In Monologue with Myself

After a year of rudimentary tiff with the vital elements of Delhi, which comprises of the temperature, the volatility and the social life, I have come back to Calcutta. The cabbies here are willing to take me wherever till whatever distance. They don’t deny me of my civil right to ride their vehicle meant for transportation (as long as I have the money to pay), which is so unlike Delhi. And they are a laconic lot compared to their cousins from Uttar Pradesh who dominate the auto-drivers’ landscape in Delhi. They don’t stuff up a perfect stranger like me, with political views, connections and network chats.

It’s raining here in Calcutta, and whenever it doesn’t, it is cool enough for a thin layer of mist to spread itself all over. That takes care of people like me, whose spirits rise when there is no sun during the May-Sept slot. And though the towels here don’t bake so easily like they do in Delhi, I have learnt not to get into a depression mode concerning a few wet linens.

The fruits look unimpressive but they taste better than their up-market and expensive counterparts that gild the local Delhi markets. And though I am missing the hip-hop wannabes everywhere I travel locally, I can not say that their absence poises a vital threat to my visual abilities – I think its time to order for a pair of glasses anyway.

I have come back to the land where the windshields are made up of normal colorless glass, where people don’t push their dead weights on their car horns to express their innate desires, where the latest breed of automobile don’t rule hearts and conversations – but most of all and away from automobile models, I have come back to a land where people take a daily bath, keep their nails clean, and flush (or splash water from a nearby bucket) after using a commode.

Our housing families are pretty relieved to see us. So are the shop-owners of Lake Market. The other day two of them had scolded my wife for her near year-long disappearance. My wife says that she likes it this way. I can not disagree with her, especially when I think of our dear friends in Delhi. There are two of them. If you tried calling one up, he would never answer – our capital city is also the corporate hub of the country after all. Well, almost. Except for useless souls like us, people keep busy. So we would get a no-reply. Then he would call up after few days and accuse us about not keeping in touch, promise to finalize a meeting on a later date, and disappear religiously, with his prototypical no-reply cell-phone. A routine, almost every month.

The other gentleman would brave the initial inertia to call us to his house – and that would materialize. The rest of the evening would be spent sitting in front of him watching him slowly polish a big bottle of booze, enduring worn down pirated DVDs of perfect trashes like Snakes in the Train (yes Train, not Plane – and that’s even worse), or waiting for dinner. Then we would saunter off to his bedroom and sleep either on the floor or on the bed. The house had two bedrooms but he would insist that we chatted till we dropped. For a friendless someone like him, we would be forced to consider the appeal. Still, this gentleman was the best friend we had. At least we were in constant touch – probably because of the years that he’d spent in Bombay and London, far away from the capital.

Life promises to become more predictable now. So that when aunty next door asks the anonymous school boy ‘how was it?’, I can be rest assured that she is asking about his examination papers and not about some of the latest flicks like ‘Tashn’ or ‘Lovestory2050’. No more surprises. My cell number is the same that it used to be one and half years ago. The feeling is that of comfort. I don’t mind that one bit – after all everyone grows old.