the LEH chronicles

SMOKE

Virein fancied lying in a big lounger, in an unlit room, before a huge LCD screen, his circumaural surround-sound headphones hanging by the skull, a remote in the right hand, a cigarette in the left; he took a liking to smoking with his cigarette dangling between the forefinger and middle finger of his left hand, felt a symbolism in what his shaky left hand finger did to the cigarette, rings of smoke waywardly rising up, much like the cigarette did to the colloids in his head. In darkness, in solitude and in burning tobacco, he sought and discovered repose. Light would bring to fore, malevolent visions, company chaotic emotions and abating cigarettes a fear of being harrowed of his delirious calm.

Awakened by thirst on a dry April night, he stood shaky, rubbing his brows and swallowing his tobacco laden saliva. His sweaty armpits and chest were itchy, and as he ran his fingers through his unkempt body hair, he felt his nails sharp, breathed a puff of warm air around and staggered to the fridge. As he gulped half a bottle of cold water, his body jittered and he sensed his soles burning; he spilled some water and stepped into the puddle and suddenly a wave of youthfulness ran up his stale whole. His one eye opened wide for an instant and a warm tear wetted it, he shut the fridge door, smeared other eye with his moist finger. Now he could see.

As he sat back on his bed, he felt like he was elsewhere before he woke up. He had been dreaming again. Of the faraway hill, the deserted hut with a slanting wooden roof, a creaky door, built of left over planks fastened with rusted nails and wire, which allowed but a steak of moonlight into the room, as Virein swiveled his head to music pouring in his ears and swooned eventually. He had just dozed off in his dream when he woke up. Yes, he could follow the trail.

He walked out to the next room, switched the CFL on and half closing the door behind him again, pulled his cane chair and settled into it with a cushion under his bums. Stretching his legs out, planting his bony feet on the table, he grasped the TV remote and started surfing the channels. The dim light from the adjacent room, lit half the wall in front of him, and that gave him the same eerie feeling as the moonlight in the hut. Leaning to his right, he found his pack of Marlboro lights. As he looked out at the tree through his window, he could sense the breeze playing with the leaves; he stared on for a while and then smoked away.

He made an effort to rise and walk out to the balcony. It was cool outside and the next drag brought him a gasp of pleasure as he wondered where the wind might take his smoke, mix it with scents of flowers in the night sky, odors of decaying bodies somewhere, blue-black smoke from the demons of road at night, the leviathan trucks and perhaps more little wisps of smoke breathed out by sleepy menaces running the menaces. And almost as if the wind clutched his wrist and drove him, he climbed up on the railing and began to imagine to fly, fly in search of his last puff of smoke and the one before that and ran his tongue on his dry lips, musing how it might taste if he inhaled it again with his mouth. In the small grooves in the grill, he fixed his feet and swung his arms wide, a gust of cool breeze hit him in the face.

Gusto!

He could fly!

He knew he could fly!

 

My grandma called it chamber

My grandma called it chamber, and at times office; my father called it garage, my grandfather called it daftar

The place where I grew up, we had a small room with a low ceiling, in the front corner of our house that belonged to my chachu. It was his workplace. On the outside, hung a board that read ‘Advocate Puneet Gupta’

Our house had an assorted flair of grandeur and succinctness. I realized this when we moved to a new house. I was 15 then and I took time gathering strewn fractions of myself from the place I had known as home all my life, and conform to the change. I remember, for many months, I would spend lone minutes thinking about the place. My fondest and most distinct memories were in this small room.

With a big table in the middle that stood on a rugged carpet, a rickety, green-colored table fan which made an annoying humming noise until we patted and it obeyed like a mannered kid, and a ceiling-to-floor large glass case in the rear wall laden with chachu’s AIR copies, it embodied an archaic compendious spirit.

Of the many memories, is one with the GLOBE. Proportionate with the table it stood on; it was a big globe. For the first time in my life, my chachu showed me India on the globe. Before that, it was a mere ball for me.

I was amazed.

By two things.

One, the very idea of this being the earth. And the other sank in as I asked him ‘jammu kahan hai’ and he showed me a tiny dot and went on to explain how scale works. I took a minute with myself to contemplate if a dot blows up into the whole of our city, this globe should swell into something gigantic. Of course, I did eventually read about the size of earth and I can remember smiling proudly to myself in a geography class. After all I had figured it out years ago while the other blokes in the class had to come to school to learn about it.

Whatever it was; a globe or a ball, I liked to sit on the table and play with it while chachu spent hours with his multi colored files and those white and green tag-threads. These things fascinated me. I often felt envious and thought I should own some, one day.

I asked him once why these files were in different colors. I can’t claim to have made complete sense of what he said, but the conversation must have sounded something like this:

Alag alag colors ki files kyun hoti hain?

Alag alag cases hote hain. Ek color ki file mein ek case.

Case kya hota hai

………

Back then, the ambition of my life was to become a carpenter. I thought to myself when I do accomplish it, I’ll have different color files for pictures of the stools, chairs and doors and almiras that I would design.

When I look back at those days, I feel I shared a very easy relationship with my chachu. It is striking, or maybe in a sense it testifies the relation we had, that I called him Tu, despite having grown up in a family where civic manners were glorified; rather beyond relevance. I can remember my grandma often pointing it to me how disrespectful I was being by calling him Tu, and now I understand her concern was obvious, but it never occurred to me then. He was more a companion than an elder.

Like most kids, I liked kites; but unlike most kite-lovers, I wasn’t very good at flying them. So I had to convince my father to come up to the terrace and fly one for me. All this while, chachu would sit in a corner in his characteristic squat, his face cupped in his palms. He would smile to me, wave to me, but never quite participated in the sport! As I grew up, I was to realize he never liked it and it dawned on me, that he sat there only to watch me go through my endeavor.

Back to the small room I was describing. This room, to a person who hasn’t been there, spent lone time there, would seem like an insignificant little thing. To me, that was and remains one of the few places where I find solace. The low ceiling, the meager space, and the packed shelves swooning under the numerous and vivid books, in a weird sense, assure me that I am not going to get lost in this world, that I have an identity of my own, and that there is one ‘rabbit’s hole’, I can return to, anytime in my life.

That’s probably why, as a kid, I added to the tally of names this room had and called it ‘my study’. As time went by, it became my full time study room. In a way, I ousted my chachu out of his own room. Gradually, it became little Setu’s study-room and while she complains it’s too small, hot, secluded, and not happening, chachu has taken to his little wedge and is happy burning the midnight oil there, his favorite squat still denying to leave him!

And as far as the story of me and my room goes, I believe he knows what the place means to me, more than anyone else. I must confess though that not much was ever spoken between the two of us. Even today morning, when I called him to greet him on his birthday, all I could muster up and burp out was ‘Raam raam chachu .. Happy Birthday’ and all he said was ‘Thank you Beta. Kya kar raha hai tu’.

But so it has been over the years. Nothing has changed, except that I stopped pronouncing him Tu some 10 years back, more out of my embarrassment than his; and he too seems to be transitioning from ‘Chhote Laal’ to ‘Beta’ which is warm and sad at the same time.