Sometimes at #10

I’m probably just repeating myself. I do that. Life is a long series of the same and co-incidences. I am probably repeating myself. Have I said ever before that the summer in my city is everything superlative? Quite literally, it is awesome, it is brilliant, and it is severe and probably quite beautiful, if you have a mind open enough to accept it, to even embrace it. The mornings shine like the mirror. Every reflective surface will blind you with its one wink in your direction. Within a closed room, a strange sultriness will embalm you. And then there’s the hot hot breeze, which will cool the sweat off your brow and then proceed to suck the last drop of anything hydrating from your body. It is demonic. We stand powerless in its grip. We stand hypnotized by its stern gaze. In the afternoons, the sun glares you down, no matter what protection you took, or how brave you are. Your face will burn, your nostril too and your eyes will water and the tears will dry on your face even before they had the time to disengage from your eyelashes. The remnant salt on your red brown face will taste less salty, more hot and bitter. No matter how much you try, how many times you wash yourself, you will always smell of the summer. How does the summer smell? Like dust. Dust in a dry jar. Your pores will spew ancient dust. You’ll be so dry; you’ll begin to wonder if the summer is outside you or within you. There will be this unanswered, even unqueried question on everybody’s tongue. Nobody but an outsider will ask it. We denizens know giving voice to it only increases your impatience. You’ve sat in a sauna like room, with no power, at 1 in the night, with no breeze in sight or touch. When the sweat pricks your eyes and there’s a puddle beneath you and you are still able to thank the fates that at least there’s no sun, we are insiders. We the real insiders never ask each other, “where, when are the rains?” we instead maintain stoic, severe silence and pretend nonchalance. In the privacy of our balconies, we sometimes look up at the sky and check the cloud formation and look far into the horizon, to search for that first loaded pregnant nimbus cloud. But we never rejoice before time. Sometimes, a quick summer shower catches us unawares. We look outside the window expecting to see the mirror, and instead we see fleeing delirious dogs and gray leaves slowly turning green, clean and the roads a dark black, we quickly leave everything else we were doing and go for a walk. Our summer footwear unsuitable for puddles and slippery roads, we roll up our pants and start walking. It’s indescribable, this relief, it’s difficult to put into words the joys of discovering unknown lanes and turns. New clean gleaming houses almost welcome us in; we scared of their human owners hurry on ahead. We meet several dead-end s. But the weather, the evening will last just a few minutes, so we brave up and tackle them too, and discover forgotten dead lakes and find trees, which give us privacy and some moments which are not new and not original and indeed are as old as time itself, but which this rain washed evening feels quite new and completely and unabashedly our own.

This Sunday

Rolling in the dark
has its own joys,
thought the lil boy of 17.
marijuana dice fall free,
the room starts smelling of
winter nights; men and their
wood fires, burning rubbish
in my ignoble city. Rolling in
her dark room, with a sliver
beneath the door, has its own joys,
Sundays finish up my new freedoms,
and the cup now tilts; she clucks
like the mother hen, admonishes me.
The lil boy of 17 in me chuckles in glee.

Yes we can!

I wasn’t really interested this time around. Not after a heart-breaking last year I had. But I watched. How could I not? Mid-Summer, blazing sun, boring Sundays. Where else could we go? What else could we watch. The lure of cool interiors, the inviting cold beer, big screen T.Vs, (a very good looking Sameer Kochhar ) and we were hooked. And we started watching IPL season 2. I hadn’t meant to, but thank god I did, for my little city won to erase the ignominy of last year.

I am a very pessimistic, superstitious person when it comes to cricket. I am such a stereotype when it comes to cricket. For the Border-Gavaskar 2000-2001 Chennai match, I stayed in my bedroom and tried to study political science. Everytime I emerged, Indian wickets fell. My sis and Mom banished me and I stayed in praying cos we were winning against Australia and it all depended on me! I still believe that.

Last Sunday the Deccan Chargers Played Royal Challengers. My sister, my friends and I hung out on 10d Bar stools and kept our fingers crossed and prayed. I prayed with my head bowed and hands clasped and looked up to see the owner of the franchisee in the same stance. The owner and the fan, were we praying for different ends? Money v/s Simple Victory? Did it matter? Weren’t we all participating in a religious ritual/warfare here? Do the advertisements reduce cricket’s sanctity? Not for me. And not for the hyderabadis at 10 d that Sunday. Or for the 4 bangaloreans.

Every evening I take my now accustomed road back home and I think of you. To fill you and me with thoughts those surround me this evening. My heart chokes and I long to feel the heat engulf me and the hot air of my lonely city to parch my skin and make my eyes water, with heat and easily remembered yarns of my past life. Lonely grey-green trees stand by and suffer the summer. Every evening I make a promise to spin those yarns about my city, my childhood, and my memories. All that is now my melancholia, my nostalgia. The summer in my city has its own personality. A visitor is always surprised by the Deccan summer. The mornings are quick to blossom and sultry. I stand under the shower, eyes still shut with sleep and hot water pours down. The smell of vanilla and cinnamon slowly calms me down as I get ready to live away another day. It’s just 6:30 am. A short and silent cab ride to hell where the weather doesn’t matter and it is eternally cold, and I am cold too, not on the outside, but the inside and I breakfast on the spoils of war at the loner’s corner. It’s 9 and I have spoken not a word. Enough of that.

Every evening I take my now accustomed road back home and I think of you. To fill you and me with thoughts those surrounded me that evening. Evenings here are balmy and breezy. The people who were inside (wherever that may be) come out to feel as the sun sets. They come out to belong, we come out to share horror stories about the weather, the heat, the sweat or the lack of it and people dying of sunstroke. Was it 43’c yesterday? 45’c in Warangal? We win the weather forecast on every channel with the highest predicted temperature and we lose at the humidity.

Ineffective summer showers pitter patters on the over-worked A.C and the summer painted terrace. My poor dog with a perpetual black coat barks in delirium at the rain. And then at its short-livedness. The 15 minute rain and the accompanied 20 minute powercut both over, my room now artificially chilled. The A.C cools my hair and I forget the completely still, hot night that reigns over my poor city. Instead I dream of clouds, snow and other improbable things.