“You don’t mind me smoking?” Jimmy asked, probing his trousers pocket for cigarettes.
“Go ahead,” Roy said distractedly. Setting up the tape recorder was taking longer than he thought. He began to sweat.
Jimmy pulled out a cigarette and held the opened package out to Roy.
“I don’t smoke,” Roy said.
Jimmy took out a lighter from his shirt pocket and lit the cigarette. Roy knew he shouldn’t be watching, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t know Jimmy was a smoker. Roy waited, watching, excited. But somebody knocked on the door before Jimmy could take his first puff. The intruder was a waiter – with two glasses of iced lemon tea. Roy groaned quietly. He glared at the transgressing waiter. Jimmy balanced the lit cigarette between two clefts in a glass ashtray on the table between them. The waiter set the glasses on the table and left after he watched Jimmy a curious, lingering look.
“You don’t have to be nervous, you know,” Jimmy said. “I’m used to people looking.”
“I wasn’t, uh, staring,” Roy stammered, suddenly sweating again.
Jimmy watched the young journalist sweat. He picked up his glass and took a sip of his lemon tea with a straw. Jimmy was beginning to enjoy himself. They always broke down, these people. Roy the journalist sweated as if sweating was the most important thing in the world. His shirtfront was soaked; his gelled hair had gone limp from the sweat. Jimmy knew he was expected to speak – to say something, anything, to ease the ballooning silence. But he wasn’t going to do it. Why make it easy for them? Jimmy wasn’t going to say anything to explain himself. At any rate, there was nothing to explain.
“Do you mind if we begin with your movie?” Roy asked. He hoped his perspiration wasn’t so obvious. He was worried that he appeared laughable, incompetent, amateurish. He still couldn’t get over how normal Jimmy was. The guys Roy had spoken to didn’t lie: Jimmy was pleasant. But that was exactly what made Roy nervous. A guy like that – like Jimmy – wasn’t supposed to be pleasant. Jimmy was supposed to be bitter and angry with life. Jimmy was supposed to feel like he had a thing or two to teach the world. Roy had expected him to be caustic and grumpy and rude. Living on drugs. That would give Roy something to write about. Who would believe that Jimmy drank ice lemon tea?
“How do you feel,” Roy continued, “about being cast in the role of Birdman?” Roy glanced at the poster that was plastered on the wall behind Jimmy. It was the promotional poster of Birdman the movie, with the figure of Birdman himself looming large in the center, green and muscular and beaky. Birdman looked almost like the Hulk, with the exception of his beak. It was a beak like a parrot’s, curvy and pointed and solid. Birdman’s shirt was torn along the middle, exposing a nauseatingly muscular chest – reminiscent of Salman Khan’s own – and a similarly built torso, all coated in a greenish sheen.
“It was an obvious choice,” Jimmy said and laughed, “don’t you think?”
Roy stared at Jimmy with big, nervous eyes. Was there a point behind Jimmy’s laugh? Suddenly Roy felt humiliated. He looked at the list of questions he had neatly written down on his notepad. Was there any way around it? Could he ask new questions – at least rephrase the ones he had listed? He could hear the creak and scrape of the tape recorder and he felt his back getting wet. Did he put on deodorant today morning? Roy looked up at Jimmy, who was sitting serenely in the chair opposite, fiddling with his fingers.
Roy felt his throat drying up. “The movie,” he persisted, “as you know – the movie is popular. It’s crazy. Do you think it has a lot to do with you being in it?”
“People love wonders, don’t they?” Jimmy looked as if he was smiling. Except that Roy couldn’t really tell, however hard he stared at the beak-like protrusion in place of Jimmy’s lips -- a protrusion that looked much like a parrot’s bill.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Bits
(1)
It’s all a part of the morning, the remains of a dream, the beginnings of bustle from the neighbouring flats, the sweet smell of prawns being shelled. And why, why must Nathana stuff her wardrobe with naphthalene balls? Must she do her cleaning up on the morning she shells the prawns? And then of course the offender herself floats into the room, already chirpy at eight on a Sunday morning. It’s terrible, terrible to wake up on a Sunday. The relics of dreams still hover there somewhere – inviting, waiting to be banished. Yet there is such guilt in succumbing – because it’s such a fine morning, a fine Sunday morning.
A trip to the beach perhaps. Maybe later, when the sun is a little reticent. Or a visit to the new bookshop. Get a haircut. Anything. And that smell – that queer combination of naphthalene and prawns. All over the flat. But Nathana positively glows when you praise her cooking. You get the feeling of her thinking that you will remember this day, when she cooks you such-and-such. And maybe you will. There is, in her cooking, a peculiar way in which order presents itself. Almost as if there is delight in the knowledge that the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, kottamalai and everything else have to give in to being chopped, torn, sautéed, julienned. But then if she should put things in order, these are about all she could get her hands on. These go under the knife, into the frying pan, are manipulated on serving dishes, made over into something lovely. What small loveliness one can manage. What small orderliness.
(2)
Perfection can so easily be this, here: a steaming cup of coffee, a fresh novel to be read, a few unread messages waiting in the mobile phone. The sense of anticipation. The thrill. If there is anything she loathes about herself, it is this – this greed she has, a craving always for suspense. For delicious moments. She thinks that if she were to write a book, it will be a cheerless one. Which makes her common – much too common. Isn’t it funny the way people are gravitated towards sadness – even in art, even in things that are meant to be beautiful? The stories told and retold are sad ones; the most popular songs speak of loss. And yet we crave happiness – moments that are always too large when they happen that we wish they dawdle, so we can portion them out, taking a little at a time.
And of course it’s impossible to be perfectly happy – to be happy in that uncontaminated way. The world has a knack of sneaking in. The way the room is, now. Sunlight penetrates into the room even with the windows closed; the dust dancing, falling in the shaft of light. How does one shut that out, really? There are echoes of an argument from the flat downstairs. Somewhere in the street, someone is asking for his ball back. Things find their way in, even with the windows and the doors shut. Even with her stubborn determination to attend only to her coffee, her novels, her mails. Still, still, one has to isolate oneself somehow.
(1)
It’s all a part of the morning, the remains of a dream, the beginnings of bustle from the neighbouring flats, the sweet smell of prawns being shelled. And why, why must Nathana stuff her wardrobe with naphthalene balls? Must she do her cleaning up on the morning she shells the prawns? And then of course the offender herself floats into the room, already chirpy at eight on a Sunday morning. It’s terrible, terrible to wake up on a Sunday. The relics of dreams still hover there somewhere – inviting, waiting to be banished. Yet there is such guilt in succumbing – because it’s such a fine morning, a fine Sunday morning.
A trip to the beach perhaps. Maybe later, when the sun is a little reticent. Or a visit to the new bookshop. Get a haircut. Anything. And that smell – that queer combination of naphthalene and prawns. All over the flat. But Nathana positively glows when you praise her cooking. You get the feeling of her thinking that you will remember this day, when she cooks you such-and-such. And maybe you will. There is, in her cooking, a peculiar way in which order presents itself. Almost as if there is delight in the knowledge that the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, kottamalai and everything else have to give in to being chopped, torn, sautéed, julienned. But then if she should put things in order, these are about all she could get her hands on. These go under the knife, into the frying pan, are manipulated on serving dishes, made over into something lovely. What small loveliness one can manage. What small orderliness.
(2)
Perfection can so easily be this, here: a steaming cup of coffee, a fresh novel to be read, a few unread messages waiting in the mobile phone. The sense of anticipation. The thrill. If there is anything she loathes about herself, it is this – this greed she has, a craving always for suspense. For delicious moments. She thinks that if she were to write a book, it will be a cheerless one. Which makes her common – much too common. Isn’t it funny the way people are gravitated towards sadness – even in art, even in things that are meant to be beautiful? The stories told and retold are sad ones; the most popular songs speak of loss. And yet we crave happiness – moments that are always too large when they happen that we wish they dawdle, so we can portion them out, taking a little at a time.
And of course it’s impossible to be perfectly happy – to be happy in that uncontaminated way. The world has a knack of sneaking in. The way the room is, now. Sunlight penetrates into the room even with the windows closed; the dust dancing, falling in the shaft of light. How does one shut that out, really? There are echoes of an argument from the flat downstairs. Somewhere in the street, someone is asking for his ball back. Things find their way in, even with the windows and the doors shut. Even with her stubborn determination to attend only to her coffee, her novels, her mails. Still, still, one has to isolate oneself somehow.
(1)
Tired of being, the evening is going.
I seek it in me to pardon the sudden leaving.
Leaves are not as orange-green in words. Dust too, will not dance inspotlights of orange. Even with a crowd of adjectives, faces will not
live as when pools of tinted light animate the cheekbones,
creating rivers along the ink of hair. But the evening is
going, past convincing, and what words offer
in composition is
all there is.
(2)
Why we need each other is because we trace each other’s bodies like maps,
like a geography too familiar that to be lost is impossible, but
if we are, nonetheless, it’s never completely.
If it is the promise of finding that makes me so gritty, so
ridiculously gritty, what I’ve found – in the beginning, and
many times after – must be the kind of curious will with which
a thin-stemmed flower splits a rock.
In the map of you, my possibilities are endless because my ways are not linear.
I prefer circles; I do not like to end and begin things. Rootless, you say,
yet I come back to the centre, always to the centre, and I
cannot, in that case, give you up.
I mean to say that if this tracing-finding-coming back were to end today,
the being-together yesterday would be the centre still. No less, because
even with circles, the centre is mathematical, as what mirrors give in
return when we offer ourselves up. In the end I must retrace, revisit,
return to you because, in my mirror, however precise the composition, I see, a little tremblingly, staircases of abandoned homes.
Tired of being, the evening is going.
I seek it in me to pardon the sudden leaving.
Leaves are not as orange-green in words. Dust too, will not dance inspotlights of orange. Even with a crowd of adjectives, faces will not
live as when pools of tinted light animate the cheekbones,
creating rivers along the ink of hair. But the evening is
going, past convincing, and what words offer
in composition is
all there is.
(2)
Why we need each other is because we trace each other’s bodies like maps,
like a geography too familiar that to be lost is impossible, but
if we are, nonetheless, it’s never completely.
If it is the promise of finding that makes me so gritty, so
ridiculously gritty, what I’ve found – in the beginning, and
many times after – must be the kind of curious will with which
a thin-stemmed flower splits a rock.
In the map of you, my possibilities are endless because my ways are not linear.
I prefer circles; I do not like to end and begin things. Rootless, you say,
yet I come back to the centre, always to the centre, and I
cannot, in that case, give you up.
I mean to say that if this tracing-finding-coming back were to end today,
the being-together yesterday would be the centre still. No less, because
even with circles, the centre is mathematical, as what mirrors give in
return when we offer ourselves up. In the end I must retrace, revisit,
return to you because, in my mirror, however precise the composition, I see, a little tremblingly, staircases of abandoned homes.
Kabir’s Duck
Damn it, Kabir cursed silently, feeling the bump on his forehead. The clatter that issued as he hit the metal bin was loud enough to wake the entire street. He had hit himself against the steering wheel. He adjusted the rearview mirror to try and get a look of the thing that had unceremoniously scuttled across the road. The swerve was lucky and impulsive; minutes before he had been listening to a brokenhearted woman on the car radio recounting a relationship that just ended. The glow from the neon lights wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the street. He was about to back the car up when he heard it. The sound was low at first, almost indiscernible. It grew more distinct as he listened. A duck.I hit a duck, he thought. Out of all things, a duck.
To Kabir’s relief, there had been no dead duck. The thing had only appeared traumatized. Kabir found it rooted to one spot behind the car, a little more than a duckling, quacking wildly. He wasn’t sure how to approach it, and he had sat cross-legged in the middle of road, waiting for it to calm down. He had then bundled it in his jacket and driven home with the duck on the front seat next to him. He found the whole episode baffling. He had never seen or heard of a solitary duck crossing a city street late at night.
The duck was still pale yellow in colour, with a small bald patch on top of its head. No sooner had it seemed to settle down in the tub did Kabir realize he had no idea what to do with it. He didn’t have a plan when he decided to bundle and carry it home; at the time it seemed the right thing to do. If you hit a person, you wouldn’t leave it lying traumatized on the road. You would carry her home (it was easier for him to think of the victim as a she), feed her something hot, make the necessary phone calls, probably let her stay the night. Only that in this case, Kabir didn’t know who to call or what to offer; the tub of water was as much as he could come up with.
Which was as well, because the bathroom had, for days, been the cleanest place in the house – and only because it was put to regular use. Since Leela left him, Kabir had remained in bed for most of the time. The neighborhood tended to get too quiet at night, so he went out then to catch a late night movie – so late that he could go home and get straight to bed. He hadn’t opened the door to anybody since her leaving; he hadn’t wanted to speak to anybody. The phone was disconnected and his cell phone, for all he knew, was probably clogged with messages.
It was pathetic, almost ridiculous, he thought, for a grown man to be brooding in bed. It would, of course, be too embarrassing to have his daughter come and console him. He was supposed to have seen enough at his age, 41 years old – enough to know how wrong life could go, enough to not be shaken when it did go wrong. To his surprise, he found himself reaching out for Leela when he woke up in the morning. He longed for someone to butter his bread.
Theirs was a relationship you would associate with fireworks. It was instantaneous – the kind that sweeps you away, the kind that makes you breathless. And unlike most relationships that began that way, the afterglow lasted. He liked the feeling of stability he had with her around. He liked having something to look forward to when he came home after a full day’s teaching. The thought of a relaxed dinner with her, possibly accompanied with a movie that contained very little violence, made it that much easier to bear impossible students and coworkers, the occasional hellishness of university bureaucracy. Kabir thought of this as he squatted in his bathroom, crumbling a boiled egg over a newspaper for the duck to eat.
He browsed the Internet to find details as to how one should take care of a duck. He placed a shoebox lined with cotton cloth in the TV room, positioning a stand-up lamp at one corner of the box. Ducklings, as it turned out, if raised without their mother, should be provided a source of sufficient warmth. The website he referred to also mentioned that it was preferable for ducklings to be raised in groups; they are very social beings and tend to not cope well alone. That made him a little anxious. His presence wasn’t going to help much if the duck was lonely. Obviously there wasn’t much in the way of communication. As if to compensate, he did everything else he could do rigorously. He changed the lining of the box everyday, refilled the water basin regularly, made sure that the duck get sufficient swim-time in the plastic tub.
He hardly left the house in the following days – not even for late night movies. To leave the duck alone at home was out of the question. There were so many things that could go wrong. It could squeeze itself in the space between the sofa and the wall and get hurt. It could choke on something. It could get out of the house and get run over by another car – and this time it might just prove disastrous.
In the first days of being alone, Kabir had gone out to stop himself from thinking. During the day the street was busy and he could drown himself in the goings-on of the neighborhood. But when he lay alone in his bed at night, his mind meandered through alleys he wanted to leave well enough alone. His mind acted like a nauseating child he couldn’t control, and he hated it. It helped to be in the presence of strangers. It was perfect, too, because strangers didn’t know him enough to ask questions about his life. The child in the mind, Kabir learnt, was to be dealt with the way you deal with all impossible children: distract them; give them something to play with.
Soon enough Kabir realized the same effect could be achieved by watching endless television. He read magazines about the recent fashion trends, the latest famous person who afforded a château in the Loire or in Bordeaux. He read about the latest protest against the selling of fur. He spent a significant amount of the day playing with the duck. He avoided newspapers. He wanted, for the time being, no responsibility for global poverty and unhappiness, wars, or for the chaos the world was in.
He had lost people in his life before, of course he had, but it had never been this bad. He had never felt so corroded – as if something was eating away at him. If he were to be logical about the whole thing, about his wife’s leaving, there was – he told himself – very little to mourn over. The relationship, any relationship for that matter, was just a sum of habits. You grow used to being in the company of someone; you grow used to needing someone; you grow used to being needed. Now, he thought, it’s just a matter of dismantling habits. A matter of not expecting her to be there when you come home, not to call or message her, whimsically, when you have something silly to say. But it felt wrong, all of it – like telling the voices in your head to shut up when they wanted to sing. There was no way around it. That was all the heart’s doing.
But a month went by and he found it was possible for whole days to pass without him thinking about Leela. It became easier to think of her only when he wanted to. It was liberating, in a way. He was more in control of his thoughts. He still thought of her when he saw her empty wardrobe, or when he saw his solitary toothbrush in the bathroom. That was it, though: he thought of her. He no longer uncontrollably wished so hard for her to be there and felt a pang that didn’t go away because she, in fact, was not there.
It was possible to live with as little contact as possible with the world. There was the nasty period of adjustment, but it passed quickly enough. Kabir thought it felt a bit like quitting smoking. There was the odd sensation in his stomach after he had gone days without speaking to anybody. Then he felt angry, because the need to talk to other people was so intuitive and he was forcing himself to go against it – like not eating in spite of being hungry. But it wasn’t so bad after a couple a days. The main thing was to keep himself occupied, even if that meant doing the flimsiest things. Kabir reorganized his bookshelf and the spice shelf in the kitchen; he sat down and watched movies he hadn’t seen for a long time; he spent long hours with computer games.
On a rainy Saturday evening Kabir woke up feeling very good about himself. He would fix his meal , then do what he was in the mood for – whatever was available to occupy him. He woke up to a dark room and a number of mosquitoes on his legs. The TV was still on; two cowboys were dueling. The clock on top of the TV set told him it was ten minutes after six. He remembered he had to switch on the lamp by the shoebox to keep it warm. He turned on the room light and looked around for the duck. The shoebox was empty. Kabir looked under the sofa. He scoured the TV room and the kitchen; he looked all over the house. By the end of the hour, he was frantic.
It must have gone out of the house somehow. The traffic outside was still heavy; he could hear the buzzing of cars from his opened window. He ran shoeless out of his apartment, leaving the door open behind him. He didn’t have to look far. He located it almost immediately: the yellow fluff next to one of the large flowerpots in the parking lot of the building, pecking at something slithery on the ground. Mixed with relief at the sight, Kabir couldn’t help the feeling of something burrowing into him. It all felt too familiar – the panic, the fear of loss. He shirked the thought. He scooped up the duck, clutched it to his chest, and climbed back up to his apartment.
Damn it, Kabir cursed silently, feeling the bump on his forehead. The clatter that issued as he hit the metal bin was loud enough to wake the entire street. He had hit himself against the steering wheel. He adjusted the rearview mirror to try and get a look of the thing that had unceremoniously scuttled across the road. The swerve was lucky and impulsive; minutes before he had been listening to a brokenhearted woman on the car radio recounting a relationship that just ended. The glow from the neon lights wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the street. He was about to back the car up when he heard it. The sound was low at first, almost indiscernible. It grew more distinct as he listened. A duck.I hit a duck, he thought. Out of all things, a duck.
To Kabir’s relief, there had been no dead duck. The thing had only appeared traumatized. Kabir found it rooted to one spot behind the car, a little more than a duckling, quacking wildly. He wasn’t sure how to approach it, and he had sat cross-legged in the middle of road, waiting for it to calm down. He had then bundled it in his jacket and driven home with the duck on the front seat next to him. He found the whole episode baffling. He had never seen or heard of a solitary duck crossing a city street late at night.
The duck was still pale yellow in colour, with a small bald patch on top of its head. No sooner had it seemed to settle down in the tub did Kabir realize he had no idea what to do with it. He didn’t have a plan when he decided to bundle and carry it home; at the time it seemed the right thing to do. If you hit a person, you wouldn’t leave it lying traumatized on the road. You would carry her home (it was easier for him to think of the victim as a she), feed her something hot, make the necessary phone calls, probably let her stay the night. Only that in this case, Kabir didn’t know who to call or what to offer; the tub of water was as much as he could come up with.
Which was as well, because the bathroom had, for days, been the cleanest place in the house – and only because it was put to regular use. Since Leela left him, Kabir had remained in bed for most of the time. The neighborhood tended to get too quiet at night, so he went out then to catch a late night movie – so late that he could go home and get straight to bed. He hadn’t opened the door to anybody since her leaving; he hadn’t wanted to speak to anybody. The phone was disconnected and his cell phone, for all he knew, was probably clogged with messages.
It was pathetic, almost ridiculous, he thought, for a grown man to be brooding in bed. It would, of course, be too embarrassing to have his daughter come and console him. He was supposed to have seen enough at his age, 41 years old – enough to know how wrong life could go, enough to not be shaken when it did go wrong. To his surprise, he found himself reaching out for Leela when he woke up in the morning. He longed for someone to butter his bread.
Theirs was a relationship you would associate with fireworks. It was instantaneous – the kind that sweeps you away, the kind that makes you breathless. And unlike most relationships that began that way, the afterglow lasted. He liked the feeling of stability he had with her around. He liked having something to look forward to when he came home after a full day’s teaching. The thought of a relaxed dinner with her, possibly accompanied with a movie that contained very little violence, made it that much easier to bear impossible students and coworkers, the occasional hellishness of university bureaucracy. Kabir thought of this as he squatted in his bathroom, crumbling a boiled egg over a newspaper for the duck to eat.
He browsed the Internet to find details as to how one should take care of a duck. He placed a shoebox lined with cotton cloth in the TV room, positioning a stand-up lamp at one corner of the box. Ducklings, as it turned out, if raised without their mother, should be provided a source of sufficient warmth. The website he referred to also mentioned that it was preferable for ducklings to be raised in groups; they are very social beings and tend to not cope well alone. That made him a little anxious. His presence wasn’t going to help much if the duck was lonely. Obviously there wasn’t much in the way of communication. As if to compensate, he did everything else he could do rigorously. He changed the lining of the box everyday, refilled the water basin regularly, made sure that the duck get sufficient swim-time in the plastic tub.
He hardly left the house in the following days – not even for late night movies. To leave the duck alone at home was out of the question. There were so many things that could go wrong. It could squeeze itself in the space between the sofa and the wall and get hurt. It could choke on something. It could get out of the house and get run over by another car – and this time it might just prove disastrous.
In the first days of being alone, Kabir had gone out to stop himself from thinking. During the day the street was busy and he could drown himself in the goings-on of the neighborhood. But when he lay alone in his bed at night, his mind meandered through alleys he wanted to leave well enough alone. His mind acted like a nauseating child he couldn’t control, and he hated it. It helped to be in the presence of strangers. It was perfect, too, because strangers didn’t know him enough to ask questions about his life. The child in the mind, Kabir learnt, was to be dealt with the way you deal with all impossible children: distract them; give them something to play with.
Soon enough Kabir realized the same effect could be achieved by watching endless television. He read magazines about the recent fashion trends, the latest famous person who afforded a château in the Loire or in Bordeaux. He read about the latest protest against the selling of fur. He spent a significant amount of the day playing with the duck. He avoided newspapers. He wanted, for the time being, no responsibility for global poverty and unhappiness, wars, or for the chaos the world was in.
He had lost people in his life before, of course he had, but it had never been this bad. He had never felt so corroded – as if something was eating away at him. If he were to be logical about the whole thing, about his wife’s leaving, there was – he told himself – very little to mourn over. The relationship, any relationship for that matter, was just a sum of habits. You grow used to being in the company of someone; you grow used to needing someone; you grow used to being needed. Now, he thought, it’s just a matter of dismantling habits. A matter of not expecting her to be there when you come home, not to call or message her, whimsically, when you have something silly to say. But it felt wrong, all of it – like telling the voices in your head to shut up when they wanted to sing. There was no way around it. That was all the heart’s doing.
But a month went by and he found it was possible for whole days to pass without him thinking about Leela. It became easier to think of her only when he wanted to. It was liberating, in a way. He was more in control of his thoughts. He still thought of her when he saw her empty wardrobe, or when he saw his solitary toothbrush in the bathroom. That was it, though: he thought of her. He no longer uncontrollably wished so hard for her to be there and felt a pang that didn’t go away because she, in fact, was not there.
It was possible to live with as little contact as possible with the world. There was the nasty period of adjustment, but it passed quickly enough. Kabir thought it felt a bit like quitting smoking. There was the odd sensation in his stomach after he had gone days without speaking to anybody. Then he felt angry, because the need to talk to other people was so intuitive and he was forcing himself to go against it – like not eating in spite of being hungry. But it wasn’t so bad after a couple a days. The main thing was to keep himself occupied, even if that meant doing the flimsiest things. Kabir reorganized his bookshelf and the spice shelf in the kitchen; he sat down and watched movies he hadn’t seen for a long time; he spent long hours with computer games.
On a rainy Saturday evening Kabir woke up feeling very good about himself. He would fix his meal , then do what he was in the mood for – whatever was available to occupy him. He woke up to a dark room and a number of mosquitoes on his legs. The TV was still on; two cowboys were dueling. The clock on top of the TV set told him it was ten minutes after six. He remembered he had to switch on the lamp by the shoebox to keep it warm. He turned on the room light and looked around for the duck. The shoebox was empty. Kabir looked under the sofa. He scoured the TV room and the kitchen; he looked all over the house. By the end of the hour, he was frantic.
It must have gone out of the house somehow. The traffic outside was still heavy; he could hear the buzzing of cars from his opened window. He ran shoeless out of his apartment, leaving the door open behind him. He didn’t have to look far. He located it almost immediately: the yellow fluff next to one of the large flowerpots in the parking lot of the building, pecking at something slithery on the ground. Mixed with relief at the sight, Kabir couldn’t help the feeling of something burrowing into him. It all felt too familiar – the panic, the fear of loss. He shirked the thought. He scooped up the duck, clutched it to his chest, and climbed back up to his apartment.
(unfinished)
Cyrus lived in a quiet seaside town, rather dreary and modestly sized. If you happened to live in one of those classy houses that faced the ocean, you’d have the morning wind wafting the sweet smell of the sea –of fish and salt – through your window. On the middling stretch of sand, dog walkers, joggers, and people lonely with their thoughts savored those rare hours when the gloom and quiet of night were done with and the day hadn’t sunk too much into the chaos and clutter of noises, arguments, idle conversations. Those were surreal, fantastic hours. Even more so, since a few hours after, while driving one’s car or running to catch the bus, one would catch a glimpse of that beach again. Only by then everything would be much too vivid – vulgar, almost – the way metal surfaces glint under the sun, the women selling their bhajis and sundal, the way fish catchers bent over their nets, dragging to shore countless gleaming fish. It was impossible to genuinely feel anything. Things were too flamboyant for one to be melancholic, too factual to feel anything close to delight.
Cyrus considered getting himself a dog. The beach was well enough. There was something intensely private during those quiet hours of early morning. Something like memory, to be basked in undisturbed. Even though in the last couple of days, his joy of walking had been fairly marred by a group of middle-aged men who had taken their yoga exercises, in his opinion, to a dangerously serious level. He thought it a violation of privacy. Why couldn’t they find a quiet patch of ground somewhere?
The problem was that he had this thing about speaking to himself -- which sort of alarmed people. Getting a dog would be an attempt at appeasement. But more than that, perhaps. Animals, they said, make good companions. A magazine, was it? An article on how effective the acquisition of pets is to dispel loneliness. The small person in Cyrus’s mind laughed at the thought. Maybe, though, there was no reason to be so skeptical. There were men who scoured the beach with their bitches, looking content, as if in complete possession of love. And maybe they were – such is the nature of bitches.
Recently, he had moved his computer to the living room, installing it before the window that opened directly towards the beach. It was meant to make him feel that the room extended all the way to the beach, to sea. He had blamed his study for his incapacity to write; it made him feel all cooped up. He could’ve sworn he had seen pores on the wall, cracking from the heat. The prospect of the shift had thrilled him a little, but it didn’t do much. The wind buoyed him, certainly, but he was as dry as ever. Everything he wrote was something that had been written before, somewhere else; another person, another time.
The other morning he switched off his computer with a potent feeling of impotency. The beastly thing about living alone, he thought, is that your thoughts, your fears – hell, even your impotency – didn’t matter. There was nobody to respond to any of those, nobody to challenge them. What he did, then, on the second week of feeling impotent – which by extension made him feel incompetent – was to go to the toilet and kicked a bucket.
Cyrus lived in a quiet seaside town, rather dreary and modestly sized. If you happened to live in one of those classy houses that faced the ocean, you’d have the morning wind wafting the sweet smell of the sea –of fish and salt – through your window. On the middling stretch of sand, dog walkers, joggers, and people lonely with their thoughts savored those rare hours when the gloom and quiet of night were done with and the day hadn’t sunk too much into the chaos and clutter of noises, arguments, idle conversations. Those were surreal, fantastic hours. Even more so, since a few hours after, while driving one’s car or running to catch the bus, one would catch a glimpse of that beach again. Only by then everything would be much too vivid – vulgar, almost – the way metal surfaces glint under the sun, the women selling their bhajis and sundal, the way fish catchers bent over their nets, dragging to shore countless gleaming fish. It was impossible to genuinely feel anything. Things were too flamboyant for one to be melancholic, too factual to feel anything close to delight.
Cyrus considered getting himself a dog. The beach was well enough. There was something intensely private during those quiet hours of early morning. Something like memory, to be basked in undisturbed. Even though in the last couple of days, his joy of walking had been fairly marred by a group of middle-aged men who had taken their yoga exercises, in his opinion, to a dangerously serious level. He thought it a violation of privacy. Why couldn’t they find a quiet patch of ground somewhere?
The problem was that he had this thing about speaking to himself -- which sort of alarmed people. Getting a dog would be an attempt at appeasement. But more than that, perhaps. Animals, they said, make good companions. A magazine, was it? An article on how effective the acquisition of pets is to dispel loneliness. The small person in Cyrus’s mind laughed at the thought. Maybe, though, there was no reason to be so skeptical. There were men who scoured the beach with their bitches, looking content, as if in complete possession of love. And maybe they were – such is the nature of bitches.
Recently, he had moved his computer to the living room, installing it before the window that opened directly towards the beach. It was meant to make him feel that the room extended all the way to the beach, to sea. He had blamed his study for his incapacity to write; it made him feel all cooped up. He could’ve sworn he had seen pores on the wall, cracking from the heat. The prospect of the shift had thrilled him a little, but it didn’t do much. The wind buoyed him, certainly, but he was as dry as ever. Everything he wrote was something that had been written before, somewhere else; another person, another time.
The other morning he switched off his computer with a potent feeling of impotency. The beastly thing about living alone, he thought, is that your thoughts, your fears – hell, even your impotency – didn’t matter. There was nobody to respond to any of those, nobody to challenge them. What he did, then, on the second week of feeling impotent – which by extension made him feel incompetent – was to go to the toilet and kicked a bucket.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)