*It’s ridiculous how much you can love some people. It’s like this knotty overwhelming feeling that, punches you in the guts sometimes. It’s what makes you check to see if a person is still breathing or not if he’s not snoring.

**Ray held an orange against a marmalade sky. And he wore a dizzy blue shirt and had bright red scratches on his arms. I wonder what happened to him. He probably turned into a beautiful little picture, between the pages of my diary.
It’s all bullshit, he said. What is, I asked. It’s ridiculous, he said. What is, I asked. The way you write godammit, he said. What are you posing for, I asked. I am not, he said. He then grinned suddenly. He always grinned suddenly. And his sooty grey eyes turned wild and dangerous when he did that. Let’s go, he said. And I followed without asking where.
Ray, you are a strange, strange man, I told him. You smell like an Indian kitchen, he said, digging into dal puris. I am an Indian kitchen, I said. I am strange, he said. I still hate the way you write, he said licking his fingers. So what, I said, I can cook well. And we both ran down some empty wet road, like cricket balls hit for a six.

***I stood with others like me, in front of our favourite dhaba, sipping sweet cha. Colourful girls in kurtas and patialas, with interesting jholas and dangly earrings. It started raining, lightly at first and then harder, and I sang some rainy song, really softly, so that no-one could hear me, but myself. What are you muttering about, dangly earrings asked. Nothing, I said. No, you are always doing things like this, interesting jhola observed. I’m just singing, I said. Then why can’t you sing louder pipsqueak, yellow kurta exhorted. I don’t know, I said. I sipped tea and looked at the slick wet roads over the muddy rim of the cup. The boys joined us, a while later. Disheveled and dirty on purpose, with pants that were so loose that their underwear showed. With sneers and crisp witticisms and observations on their lips. Colourful boys and girls in the rain, smoking and sipping tea and talking about Satyajit Ray, Eliot, Pink Floyd and revolutions. And I stood there hunched and spectre thin. Maybe I wasn’t like them at all.

****The metro ride home was lonely, squashed in with people wet with sweat and rain and discontent. Like sitting on a wet toilet seat, first thing in the morning. I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed: I’ll go here, go there, I’ll do this, I’ll do that. I stood on the vestibule, where you’re not supposed to stand and dreamed, only to be interrupted once in a while by indecisive passengers, who kept changing compartments. The jerky khatakhat-khaat, khatakhat-khaat noise of the train and the lovely zephyr that blew through the torn edges of the vestibule took me to another world. And the lonely people of course. Of course, I’m sure not all them were lonely. Maybe it was the lights… the distant look in their eyes... the mis-en-scene of the entire compartment. I remembered standing here once and reading bits of Toni Morrison’s “Jazz”, about Violet and her lonely life.

*****Nothing, nothing makes sense, Ray said. You? You are saying that, I asked, bewildered and heart-broken. Who am I? I am nobody, he said. No, no, no, you’re everybody I argued. You can be anyone, I insisted. And he grinned and asked me where we were going to go today. I was relieved. Anywhere, anywhere, I said. To a rocky cliff then, he said. With a swirling sea below, I said. And an oak tree, leaning over the edge, he said. And a swing attached to one of its heavy branches, I added. Yes, let’s go, he said. And we both went.

Victor's Room

It was a room that cast a spell on you.
The bookshelves boasted of all the right books
And the lazy lounge chair and svelte lamp
Like a Moroccan don and vixen vamp
Invited you smoothly, blowing smoke rings into your face.
Sit down, sit down.
The window stared into a narrow cobblestone street.
Outside, burnt brick houses leaned over each other,
- Ponderous, pondering, smoking a little.
Inside, a fire burnt assiduously
Dancing, bickering and bantering with fellow flames.
Rosemary prepared the coffee.
And silver spoons and coffee cups
Waited eagerly, and importantly like bright children.

Victor was old.
He didn’t bother with hats, suits
Or patent leather shoes.
He stayed at home and watched the news.
He read a lot,
Settling down comfortably on the Moroccan don
And smoking rare Cuban cigars and Java coffee fumes.
He’d travel thrice a year.
Some place exotic and new.
But quiet, with plenty of solitude.
Victor was old.
Sometimes he missed the tangerine perfume
That once invaded this room.

Victor dreamed sometimes, when he finished reading
The yellowed pages of some old, worn book.
He dreamt of woods and jungles
And a strange red earth…
And a perfume, yes, the most divine perfume,
Of tangerine with a lemon’s twist.
Of olive skin and guitars
And rain in December.
He imagined he heard laughter sometimes…
And mirthful voices that bantered
Like the flames in his hearth.
And the eyes, of course the eyes –
Dark, stormy, gypsy eyes
That, veiled themselves with thick eyelashes
And an elusive vagueness.
Yes, Victor dreamed sometimes.

Was it this room? Of course it was.
Where a flower, a powerful, powerful flower
Was brought and kept for everyone to see.
Its lavish petals enthralled all,
And its sweet smell intoxicated.
And Victor, nourished the earth
That his prized possession grew on.
Right next to the Japanese paintings
And Russian dolls,
Pushed against a green-apple wall,
The one with the window,
In a most exquisite vase.
The flower lived out its life
And faded...
It never replicated.
And Victor settled for some less exotic daisies.

And as he sits, by the warm fire
Reading a book, leather-bound and kind of dull…
Victor feels a little chill.
Like a breathy whisper -
Of frozen citrus perfume.
And he cannot help it as he chokes,
On some powerful unseen beauty,
And the coffee grows cold
And the glowing cigar-end turns to ashes…