Fragments of normalcy

Late last night, they found the bloodied head of a man near a posh club in Mumbai. Decapitation must be painless. A great force and suddenly the body that you have always had for so long is brutally separated from the head. I wonder if the moment itself is painful. But, of course, the blood would have been copious and enough to flow thick and fast on the concrete road.

The noise itself is booming and loud. It resounded in my ears long after it actually happened. The windows of my house shook, the last time this had happened was during the Latur earthquake over 7 years ago. I was a kid back then and regarded the whole affair with a lot of casual amusement. Part of the reason I am angry right now is the fact that I am no longer the age when earthquakes can be judged for what they are, without accounting for what they cause. Similarly, bomb blasts can not be judged by the unexpected holidays they provide.
—

It isn’t terribly hard to identify an albino in Mumbai. The first time I saw the lady, I knew she was one from the white skin and the grey eyes. The white was not the Ariel-induced white but a shade fairer than that. She was wearing a printed green salwar kameez and a red dupatta and kept scrunching her eyes, to avoid the light.

Suddenly, she put her hand inside her silver bag and pulled out a green sprig. She began to nibble at it, almost as if it was the most natural thing in the world to chew on sprigs. She pulled out those leafy sprigs, chewed on the leaves, looked around furtively and then quickly threw the leafless stem under the brown seat in the train.
—

It is probably futile to talk about lapses in intelligence at a time when the world seems to be at war with each other and the most pressing problem is to transform a war zone back to a city.

It is at times like these, when you begin to question normalcy. Is the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers with the light glinting off its façade on a sunny afternoon normal? Or is the same building held hostage by armed men, who are prepared to kill and die normal?

There is a corner, several corners in fact, in that gigantic building, where one particular view of the Bombay harbor hits you suddenly. The suddenness startles you because there is no turning back. Even if you wished to re-live the moment, turn the same corner again, and savor the view, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

Death is just as random. Even normal. You could just be standing at the side of dingy street and get killed by a passing sniper. You could be whipping up a delicious dessert for dinner and get killed by a gunman. Or even worse, you could just be a pigeon pecking away at grain and get shot at. Or maybe an albino chewing at a sprig. An island of normalcy, all by itself.

—

Chemotherapy

My father observed his parents’ love, such as it was, as I observed his, and my children do mine, wondering what it might be this couple were doing together and what they might want from each other. And although there is a lot the children would miss, there is much they would pick up too, and who knows how this knowledge would work inside them, and what it might turn into, later.
(Hanif Kureishi in “From my ear at his heart)

It is a funny thing to be a kid–both wonderful and bitter at the same time. You observe a lot. You don’t understand too much but you absorb it all the same. A few years later, you realise the import of what you saw one fine summer day when the vacations began. Suddenly, the realisation begins to seep in and then you begin to doubt your memory. The doubt occurs simply because it is a relief to know that there is a doubt and that there is a possibility that things might not be the way you remember them or that you were a kid when you first saw it.

Why did it happen the way it did, you ask much later? That is when the blame game begins. You try to think of the exact moment when your mother left you. You go back to her and ask her. She looks at you in that all-knowing way mothers of older people have. They know but they believe the knowledge will not help anyone. So they refuse to talk about it or at best give evasive replies. They forget that you are 24 now and replies such as the ones they give you today don’t satisfy you any more.

And so, you live as your understanding grows. Sometimes, you feel like a blob inside you swells up, reaching till your throat and you want to spit it out but the more you do that, the more you realise that it is actually a part of you. Your anatomy, as it were. So it remains. That one moment that changed your life one fine summer day when the vacations began.

Post script: The burden is suddenly lighter. The blob has melted away like a tumour destroyed through chemotherapy. 12 years after, I am myself again.