*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.