Dog days – Caffeine

By the time you get to the café – three shops to the left – your hair’s caught some of the rain. Maybe it’ll fall flat now. Maybe you’ll catch a cold, though a few drops never killed anyone. The door opens inwards and you’re gripped by the smells of coffee, sugar and vanilla. The temperature inside this café of 4 tables has shifted north just a little, but enough to make you notice. Have you been here before? Probably not. Cafes mean speaking to people and the accidental eye contact and god knows you’ve spent a good part of your life avoiding both.

But you’re here now.

And your companion from earlier has settled into a table, dwarfing it. Settled well in, as he’s using the time looking at you. You would too, had someone stood at the entrance of an empty café looking at nowhere really. And now you’re looking at him. Start walking, idiot.

Why are you here anyway?

Did you want coffee?

When was the last time you had coffee?

Did you blank out back there?

Did he hypnotise you?

Is this safe?

Why isn’t there anyone else in the café?

“Nobody really notices this café, probably the sign. Doesn’t glow. So we’re usually slow.”

Oh.

“Loyal weekend crowd though.”

You’re in the booth already. Why does this place have booths? But it’s lit up. So it’s not absolutely the 70s.

“Do you work here?”

“Yes, also own it.”

You like the seat, feeling it on your fingertips. “So what’s good?”

His eyebrows scrunch themselves up. That’s a lot of scrunching. Of course. Listen to yourself.

“What would you recommend?”

Ah. Scrunch resolved.

“Well,” – is he assessing you? – “Cappuccino.”

Frankly, that’s a let-down. You always assume your tryst with strangers will mean they will have some secret knowledge about you, intuitively. And a cappuccino is far, far from intuitive. Masala chai would be nice, although he did say coffee. An espresso just to get out of the funk. Or an iced americano. So that the ice melts into itself and you can stay in this warm seat, sipping on the reincarnation of your original drink.

“Cappuccino’s great.” You’re not a monster.

He’s off the table and into the kitchen, and you take a moment to sigh into your crossed arms on the table, keeping your head down just to stop it from trying to desperately process and execute everything you’re feeling.

Sadness. A shade less than the morning, but sadness alright. Apprehension of opening the door to your house. Guilt for what you did. Guilt some more for being in this seat not because this man gave you his phone and help, but because something shifted in you after years when you saw the fabric of his jacket taut against his back. Guilt for making this man brew you a coffee you don’t even want. Guilt because it’s raining outside and you’ve never needed alcohol – you’ve only needed the right rain. And this is the right rain at the wrong time.

Guilt because his sideburns have a shade of grey in them.

You aren’t worried though. Somehow, safety is the least of your problems today.

Something moves on the table and you snap up.

“It’ll help.”

He’s made himself an espresso, but you’re not going to whine now, are you? The cup’s wider than you’re used to, so there will be a moustache. But it’s pretty, the whole thing. Some kind of leafy design made of fine, slightly reddish coffee powder on the froth. It’s not coffee powder though. It’s cinnamon.

He’s put cinnamon in your cappuccino and now you want to snuggle against his shoulder in the rain and smelling of cinnamon.

Fuck this.

You stare diligently at your coffee because clearly you need something stronger and drink up. The plan is to finish this as quickly as you can but your tongue and lips are off to mutiny. This is good, warm coffee. The spice stirs something, and the sip had the most subtle aftertaste. He’s made art in a cup.

You look up and catch his eye.

“Thank you. It’s quite lovely.”

This is the first, decent, non-pathetic thing you’ve said to this man. Almost ladylike. He nods and the light catches the scar under his eye and sideburns. A knot you didn’t know you had in your gut tightens. You want to touch the smooth, pink scar with the pads of your thumb.

“What happened to you?”

“I had a bad start to the day.”

“And it nearly ended with your card being swallowed?”

“Nearly, yes.” But thanks for this.

“I’ve seen you before.”

Of course, he has. A few weeks ago, you had that showdown around this corner with a cab driver who wouldn’t go a few hundred feet further on a rainy day. It got loud and horrible rather quickly. That was another bad day. Several people from stores and restaurants had tried to intervene. A cop had to step in.

But you hadn’t seen this one. This one should have stuck in memory.

“I had the morning shift so I was watching from inside here.” Ah.

“I won that day.”

“What did you win?”

“The argument. He had to drop me to the vet’s clinic ahead and he refused to. I made him.”

“Good start to the day then?”

He’s talking about that day, not today.

“No, not really.” You like that he leans in, urging you to share more. “My dog’s scan. Tumours in the lungs.”

He’s scratching his hair; you want to do it for him. “That’s bad. Yeah. How’s it now?”

Dead.

The spell is broken. Binks’s shiny eyes and the whine that’s caught at the back of his throat since 4 am this morning and how his coat felt course as you piled him alone in the cab. You want to say with a straight face that yes, I decided that I can’t treat it any more, that I have to take this decision for him. So, as of this morning, I turned into a god, and had him put down, because I’m omniscient and I can tell is there’s no hope and no cure.

I heard him howl in pain through the night and in one irreversible decision, I killed the one thing in the world that loved me.

Now the coffee tastes salty and you’re a swirling mess of tears, snot, dread and darkness.

Dog days

“Should I get the door?”

You look up, uncertain about the sounds you’ve just heard.

“I’m heading home now, should I leave the door open or are you staying the night?”

The implications of all she’s said may not have dawned on her, but you know now is not the time to mull over each of the tributaries of your thoughts. You nod, and thankfully she intercepts that as a “yes, leave it open” – because you’ll be stepping out of the office and locking up behind you, and trying, trying hard to get some of your old self back.

20 minutes later, the only force driving you out of the door and your reverie of self-pity is that you have to water the plants in your house the next morning. It’s a house now, you notice – it’s not a home. It’s a place where things you own are kept, not where you live and make things happen and cook and feel calm. You wonder when the difference set it. You know when.

Of course, the elevator has a couple of stops to make before you can get in. There’s Anita from upstairs repeating into her phone that, no she can’t hear you. Can you… can you please wait? She’ll text you back. You smile at each other, and in other circumstances you’d have asked her if she’s still planning on negotiating her yearly package with Nadira. But she’s too busy and you don’t care for small talk today.

The street outside is filling in. Friday evenings in this part of town mean that you have to be in the right place at the right time to be able to get anywhere. It wasn’t this way, you note – or perhaps it always was and you’re just in a place to really observe it. There’s a non-threatening drizzle in the air and you know that once it would light up your face and make the world spin with excitement around you but today, you note it as mild precipitation. The walk to your ATM is lined with restaurants. What is this love for Asian food that’s permeating the world? You’re more of a continental food buff but really, these many outlets? And always full, at that. What are people celebrating all the time? Is everyone just a terrible cook when left to their own devices? Is corn syrup really all there is to it? You don’t even know what corn syrup really does.

You pull your coat a little closer to your body having admitted not knowing to yourself. Maybe I should try more of these truth telling moments. Embarrass myself around me. That’d be a change.

The ATM’s a little dark inside as usual, so you peek in to see if there’s a light on the screen… and yes there is. You step in and wait for the card to process so you can get the month’s cash in hand and transfer the rest to your savings accounts. The screen flickers a little and your irritation with the world as it is spikes – irritating because now, your card’s stuck. Irritating because it’s been a relentlessly bad day. Did your tone show on the phone call? Let’s leave that for Monday, but right now, the card’s stuck in the slot and you need to calm down.

You wait for the screen to come alive, but this is it. Of all days, after months of slowing down in function and luminosity, this ATM machine has picked the day you had to put your 13-year-old dog down, to crash.

Of course.

You shrug, set your glasses back, and remind yourself to be objective about this. The ATM machine did not know about Binks. Cannot know about him. You need a solution. Is there a helpline on the machine? Ah yes. You wait for it to be answered. But the call disconnects of its own accord. Try again. Nope. And again and there’s no network, as if there’s a finite quantity of network and today you’ve used up yours. After a little juvenile push to the machine, you step out looking for distance from the issue and help in case anyone can lend you their phone.

The drizzle has taken the time you were in the ATM room to turn into a light shower. For the first time today, you smile. Or you don’t frown. Well, something in your face changes.

There’s a chap smoking a cigarette by the store display to your left. Shouting across a few feet isn’t nice, so you glance back into the ATM and run the distance of a few feet to ask for his phone. When he turns, however, you want to ask him a whole lot of other questions.

What’s your wingspan?

What happened under your eye?

Can I put my fingers in your hair?

You’re about to cross the line of polite staring-going-to-letching so you quickly blurt out something about the ATM-card-phone-yours.

“Is it stuck inside the machine?” Your toes need not have curled at that baritone.

You nod.

“Cancel the card. Sooner the better.”

He punches in a password as the two of you walk towards the ATM. He hands you the phone.

A conversation filled with a lot of verification details about your account and about the problem and about the card and about the ATM and about if you’re sure later, you stare at the phone in your hand. While the relief of the card being cancelled settles in, you realise that the phone owner is still inside the ATM space. His attention, however, is outside and on the rain. It’s even heavier now.

For a moment before you take in the updated meteorological status, you take in the muscle of his back. His grey jacket is stretched over the scapulae and his slightly unruly hair has a sheen of droplets. The ATM must have stilled because phone man turns back inside then.

Look up look up look up.

“It’s coming down heavy, isn’t it?”

Fuck your small talk. To add insult to self-inflicted injury, phone man grunts.

You stretch your hand with the phone in it. He takes it back and your breath gets caught in its shoelaces, so your thanks comes out too raspy.

That, unfortunately, gets him to look up.

“It’s alright.” Why’s the ground rumbling to his voice? “You look unwell” – uhm, okay, but now he knows this isn’t your usual face? – “Do you want to sit down?” –  there’s nothing to sit here but thanks for the suggestion, stranger – “Maybe have a coffee with me?”

“Yes, sure.”

What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?

“There’s one place, down the road, same side, needn’t cross. Three shops to the left. Don’t slip.” He opens the door and makes a dash for it.

 

---

Next in the series.

Dimmed.

“What moves you?” you ask

Looking at me in a crowded room

As the crowd presses with its eyes

On the new victim of your unwanted curiosity.

But I will know that later.

 

That evening of dimmed lights and glasses half full,

I have nothing to say.

I know your gaze anchored to my unseeing eyes

Is a game you have played and mastered;

But a game that matters only to you

A personal victory that does not scratch the surface of another soul

Yet here I am writing about it.

Let me explain this.

You asked a question,

And I will answer it because the question

Intrigues me.

Let’s not presume it’s you.

 

You don’t know how far back

I have to scroll my photo stream

To find a picture of myself that I clicked

That I may like.

That show my eyes without the baggage

Of nights I lay trying to court sleep

He, like everything I desire, rejects me gently.

A picture of a friend pulling me close

To share the moment.

Of family that does not hand me the camera

To capture them, ever so complete without me.

Of any trace of my existence.

 

Further back, when a boy asked me

If I could honour him with my love

I refused to believe that my love is honourable.

No love that has rolls of fat

No love that has broken teeth

No love with pimples is honourable.

I shall get my share of loneliness

That my loud faults warrant.

Because anything good in me

Is swallowed by my lard.

 

A little before that, not long ago.

A woman whose womb I come from

Looked me in the eye and said,

I cannot love you anymore.

And she cut the umbilical cord.

She was free.

I was happy for her.

She was free

Of being tied to a millstone of disease

Of shame, of questions and worry.

She climbs mountains now,

Watches birds, flies with them.

The farther she goes away,

The closer my demons breathe.

 

Before that.

A school bell rang and a gang of girls

With quieter laughs and thinner knees

Sat away from me.

When I opened my lunch to share with them,

They inched away.

I’ll have all of my lunch myself.

Yet I felt hungrier.

 

What moves me?

I don’t move.

Chaos.

I’d suggest you read this before you read ahead, and then continue with this post.

---

It’s the same spot. I’m waiting for you to come into the room so I may ask you to switch off the light.

The summer is leaving soon. I know it because I see clouds where I could see the Scorpio constellation, and the paper dial we bought is lying next to the bed under our Kindles, my watch, your pen, my wires and our empty mugs.

I’m starting to sweat a little, so I add “put on the AC” to my “list of things to ask you to do before you slip into bed.” Another uneventful day at our jobs and another night of mismatched dinner timings, reconciled only at TV – we support the same cricket teams, but the enthusiasm has drained off a while ago. Now it is just the prelude to going to sleep, and catching up on each other’s day. The term ‘defamiliarisation’ comes to mind. Schlovsky’s essay was right, but we did manage to look past the silhouette into the details and extract the art out of the algebrisation. What a rubbish thought to think, I scold myself – there is nothing romantic about being asked by your partner for a few years about plans for the weekend. The answer was for once not “working this Saturday”. We’re too old for double-takes.

You’re here. The t-shirt has come off and I’d like you to throw it on to bed so I may wear it. We haven’t found out whose t-shirt it is. It’s a Calvin-Hobbes one so it could be anyone’s, even my father’s. I ask you to get the lights and AC, but you take a second to register what I’m saying. Work has a way of bogging your thoughts – I give them the space they require before you slip into bed. After which I am territorial.

But not yet. Have I forgotten to post the letter to the society? Nope. I have – wait, there’s a possibility that the electricity bill wasn’t paid on time. An unnecessary itch begins in my mind. You haven’t been at the door for more than a few seconds longer than usual and my mind has found its way to the archives of my insecurities. Is it work? Is it Ashwini? It’s Ashwini, isn’t it? She has called me thrice accidentally this week. I have always appreciated how she’s family to you – to us. But never have I seen you hesitate so much (it’s almost a minute that you’ve been looking around the room now) and never has she called me without any purpose. I need to stop thinking this way so I give you a smile and shift infinitesimally to the right of the bed, so your left is wider and you please, please get into bed.

You’re walking. What a relief. Before you settle into bed you open the window to let the wet air in. I cannot sleep any more. I need to know. I wish I had asked sooner than you had answered.

“How long has it been?”

I’m too scared to answer. I raise my eyebrows.

“Since we moved in.”

You want to ask me to move out. You’ve always wanted to move to a new city and have the family and I’ve never let you speak about this so you have spoken to Ashwini and you’re seeing yourself with her. Hold fort Ammu, hold fort it could be about a new wash of paint.

“4 years.”

“Hmm.”

I hate your fucking ‘hmm’s. They fuck with my brain. I shrink into the bed-sheet and I want to end this. You are now in bed. You want to soften the blow so you put your arm around me. Don’t. Be reckless. It’ll hurt less.

“Why’re you crying? What happened?”

The table lamp is back on.

The orange is seeping through your hair and I want to touch it but you seem so distant and not mine that I don’t. I also cannot see very clearly because there are hot tears in my eyes and I need some self-control. I shake my head.

“Was it work? Did Taufiq say something again?”

No no no. It’s what you aren’t saying.

Your hands are on my face and so are your lips. I struggle to break away. But you’re holding me firmly. Why are you doing this?

“What is it? It’ll be okay, I know it will be okay, you know it will pass. Problems don’t last.” You’re whispering in your this-is-not-what-I-really-mean voice. Fuck fuck fuck.

I calm down. I have to. You will drag this to tomorrow if not now. I cannot survive this. Do I have a suitcase?

Your lips are on my forehead now. You’re talking. I catch one word in the utter chaos of my thoughts.

“… Ashwini…”

I did not know I would hiccup.

Your eyebrows are knitted together. You were saying something and now you have been interrupted by my unnecessary sobbing which you are sick of for 4 years already.

“So you know?”

I nod.

“Let me say it?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Will this go away?

“She’s been sitting on my head for this but I told her I did want to tell you already. She must have tried calling you.” I nod.

“So you know?”

“Say it.”

The defeat in my voice piques your attention. Your fingers are fidgety against my back.

“I’m sorry I did this without you knowing. But I checked with Taufiq, and you do have a holiday on Friday. The registrar will be available at 7 pm. Is that okay? I know you’re mad. Fuck you’re mad. I don’t want any change but this could save us taxes and getting the Mahim place. The fridge looks bigger here and I can’t stop thinking of the windows – come on you said you wanted a balcony.”

“Registrar?”

“The chairman said they’d prefer married couples. I told them of our situation but I really want to see our baby grow in that place – it has a park! Where do you find parks in Mumbai anymore?”

“Baby?”

“You said you wanted to have one before you’re 30? You’re 28. We need to work on it now.”

The bite on the shoulder was tautology in action. There is a lot of confusion on both our faces.

“I can cancel the registrar’s appointment. Ashwini’s idea. He works at her office and they usually take 6 months but she speeded the process up.”

Oh sweet panic in your voice. Ashwini, I love your dear soul, and I owe you lunch for a year.

“I’ll talk to them again.”

I raise my eyebrows, noticing the number of times you’re blinking now. Nervous blinking.

“The chairperson and all? Ridiculous rules about families. We’re in 2018 for goodness’ sake.”

I’ll wait for your argument with yourself to stop. Your eyes need kissing. The puzzled silence hangs in there, an imp dancing on your nose.

“Say something, woman.”

My lips have better things to do.

You’re breathless now.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, cancel the appointment. Yes, speak to the chairman about those ridiculous rules about families. Yes, baby.”

Geez, boy, stop those tears. I can see them, as hard as you hope that I don’t.

---

There it is. Another post about guys making their proposal for marriage to a girl a whole new experience while standing atop a rock in the middle of nowhere or in a cave in South America or on a boat in the canals of Venice.

And a photographer, capturing the exchange.

Two people who have probably been together sharing moments intense enough to make them wish that the bond lasts for as long as they have their wits about them need to express to each other in elaborate ways that they want to legitimise what they have for the sake of grandeur and in this moment that they share, have a third person with a camera, doing their own thing.

It’s unsettling. The urge to make everything an act that anyone else tries to outdo, and importantly, rubbish the intimacy of the moment (which you probably had coming) by adding a third into it – it’ll take a while for the why of this to sink in. If it does, at all.

This blog was how I imagine such an exchange happening.

 

Last night.

Everyone around me says they can do without the internet and I agree. I can do without it too.

Of course it isn’t a compulsive brain-damaging urge to want to stay online and browse all the time. It’s just that I have made so many friends through Twitter (little note – it’s part of the internet!) and they are across so many time zones and regardless of time zones, they are leading so many lives that I want to be part of each of them and I’m afraid of the day when even one of them doesn’t think of me if they are in crisis because I want to be there since that’s what friends do even if you have met once or never. I want to be there to share their joy, news, highlights, frustrations, rants, their pillow talk friend, their shoulder to cry on, their first SOS contact I want to be on their speed dial because what if they’re into something that they can’t tell their mom or what if they just want to hear a human voice? It’s not compulsive, it’s my emotional drive to not let anyone be alone, even if that means I get late to class in the morning and have to text an apology as the teacher takes a break to sip water and even if it means I have to skip gym before work and instead head to after work when my body is dragged through the day and has a thousand conversations with every soul I have interacted with running through my mind wondering what is the next most comforting thing to say because if you ever need reassurances I must be around to give it to you, to soften the blows and to set things straight. I don’t think of it as an obligation because I choose the people I interact with even if they are many and one day I don’t know who I love the most and who I would want to settle down with and I was pretty sure I didn’t take her name the last time someone asked me who my best friend was but hey, circumstances change and I can assure you that she really does think I’m the best friend in the world and for me, in my heart that is enough, even if she doesn’t remember what she told me the next day. I’m here for everyone and I like it, till the names blurred last night and I wanted to know who I am in love with and if I am in love at all and I had no answer because of so many names in the same list, each a promising candidate of my affections and a brilliant soul.

So I put my internet off, and I slept.