chalchitra

The fat god has arrived. Shivareeing through the roads of Mumbai, millions of people dance their way home, welcoming lord Ganesha. For nights, the architects have molded clay to beautiful shapes, to which people would tuck their heads and murmur their prayers. Days of workmanship have gone into conjuring the contours of the tiniest feature of the idol.

For hours, the followers would queue outside the pandal, chanting pious songs. A bellwether would emerge from the crowd: a kid in his thin voice would lead the chanting of Ganapathy bappa morya, and the rest in the line would closely, unanimously follow the pitch, stressing different syllables each time, making it lyrical. The brown pandal tarpaulin would be raised and the devotees would stagger in and gather around the daan peti. The lights would dim and a short chalchitra would follow.

A story is dramatized using Indian mannequins of gods and humans; the gods painted blue and the humans dark-skinned trolley back and forth, in tune with the voice-over recorded in Marathi. Earthly beings face the atrocities of a devil. A gigantic chimpanzee looking monster, painted black, thump-march the stage, killing whoever comes in the way. He randomly fists his chest to enhance the devil-like appearance. The women in the crowd flinch, a hand planted on the chest. The kids laugh, looking at the shabby devil, that’s anything but scary. There’s a giggle in the crowd when a hand would pop-out from a tree or from behind a hut on the stage to move the devil along the rail.

When tyranny reaches the brim, God-men pray to Gods. But when no God can be of help enough, not even the trio of Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh can stop the devil, they implore together, Shankar and Parvati, plunge their palms, and the entire universe calls for the elephant-god.

What follows are the series of prayers. There’s a lightning in the sky. Thunder echoes on earth. A light blazes beneath the curtain, behind which the god-of-the-season resides. The curtains slowly lift up. The giggle in the crowd stops. Men, busy ogling women, angle their heads to the stage. The palms are folded into a pranaam. And as the curtains are lifted, there’s a resounding cry of Ganpathy bappa moraya. At that instance, the lid of the halogen flips, and darkness hovering around the idol is consumed by light.

The grandeur deity is standing on one foot. The other leg crossed- bent in air as a pause of a dance. The left hand is holding a Trishul, which flies and beheads the monster. The right hand is raised in a blessing. Godly instruments are grasped in other two hands, which will bring peace on earth. Now the entire stage lits up. The flowers emerge from under the stage. Birds sing in different melodies. The humans begin to frolic in victory. The Heavens descend on to earth and thank Lord Ganesha for his mercy. A carol plays in the background.

But in all this drama, all this theatre, what is seen first is not the protruding stomach or the long trunk that snakes through the body and assumes a skyward curl. What is seen first is not the trishul that’s hurled or the pause of the idol. When the curtains are drawn, when the chorus of the lilting hymn pervades the pandal, when the God is open for darshan, what is beheld first are the tiny radiant eyes of
Ganpathy. The powerful glow in the elephant god’s eyes, one is enthralled, transcended to a saintly state.

Even while their own eyes are shut, they know that they are fine. Their pulsating hearts settle. The hours of fatigue drains into oblivion. They aren’t worried about the pickpockets who would be wading through the crowd in this dark. The elephant-god is watching.

So when they shut their eyes, they see the halo of the elephant God. At the back of their eyelids, a perfect sun-rim has formed. Darting at this godly light, lost in this divine appearance, the family's remembers and there's an utterance for children's health and prosperity.

The lights go dim.
Speactators disperse in knots.
Curtains fall.
Another set of devotees stagger in.

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.

Hiatus

Nobody came. Not Shankar. Not Krishna. Not even the Monkey God, whom I visited religiously, every Saturday, for last five years. I was received rather plainly, by a plenitude of sharp penetrating light, the one which I had often seen while shaving a beard, staring into a hundred volt bulb from a foot's distance. It blinded me instantaneously, but leaving enough room, so as for me to know that nobody came.

And in this blindness, when I meandered about, eyes shut and hands stretched, I gathered that I'd missed the floor, which ended quite abruptly not far away from where I'd started. It reminded me of my seventh standard English teacher, who often threw at me humongous words like a pestilential child! who did what was not to be done, who more than once had attempted to convert sentences into indirect speech, which were to begin with in the required format. But she, with her virtue, still kept at her best, showing off her profundity in vocabulary, which I found tedious to ears. Whilst admiring the wisdom of my professor, I had, momentarily forgotten my current crisis.

I fell to an eternal falling. Not the ones you stumble upon in your sleep, a quick short fall from a bed or staircases, which would shiver you to wakefulness. It was rather a controlled fall, with such severe tranquility, that I, who while at my life, beseeched to digressing from mundane could not but acknowledge its creator's sincerity. While I did appreciate its temporal anomalous setting, I was, within a brief span of time, thoroughly equipped with not only its slowness of speed but also the erratic shift of direction in the fall. And for a man, to gauge this, who did not ever understand the sequential pattern of the songs, which shuffled on an I Pod, was a remarkable achievement I believed. So, while I was boasting at my own achievements, I did a fear a trap, perhaps, a crafty plan to put me back from where I came.

Will I be split into multiples of myself to keep-up to the spilling earth? Or will I, one fine day, drop into a mother's womb?

My marrows began to tense. The water from below the skin tansuded through the small pores. And with a sweaty feeling in my palms, I was beginning to fade. My knowledge trapped into the layers of these falls, lost to its ambushes, permanently. My worries ceased.

I was born.

Savitri

I stood at her pyre, hands clasped. I’d seen those faces, which now stood straight, circled around her burning flesh. I’d seen them while crossing the road, and while buying stationary at a nearby store, and while waiting at the doctor’s clinic at the end of the blind street.

With an eight year old and a sack full of belongings, Savitri took a bus from her village and alighted in Mumbai the next day. This, she told me while mopping the floor under the bed, and into the first week of joining the housework. “Kishan needs to learn,” she said between her chalk-white teeth. “Kishan needs lessons.”

When Savitri completed one month, father enrolled Kishan’s name in a municipality school. So he studied in English, whilst Savitri remained at home performing house chores and lived with us.

One day, when I sat at my room, pensive and tears dulled in my eyes, Savitri strode through the door left ajar. She sat squatted next to the bed and scolded in her husky voice, “Kai re, Kashala radtos?” (Oy! Why are you crying?) She told me her own story. About her drunkard husband and his squandering habits and about their daily fights, which I listened to uninterestedly.

It was much later, when I was over the gloomy mood and had forgotten the break-up with my girlfriend, that it struck me that Savitri came to Bombay perhaps not only because Kishan needed lessons.

I indulged with her in short conversations now and then, and she began to pick a bit of English from me. She would use in her sentences words like spoon and table and plate. It fascinated me how quick she would grasp these words.

Savitri got accustomed to city life. A couple of years later when she got a kholi of her own, she moved out and joined work at two more houses to earn better living.

She called our house the first home in Bombay, and did the extra bit of work for us. When mother went to the market to shop for vegetables and grocery, Savitri would wrap the dried clothes and pile them on the bed and wash the evening vessels, which would accumulate in the sink after tea. Often, while sweeping the floor or dusting the room, she would pose in front of the cupboard and look at the mirror, adjusting the festoon of ghajara clipped to her coconut oiled hair.

It was her calm demeanor that made her likable. Never had I heard her shout or fight with mother, except when she occasionally raised her voice to negotiate for a twenty rupee increase in her salary or when she wanted a week’s leaves to go to her village and mother denied.

She negotiated for what she deserved, until she quit. At sixty three, Savitri put a period to her home-making. She did however for a while visited residences to massage babies and bathe them, until her bones gave up on her. Even years later, she would get us raw mangoes from her village to make pickles. This year there would be non.

Standing at the pyre, I could envisage her figure when she first entered the house with her eight year old. Her bindi, big and round, stuck permanently at the centre of her forehead. I could sense a trail of nilgiri she would linger behind every day when leaving the house at night.

Standing there, amidst vague acquaintances, and tears welling in my eyes, I felt as if she would emerge from amongst the wood and scold me, “Kai re, kashala radtos?”

Office

But what can you do?
This mind is not your own
It scurries away
Like a rabit
Unto the recesses unknown

So while you are at
your morning tea
or into the day busy
This mind of your yours
Yours but not your own
Is out in the open and
it flees before you see

What can you do
but follow?
To and fro
to and fro

And it
Not wanting to be caught
leaves you a little trail
to halt and slow
for your thoughts frail
to grow

But if you keep your breath
and not rue
and catch its tail but briefly
And let it go
you'll pick a virtue.

But now my dearie,
Please prick your skin
You've got job to do.

Weep

And at times, when you do don that armchair, or sit in a lea under a tree where not a single shaft of sunlight fall upon your lap, look back… through the vicissitudes of time and into the passage of past. And in this solitude, in this forlorn longing, when you feel the void and a growing lump in your chest… twist your arms, clutch your hands, twirl your toes, thump your feet and weep: to a friend or a neighbour as you wish, over a phone or under the bough in lone. Weep until your arms, your hands, your toes regain its rest; weep until your feet are worm. Weep until you find repose: to rise and walk unto daylight.

I stand on my balcony

I stand on my balcony on one of those languid summer afternoons. The sun is bare and bright. The city is in slumber. The house is still and the roads are quiet. From the summers spent in this city, I know that the puling taxi drivers are whining about the narrow bumpy roads and the scorching Mumbai Sun, toweling their foreheads sucking the beads of sweat with a rug. Chains of cars are lined at the zebra for the signal to turn from a red to a dotted arrow. I can hear the low hums of the engines. Men and women, cabined in cars, toss from side to side and cuss the reckless motorcycles, which careen carelessly over the giant hunch of the Opera House flyover. It stands slouched, blocking the view of the magnificent Arabian Sea, until one begins to descend the slope.

The spread of lustrous water sends a warm greeting. Ambling to its mouth, the pair of shoes is cushioned under the torrid sands. The billowing waves clothe the stretch of uneven rocks. The sunbeams penetrate the shallow rim of the sea, unveiling the sunken city grime. The shore is conspicuously clear of the trail of footprints; couples are sheathed under the trees across the road. Lovely leggy ladies dressed in lingerie fail to lure eyeballs. The billboards overcrowd this dimly trafficked Marine Drive.

My mind saunters like the unhurried wind, and even as I stand under the lee of the roof, the sun pricks my skin, and I feel the heat in my head as I let my palm plunge into the puff of my hair.

I’m done with reading crime thrillers, which otherwise occupy the most of these slow summer afternoons, when I would nestle on my bed and envelope myself with the softness of quilt, and set the air-conditioning at its high. I’m done with these incessant readings; the stories with similar layers and sub-layers of plots. I’m tired of Grisham’s courtrooms and Baldacci’s Camel Club and Brown’s codes. And I wish Jhumpa Lahiri had written one more book. I’m done with tapping fingers on the television remote, and playing with neioghbour’s kid. I’m done with watching my sister let her hand run flawlessly on a sheet of white paper and bring it to life, and I am done with wishing for more hobbies.

And so when the low tuned dhinchak radio songs have blended into the stillness of the room and when my mum has stopped hovering over the maids: washing utensils and cleaning the kitchen floor and clipping the clothes to the clothesline, and when she is done with asking for her Divya Bhaskar and Chitralekha, she recedes to her bed; and when nothing is left to be done at all, boredom creeps into my spine, and I walk unto the open of my portico and thoughts come automatically, waywardly.

Lies

Mamma’s belly no more pops out like a flower pot. Daddy says she can do the horse rides from room to room again, carrying me on her back.

Sitting at the dining table I am colouring a painting when guests arrive, brining gifts wrapped in shiny papers. They hand me the presents kissing me on both cheeks. Matching suits, stockings, plastic toys for teething, napkin sets, bedding… I pile them all under the bed.

Mum sits on the garden bench talking to aunties. The Peepal tree is huge. I try to fit myself under the shadow of giant leaves. Ashutosh digs the soil near its roots to hide marbles. He throws the marble from out of the puddle, looks at me, and cries. Mamma comes running towards us.

Dad puts his ears to Mummy’s tummy. It kicks, he says, putting my hand on the bulge. “You will have a sister to play with Ashu,” Mamma says, smiling at me.

Geeta masi has come from London. Sitting on the bed, she chit-chats with mama while I stitch my handkerchief, tucked in a sewing ring. “Ah, he has such butter cheeks. Isn’t your brother beautiful, Ashana?” asks Geeta Masi. I stop my stitching and look up. Geeta masi plays with Ashu, cupping his chin with her thumb and forefinger. Mum looks at me fixedly, until my mouth cracks into a smile and whispers an approving yes.

Once in a while

Don't you feel flamed or vexed, while unable to produce the exact words to befit your emotions or to let out the feeling suppressed within yourself to release this urgency of explaining the inexplicable or the clamour of thoughts. To render words which would form into to perfectly coherent sentences, its edges rounded and trimmed. Words which would support each other, assembling itself to frame a sentence which sounds distinct to ears and its syntax and grammar. Do you not crave for the seldom alliteration and anaphora to be innate in your writing.

Does not your sentence leave you with a feeling of sitting on a couch, uncomfortable; or donning a gown that you can't carry. Such are the times when I feel like diving into a fat book and swim in its content to understand the mechanics of writing, and to dissect the content words and the function. To say aloud the sound of each consonant and understand its altered effect and meaning to the sentence. To merry the mechanics of writing and satiating the outburst of letting the quill rundown its path flawlessly without rummaging the vocabulary to its every pocket.

Do you like the sodden bread crumbs in your soup. Insipid and unpalatable.

January 14

The sky is conspicuously clear
Taller buildings
Busier lives
Filled coffe shops...

Here's your kite
and here's your spool
gift thy pal
and mak him drool

Take some solace in the kiteflying application,
if you will.

blah

Put on those silencers please
To cease

This incessant burbling,
Irrepressible grumbling

This chitter chattery,
Foolish flattery.

It ain't a bout
O loose-lipped mouth -

Gift thy dental braces Jack
and quiet this quack.

( I ) At Dinner Table

"Two and a half lakhs," he said between bytes. "The Napean Sea Road flat was bought for two and a half lakhs in 1975." He stares at his food; he moves the fork along the rim of the plate. It was in November, he recalls. Dipping in red sauce motta kaka forks another strand of pasta. "The Parsis were paranoid," he chuckles; "Emergency was imposed by Indira Gandhi. The parsis couldn't keep the second flat under their name, so they sold it."


He takes some khichdi in a bowl. Pouring some buttermilk he continues, "We were scared. To shift from one place to the other. Vegetables were more cheap at Bhuleshwar. The flat was on the eleventh floor. What if the lift didn't work and we had to climb? There were no neighbours to look after kids. We couln't watch kids play on streets from such hieght. There was no dhudhwala at the end of the lane; there could be guests appearing without phoning. How to make sev dudh without milk? We bought the house for two and a half lakhs..." he ends the converstation abruptly.

It's time

It's time to read some more
and comprehend.

It's time to travel around
and rest.

It's time to stop the race
and step back.

It's time to fathom the life
and the non-living.

It's time to know it's time
and act.

I

I admire the ocean's longitude
I am scared of its depth

I fancy monsoon mornings
But for frightful stormy winds

I abhor littered roads
I ride on dusty lanes

I like the word cliché 
I dislike its overuse

I am an egalitarian
I am allergic to uniformity

I despise policies
I am a conformist

The Sports Day

Chinx sits at the beach of Priya Darshani Park with his friends. Dressed in white shorts and T-shirts of their respective house colours, they stand in a row with stones of different shapes and sizes in their hands. They throw one stone at a time into the sea on a count of three, competing as to whose stone goes farthest. Chinx would particularly look for round stones which would spin in the air cutting longer distance. He would place the stone between his pudgy index finger and the thumb and fling the gravel applying force with his forefinger. They would play several rounds of this match until they are physically tired of standing and throwing the pebbles. Then, they would look for shells. Chinx would generally look for flat shells with glossy surface and sequenced embossed lines, collecting them in his pockets.

A couple of yards behind them hundreds of students along with their parents galore to watch, play, participate, and cheer for their houses. ‘Red house Red house … Red house Red house’, the crowd would bellow in an undecided chorus.

Chinx is viewing this spectacular scene from a distance. Some are gleefully devouring their sandwich ice-creams. Some are throwing their caps in the air. Some are sliding on the sanded slope meant for the students to sit; touching the railing of the ground and quickly returning to be in their place before their friends, and then they would stand-up again, dusting the backs of their half-pants. Some are pasting the numbered stickers on their T-shirts waiting for their turn; while some are intently watching the happenings on the ground.

At three thirty PM, Chinx stands on the allotted track to run his race; his dusty canvas shoes slightly rising and falling in no particular pattern. The end of shoes laces are tucked in the narrow openings at the sides of the shoes. Chinx is ready for his run …

Run till you cross the line... run till the end... even if the winners are timed, do not ever leave a race half way... completing a race is more important than participating in it... I will be proud of you Chinx... remember, your mother will be proud of you.

His mother's words are constantly reverberating in his mind, each word pricking him like a piece of glass. He tries to concentrate on the race. Right now, his mother's words are not important, not at this time, for he is going to win this race. He is no more merely a backdrop runner; he is not jeered at. He is the best runner in his team.

On a mark, get set, go...

His eyes squint, facing the blaring sun. His legs quiver as he tracks the trot of the lead runner of his team. “Come on Paras, run faster,” he mumbles in fear. The distance between Paras and the second runner is noticeable even from a distance. His plump body paces ahead swiftly making its way to the second runner of the team. Now, he can see him standing, gasping for air, bent at a forty-five degree, and his head drooping.

His eyes fix on the third runner. His legs quaver. His heartbeats quicken. He feels the lump in his legs. His hands are sweaty, trembling; as his mother's words grow louder... cross the line, cross that line, your mother will be proud ... the baton is passed form one hand to the other. Held in the right hand firmly, his legs jerk as he lifts them. His steps are short and fast, like a trot. “I can’t let them down. All I have to do is maintain the lead,” the thoughts rumble. He moves as fast as he can, running his best run. The movements of his legs fasten, cutting short distances. The trot is transformed to a canter. He runs the finishing ten meters of the last leg and gives out a loud cry as he crosses the finishing line.

He drops to the floor and then quickly rises again. He wipes the sweat from his forehead, running toward his teammates, randomly jumping on his way; swinging the baton high in the air.

The hot wind is not palpable. The gush of the tide is not heard. They lay on the track, basking under the sun, bewildered. They have made it. This year, they have made it.

As he rests there, beneath the wide spread sky, he thinks of all the times when he had lost. The day when he fell and he quit the race. The day when the crowd was waiting for him to finish the race, so that the next event could start. The day when he sat next to his ayah and cried on her lap, curling him around her.

They were fourteen of them on the ground. Twelve participated and two supervised. One started the race and the other one recorded the finish time. It was one month before the sports day, when they decided to not to take part in it and formed their own team. It was named "The Fat Men's Team”, and only the fat boys were allowed in the team. If any of the boys ever participated and won in any of the final sports day, they weren't allowed to enter the team. They had their own set of rules and regulations. “It’s not fair to race with those chums,” they told to themselves.

For Chinx, he didn't get a medal; neither did he get a certificate. But he did get his name, The Title of ‘The Fastest Fat man.’

After office

A mild smell of paint floats in the newly done house. The marble flooring is smooth, tempting a bare feet walk. A pile of bedding is neatly dumped in a corner. The house gives a welcoming eye, yearning for occupancy.

A cable less television faces the caned couch. A few books, mostly chick lits and a bunch of old Hindi audio CDs lie stacked under the centre table. The routine is punctuated by these necessities, or so it seems.

The hall opens-up to a kitchen and two bed rooms. The bedroom is warm. Curtains of different colours hang from the steel rod fixed to the wall. A single box-bed is placed in the room like a radius of a circle. A postal red sheet is spread on the mattress. A small gas stove makes the kitchen platform look slightly longer. A tub of utensils is conspicuously missing. A plethora of instant cooking items decorate the plastic stands.

We sit in a circle. Yellow light emits from the lamp placed in the centre. Casual conversations. Empty beer bottles. Taboo cards. Scribbled score sheet: nine and eighteen. Garden chips. Potato salad. A tumbler of whiskey. An ashtray housing seven butts. 11:40 PM.

In defiance

Whoever said that the world is a small place has seemingly not been to Andheri.

Getting off the train isn't as much a problem as climbing the steps to the bridge. Competition is clearly not restricted to workplace. The benefit of being in a first class coach, fortunately, does not stop at suffocating amidst the huge mass of sophisticated working processionals, or at the norm of no forth seat. You feel privileged when your compartment halts at the mouth of these steps. I must thank the government for this one more added facet of the first class ticket; and foreseeing the problem of population rise much in advance. Anyway, this benefit gifted to us help me quickly sift through the crowd, letting them know that I fall in the 'me too getting late' category. Adjectives like quick and slow are perceptional, and I use the word quick only at comparison.

There's one thing to keep in mind while you are in this haste: two feet from the left railing of bridge, belong to the ladies. One foot there and you are instantaneously bestowed the title of a bastard. These ladies are not only the possessors of this two feet passage, but are also the first choice of rickshaw man. Tall girls. Fat women. Aunties wearing chudidars. Brown hair. Black eyes. As far as you belong to 'I am a she' class of people, which by the way is more than half, you are in*.

Thanks to the Ambanis and their metro that I found the route to reach my office via Amboli. Gliding through these long narrow lanes connecting each other at random, shaded by trees at one side and a chain of raw houses planted at the other is the most awaited time of the day. And just about when you begin enjoy its pleasant setting in this otherwise noisy suburb, it kisses a goodbye.

Now, your rickshaw is protected from all sides, by trucks, cars, buses, taxis, cycles, and the other rickshaws.

You reach, not caring about the loss of pay.

Yet another day of your god blessed dream job comes to an end. There' no cribbing, no whining, no bickering. Recession has got work in stock, and the sale isn't seasonal.

I long for the afternoon of a summer vacation, when I can set my self in front of the television and incessantly ramble through the channels. I long for that boredom.

* Dear ladies, please reagard this as a passable work of fiction.

A picture speaks a thousand words

Shantanu is looking at her picture. She charms in the life-size frame. The frame is nailed on the entrance wall.

It isn’t a close-up. She is visible entirely. Clad in a red and white garchola, Chitra is seated on an old wooden chair. Her sari is embroidered with golden zari, small white beads are woven finely, adorning the border of the chundari.

A dark red bindi resides on the forehead. Her eyebrows, neither thin nor dense are left untouched, uncared. Not a thread has plucked a single hair. Her long braid rests on her shoulder.

The picture, it speaks of a newly wed. It speaks of the change of house. It speaks of entering a new world. Of adjustments, of comforts, of trust, of relationship bound by the word marriage. It speaks of a new beginning, like a stream of water merging with a river, flowing with full vigor; finally submitting itself to the sea. It talks about blending with a new family. A family of kaka and kakis, of mama and mamis, of masa and masis; the picture, it speaks of the new neighbourhood.

The long braid rests on her shoulder. Her one hand twiddles the chains of fresh moghra pinned to her hair. The other clenches the arm of the chair. The bunch of gold and white bangles filter the view of mehndi crafted on her hands. The elephant, the lotus, the peacock, the flamboyantly lettered initial of her husband dwell on the dorsum of her hand. Her eyes lay low; the thick line of kajal rubbed against the eyelid allows itself to be captured in the painting.

The picture, it speaks about her love towards her husband. It speaks of her house, and the wealth it possesses. It speaks of the abundance of jewelry and clothes – not of dowry or rivaz but of love and relationship.

The picture speaks
A thousand sweet nothings

Her sparkling eyes,
Half seen half not*

Her young skin
Against heavy gold

The mangalsutra
The faded haldi

The mithai plattered
The children gathered

The shannai
The pandit
The Pheras
The bidai

Shantanu beholds her picture. She charms in the life-size frame. The frame is nailed on the entrance wall. Little white lilies put together form a half round.

Of whispering leaves
And the lingering drops

Of hovering flies
And the month old pickle

The open umbrellas
Sheltered pedestrians

The scented wind
O’ Wet Soil

The fresh white flowers,
They speak of the midst monsoon