Two wise men

I like the traffic. The shrill honks reducing behind the curtained cabins. I like the crowd. Cluster of people walking on a footpath to get to their destination. The tap-tap of their feet. The hurling cars at the signal. The flurry at a zebra crossing. I like the unexpected ringing of phones. I like quick decisions, not hurried, but quick. I like the interrupting spasms.

No, don't get me wrong. I do like the ephemeral silence. The fleeting sense of serenity. But I'd be feigning if I said I liked to listen to the gush of waves, the whoosh of winds. Or if I would want to keep sitting at a beach, staring at an endless sea merging somewhere with the sky. No, that's not I.

I do not belong to a countryside. I'm a city man. I like the noise. The frenzy. Being on toes. But today, this day, I want to curl myself under a blanket. I do not want a knock or an interruption. Today, this day, keep me away from these rascals. These oppressive creative clowns.


**

Some people like mess. They can't work if they aren't constantly struck with what's called a problem. They look for it: here and there. And when they can't find any, they create them, mother them, until the nebulous monster stares in their face. These people like being on the edge. At the brink and brooming. They like crisis: to solve them and emerege a hero, chest out.

These people will stay afloat in the quicksand. Push them to their porticos to see an early sun, or let loose on a hill to breathe some air, I'm afraid they'll choke their lungs.

Afternoon readings

I would sit at my mother's elbow after the Sunday lunch and fill up the page. Find your way out of the maze. Spot the differences. The complex Shabdkosh, which I would fill with my grandma's help.

Mum would open-up the in between pages of Mumbai Samachar and for more than an hour I would sit on the bed, head down, rummaging through the supplement. And then, if there were still some time for the gully cricket to commence or if the marble game had yet not begun in Champak kaka's garage, mum would read to me the short stories from out of the paper. The fiction stories of Kanti Bhatt, Suresh Dalal, Gunvant Shah would shape in front of me, just below the teek-teek of the rotating fan.

Their vivid stories would fill in the room and mum's narrative pitch would rise and fall behind Jayshri bai's washing of utensils. A nurse helping a patient to get to feet... An old uncle living an independent life... the stories always having a moral, a learning, which mum would stress after the reading. And when at times, a friend would ring the bell and the match was about to start, mum without reading further from the paper would spin her own tale, and even in her quick ending, there would be a message that would remain with me, like the change that would lie in the front pocket of the school bag.

I do not quite clearly remember when these afternoon readings stopped.