Puri Subzi

Red

It’s been a full day trek to get to Jugsaipatna. The Karlpat forests have been unforgiving. Kalahandi has been unforgiving. Nature and the Indian state haven’t been kind to these parts.

“So, why are you here?”, asks the elderly village leader. In fading light, the only discernible feature is squat nose and a ridged forehead.

“Go on, answer him”, my friend and activist first class Sumedh says.

“I came to see the sun rise over the hills”

First there is a narrowing of the eyes, then a twitching of the nose and finally a laugh so loud that almost the entire village is startled to gathering around.

10 pairs of eyes wait for something. I remain straight and unconcerned. My eyes fixed on the elderly man 5 feet away from me. He takes a swig from a tall vessel that is part glass and part pot.

“A variety of Mahua. Extremely potent”, points out Sumedh helpfully.

Five minutes pass agonizingly. I am being studied. Eyes not escaping one single detail of me.

“Ok, you will get to see your sunrise. But you can’t sleep in the village. Go out and some one will come tomorrow morning.”

5AM. 

“Come. Time to go. We have to climb lots.”, says a figure who is as tall as me with a voice just slightly less deeper than Barry White. Or that’s what I think he says.

And so we climb. Hacking. Up. And down. A bunch of bats are disturbed. I get hit on the face by one. 

The sky is turning indigo. A streak of pink shortly appears. Birds are now calling loudly. We cross a small pond and climb one final time.

He raises his hands and points down at the ground. We wait here.

Slowly a yellow disc appears behind a streak of cloud. Orange. Pink. Red.

Redder.

The dawn.

I realize it after sitting for 20 min in the enormous waiting room: there is no immediate viscerality to anything around me. The hospital is clean, almost fully silent with sombre people looking healthier than they really are. The muted, diffused light from a mid morning sun is bouncing off beige blinds. The edge has been taken off.

It is a most disconcerting feeling. 

Where are the hacky, coughing people? Where are the people with fractured limbs? Where are the people with dried blood on their bandages? Where are the people who are grieving for lost loved ones? Where are the normal hospital people?

********

Gangamma is sitting beside me. 

“You don’t look sick, young man. Why are you here?”, she asks in an accent that I immediately recognize. Deccani. Bidar. Gulbarga. 

“You don’t look ill yourself!”

“Ah, but I am a 76-yr old woman. I am ill.”

Strangers brought together by a common thing: an illness that is almost invisible. I have no scar to show for my migraines. Except for a difficulty in recalling the name of her village, she has nothing to show for her Alzheimer’s.

“I travelled for almost three days to get here. At least it is cool here. The bus from Bidar to Hyderabad was terrible. I had to stand for so long in the heat. I thought I’d die.”

“You came alone?”

“No. My grandson came until Raichur, but he had to go back because his wife did not give birth properly. Curses on her!”

”..and you came from there by yourself?”

“What else to do? No one gives me free treatment except for this hospital in Bangalore. I don’t have enough money.”

Almost 800 kilometers from home.

She leans across as she says that. Breath redolent of onions, tobacco and betel.

“I don’t like this hospital though. No one talks to each other in the room. Everyone’s quiet. It’s like being in a place full of ghosts. Living ghosts.”

A nurse walks towards us. 

“Gangamma! Gangamma!”

“She’s calling for you, please raise your hand”

“She’s not calling me. I am not Gangamma. Also who are you?”

My name is called. I get up, look back at a confused Gangamma and walk towards the corridor…

A morning

Bombay looks beautiful in the morning, I whisper to myself. The view from seventeen floors high is spectacular. First rays of the summer sun are slanting across thin, tall buildings. In the far distance, the mangroves are already simmering. A pigeon flutters into view, it’s peculiar whitish grey feathers offset by an outrageous twin striped forehead. Is this a pigeon at all? Down below, the temple bells are signalling the cacophony of the day ahead. An autorickshaw pulls up to the entrance of a building across the road. From it come three people, two of them alive. The other draped in white, shoulders and upper torso stained in red. Three women wail and beat their chests. A crowd gathers but soon disappears. No time for the dead. The 6.29 fast to Churchgate waits for no one.

On an adjacent roof, eight people are still sleeping. Sheets in all hues, wrapped right over their heads. The temple bells are now roaring. Pigeons are fighting for sitting space. Bombay affords little of this for even them. Two women, one of them wearing a bright orange salwar kameez, come up on the roof. Both of them carrying brooms. One walks to the edge and starts sweeping. The other uses it liberally wake up the still sleepy. I can hear silent howls as the sheets are parted and eight people suddenly come to life. Inevitable pulling and pushing at the staircase. One person hurriedly pulls up his slipping underwear.

I can smell coffee.

One express train whizzes past the station. Staccato blasts from the horn telling people to get off the tracks. A slow, local train too starts. A push cart seller of papayas rounds the corner and disappears. His dark, swarthy appearance contrasting the bright blue shirt and white cap he is wears. One middle aged man, with a large belly, on his morning walk pauses for a breath. Hands on hips first then hands on knees. A red towel to wipe the sweat off.

The coffee tastes just right.

Reading Thomas Keneally now. Out in the living room, a mother and daughter are tickling each other away. Short giggles with loud guffaws from both of them with a protesting “Mamma?” from the child thrown in between. A moment across walls.

It will remain my favourite memory for a long, long time.

Thud

The cab of WDM-2 locomotive, at its best, is not a comfortable place to be in. The seats are hideously designed with minimum back support and there is practically no leg room - the emergency brakes take up whatever stretchable place there is. Heat from the V20 engine behind is soul sapping. 

But Bharucha Kaka, as he was fondly called, was in his elements. His thick, Gujarati accented Hindi was in full flow.

“Nothing like a long stretch of green signals, no? I can jam the throttle and just enjoy all of this.”, he points out towards the vast orchards of haapus mangoes that follow the track. The speedometer shows a steady 109.5 kmph. His assistant driver, with whom I am sharing the tiny seat, pours everyone a cup of hot, sweet, tea. I pass around a pack of Marie biscuits. It is a moment I savour intensely.

Dahanu approaches. The assistant stretches out a little and pushes the high tone horn. A few people squatting near the track, playing a card game quickly scatter. About three hundred meters ahead, I notice a young woman standing still. She’s wearing a bright pink salwar-kameez and carrying what looks like a school backpack. She takes one step forward and stops. The horns are blaring continuously. Bharucha Kaka is talking on the radio to the station master for all clear. She takes another step forward. There is hesitation. My hands get clammy and tight. Instinct and experience pushing the pulse. Another step forward. Bharucha Kaka ditches the radio, the assistant howls, “No, no, please don’t”. Her knees give away. I notice she has long wavy hair, almost brunette. Kaka jams on the emergency brakes. The neck is on the rail. She twists it slight upwards. I catch her eye. She catches mine. Fear. Guilt. Help me.

The inevitable thud.

Half a kilometer later we shudder to a halt. There are already half a dozen people at the spot. My knees are weak. Sweat pours down my neck. Her face keeps flashing in front me of every nano second. I shouldn’t be here. Where’s my air conditioned cube and the comforting colors of the Windows task bar? 

“Oh god”, shouts one of the bystanders, “there is no head. Oh my god, oh my god”. 

Bharucha Kaka is the bravest here. He clears the crowd and squats underneath the coach. 

“Pass me a piece of cloth”. This soon appears and is tied around his left hand.

The mangled torso, sans the head, right leg, left arm and much of the shoulder blades is taken out. Intense white of the inner body. The cloudy yellow of the intestines.

“We need the head”, says Kaka. “I am not starting the train without it”.

I am shivering. I’ve been through this before half a dozen times, I remind myself. Steel up, you bastard.

We fan out on both sides of the long train. I am walking towards the locomotive when I spot something. Hair. Please don’t let it be me. Please don’t let it be me. My hands feel all jelly and noodley. Three quarters of a head, sliced from the left side upwards. 

Crouch. Extend hand behind battery box. Gently push. Extend another hand and catch. Feels heavy. An over inflated volleyball. Leathery, texturey. Speckled with earth and blood. Still, blue eyes stare back. Fear. Guilt. Help me.

“No. 28”, says Bharucha Kaka as we start the train.

************

“How do you deal with it. All of it?”, I ask

It’s a sweltering Madras evening outside, but the air conditioner inside is making sure the temperature is a steady 21 degrees. The enticing, amber peaty roughness of a Laphroigh 12-yr lingers on the tongue. Grilled Chicken and Sriracha sauce are on the table.

“Honestly, boy, you don’t.”, says Peter Johnson.

“I’ve been at this 29 years and I still don’t know how. I keep reminding myself, and I’ve told you this many, many times, that I am not guilty, but that’s a hard thing to reconcile. You know the story of what I went through when it happened for the first time. And yet 28 years on, I still wake up some mornings with those nightmares.”

“The wait at the coroner’s offfice is horrible. You remember that one young man that died at Tondiarpet no? 2 days later I saw his father. He slapped me. That’s the first time its ever happened. I almost hit the guy back, boy, I almost did. I cried with the father for 20 minutes.”

Janet, Peter’s beautiful, graceful wife, walks in with some more eats.

“He doesn’t deal with death all that well. His father was the same too.”, say she. 

There’s steel in the voice that lost a daughter a long, long time.

We stepped on to the slippery cobblestone steps.

We were present.

We climbed. Through rain and sleet. Feet giving away sometimes. But never giving up.

We smelled fresh pine.

We rested under the meagre bulk of cedar.

We reached our cabin.

We had no internet.

We drank half a bottle of rum. Neat. We kept ourselves warm.

We smoked too. Whooping coughs echoing across near hills.

In the vast whitespace that existed between these activities, we talked. Confided. Motivated. Cajoled. Cried.

We ate simple food. We played scrabble. We drank a little more.

We slept to the sound of crackling fire and the whistling wind. 

We said goodbye to an year.

We woke up to a frosted ground. And snowy mountains.

We said hello to a new year. In beautiful sunshine.

We made friends with the locals.

We walked more. We slept a lot. We drank cold beer at 10AM that needed no fridge.

We ambled down. We dispersed.

We need to go back.

The photo is a purplish yellow frame now, the edges bleeding vibrant color. 

“23 years ago”, my mother helpfully points out.

“Barely 5 minutes after we took this photo, it started raining like crazy. We had to run to the far end of the platform for shelter.”

I nod along as if I remember everything to the last detail.

My eyes are fixed on my father in the photo. He is holding me in his left arm. The right arm pointing to two diesel locomotives about to pull out the Karnataka Express from Bangalore. The locomotives are colored in cream and brown bands. The coaches behind spinach green and mustard yellow. His shirt is checked, the trousers in darkish grey, making a stab at getting away from the bell-bottom fit of the late 70’s and early 80’s. He is beaming. His stance straight. The clothes seem to fit perfectly.

******

This one’s in black & white. I am a few years older and at the far edge of the frame. My makeshift bat is held high, Graham Gooch style. Behind me, on the wall, are three thin lines in red. Stumps. Nearer in the frame, now with a small pot belly, is my father. He is just about a deliver a off-cutter. The arms are taut and raised high.

I tell my mother, “This I remember well.”

He bowled the ball, the action resembling Ravi Shastri’s. A sort of languid crane, confused about his sense of gravity. The ball looped in the air. I took three steps forward, hoping to meet it just as it pitched. Then something wicked happend to the bright yellow ball. It drooped, the angle of rotation changing ever so slightly. My bat, my eyes and swing looking towards a mid-wicket shot. The ball pitched a foot in front my left leg. One sharp turn. Out of my ground and a wild flay. The ball caught the edge of the bat and ballooned towards mid-off. He ran back, feet moving effortlessly. A small shuffle to the side. John Travolta would have been proud. Another shuffle to the right. And in cupped hands the ball landed safely.

“Out.”

“Ya, ya, pa. That was a good ball.”, shoulders drooped and resigned over handing over the bat.

******

It’s funny when you first note a vulnerability in a person. One part of your mind refuses to give credence to the thought. Bullshit, you are imagining things it says. But, the other, more sensible part knows what you saw.

We’ve just finished breakfast and are on a round of excellent coffee.

“I’ll just head to the toilet and then we can start again”, he says.

Outside, he asks the attendent which way.

As I watch the scene, perhaps for the first time in my life, a black flash crosses my eye.

His back has stooped. His clothes are ill fitting, the trousers too high above the wait, the shirt too flabby. The limp has become more pronounced and the strides slower. The confidence seems to have evaporated a bit.

The black flash again.

“He’s become old.”, the mind speaks. “He’s become vulnerable”, it pushes its case further.

The coffee scalds the tongue.

A deep sigh. A realization. Of temporality. Of physicality. Of inevitability.

Tears.