..I mean Tee standing.

'Here, sit down... feeling lonely?'...Shejdi asked. Seemed to Shejdi she was repeating something from the past she could not really recall. Oh yes, the milkman said something similar today morning...or was it the fisherman...or no the postman that day when she was walking back along the river...?

Prisoner of a snowball earth

Once upon a time there lived a little fairy. Her name was Miranda. She was pretty and she loved to frolic in the warm ocean. She played in the aquamarine waters and rode the white foaming crests of high waves till she landed on snow white surfaces of golden sand. As she scanned the horizon she could see no one and nothing...just a wide stretch of paradise, blue skies and a lovely red Sun. Now we all know that fairies live forever. At least long enough for us to think in terms of 'forever'. And they never grow old. They live as pretty as a lark for as long as they want and then.... they dissapear...

Now, recently Miranda was having a bit of a trouble. Why! the sand was not warm enough these days and the water was cold..and getting colder each day. This worried her. She flew over the blue mountains and scanned the skies. um um..nothing that could be bothersome..except the nagging feeling inside her  that things were not quite the same and she had a premonition that it would get even worse. Amidst all this confusion came the cruel winter. And Miranda, as every year, went off to sleep in a little shell on the warm sand, where the ripples from the ocean once in a while rocked her cradle..and she slept on like a baby. The little shell folded itself around her. It would again open with the first hints of the summer Sun......

It was a few millions of years before Miranda woke again. And she woke startled..and cold. Shivering. Where was the sun, where was her shell..and what was this big ugly thing into which she was trapped. She flew to every wall. But it was not to be shattered. It was dark inside and probably dark outside too. Oh! where was her paradise? Who was the ugly grinch who took it away for her...and could she ever ..ever, find her way back to those golden shores she loved so much?

Scientists were excited to have finally 'discovered' a life form in a rock. They said that the rock formed on the ocean floor about two billion years back. This was unprecendented. The sensational news hit major newspaperooms across the globe. They did not yet know what it was or how it lived. But from what little they knew of life forms that old, it seemed that it used to live in tropical coastal waters. Much like that of the present day Caribbean. The 'thing' seemed to have somehow been trapped in the rock which was mostly a mixture of sand and mud. Scientists knew that this rock belonged to a time in history when the earth was covered in ice from pole to pole. Meaning that if a polar bear wanted it could trample all the way from the Arctic across Paris, New York, Capetown and over the Atlantic to have lunch with the penguins in Antarctica. Of course it had to walk pretty quick. But if it wanted it could. You see all the world's ocean at that time was covered in thick ice layers..so thick that  wrestlers and polar bears could easily jump on the icy layer without the fear of falling through it into the cold oceans beneath.

Now why did ice do such a thing ? After all now it seems to melt and freeze pretty regularly. Which is why you have glaciers in the winter that melt a little during the summer and grow back again in the winter. Why did it behave so weirdly back then?

Turns out that back in those days the sun was particularly feeble. Young and helpless in those early days when the solar system had just about formed. So the sunshine was not strong enough. But the adolescent earth was very energetic. It wobbled and weebled, flipped and flopped , tossed and turned...and while on its crazy behaviour it might have so happened that it cut itself off from the small heat of the Sun even temporarily (say for a few million years?). Ice crystals saw this oppertunity and slowly assembled to travel all the way from their home in the poles to the tropics. They thought they would warm themselves up a little. After all the Poles are not great places to live in. But Alas! as soon as the ice crystals made their way to the sandy, lovely tropics, they spread their cold so much..that the  ocean water, the lakes and all that was on the earth froze over. It was a white, dark, cold, hostile world. A world covered in ice. And because the ice was shiny it refelcted all the sunlight right back into the blue sky where there were no clouds to hold on to the heat and so it escaped unabated leaving behind the icy world.

Miranda couldn't get out of her tough prison. When she was quite tired of running around and crying in vain she fell asleep...again for a long long time. But the next time when she woke up, instead of fruitlessly beating on the walls she started to think. She saw that she was actually floating in ether...and it was full of transparent cells..much like the one she was in..and it had little things trapped inside them ..some even contained the golden sand like material ..maybe a just a little bit darker. Could it be dust..like the ones she saw in the dry summer season blowing out from the sandy sea, far inland? And it started to make sense..maybe the paradise had converted to ether..but if so..where did these sandy things come from? And where there places in the paradise which escaped the brutal ice invasion? or was there a source of these shiny, small things underneath this dark ether?

Scientists think that the end of the cold period lay in the fact that although the globe was frozen on its surface, inside the young earth was just as restless. Infact enough to keep the molten interior moving, sloshing and spewing lots of fiery volcanoes. And boy do volcanoes have heat! Volcanoes spew huge amounts of smoke and gas into the sky. These gases and smokes now start to hold on to those escaping sunrays and heat starts building up in the earth. Legend has it that this heat accumulation over long time eventually did succeed in melting the ice and that forever ended the cold episodes of such a very long time.

But there are problems with this. Turns out that the gases from volcanoes alone cannot hold on to so much heat. And even if it did it would take an awefully long time. Much longer than scientists think the cold weather actually lasted for. What is it that they have missed...they scratched their head even harder looking at this new lifeform they have discovered....

Miranda thought and looked hard..she noticed that shiny things were coming up from somewhere down below...she could not quite see from how deep. And she saw tiny cracks in her prison as it wobbled up close to those shiny things. Looked like they were caught up in some kind of a updraft. Was it warm? For as soon as her prison came into contact with these particles it developed scratches...as if it was melting. And She started to scratch her ideas into the inner face of the walls.  Soon it was all filled up with ideas..for she went through a number of cycle of sleeps, looked deep and thought hard.

After what seemed an eternity Miranda noticed that the ether through which she was floating was gradually accumulating more and more of such 'prisons'- each having many many particles...some shiny, some dark..and some even seemed to have somebody trapped in them. Why! there were so many like her. And they were all trapped . So maybe they were all going together somewhere? Maybe this was how she could get back to her paradise?

Miranda started feeling warm...and she saw that her prison was finally melting..just like all the rest and soon before she even knew it she was rushing through torrents of water with the others into huge water bodies !! carrying all the shiny, dusty, sandy things and was hurtled face down onto a sandy surface....aaah!!! liberation!! But soon she was being pushed into the sand. She was screaming. Wanting to get out..breathe...

Scientists looked at the lifeform carefully..and the best they could do was guess that it had forever lived in the ocean water and unable to adjust to the abrupt onset of the cold environment, died. It must have floated in the water for sometime and then come to settle in the ocean bottom. Finally it was buried under layers  upon layers of mud and dust that have been liberated from the melting the icy layers as the world was emerging out of the icy seclusion. Yes, thats pretty much what had happened. They were certain.

Miranda knew her wings were torn and lost in the torrents of dust, sand and slosh...she would never fly again. Maybe she could just ride the wave crests..once this nightmare was over and she was back in her paradise...

Photograph by Ritayan Mitra

P.S: There were periods in Earth's history when the  Earth was covered in ice from pole to pole. There were several such episodes. The latest were ~ 2.45 Byrs. Geologists refer to such periods as the 'Snowball Earth'. It is not clear how the Earth gets into and out of such a state. It is a field of active research. 

For more information please visit  www. snowballearth.org


Also ' Miranda' has been recently ' discovered'. Its true.

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Most-Emailed-Photos/ss/1756#photoViewer=/091122/481/f4559ecbe9d64fe8951a320fb00e17eb

The House

It was around evening. Dusk was setting in. In the Big House she never quite felt the need to look at time. It sufficed to know whether it was morning-noon-evening-night. It seemed to her that time was playing a kind of hide and seek game with her in this house. It was a fun game that she had come to love from that day she first set foot in this house. Couldn't even remember when that was. But for sure it was a very long time back. At least, it seemed to her that way.

P was married at a very young age. Her parents died when she was only six. Since then she somehow grew up till she was married to a very rich merchant. The earliest memories she had were of the house into which she had stepped that hot-humid day. Was probably a Sunday. No maybe it was a Friday. She couldn't remember. She was just sixteen. It was a rich household. An old household. Someone had told her that it was nearly three hundred years old and had been a part of the 'family' ever since. Even on that first day she had felt that time, as the rest of the world knew and valued it, probably had little use here. The house was plentiful in its demands and equally well equipped with servants to cater to every wish and necessity, quickly and unobtrusively. She was told that many people lived there. She met almost no one..except that day when there were so many of them to welcome her 'home'. From then on she met them all only on rare occasions when one of them either left the household or joined it. You might already have started to pity her..feel her loneliness...

You are so wrong. So very wrong.

She loved moving around the house. In the afternoon she loved to sit in her room with blinds drawn. There was a mantle clock on the old fireplace and if she left the blind on the west facing window just a little bit parted, the crystal pendulum would catch the late afternoon sulight and the reflections would create a magical world of brightly lit moving polka dots. The oscillating pendulum created in that late afternoon, a world for her where time went crazy and she had the leisure to let it do its trick....while she thought...well thoughtless thoughts .....all through the lazy sunny afternoon. She had spent countless hours of her life here, in this polka-dotted-dimly lit-world. It had so happened many a times that a servant had caught her looking at the moving dots with an aimless expression.

She had fallen in love so many times in this house. Almost anyone who would catch her fancy. Could be anyone. The poet she had recently read...or maybe that postman who came clanging the feeble cycle bell ever so often. In her imagination she had explored the world of love with many men...all of them diverse..all of them unique. Alone in the house she felt free to love without any guilt..without any remorse. She had made love, yielded to passion, sobbed at seemingly painful departures. Nobody ever never knew any of these. least of all the men she had secretly loved and lost. She was not sure she would want them to. At night she made love to her husband. Loved every second of it. Writhed in pleasure...the kind of guilty pleasure that comes with the forbidden love. She suspected that had the house been a little bit smaller, a little more crowded, she would not have been so free to express herself to the mirror on the wall.

But of all magical places she had discovered in that house, the one she loved most was the slightly elevated platform by the old window overlooking the lane that led to the main door of the house. The house was just a block away from the main street..and yet this little lane brought a quality of seclusion to it. As if it broke the connection of the house with the rest of the world and their ways of appreciating time and space and people. The window had long vertical iron bars. There was a thick coat of rust on them. Years of negligence has had this effect. P would sit by the window for hours looking out to a very small part of the globe through those rusty bars . But through these bars lay her world ...the milkman, the priest, the postman- their arrivals and departures. Their routines on that lane. What they did once they walked out of that lane was where she took over..

It had kept her so happy and occupied.

Years have gone by and she had grown from a teenage to a woman in that house. And now she still lived in a big house... even now she never did meet anyone very much. she did not miss anyone or anything in particular...but only for the mantle clock and the window with its rusty bars...without these two she could not be happy any more. There were so many clocks around this place. Here also time had lost its value. Well she never quite had any use of it anyway.

In search of a story

The rains followed her and she followed the rains. She had followed them all the way to Spain and then back to Cambodia. It had been a long journey, punctuated with riddles and puddles, colors and shapes, smells and tastes. But most of all, it had been a journey in which love was born. This is her story..the story of a girl who followed the rains, fell in love and...did she return? To think, it all started off with just a little bit of curiosity...

"In a little place up in the woods, far away from the hustle-bustle of the crowd, lived a little girl. And nobody would have remembered her, if only it wasn't for her unkempt pigtail and big, wide eyes, which seemed to fill up all the space in her little face. If you happened to pass by her house, like this old man on his way to the town's market, or that giggling group of children to school, or the chipmunk on his way to gather corn, you would see a pair of black eyes and a tiny nose plastered against the rain streaked window pane. There was something in that face that made you look up and smile. I assure you it will not be a happy smile..nor a sad one...but a smile that comes without feeling...nor for that matter, a lot of thought.
This small town was nested in the foothills of a great mountain range. The town was wrapped in lush greenery, canopied in mist and streaked with rain. In the distance the snow covered lofty mountain peaks stood proud. But from the little girl's window it looked all mist covered and obscure...almost like a shelter against that unknown rest of whatever. Life in this town evolved with the rains- its arrivals and departures, its rhythms and durations. Sometimes when it would be gusty and windy, children had fun holding onto their umbrellas and when it was almost misty, families flocked around the hearths filled with burning coal. If you watched from a distance, all you saw were huddled groups of happy faces glowing.... The constant rains made small rivulets along the red coloured mud sidewalks. Legend has it that the giant mountains brought the rains and the rains washed the red colored mud from the mountains which made such vermillion streaks along the slippery, winding roads.

Since she could remember, the little girl had heard about the legend and she had a mad desire to follow the rains all the way across the mountains and to the sea, where they say, every rain droplet was born. But she couldn't...her mother forbade her the trip for she was always so hot and flushed. The old man with the black bag, who visited her every sunday, always made her stay at home. She hated him. So one day when her mother was attending the vegetable garden in their backyard, she sneaked out. It was a drizzling lightly and when the rains touched her flushing skin, it felt cool and soothingly refreshing. She looked up and could almost touch the clouds..they floated so near. She followed the red coloured rivulet and started walking away towards the giant mountains till you couldn't make out her small form in the mist.

The monotonous sonorous voice of the professor lecturing for the better part of the last hour on the civilisation that perished, for lack of rainfall over a period of some two hundred year, had transported her beyond the mossy, grey walls of the old classroom. Where was this civilisation again? She was sure that the professor had mentioned this place several times...but for some reason she thought it had to be in Cambodia, where fireflies break the darkness of tropical rainforests and farmers with rainwater dripping from their wide straw hats, tend to the rolling acres of lush green paddy fields on the sprawling mountain terraces. It stirred in her a fond memory. It surely could never have been dry. The legends had gotten it all wrong. She caught a reflection of her smile on the dusty window pane in front of her.

Outside grey cumulous clouds were building up. The city was in for the first of the summer rains. How she wanted to be outside...feel those first, few big raindrops on her palm and the smell of first rains drenching the heated summer soil, teasing her senses. Soon it would be coming down in torrents drenching the whole city, cleaning all the dirt and washing it in sidewalk rivulets. Traffic would come to a standstill..and people returning home inside the cramped city buses would look out desperately to see if there was any hope of traffic clearing in a short time. But, their vision would be clouded by the raindrops that hung from the rusty window frames of the old city buses and seemed to cling on.. for what seemed forever..
She woke from her reverie and saw that there were streaks of rainwater slowly washing the summer dust away from the window pane..

He saw her. She looked a little lost from where he was standing. He was trying to get his umbrella to open up before going out. It was cold and he shuddered at the thought of getting even slightly wet. The raindrops would be like needles piercing even his thick winter jacket. How on earth did he land in this university town which could only be as cold and so damp. With his credentials he could have easily gone to more sunnier places..but somehow luck would have him transported here and nowhere. Somehow, right now all that did not seem to bother him so much. He tried hard to focus on her face inside the window pane in the ugly grey building just across the small, slightly rain drenched, slippery road. But his own breath mixed with the cold mist clouded his vision and he was forced to take off his glasses. At least, now he could see her face, although a bit blurred. And what attracted him were a pair of big black eyes in a rather smallish face. He smiled without thinking.

She was strolling along the embankment. A slim woman who wore her hair long and rather limp so that the stresses caressed her small face. From time to time she would try in vain to remove those unkempt strands from her face. Her long skirt was wet and clung to her ankles. At times, she bent down and tried to free hreself a bit. And it was during one such moment she looked back. And through the rain she found him walking towards her. She had been waiting for him for what seemed forever. Was it such an awfully long a time since that day in front of the library where they had first met? He had been finishing up his work and had strolled upto her to ask her if she cared to join him for coffee. She had found that funny. For she had watched him concentrate on his book for the better part of an hour.

They were holidaying in the Mediterranean. She had been chasing the rains through the cold beaches, and the wet flower markets that smelled of honeysuckle and moss. And for the rest of their time they sat under a shelter with the misty wind on their face, talking of the lovely times they had spent over the last..what seven days?...in Spain..
After all ..she had chased the rains to Spain. Not away..."

I hope..

Catalog No.3598

She stood on The Balcony looking down. Far down..so incredibly small were the teeming masses of humanity on four wheels, rushing past her....

Tee got up that morning a little groggier than her usual self. She had been up almost the entire night reading Somerset Maugham .The Razor's edge. She couldn’t help but reflect on how appropriate the title was to the contents of the book. She thought to herself as she slipped into her housecoat. She did not need to. She felt quite attractive as she looked into the mirror. She turned around and gave herself a critical look over. Not bad at all. Her long hours at the gymnasium had started to pay off. She wanted to walk out into the living room in her shorts and tank top. She almost did. After all there was nobody in the house! She could afford to be a bit daring when no one was watching!! Oh well..its the thought that counts. R would totally disagree. She slipped into her old housecoat and walked out into the kitchen to make herself breakfast, which was a meager fare of cereals with raisin and milk. The only exciting part of her breakfast chore was the coffee. Ah! the smell of the fresh brew as she watered her plants. The thought brought a smile to her lips.

A poet with the vision, would tell you how pretty and soft a picture she made, standing there smiling to herself in the old housecoat with the morning light catching the ends of the disobedient strands of her locks. He would title it, 'She'. But if the poet was so unimaginative as to stop writing to tell her that 'she' was the inspiration of his morning poetry, she would only look up at him with her big, soft eyes, smile that same smile, and tell him how she often wondered if there lay something beyond the looking glass that would make her beautiful every single morning....

She felt comfortable in her housecoat. There was a nip in the air outside. The first of the Fall days were here. Time for maple syrups, light sweaters and cinnamon smells!! Her mind was still on Maugham and the ending of the '..edge'. As she started making her usual brand of coffee, she remembered that hot afternoon just two weeks ago, when she was browsing through the book store ...

The bookstore was in the basement on a tiny street just across a local 'tea and sandwich' shop. The store had a rich collection of cheap, second hand books and it was secluded from the regular hustle-bustle of the square, which is one of the many reasons why Tee loved browsing through its stacks for hours on end. So many titles..mostly unknown. Usually she would take ages to select a book which she would decide to buy and keep on reading. That afternoon, however, she had just started to look around and this title -' The razor's edge' caught her attention. And before she even finished reading the first paragraph, she wanted to keep reading it..

Well, she always had a knack for titles and more often than not she would end up buying books just based on a title. And today morning she was not regretting her decision from two weeks ago. But she carried over her obsession for good titles to other forms of arts as well and on this one point she got into bad arguments with R. Now, R was a photographer and a man of few words and a restless mind. He believed in content. Strongly and truely and completely. He breathed pictures. But he did not spend any time giving those appropriate titles which, she thought they deserved. That was exasperating to Tee. She would have loved if R gave the matter some thought. But he didn't and neither was there any hope he would. Why, just yesterday night they were into this long discussion about the importance of titles to any form photographs and it had ended in total disagreement and Tee had gone off to bed, alone, to read Maugham. At this point I should probably tell the reader that Tee herself enjoys taking pictures and is not too bad at it either. Today morning R had left earlier and she had grudgingly agreed to herself that, after all she had loved the book for its content and not the title..but..she bought it in the first place for the title..oh well..it wouldn't apply if she were buying pictures..but he still should give it some thought..after all it was also a form of art!!!........

Later that day something happened.

As Tee was walking to work, enjoying the crisp air, she spotted a 'poster sale'. A young girl was minding the booth. She looked like a middle school kid. Tee went over to her and requested for the catalog. She looked through it several times and finally decided on one. It had on it 'catalog number 3598'. And so Tee and the girl started looking through the boxes for number 3598. There were so many numbers it was getting tedious. Tee was almost giving up the search, when another girl, slightly older, walked in. And she asked which number they were looking for, and they said in unison, 'number 3598'. So the three of them searched together for yet some more time. The older girl got exasperated soon and asked', what's the title/name of the picture?’. Tee got irritated with herself. Now, why hadn't she thought of the title before? She quickly looked over at the catalog and repeated,’ The Balcony'. They located the poster in another two seconds.

It was right there in front of their eyes all the time. And as the younger girl brought out the poster..the lady looked at them from atop her ivory castle..Tee said, a little loudly to herself, 'why of course it is her balcony, indeed'!

Picture taken from allposters.com

The racoon and the girl

It was a cold night in a small township in a not-so-far-away corner of the world. A blizzard was howling. The Girl looked outside and sighed. Tonight, she would have to walk to her place. Usually she biked. But just today morning, she noticed that her bike had a flat tire. It took her a good part of an hour to reach her place by bike.Walking would take about a couple of hours. It was so cold outside and, there were holes in her shoes. Tears started to sting her eyes. How many years was it since she had bought this pair of shoes from a village fair? Almost four, she recollected. She decided she needed another pair very soon. Soon....when she had saved a bit of the money from her lowly paid work as a waitress in the Bar. If only the Bar was closer to her place...if only she had enough money..if only she had not been adament to leave home to attend college....if only ....

The manager's sudden yell jolted her out of the self-pitying musings," What are you looking outside for, heh? There are people waiting at the table. Don't you come cribbing if you don't get enough tips. Iam not going to give you a raise! lazy bums". She would be more than happy to leave this place and even happier to have the manager stangled. She looked at her watch. In an hour's time she would be free. The thought made her smile a little and she liked the reflection that smiled back at her from the kitchen mirror.

"Why, the girl serving them was almost beautiful", thought the Boy, as he looked at her closely. She was smiling at him while serving the ham-sandwich with honey mustard dressing, just the way he had ordered it. She was not very slight of frame. But her collar bones were very prominent and he noticed a bear-shaped-pendant hanging in the hollow between those bone arches. Bear shaped? That was odd. She wore a red blouse which accentuated her feminity and he found it hard to look away.The Girl had a face with sharp features, a bit too sharp for a woman. Her hair was a deep chestnut colour and it was tied back in a severe bun. A few strands had escaped the discipline and fell on her tired face...it helped to defray the severity of her facial features and she looked almost beautiful in the dim light of their table.

"I will be around...let me know if you guys need anything else", the Girl was saying. She had laughing eyes and a plain smile..but somehow, the two together made her very attractive. At least that's what he decided. Maybe he could ask her out? The name tag above her left breast and just below the collar bone read...Oh no! She walked away. No problem. He decided she was the Girl. He smiled at the irony of the name.

It was almost 1.00 AM. As she was getting ready to leave the Bar, she thought of her home in the countryside. She was so tired, she longed to be cared for, and she thought of her mother.Thoughts of home always brought to her mind visions of the little kitchen garden in their backyard. It was a joy to her parents and in the summer, looked lovely with beds of radishes, carrots, tomatoes and spinach in full sprout.The freshly raked garden smelled of the earth. She couldn't wait for the summer and home. And once she was home, she would meet her Racoon. Yes, it was her pet. At least that's what everybody knew. And she had believed it for a long time..she still did, by the way. The Racoon was an adorable thing in brown and white and it had curious, naughty eyes. It had been with her for seven long years. She had been told that racoons had short lifetimes. But she couldn't care less.Why, if she loved something..it would live on forever...

Oh! the Boy at the table needed something. She forced herself to smile. She noticed that the Boy was rather cute, stubby fellow with a mischevious smile and curious eyes..quite like her racoon..and she smiled almost spontaneouly. "A beer, please", said the Boy. "Which one, sir?" "The pale ale will do, thank you", smiled the Boy. "Sure", smiled the Girl. She could not help but look over her shoulder. He was not looking at her. He was busy scribbling something on a peice of paper. His friend's were looking at it with a great deal of..anticipation? For some reason she felt a little sad.Why boys were never attracted to her. Not even short, fat ones. Maybe it was her looks. She went over to the bartender to get the beer and returned with one. She placed it on the table, rather abesentmindedly, and left.This time the Boy looked up. She hadn't smiled at him. Had she?

She would definitely go home this summer to meet Racoon. The one person who would love her ..forever.What a silly thought! But it made her forget her temporary melancholy. It was the last table she had to serve that day and thank God they were getting ready to leave. As they were paying their bills, she stood there smiling and looking towards the door...and the Boy looked at her. He decided to ask her out..someday.

"Thank you", said the Boy and they left. She had recieved 10$ in tip!! It was a nice way to end a rather uneventful day. She started taking the signed bill back to the manager and for some reason, she would never be able to explain, turned to look at the menucard. A severe curiosity gripped her. Quickly, she looked over to make sure that the Boy had left. She flipped the back of the menu card. There was a picture of a racoon, rather crudely drawn...signed 'hope you liked him'.

Picture: Courtesy Ritayan Mitra

The Warrior

She wasn't much into mythology. But mythology did offer her the vista into a world of infinite probabilities. Now, Hindu mythology, like any other mythologies in any civilisation of the world, is rich in fascinatingly impossible tales of Gods, and their interventions in preserving the lowly form of human life down here on the Earth. A particularly interesting one involves the reincarnation (so called avataar) of the Lord Vishnu. Lord Vishnu is believed to be responsible for preserving human virtues on earth; the kind of virtue that keeps the human kind from destroying one another; the kind in which the evil needs to be punished and the hero needs to be rewarded. So whenever there were times, in human history and beyond, when mankind had been involved in self-annihilation, Vishnu incarnated himself in many forms (e.g. fish, tortoise, boar, man-lion, dwarf, man with a bow, king, shepherd, learned man *) to preserve humanity and restore peace. It is said that there had been nine such occassions. And legend has it that the prevailing madness of the modern world would have to be resolved/ended by the final incarnation of Vishnu in the form of a warrior on a white horse who will end Time. The scriptures called this warrior the tenth and final avataar, 'kalki'.

It is this warrior on a white horse that had always been a curiosity with Mrs B. She knew from her rudimentary understanding of physics that Time might collapse onto itself if the expanding universe collapsed..but gazing at the stars in the night she couldn't fathom how that would be. How can such a huge space simply collapse on to itself ? how would it look like? Like a piece of dough wrapped about itself ? It seemed impossible and absurd. Well, equations might indicate towrads an end like that..but there has to be something called gut feeling. She had a dogged notion that if something wasn't right she could feel it. Whatever that meant..No. she decided that space wouldn't collapse.. couldn't collapse.

But she wanted Time to stop one day.That was interesting.

She rather liked the idea of someone just turning off all the watches around the world and then, Time would simply end. But the concept of a warrior ending time was not what she felt comfortable thinking about. After all it wasn't a war with Time. Although if you asked her when she was running late for...anything..she would nod her head furiously, "Of course its war! what else??" But barring those moments, she didn't like the idea of war against time. Why! Kalki had to be a scientist with a fantastic sense of humour. Quite like a mixture of the looks of Santa Clause, the brains of Einstien and the curiosity of Alice. After all, an inteligent, funny man could do anything he wished in a wonderland! The possibilities were endless.

She didn't know wether she believed in God to save the world or anything like that. It was simply an interesting possibility and she loved to dwell on such impossibilities. After all, whoever had thought that a submarine would actually exist!

This had been all on her mind for a long time. But one afternon, she was sitting in a cafeteria, with her usual cup of coffee. She had just looked at the clock on the wall. It read twenty two minutes to three. She still could idle away for some time. Lazily she stared out and saw an old man walking towards the Cafeteria. Probably homeless. He was shabily dressed and had a huge dirty bag on his back. He was looking through the garbage bins collecting ..whatever roadside garbage bins had to offer. He looked quite busy and curious....

She saw the man approach the cafeteria, open the door, smile at everyone, pull up an empty chair, climb up to the clock and then ...he just stopped it!! People in the nearby tables started asking questions and the manager came out of his office to find out what the commotion was all about. To all of which he kept smiling and said ," Well, Time has stopped and the world has changed. Its no longer the Earth". Irritated the manager started calling the police, but he didn't know what to dial! Confused he asked the old man what was going on. To this he said, in that same funny voice," Well, as I said Time has stopped and whatever was true on earth is no longer true and all the rules have changed". He skipped from one spot to another, holding up one object after the other saying, that it wasn't what it was,"That is not a clock and this is not a coffee cup and that is not a chair and this is not a computer.." Pointing to a girl in the corner he said, " that's not a girl and that's not her hand and holding hands is not even a gesture of love..the Rules have changed".

Mrs B stood stiff in all this commotion. Very carefully, so as not to attract any attention she looked outside to see if there was any sign of the kind of madness she was in, being reflected ouside. All she saw was the usual stream of cars passing by. Nothing seemed out of place. "They haven't noticed that Time has stopped" said the old man standing real close to her. "They will notice soon though", he winked. Someone asked, " what about the Sun, the Moon, laws of physics and biology and society and...".. He smiled,"What are you talking of ? They are not there any more. Everything is wrong now. Whatever you know and whatever you have been taught and whatever you have said till this point in Time is invalid now !!" A young man started laughing. "Good he said..so all my grades are going to be A's now!" and some others joined him in the mirth. The old man laughed "Yes its all A's. But then A's are not A's anymore. Letters have changed". The student was not to be disheartened. He quipped "Then its all D's. D's would mean very good!". The old man laughed out loud and shrill. Merriment rang in every tone of his voice,"But there is no order now. No alphabet. No language. No defined laws. No defined behaviour. No definitions hold anymore!! Everything has been flung into space and we can neither do anything about it nor can we predict the future!". There was a confused silence in the cafeteria. The man seemed to enjoy this confusion. Mrs B wanted to slwoly get out of this madness.As if sensing what was on her mind , the old man smiled and spoke up, "But, we can do two things. One, we can wait till everything falls back in some order and then we will have to redifine things and start off once again. Or, we could calculate the future!". He winked and waited for a response.When there was none coming, he started off again, this time a little less sure about himself, but more curious, " there is a probability of each thing falling back and in a particular order. There are billions of such combinations and trillions of permutations. If we do the math..multiply the probabilities..no, wait we have to first assign probabilities..but how do we do it..." and he started scruffling around for some paper in a busy curious way in a roadside dustbin and on the pavement!!

His laugh rang in Mrs B's ears..She could only think ' Time has stopped. Time has stopped. The warrior is here.Time hasssss stopppeddd.Yeaaaaaaaaahhh!!!

She looked at the watch.It was ten minutes past three. Damm it! she was late again.

* The nine avataars (incarnations) of the Lord Vishnu on Earth are as follows : Matsya (fish), Kurma (tortoise), Varaha (boar), Narasimha (man-lion), Vamana (dwarf), Parasurama (man with the bow), Ram chandra (king), Krishna (the shepherd ), Sankyamuni (learned man)

Photograph by Atreyee Bhattacharya

The Gardener

She knew him for almost twenty years now. Through most of her childhood, all of her adolesence and youth he had been there. Silent, un-ubiquitous but, always present with that quiet and shy smile. There was never a time that anybody in the household would notice his presence. But his absences, which were few and far apart, never went unnoticed. Be it watering the plants in the huge garden that was the pride and joy of that grey house or the sudden errand to the local market for the extra grocery that needed to be bought for the unannounced guest that Father was bringing home to lunch, or for accompanying her and Sister back from school-he was the Man of the household. It seemed incredible to her now that an entire household would function smoothly, simply based on the faith that he was around whenever there arose any need. Yet.....she never seemed to have noticed him.Why! most of the time when she had looked for him, she didn't know where to look. But whenever she did look for him, somehow, from some place he would appear with that shy smile on his slightly tilted head and ask ' Khuj chile? (looking for me?)

Yes she had looked for him for reasons she had never looked for anyone else: To tie up her shoelaces when Mother had been busy with something else, pluck the best Dahlia in the garden to impress her school teacher...for getting her bicycle to the repair shop on his way home. Every morning he would be there at the house; in his brown (khaki? black?) pants and a light shirt..sometimes there would be brownish coloured sweater on him in the few, cold days of December.. totting his rusted, old cycle.On one handle hung the almost colourless jute bag and on other, the straw hat that he would wear the whole day as he....as he went about whatever he did all day. Sometimes when she looked out from her study towards the sprawling garden beneath, she would find him bent over a flowering bed holding a water sprinkler; however from where she looked, she could only see the straw-hat-covered-head and the veined hand holding a water hose. At times he would look up, smile and go back to watering the flower beds.

Once she had heard Grandmother talk about her own childood days during the last days of the British rule in India; Mother often complained to him about the banal day to day problems; Father would sometimes discuss with him about work-place politics; Grandfather spoke to him about the best time of the year to sow the new flowering seeds and about the state of affairs in villages under the present government (infact it appeared to her that Grandfather was relying on him to reveal the true state of affairs as opposed to the papers and his peers!). Later she had a vague feeling that without being told much he knew a lot about her house and her family.. much more than she, or any other members of the family, did.

But there was a time when this man's life had fallen apart. Irrevocably.

He had two daughters, the smaller one being his favourite. She died at five..because of negligence on part of the doctor in diagnosing a critical case of Meningitis. His wife went into shock and till date hasn't recovered. She still remembered that day when he came back after the funeral. It was a bright, sunny, June morning.That was only time she had seen him cry. Never before and never after. And that was the day she realized what his presence and his quiet composure had mean't to the sanity of the household. Later he married off the elder daughter at an young age. It was probably his guilt stricken conscience... She remembered attending that wedding. She wished she hadn't.

Many years later, when the magic wand of forgetfulness had erased all painfull memories away, when things had settled in just like there was never a day like that.. One warm september evening she had biked fast from her hostel along that red dusty road towards that grey house ... famished and in a hurry to get home, only to find it all dark; Mother was probably out taking an evening stroll as was Grandfather, Father wasn't back yet and Grandmother was out for her evening rounds of bridge. She was upset and tears welled up in her eyes thinking that there was no one to open the door only because she had come home unannounced. She debated on wether to go back and risk the stale canteen food, for it might still be a good part of an hour before anyone showed up. But she decided to wait. Irritatedly, as she started to sit down on the porch to wait for some one to come back..she heard a familiar and shy voice asking " khuj chile?"

It was Nepal kaka, the man employed to manage just the garden.

The colour red

It was something about the colour red that appealed to Mrs B. She had realised this over the past month. It wasn't because red had several shades, each one coded to the myrad mood swings that charecterised her personality. Because so did blue, green, orange and all the other colours of the rainbow. Not also because red was flashy and prominent. Although in her younger days she had claimed to herself, as well as to her friends, that red was her favourite colour because it was bold and looked smashing on a Ferari! That was sometime back. For the last one month or so she had been thinking quite a lot about this colour..or more precisely, about incidents which for some reason had one form, or the other of this primary colour in them.

Why! the other day she was walking, almost aimlessly, through the sleet and the snow and for no particular reason she started to think about the train ride she had taken almost four years back....

She had woken up groggy from medication. She was going to a place by the Arabian Sea to meet her best friend, far far far far away from the heat and the chaos of the Navrangapura. She had been running a high fever but had decided at the last moment to take the trip. She was glad she did. She had fallen asleep, tired, in a crouched position by the window in the lowest birth of a 'sleeper class' compartment as the train snaked its way towards the small nook by the Sea. As she looked out of the window that morning she saw the rainsoaked Western Ghats....

Strangely, the only memory of that morning she recalled as she walked through the snow, was of the rain drenched red soil by the railway track along which whistled the lone train ...

The soil was a deep blood red colour which had turned to a wet crimson. The continuous showers of the long monsoon had caused the crimson soil to drip as mud pellets from the edges of the walls along the railway track. The red soil was in stark contrast to the lush green vegetation that covered the hillocks and the low hills, just a little further away from the railway tracks. She could only see the red mud where it was dripping and her eyes had followed the bloody trail till it got lost...higher up in the all encompassing greenery. It had seemed to her that the earth was bursting at the seams..dying to reveal something : a secret? a pain? a quiet pride that the green above was because of the red earth below..? Somehow she never remembered what had happened to the red trail after it dripped on the tracks. Her eyes had only followed it up and not down. She had been mesmerized by the scenary for it promised her of the rain, the wet and the moist ..all of which she had craved for in the heat and harshness of the Sun in Navrangapura.

She looked up and saw that the buildings along the snowed-over-road looked a heavy crimson..a wet crimson and she thought again...red. It was this colour in a movie that had brought her to these red, brick-house-lined streets in the snow, far from that grey house on that red dirt road in that small town.. through the railway tracks along the rain drenched, red soils of the Western Ghats. In a distance she heard the tolling bell and as she looked at her watch she couldn't help but notice that the handle of her bag was red too...

Photograph: From the BBC

A blizzard blew over her house...

Mrs B looked out of her window. It was a late January morning. A blizzard has been blowing over her house for the last two days. She had gotten used to pushing aside the curtain across her window pane, with the hope that it would be sunny and green outside. But no. All she saw was little chips of ice and snow dancing wildly outside her window sill. The flakes moved in random, crazy patterns as the gusty wind tried to discpline and direct their motion, but in vain. It seemed to her that the firns were a willful herd of young sheep amusing themselves in the wonders that lay in their path- the twigs, the fences, the bare tree trunk..the occasional fur hat on a woman's head- and the forceful wind trying to shepherd them towards a destination that was still green...Wasn't this what was happening? Somebody may have argued Brownian motion. Didn't Einstein have an equation to predict this crazy dancing behaviour of the young sheep? Sorry, I mean the ice crystals.
Mrs B now accepted this whole thing as a ritual. But the snow strom had lasted only for the last few days! How quickly she had ascribed her temporay instict to being a ritual!
Today as she performed her "ritual" of pushing aside the curtain, unwittingly thinking of the show flakes..she was in for a "surprise"! There was no dance of the ice flakes. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. The storm has passed? Now why should this be a surprise, Mrs B never stopped to ask herself. For obviously the weather does change. But not to her. No sir. Not today.
In front of her lay a frosted country. The world looked white. It was inconcievable for her to think that beneath that white vineer lay colours , smells and objects that she was familiar with. The cars, the pavement, the gardens, the rooftops, the chimneys ,the shops, the randomely strewn toys in the backyard....everything was white. As the Sun was starting to melt the first of the snow crystals off the more pointed edges, it seemed to her that they were hanging on for dear life-from every little curvature of the fences, street lights and the queer bent of branches- fearing loss of their grip; fearing porobably that their unique identity would be lost for sure upon hitting the hard ,all encompassing white world beneath.
It did not seem possible to her that a snowwtorm , even one that lasted for a few days, could cover everything with such a precesion. Why there must have been an elf who was playing around with a frosting cone and had managed to cover every nook and corner!! As her mind was coming to terms with this white canopied world that lay in front, her eyes saw for the first time things the way that had always been. She couldn't belive she missed this! The incredible shapes that the trees took. The one next to her door looked like an old man stooping and being suported by a rather crude looking stick. And the one over there? Why it looked just like a question mark! The lamp post did not look like a lamp post at all. It rather looked a an angry eagle perched on a tall and bare tree trunk!
As she hurriedly dressed and made her way to work she saw an entirely different world that she thought she knew so well. All along the way- the same way she went everyday- she encountered images and figures that made her little world look like a fairyland.
So..were colours and smells the only things preventing her from finding the perfect neverland right where she lived and even wanted to escape from? She was in no mood to think...the figures had captured her imagination..and she was already discovering this ever known world once again and it was captivating. Was she crazy in thinking she ever wanted to leave? All she now wanted was to see a prince on a white horse. And something tells me she just might succeed..

Who is Mr R anyway?

"Mr.R was out of town","Mr.R was certainly right on this one","She had been on a winter holiday with Mr.R","Oh Yes! the picture. It was one taken by Mr.R","How interesting that Mr R had captured with his camera what she had silently enjoyed....the most","Mr R was never around..."

For some time now this certain Mr.R has been often been given a casual referance. However, it does seem that Mr.R is ubiquitous. So much so that a formal introduction never seemed necessary. Some of you may have made up your minds as to who he is. And some of you maybe awaiting Mr.R's unveiling..even if just to say " I knew it was him".

So here goes the story.

" Once upon a time in an a faraway place, beyond the seven oceans and the thirten rivers (shaat shmudro tero nodir periye) there used to be an old city that arose some hundereds of years ago, quite like the phoenix, from the marshes that still surround it. Anyways, in that old city was an old castle.. almost as old as the city.The kings who claimed the city from the marshes would use it to rule the poor city dwellers. Much later the kings left but the castle remained. And the citizens fondly (?) called it Y.

By some stroke of madness Mrs B sauntered in there.Quite by accident. She was on her way to becoming a doctor and simply wanted to check out what the mystery about this old castle was all about! She was always curious. Much like 'Alice'. And as destiny would have it, she never really made her way out of that old castle. The castle turned out to be her wonderland and it cast a spell on her. The charms of Y had captivated her.

And even when she did make her way out, the castle and its mirages remained with her. She would encounter those mirrages even when she had returned home after being lost for long three years. Her parents almost thought they had lost her. But she had found her way back home.

Of the many mirrages that she had encountered within the castle , one , really special, turned out to exist even outside the castle..on the rain soaked roads, the glittering bazzar..really anywhere and everywhere. And beacuse she was bewitched by the castle fairies, she fell in love with this one mirage. And that is Mr.R."

What happened next?..

" Well..Mr R and Mrs B fell in love. Not quite simultaneously. Not quite apart. Just somewhere in between. And they flew away togther. To different places... in different directions. Not too near. Not too far. Just somewhere in between, enough to let the love grow..and only grow..and only grow.."

So you see Mrs B and Mr R are not related. Not in the sense we think of relationships to be. Mr R is not Mrs B's husband. Not her fiancee. Not her friend. Mrs B is not Mr R's childhood sweetheart. Not his mirage. Not his wife. Not his fiance either. But they are still related in bonds, born out of lack of words. And as far as I know (and who am I except an old woman spinning tales!) Mrs B dosen't have a definition of who Mr R is to her. He is her mirage...and she is bewitched. Remember?

And for Mr R, she is the one solid rock in his ever swirling world of impossible fantasies. Is he bewitched too?And, after all its not just castles that bind you to their spell. Rocks can cast their spell too..just maybe not as strong as castle fairies..

And till they both find out who it is that Mrs B is to Mr R and Mr R is to Mrs B, lets just kiss ("keep it short and simple") and let them simply be Mrs B and Mr. R....

And you thought you knew who Mr R was! Got you!!

Road to El Dorado

Mrs B was quite happy these last few days. She had been on a winter holiday with Mr.R. I say winter because it was in the northern hemisphere and 25th dec in this half of the globe is considered winter. There was nothing really to suggest it was so. Blue sky..light fluffy clouds..palm trees..coral reefs, aquamarine blue sea with changing hues , a hot and bright sun till 7 in the evening..warm sand..cosy beach chairs......margaritas, mojitos, long showers, late nights by the pool, air conditioning in the hotel room. It was somewhere in the tropics and Mrs B hoped she never had to return to frigid reality. Ever again. It wasn't terribly romantic and the quiet twosome holiday as she would have adored..but it was fun filled one with friends, some old, some new and some....She could almost sing out loud " We had joy we had fun we had season's in the sun". Interestingly she developed a knack for this tune in this trip to the tropical paradise.

For a couple of days after her return she still kept on thinking how soon she could get away once again. But as life has it, slowly the frenzy gave way to acceptance of the cold reality. That she was still a graduate studenttt and the semesterrr was far from being over and the pppaperrr she had to write ...and the copies she had to grrrrade..and the offffffice hoursssss she had to hold..and worst of all the maillllllllls she had to endure...it was never ending. It was then she saw this picture. It was that time, post trip, when her head was still in the clouds but her feet was back on the ground..and she kept looking at the pictures over and over again..till she almost convinced herself that her feet too was on cloud 9 and that tomorrow will be sunny and she would be back on the beach.

Oh Yes! the picture. It was one taken by Mr.R. A white sandy road, lined on either side by green-needle-like foliage, going slight upslope and at the brink one could see the deep blue sky with various shaped white clouds...and there was hint of something..wonderful..just across that brink. Well, in reality she had run across that path into a something breathtaking..she remembered the sensation but if she tried to express her feelings into word she realized that no one would realise why it was so beautiful. Yes, they would understand that it was pretty. But they wouldn't grasp the bewitching quality of the feeling she had when she had raced across that path. So she did not share this one experinece with anoyone.Till she saw that picture. How interesting that Mr R had captured with his camera what she had silently enjoyed....the most. They did not even know of the reason why this would claim their attantion simultaneously. Maybe there was something deeply common between themselves which they hadn't recognized? She felt mildly happy at the possibility.

As soon as she saw the picture, she had said aloud to herself "Road to El Dorado"...

As a college student another picture had always featured on her "desktop". It was a grey road, lined on both sides by tall cyprus trees..and the road went into the screen..far away from her. She always liked to look at it and think...thoughts of far away lands. So, the concept was always dear to her. But the one on her 'desktop' did not leave her with a sense of promise. This one did. So she looked at it long and hard..and allowed herself to think, without forcing herself to think of things she wanted to think. There is a difference between the two. She wanted to see, where she eventually ended up.

Her thoughts took her to places she had always imagined...Egypt, Tuscanny, Rome, Montanna. It was so soothing she allowed herself to keep thinking. For some reason her thoughts came back to a red road. A bend in that red road and she was on her way, riding her blue cycle.. fast. There were familiar houses as her mind consumed up the images. Why.. just a few yards and she could almost see that grey house that she loved so much.The blue gate and by that the old street lamp and after that .... the long wide open field. It wasn't so much the house she saw. It was an expectation that she would see the faces she had come to love and expect from, before she even knew what expectations were.

She stopped thinking. No this couldn't be the El Dorado..why it had to be somwhere sunny, with palm trees, warm beaches, cosy beach chairs, margarita's and mohitos..all just across the brink up there. That brink across the white sandy road couldn't lead to a grey house with a blue gate full of familiar faces. It had to be hidden somewhere in the unknown which she wanted to find but couldn't. That was what El Dorado was supposed to be. Wasn't it? She did have a fantastic imagination.

Photograph: Courtesy Ritayan Mitra

The Old Man's Shop

It was an evening in early August. In this small town in West Bengal, just a hundred miles west of Kolkata. Evenings during this time of the year are usually pleasant. The last vestiges of the long drawn out monsoon makes a couple of appearances before journeying farther south, where they keep up their lively and tireless performance for the rest of the year. Well..almost.Today was one such day. The evening was without the Rains. Slightly cool. A light breeze was blowing. Mrs B was getting ready for an "outing" to the local market place. It was a short walk from her house to the market and the weather was perfect for walking. However she did not feel like walking. Seemed to her that she was alwayyys walking. She wanted to ride a rickshaw*. A mischievous self in her liked to think that riding a rickshaw was aristocratic! She had always associated that with Mana (Mrs B's grandmother). How Mana would get down from the rickshaw, after her evening rounds of magazine club, bridge games and marketing! Piru kaka** would bring in the bags after her, and Daidai (Mrs B's grandfather) would be waiting at the door to greet her. And to think Mana had been away for only a couple of hours! That was regale!
Mrs B just couldn't help but give in to her desire of riding a rickshaw to the market.
The day, however, had not been as perfect as was the evening. The morning was cloudy. Mana had been upset and irritated that even today she couldn't hang her clothes outside to dry. Well..she had been upset most of last week and that was not just because of overcast skies.. it was just another few days before Mrs.B flew west again. Mrs B had been upset too. So today afternoon, when the sun peeked through the clouds, for the first time in weeks, she decided to go to the bajaar (the local market place) in the evening. That would surely cheer her up.

Now, going to the bajaar was not exactly like going grocery shopping. The bajaar also was very much unlike the grocery stores here. It is a collection of rows of small rooms next to each other; each room being a "shop" geared to sell specific sets of merchandise e.g. the music shop would have a variety of cassettes, batteries ...CDs and DVDs.
Each "row" divided up the market place into several small "regions", also called "markets" e.g. the vegetable market, the fruit market, the flower market, the meat and fish market, the sweet shops , the tailoring shops, stationary shops, banks, grocery shops, internet cafes...all distributed in that random order. Open spaces separated the "markets". In these open areas vendors would sell anything from day old newspapers, handmade cane-wood-clay goods, corn roasted over open flame to regular snack and beverage-all in makeshift stalls. These vendors did not “own” any shop. They would put up their stalls early in the morning and take it back with them late in the night when the bajaar closed and the shopkeepers locked their stores.

In India, this is how a typical market would look like...well..till a few years back.

Mrs B loved to walk aimlessly around this bajaar. She had been there at all ages, at all times and with all degrees of necessity. Sometimes it had been early in the morning to buy a kite paper for the craft class in school; sometimes, in the late evening, to buy a present for a friend’s birthday party ; in the afternoon to buy a soda; late at night to have a few pages photocopied for the exam next morning; to stroll with a friend or just to meet Mana, who would go there every evening at around six o'clock for grocery shopping. And..at no time had she been disappointed.
This Bajaar, was also in a sense, The center for entertainment in this small town. It was interesting at how one would "chance" upon the next door neighbour and talk for an hour about an upcoming wedding. Mind you they chatted about this only a few hours ago over the evening tea. So, there was always a possibility that a voice from a long lost time would call out to Mrs B as she walked aimlessly through the teeming mass of buyers and sellers who seemed to occupy every corner of this bajaar. The voice may be that of the girl she hated as a second grade kid. Or that of the school teacher who taught her Wordsworth in high school. Or the rickshaw kaka on whose vehicle she had sat on the foot rest as the naughty kid. It may also be of Mana's coming back from Babloo's dokan (the sweet shop at the rear end of the marketplace) or of her best friend who went somewhere far off and was simply visiting the little town. So even though she wasn't acquainted with all the people who frequented the bajaar, she felt a sense of familiarity with this crowd.

Today, however, a major purpose of her trip to the bajaar was to have a packet of snacks that she was exceptionally fond of. An old vendor, who had a small stall in the open space in front of the bajaar, sold "baro bhaja" (a spicy mix of nuts, spices, vegetables and puffed rice).
His was a small stall; more like a table, on four rickety wheels, and a cover supported by four flimsy wooden posts. He would push that stall all the way from his village up to the market every evening around five o' clock. His stall would have several mouth watering ingredients..varaities of nuts, chanachur (a spicy mix), puffed rice, some spices and half cut onions, tomatoes, green chilies-all stuffed carefully in heavy glass jars. The lids of these jars had glass knobs on their tops. It was known as Dadu'r dokan (the old man's shop).

This stall had been the primary source of entertainment for Mrs B all throughout her school life...more so in junior school. Whenever Mammam (her mother) would allow some extra changes, she would rush off with Buni (her younger sister) and other kids of the neighbor hood to dadu'r dokan to buy a packet of barobhaja. The journey to Dadu's was as exciting as was the snack. It would be the time for hatching notorious plans to rag the new kid in the neighborhood. Or to solve some pending work for their doll's wedding party next week. And then they would be there at Dadu's. Almost always the first customers.
She would pick out her choice of ingredients ....and as she did so, he would lift the lids of the glass jars carefully and pick out meager quantities of each and put them in a big plastic cup. How excited she used to get watching that! It had always seemed to her that inside those jars were the best eatables that could possibly exist. And how lucky Dadu was...he could have as much of those as he wanted and ..whenever he wanted! He would then stir them all together vigorously and put them in small paper containers, made from old newspapers, and hand it over to her! Oh those first few fingerfuls! She took little mouthfuls. So that it never ended...

Much as his snack was desirable..so were his stories. In reality, they were just the day-to-day happenings of his life which he told with a placid face, in a monotonic voice and in a strange rural accent. He would talk of his perpetually ill cow, the problems in the paddy field due to the untimely rain, his meager lunch and his family. She later realized that those were not really stories. They had to themselves a touch of desperation …a sign of resignation. But to little B they were from a world beyond hardships. A place where there were no home works, no studies, no fixed lunch menus, and most importantly from a world full of glass jars, filled with goodies, which could be opened anytime and every time...one just had to want it!

Over time, even as she was growing up, Dadu's Dokan kept losing its charm to the kids of the neighbourhood. The market grew. Many vendors had crowded the open space. They sold Rolls, Chowmein, and a plethora of delicious fast food. Bright halogen lamps lighted up the stalls and kids flocked to them like flies. She was also drawn to those stalls. Dadu'r dokan faded into a little corner, only a week lamp trying vainly to indicate its existence. Only poor kids occasionally went there.
She went off to college and never remembered Dadu again. On her way back to home on weekends, she would just pass by it, hardly giving it a glance...
Today, after so many years, when it was almost time to fly west again, and she was walking towards the bajaar...she remembered Dadu'r dokan...and all of a sudden , she felt in her mouth the old tang of barobhaja. She hoped that Dadu was there...unknowingly she walked a little faster. Was he there? Was he even alive? As she neared the bajaar, she saw the stall..small, rickety and in the corner. And then she saw those glass jars. They still had those round knobs on their tops. They were filled with nuts and chanachur. Dadu looked a little old. But he always had looked that way. Her mouth watered at the thought of that small packet. Today she was going to have a thousand of those little packets..
She was glad that she had come to bajaar today..somehow she felt that a part of the old world still existed..maybe in little corners. But she could reach them..anytime..she just just had to want it. It was reassuring. And she understood for the first time, perhaps vaguely, how it was for Dadu to own the little stall with the glass jars..which he could open..anytime, anywhere..he just had to want it...maybe.

*a three wheeled cycle with cushioned seats in the rear for seating at most two passengers.It was driven (also referred to as pulled) by a man.

** Piru Kaka was the the rickshawa puller who accompanied Mana everywheere.From births, weddings to funerals.He expired two years back.Mana had lost her best man since then. Kaka means Uncle in bengali.