Sunday, November 16, 2014

…And It Was Too Hot…

It is a Friday. Friday is technically a solar day I plump-for the most. Friday is a day which unzips the button in every sense. A day when I plunge back to my old country, Calicut - the arena of dreams; the land of miracles. Today is veritably a drizzly day with whirlpools around. Monsoons in our state tickle you down to the spine. The spritz of chilled water freezes you to the floor and silver forks from heaven canoodles you further. I kicked off from my college and got into a chock-a-block bus. Bus journeys in our state are customarily pestiferous but the aplomb of getting back home pulsated me. I had a few plans to accomplish this evening. Basically, I belong to the circle of planners. Planning things in advance. Let it be a Boutique bargain nor a tea-serving task nor a bed-setting routine, I digitalise it in my mind’s network at the outset. The flow chart runs through my brain and then I set foot to step number one. I have succeeded miserably and fizzled out triumphantly for multiple occasions because of my planning. Too much of planning is yet again too threatening.

I blocked my ears with headset and started off my ninety minutes voyage which gobbles thirty minutes to the bowels of traffic block. I hate blathering to strangers and the ideal road to steer clear of them through a journey is irrefutably the earphones. Thanks for the headset inventors. It was raining cats and dogs and the sprinkles of rain water kissed me hard. The blend of music huddled with raindrops created an aura of mellifluous fragrance. I had a substantial objective to engineer this sundown. One of our close neighbours had shifted their home and the blow in on was remaining in the back burner for a last couple of weeks. The day’s target was to pop in at their home. If you are to walk the earth in Kerala, relatives will bounce your hours and neighbours will choke your brains. Half of your life is done with visiting, revisiting, dining and visiting again. The instant you get back home after blessing a freshly-fettered couple, there awaits a baby to be born next week. The moment you shower the munificence on the baby and return, another juvenile grandpa at a faraway residence might have waved good-bye to the globe. Consequently, the never ending rill of life scuttles on. Even when we pause to take a break, it scampers, all the more ripping the fringes with its unrelenting ripples. So today is a day meant for an old female neighbour. I kicked off in planning the sequence of the visit. The time to start with. The dress to be slipped on. Both mine and HIS. The handbag to carry. The sandals that match the hulking rains. 

A few minutes later I thought of ringing HIM up. For the humble information of the readers, the HIM is my partner at home. I opt to use the term “partner” as a replacement of the draconian term “husband”. When you give voice to the term ‘partner’, somewhere, somehow it embellishes you with a sense of freedom. A freedom to retain your name without clinging on to HIS . 

It gives you cosmic space to breathe. 
Enough footprints to trod with. 
And abundant reflections to see yourself again and again. For a better plain-sail, it can be phrased as two partners sprinting the same vocation- the business of a wedlock. I would rather loathe to resort it to two bullocks as Deshpande propounds, since I feel we are denied the right to pour scorn on the ties of creatures, which seems far ahead of, compared to human species. Ultimately, the business of wedlock will let fall its account- either the account of profit or the account of loss. 

He, him, or the partner of mine is customarily quick and a breakneck speeder in areas where I am slow. Nonetheless, this is a belt where we turn the tables at each other. As I was running through my planning chart, my cell phone started beeping abruptly and it was him. 

I asked politely “ Are you ready” ?
And I was paid with the typical stock response of a man. “No”. “Why” ?
They budge into sheer oblivion the moment they are asked to do things they don’t like at all.

 I said in a renitent tone, “How come you forget it? I had told you last day of visiting Maya aunty.
“Oh..hhh….yes….I remember”. He said in a light tone as though trying to be in accordance with a partner who appears fortnightly and melts away like an ice-cube after the weekend.
“Look….I will be there in half an hour……Get ready….We will start at sharp seven….”, I ordered.
“Sure…sure…..no arguments…”. He acknowledged.
Handling women over the phone is rather easier than handling them in person. Because you do  have the option of a red button in cell phones.

I awaited eagerly to get down and I reached my home finally. I had almost an hour to get ready to visit Maya aunty. Maya aunty was our old neighbour. Old - the word, strikes a bit ambiguous, I know. She is old since she is almost seventy and she was our neighbour for a multitude of years. Thus she became our old neighbour. She hails from a Brahmin family and her Filter coffee is too popular in our neighbourhood. When Maya aunty relocated, the neighbours stood with flooded eyes - not for missing Maya aunty, but her piping-hot yummy filter coffee served in towering silver glass. The glass fills the brink of any gluttonous mouth with its enormous dimensions. The glass appears like a tall white man from the occidental world. The silver glass would sparkle even in downright darkness. Years back, the workers from our neighbouring state who came for the Japan water project revelled in Maya aunty’s coffee, but the hapless part was the elopement of the Silver glass with those men. Her silver glass would glitter more in their jet-black hands. Anything that resides in undeserved hands would automatically shimmer in higher grades as a testimony to the fact that these are not the hands in which it should remain. Nevertheless, the coffee that approached in those silver glasses were flavoursome and delicious. Even Starbucks would kneel down before her, for the concentration of taste that she comes up with. A number of guys helped Maya aunty, making themselves fall into the slot of packers and movers - not for hard cash, but for the filter coffee she offered. 

It was raining in full length and I got back home absolutely drenched. Outings boost me up at any moment. I overcome even a hard-bound intimidating temperature with an airing to Baskin Robbins. Let it be shopping malls, or an Alfresco or an Exhibition Hall or a skimpy bike-ride - I get a buzz out of it which I feel is better than visiting old aunts and uncles. Despite this fact, it seems all right to visit homes on a showery day and let cold-breezed days stay back in stock for more bewitching outings.

I was back to home, unconditionally exhausted after the tedious bus-ride. I desperately needed a cat-nap. My partner at home was still in oblivion and I had to struggle stiff, to pull him up for the visit. Since there were none at home and just because it was raining too laboriously, he was all the more fascinated to stay back for reasons which were numerous. I love trotting over the streets with raindrops cuddling me from head to heels and therefore I love stepping out in rainy days. 

A few minutes later he said. “ Give me a cup of tea and I shall get ready”.
I was partly embarrassed and partly exasperated with the statement. I have travelled all the way from a far-away land and I am offered more tasks to be performed. We initiated all sorts of squabbles to iron out the issue of tea-making. Ultimately, I relinquished when he told me thus. 
“ Its not because I can’t do it, but when you do it…..your tea….it’s like Maya aunty’s coffee.” And he gave his standard scintillating smile. I love him all the more when he bluffs with his mischievous eyes. His eyes verbalise truth, time and again when his lips fake. Since my aim was to oust him out of the home by seven, I thought of compromising myself for a cup of tea. 

The moment I lit the burner, Maya aunty stood before me with her filter coffee. I turned off the burner and told him. 
“Why to have tea now when we are sure to have cups of filter coffee?”
He conjectured for a while and then said. “ But it takes long…….”

Before he could complete, I interrupted. My Action Plan began to work. “ It’s 6.50 now. Get ready. Quick. We shall move by sharp seven. A ten minute ride and we are right at her home. So it will be 7.10. Wait 20 minutes and you’re gonna grab your favourite cup of coffee.”

I could see the convolutions of his visage. Hesitatingly, he agreed. By seven, the two business partners of wedlock were in front of the locked door. The road was too sodden and the heavy traffic delayed us. My partner kept on cavilling for having missed the evening tea and I tantalised him with the upcoming coffee. Just like a mom who promises a better chocolate brand for her little girl for not purchasing the one she has decided on.

Ultimately, by 7.30, we reached Maya Aunty’s home. Maya aunty is a person I hold in admiration the most. Even at her seventies, she tweets. She pokes her friends in FB. She goes to RP Mall to watch 3D movies. We had watched amorphous movies together. She sings Classical songs. She is very pious. Too religious just like Grandmother Field in Lamb’s “Dream Children”. I accompany her for movies and shopping. But the moment she beckons me for Bhajans, my health deteriorates. I get a fever or a splitting-headache or a sore-throat abruptly. Only when it is Bhajans. Had it been a movie or mall, my health would have been resuscitated. 

Maya aunty was rather gratified to see us again. She hugged my partner and kissed my forehead. She got estranged from her husband in her twenties and brought up two of her sons quite independently. Both her sons are abroad and she prefers remaining in Kerala with her Filter Coffee. She started talking garrulously. She told us about her new students splurging in to learn music. She talked about her recent trip to Coorg. In no time, she went inside and disappeared for a few minutes. 

My partner was continuously nagging me for the lost tea and I consoled him with the better offer yet to arrive. Seated in two opposite sofas, we traded off, glances of arguments and compassion. My eyes spoke and his lips heard. Maya aunty popped out with a bundle of albums. Coorg Albums. We were in fact forced to go through the albums. She described each and everyone in the photographs. I saw my partner dawdling to his slumber and I chuckled deliberately in a sky scraping tone to rouse him from his nap. I laughed again and again like a Bollywood villain. Even Maya aunty paused and gazed at me for a second because of the artificiality that was spread on my laugh. I felt myself like Amrish Puri, because my giggling reverberated to my own ears and I was frightened of myself. However, I succeeded in bringing him back to the trauma of ogling at the snaps of a bevy of old women. Toothless, grey-haired, stooped, skinny women who were old enough.

Only one partner can sense the malaise of another partner. I was visibly recording the chagrin flossing through my partner’s face. His eyes turn scarlet the moment he goes out of his normalcy. I consoled him once more with the thought of Filter Coffee. The rain was still thumping on the roof of Maya aunty’s home. The chill of the day either demanded a peg of whisky or a hot filter coffee. Through consoling my partner, I started consoling myself. My penury stricken stomach too started twiddling the walls of my skin.

It was almost 8.30 and Maya aunty too might have felt bored talking about her own affairs. She relaxed for a moment and said, “It’s too cold. I should give you something hot.” She smiled and vanished behind the lace tapestry. Soon as she left, a smile appeared on our face. The smile of getting a filter coffee on one side and the initiation of a promise that has been committed on the other side. His eyes were returning from scarlet to sapphire. His eyes and lips smiled together which hardly happens. I too had the pride of seeing things happen which I had already predicted. We exchanged our muted glances of contentment again. 

Maya aunty came out with two shining silver glasses which were tall. The lustre of the glass matched her fair hands. That divulged the truth that the silver glass was fit for her thin beautiful hands. Her fair hands with golden bangles were lovely though they were wrinkled. She bent towards my partner and then approached me. We had our delicious drink. Since it was past 8.30, we settled the rhythms and moved out. She mizzled her blessings on us and kissed me again and again. We hugged each other and bid farewell.

We had a hushed silence on our way back. My partner was driving in a different direction which was contrary to the road to our home. I wanted to interrogate him. But I bit my tongue. The cadences of his driving was wavering. The Sapphire of his eyes was slowly getting on to blood red hue. The car stopped near a restaurant. I read the board. KingsBay. We got out. My partner went through the menu. He ordered. I ordered. We ordered. Silence still created walls between us.

As I told you previously, Maya aunty is a person whom I admire the most. That evening, she came with her gleaming silver glass. Silver glass which was tall enough. Silver glass which contained hot water. Nothing more. Nothing less. The piping-hot yummy water. :)


A. Krishna Sunder


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