The girl begone at Bandra Station.

Previously:
The Awaking of Abar
Encounter at Mahim Creek
The Flight of the Rain Dragons
The Rise of Arcana

Ariana felt a shudder run down her spine as she stood at the weighing machine at Bandra Station near the ticket counter, over on the West Side. The air seemed to grow colder around her. She crossed her arms hoping to find some warmth as she thought over the message. She absent-mindedly felt the thick cardboard weight card around its edges as she looked around her. A group of college girls walked by, jeans rolled up to avoid getting them wet in the little streams of murky brown water just outside station. The station floor itself was made of concrete, wet because of the many feet walking over it. The ticket counters had long lines of people, now getting impatient, yelling at anybody who tried to barge in. At the other end of the long queues were railway employees working almost like machines she imagined, accepting money, punching tickets, handing out the tickets and the change. She spotted a woman walking over and talking to another woman in the ticket queue, probably asking her to get her and her little daughter a ticket, so they would not have to wait in the line. The beggar with no arms was sitting against the wall of the ticket counter, wearing thick rimmed glasses, an empty bowl and a few meager possessions around him. She saw him pull them closer to him with arms that were stubs at the elbows. A beggar woman with tired face and dirty clothes sat against the walls of the room where the ticket counters were located. Her little girl child wore no clothes except for a black string tied around her waist, cried incessantly and had a runny nose. Outside the station was a sea of colorful umbrellas. The men had the black umbrellas, except for an occasional male with a colorful umbrella. People walked carefully trying to avoid the frames of the umbrellas around from getting into their eyes. A woman in a floral print saree and a right red blouse stood next to Ariana, her eyes on the street like she was waiting for somebody. A little child held her hand and looked around with curiosity, her eyes settling first on Ariana and then the weighing machine's lights. Nobody would notice her now, Ariana thought. She read the message one final time and then looked straight into the machine, at the red and white patterns within it. She silently uttered some words that were drowned in the constant din at the station. The little girl cried, "Look Mama! Girl be gone!". But the mother kept looking at the street, waiting for her husband to arrive with growing impatience.

And so I learned to work hard.

Once we got the time table for the final exams at school, Mummy would stick the exam time table on the fridge door. On that was the exam schedule all in Mummy's clear handwriting. We would solve multiple tests that she made by looking at the previous years exam papers. These papers were xeroxed by Daddy at work. Daddy worked six days a week. Each morning he would have to leave at 9 am, and very rarely would he be back before 9 pm. Sometimes I would stand in the window and wait for him to arrive home. I would try to look into buses that passed by on the main road closeby looking urgently at the buses as they went by. The bus stop itself was out of sight from the window of the house. But the buses were too far away to say if he was in some bus or not. People in the window seats of the bus sat with their arms resting on the window rods and any recognition would be lost in their uniformity. And then from the corner of the street would emerge a man wearing a white shirt and carrying a black briefcase. As he walked along the sidewalk and approached the building, he would look up at the window and wave back. I wonder how many times he looked up to find nobody waiting. I wonder how it would have felt. I wonder what it takes to be working 12 hours a day and to return with a smile and say a gleeful "Happdu" to children who pounce on the door to open it.

The exams would go by ever so slowly. Each day would appear to be like a mountain to scale, I wondered aloud to Mummy one day. She said, but your father and I have such mountains to scale each day. I know this to be true, because I could see Daddy working relentlessly to keep the house functioning. I could see Mummy sitting at the wall mounted "secretary desk" or the writing table as we called it and writing down whatever was spent that day. If I went to get vegetables, I would have to recite how much I got each kind of vegetable for. The cost of tomatoes, potatoes, onions, pumpkins, brinjals, spinach, cauliflowers, lady's fingers and corriander would come spilling out of my memory and form words on the paper of the 'hisaab' or the accounts she kept. Sometimes at night I would lie in bed and hear them talk. They often discussed how they were barely making ends meet. Mummy always wanted Daddy to ask for a better salary, but he was always hesistant to.

Watching the struggle of one's parents always works in making children want to work harder. Yes, the exams were difficult, but not as difficult as going all over Bombay in the summer heat, wearing worn shoes, carrying a heavy briefcase and traveling in crowded local trains and buses, having a lunch of roti and potatoes in a public place and coming back home at 9, only to be leaving within 12 hours for work again, in which one has to eat dinner with family, spend time with children, sleep, shower and then leave again, and so on for six days in a row, so when Sunday arrives you are so tired that by the time you are beginning to feel rested it is Sunday evening already and a week looms ahead just as difficult as the last and there is no end in sight because this will continue because the children are little and they need to go to school, so we need a constant income, and so we can wait till the children grow up, and so weeks go on and the continue into months, and those into years.

But all the children see a Sunday is as the day when we wake up in the morning Daddy is up already, we know because we heard him flipping the pages of the newspaper, and this is just one day of the week when he can lie in bed and read the newspaper. Perhaps he will take us to the fish market to get some pompret, and on the way back we will stop at the pani puri place and share a plate of pani puri, after which we will have a Mangola, but when we get home remember this is a secret from Mummy because we are not allowed to have unhygenic pani puri. And then perhaps in the evening we can watch the movie they show on Sundays on Doordarshan before we go to bed. And all this he did often enough for me to have memories of happy Sundays after two decades.

So even when I was little, I worked hard. I had the examples of my parents to follow.

The First

The first time Ariana met Arya, it was in a dream. Arya walked her home that night. As they walked down the empty street with the wet asphalt reflecting the lights, all they could hear was the sound of the rain. They danced under a street light and they walked - his arms around her, her arms around his, like carefree lovers lost in time. All she remembered were his eyes, as they looked into hers, and his warmth as they walked home. When she woke up the sky had descended to the earth again, the clouds were all grey and low, and the rain lashed out again. As she lay in bed listening to the sound of the rain, the memories from a time she did not know, all rushed back to her, engulfed her, and denied her the right to exist anywhere else, but in his memories. If this was the first dream she had about him, she could not say.

Ariana walked down the sloping, narrow street recalling the dream, recalling the other times she had met Arya in a land away from consciousness, but the memories eluded her. When she thought she remembered one detail, the other details slipped away. When she remembered his eyes, she forgot his words. When she remembered his words, she forgot his voice. She remembered asking him - when will we meet again, in another life? And he said - in another dream. The rain began to fall fast, and she stood under the shelter of a flower shop waiting for it to pass. The rain fell on the roof of the flower shop and ran down it's slope falling in one steady stream of water onto the sidewalk. The flowers were set outside the flowershop in bright red plastic buckets. The little lavender flowers were coated with tiny drops of rain water that had blown on them. She picked up a bunch of them, paid for them inside the shop to the shopkeeper who smiled at her and gave her some more flowers, because they went well with her lavender dress, he said. She stood outside the shop and waited for the rain to pass again. Now the rain formed tiny droplets that ran down the slope of the roof. The tiny droplets blended into one formed bigger drops and fell to the sidewalk. The rain had nearly passed, and Ariana began to walk up the street again. The rain water ran along the sides of the tiny stones of the cobbled sidewalks, forming tiny rivers around tiny mountains made of stone. Ariana looked at this miniature landscape unfold at her feet as she walked.

Somebody bumped into her, the flowers fell on the street and scattered over the cobblestones. She tried to pick them up right away before they were trampled on. The man who bumped into her helped her pick the flowers, apologizing. He was dressed in an old fashioned black suit, and a black hat. When she saw how pale his hands were, as he picked another flower off the street for her, she knew he did not belong to this place. An Englishman, she thought. She looked at his face, and into his eyes and he looked back. Words, voice and face merged into one. And then time stopped.

Remembering Home

My sisters's idea of a perfect day was the house to be clean. And in this clean house, she would sit on the divan by the window and read a book. The house was not too big to clean. It was a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom and a toilet in six hundred square feet of space. If 600 square feet was the carpet area or the actual space, I do not know. The carpet area would mean the space outside the main door too, which we shared with our immediate neighbors. This apartment was one among the eight apartments on the sixth floor of Chetna. The building had seven floors in all. Eight, if you counted the ground floor too. Out of the eight apartments on each floor, four of these were one bedroom apartments, two were two bedroom apartments and the poorer two were no-bedroom apartments. But the people in no-bedroom apartments had their kitchens moved to a smaller and narrower part of their apartment and then converted their kitchens to bedrooms. Identical sized families lived in these apartments, and had found variations to make their homes more spacious. On the fifth floor, in a one bedroom apartment, the jewelery stores owning Parui's had merged the bathroom and the toilet to a single room, moved the kitchen to the former bathroom, and made a bedroom out of the former kitchen, complete with a fancy glass bathroom in the corner. We giggled wondering how somebody could shower in a glass bathroom that was in a bedroom. Or in case of the merged bathroom and toilet room, what if somebody was in the shower and you had to go to the bathroom real bad. On the first floor, the Gangollis had converted their side by side two bedroom apartments into a single four bedroom apartment with a gigiantic living room, in which lived two brothers, with their mother, wives and two children each. One of their neighbors was Ms. Lisboa, a lady from Switzerland who never lived in Chetna. She would come to India occasionally and get Swiss chocolates for the Gangollis perhaps in gratitude for watching their apartment. Another neighbor of the Gangollis were the Patels. They lived in a no-bedroom apartment, seven of them, Mr. and Ms. Patel, with four children and Mr. Patel's father. He was an old man only outsiders paid attention to. He knew the tables until 32, he said. I shamefully admitted I only knew them till 12, and I was a little weak in the nine times table. He was also the one who told me how lizards were important because they ate the mosquitoes that came into the house during the monsoons. But nothing in the world could make me think kindly about lizards. The wall lizards or the geckos they were called. They crept into the house when nobody was looking, and hid behind the paintings in the house. Not that we had too many paintings in the house. There was an oil pastel painting of a boat at sunset that a relative who collected antiques in Hyderabad had given to my parents. It was beautiful, and that was the only real painting in the house. There was the Gita Saar on shiny pink paper stuck on the kitchen wall, next to black wooden board that had the Panjatan's names painted on it. Once I learned Hindi in school, I could read the Gita Saar script. It said nice things like you should not mourn the loss of something you never made. When I lost the Sheffer ink pen in school, this phrase from the Gita Saar would give me great comfort. It was behind the supposedly antique painting that a lizard in the house would hide. Then it would show up after sunset when the mosquitoes and moths would hover around the fluorescent tubelights in the house. It would eat unsuspecting mosquitoes and sometimes to my dismay the moths too. The moths would put up a struggle, but it was pointless to try to save them once the lizard got them because they would die anyway. And there were other times when we were paid visits by flying coackroaches, green grasshoppers the size of a hand, and the elusive praying mantis that sat on the door for hours and took off without saying goodbyes. The lighting in the house was by fluorescent tubelights. When me and my sister stood in the window and gazed at the houses in the opposite building, across the street and less than ten meters away, we often spoke about how pretty yellow lights made the houses look cozy. We didn't like tubelights too much, but tubelights were practical, low on electricity and good for the eyes our parents said. But there were special events, like when we had relatives over from Hyderabad, that we would use the chandelier in the center of the living room. It was made of pretty glass crystals, each the size of a thumb, which I learned much later were not real diamonds. It had six bulbs in it, yellow and cosy, just like the houses we saw in the opposite building. The apartment faced the road mostly, except for the bedroom which was cross-ventilated as my mother proudly said. The dust that gathered on the chandeliers would have to be cleaned before the relatives came over. Out would come the wooden stool, a tall step up ladder with a single step and twice as high as a regular ladder. Up would climb mother, and down would come the chandelier in parts, each little glass crown that went over each of the bulbs, had to be precariously balanced as she climbed down the stool. The living room was the biggest room in the house. It was an eighteen feet by ten feet room with pistachio green walls, one wall curiously a darker green than the others. The floor tiles in the entire house were ivory colored mosaic tiles with colorful specs in them. All except for the kitchen tiles which were gret mosaic and had black and white specs in them. When you entered the main door, the windows were to the left, the darker green wall to the right, and straight ahead was a corridor, with a doors to the kitchen, then the bathroom and then the toilet to the left, and finally at the end of it was the door to the bedroom. The living room had two ceiling fans in it, and their switches had gigantic rectangular regulators to go. They had turned into a pale yellow color, and had blackened near the vents, and no amount of scrubbing would make them look otherwise. The windows had wooden frames and the window panes were glass. There were four such window panes that opened outward, and were secured by little hook and loop contraptions we called hinges. If a window was left unsecured, the wind could possibly make it crash inwards and scatter glass over the floor. They had wooden railings so children who climbed the window sill could be secured, a horizontal wooden rod ran horizontally across the length of the window through the center of vision. And coming downward from this rod were tiny vertical lathe-carved wooden rods. The windows were the hardest to clean before the relatives arrived. They would have to cleaned with newspaper because newsprint at polishing glass clean. One would also have to be careful to not use the newspaper that came in the same day, or newspapers which were stowed away because they had some articles in them that mother wanted to save. Cleaning the insides of the window was not too difficult, but to clean the outside, one would have to lean over and clean until mother saw and ordered us to not lean over so much. We never complained about cleaning windows, because we had always seen her clean windows when we were too little to even reach over the window to peek outside. The vertical striped maroon and white curtains were not washed too often, because they were difficult to wash by hand in the bathroom, wring and then to dry on the nylon ropes tied outside the window. The nylon ropes ran left to right outside the window, and clothes would be hung out to dry and secured by clothes pegs. If the clothes were left unsecured, they would fall off onto the parapet, then would have to be pulled back up using the long stick with a hook at its end made out of a hair clip. If they fell over the parappet and landed on the parapets of any of the five floors below, we'd have to figure out which floor it was on and then go ring their doorbell. From the window you could see the street, which got busier as time went by. In the center of the street ran a divider, where you would stop while crossing the street and always change the direction you were looking in. On either sides of the street were stores, or shops as we called them, under each building. The shop owners were the commercial residents of the building. On the opposite side and to the left was New Grand Stores and they sold groceries, books and stationary. They also fed jowari to pigeons in the area in the center of the street.The most beautiful thing about the windows in the living room were the pelmets that held the curtains. They were wooden, and intricately carved in Hyderabad, brought over when my parents were married and moved to Bombay. The sill of the window was marble, a darkish kind with thick black zigzags at random spots in it. On one of the eighteen feet walls, the one on the side of the door were the major seating arrangements. A divan, with a pink mattress on it whose springs you could hear if you sat down too hard on it. It had carved wooden legs similar to the rods in the window. Next to it was a sofa, a couch with a storage in it's back rest. In the storage in its back we would put school textbooks. The sofa could also be pulled out somewhat, enough to have a person sleep on it. On the wall opposite to this sofa and the divan was something you can probably find in the houses in Bombay. Wall mounted shelves. From Indoors, my mother proudly said, bought in 1979. They were solid and wooden, and hung off on long nails that went through the five vertical wooden mounting strips on the wall. There was a 'writing unit' whose front you could open into a little desk. It had shelves in it and a little drawer to put more important things like house keys. On the top of the writing unit were two light green wine glasses, a white vase with bright flowers painted on it and in it too. There was a 'show case' which held the Lady Birds classics and Enid Blyton book collection. A book shelf which held the World Book Encyclopedia collection sold to us by one of our two-bedroom owning neighbors the DCostas for 12,000 Rupees. Each book cost a little less than a thousand rupees. This thought never left us and we always referenced them carefully and put them right back in place. A fold-out dining table, with some more storage space in it, in which would go the school books. A set of three drawers, one for each one of us to put school books in. The top drawer was my brothers, the second one my sisters and the lowest one was mine. All of them were lined with colored newspaper from the Sunday Review, with an attempt to have the most attractive animal or flower pictures face upwards. And finally there was the 'ashurkhana' or the prayer space, a one foot wide and half foot tall shelf, in the top rightmost corner of the wall with shelves, with sliding doors. Over the ashurkhana were two Qurans. One in an attractive green cloth case with gold embroidery, and the other with a simple pink cloth case. Inside the Ashurkhana was a picture was Hazrat Ali, eventually hidden behind other things because somebody said it was not allowed to have a picture representation of Hazrat Ali. Also in it was a little toy glass cupboard which belonged to my grandmother when she was little, and various prayer beads and books. Over the door was a holgraphic looking sticker that said 'Say Ya Ali', but had nearly disappeared when my father polished the furniture in the house one Sunday. The shade was a little off, to say the least so all the cabinets were atleast a shade darker at the end of the day. To the left of the cabinets was a wooden TV trolley, with a TV that my parents had purchased during the first Asian games. It had tweleve channels, and all the channel buttons could fit on a single remote. On the last wall, which was to the right when you entered through the main door were five wooden chairs, all lined up against the wall. They could be pulled to be used wherever one wished, at the writing unit or at the dining table. That was the living room, and this is how it appreared when us five would live there. Then would come the grandmothers. My paternal grandmother, called Dada, would use the divan when she lived with us, and often she would be accompanied by my maternal grandmother Nani who would use the sofa. They would set up little shops of their own over the cabinets. Jasmine scented hair oil, a comb, supari nuts, a supari nut cracker an Urdu newspaper Inquilab Times or Shama Magazine would be in Dada's shop.Various prayer books, a braid of false hair, a comb and a red and white alarm clock would be in Nani's shop. Dada would live off her suitcase stowed under her divan for however long she stayed, and Nani would use the storage behind the sofa, displacing our books. In the kitchen was a marble platform, with storage above it and below it. On it was a Nikitasha kitchen stove that operated on a gas cylinder. There were two gas cylinders, and when one ran out, the other had be plugged in. But not before the first one was shaken to make sure all the gas in it was used. Sure enough, upon shaking it the blue flame of the stove would grow stronger and the once thought empty cylinder could be used to cook another meal. The empty cylinder was eventually replaced by the Bharat Petroelum gas cylinder delivery man, and its receipt confirmed on a bright yellow card. Near the window of the kitchen was the sink that ran only cold water even in the coldest winter. Often when I left for school, and walked on the street below my mother would wave to me as she did the dishes. Once the dishes were washed they were stored in the steel cage over the sink that held dishes with a clang. Under the sink was the area where detergent and the kitchen sink plunger were stored. On the wall opposite to the marble platform was another storage unit with shelves in it. The corridor between the living room and the bedroom, or the passage as we called it had a tubelight on one of its walls and a nightlight in the center. The next door after the kitchen door to the left was the bathroom door. It was a wooden door whose base had started to grow black because of the continual exposure to water in spite of the aluminum sheet it had nailed into it on the inside. It had a thick glass window right on the top of the door, but you could not see through it though. There were two pin point holes in the center of the door, because somebody had tried to nail a soap dish on the inside of the door. In the bathroom was a geyser that we used to get warm water in the cold winter days. The hot water came through a tap though and not the shower. The shower was not used too much, most baths were taken with water from a bucket using a little plastic mug with a handle. Mugs whose handles broke were used as a water dish for the cat. The bathroom was tiled half way down the wall and on the floor. On the center of the floor was a big, black marble slab to bang clothes against during a wash to make them clean. There were two little stools to sit on when you had a bath, one light blue and the other light green. They looked like giant dice. Also there was a black glass shelf on which my fathers shaving equipment was stored, and shampoo, when we first started using shampoo. The toilet was the next room, and it was tiled similar to the bathroom. It was an 'Indian style' toilet, over which you would squat. With arms reach was a bucket full of water and a mug. Also next to the bucket was a metal kettle-shaped container filled with water or the lotha. I would often play with the water in the bucket and use the mug to fill up the lotha to the brim . I would watch the water pour out of its spout. Then I would empty it a little, and try to put water through its spout to see if it would overflow through the brim. After the lotha was used for its real purpose, you could flush the toilet by pulling a chain attached to an overhead metal tank. Sometimes the tank would decide to pour some water on you through the small opening it had on its top front. To go to the toilet, one would wear the 'toilet slippers', blue and white Bata flips flops to fit my fathers' foot. Then one would wash hands at the washbasin, which was in passage, between the bathroom and the toilet doors. It was thick porcelain and said 'Neycer' just under the tap in a tiny, cursive blue font. On the wall over it, was a mirror in a black plastic frame that had a tiny tubelight on the top, that never worked for as long as I can remember. On the opposite side of the wash basin, was a small window, set high up in the wall. This was the most difficult to clean window, because one would have to stand up on the stool, and it was difficult to get the outsides clean. Also, the kitchen windows of the immediate neighbours the Nanavaty's was just to the right, and I would often get caught peeking into their kitchen when somebody walked into it. I'd pretend to be cleaning windows and not notice them. And then at the end of the passage was the bedroom. It was smaller than the living room, about 10 feet by 10 feet, and had windows on the left and the right. It was bright at any given time of the day. You could see the sun rise over the buildings across the street and set over the building next to ours. From the window you could not see the street from, you could see the parking lot of the building next to ours and watch children play in it. It was the second of the other windows that had clothes lines running outside it. On the parapet of this window was a little plastic tub tied with a string to the wndow pane, filled with water for the birds. From here you could see the apartments in the neighboring building, less than 6 meters away to your left. But it opened out to the front, and you could see the heads of coconut trees, and further ahead were three floored buildings whose terraces you could look over, and finally the horizon, where the sky swooped down and touched the buildings, apart from one tall building called Quarter Deck which seemed to touch the sky. In the bedroom itself, there were two huge square beds, joined lengthwise, and ran across the wall. I am not sure wha size they were, but now that I think back they were full sized beds with coir mattresses. My parents slept on one bed, and the three of us slept on the other. When we began to grow up me and my sister would share a bed, and my brother was moved to a cotton filled roll-away mattress or a 'gadda'. This mattress was made by the matrress maker or the 'gaddi-walla' in one of the shops on our side of the street under the neighboring building. The mattress would be rolled away during the day and kept on our side of the bed, and made into a makeshift bed for the cat. Within the beds was a storage area, in which were stored family albums and more books. Come summer and out they would come, by opening the storage under the bed which was a long affair. The mattress had to be rolled over, and the storage opened. Then the mattress had to be rolled back and the bedsheets spread neatly without a wrinkle on it. The bedroom had one cieling fan in the center, and two tubelights. To the left of the bedroom door were two cupboards, Godrej cupboards they were. One was the 'new almirah' and the other the 'old almirah'. The old almirah made loud creaking sounds when opened. We each were allotted a shelf to store our neatly folded clothes in. Everybody's underwear and handkerchiefs were stored in a single shelf. The only place to hang clothes in the old almirah was used to hang my father's work shirts and pants. His socks were hung on the rod on the inside of the cupboard door. In the new almirah was a lot of hanging space, and only important clothes were stored there. My mother's saree collection was in there, but she rarely wore them. Sometimes she would bring them out and us three would gaze at them in admiration touching their soft fabric. The most beautiful of them was her wedding saree which was red with a gold embroidery all over. I remember how sad we all were when she gave it to our second cousin for her wedding in Hyderabad, with many other beautiful sarees. Both the cupboards also had 'safes' within them, little shelves with doors you could lock. The old almirah's safe had nothing significant in it except for bills. The new almirah's safe held some jewelery from my mothers wedding, and a ring of my paternal grandfather with his initials in it. It had pictures in it of my father in a striped blue shirt, from a time I did not remember. It also held a bottle of perfume called Nancy, which my mother's brother had bought for her from Saudi Arabia. The almirahs had carboards under their base to evenly balance them on the floor. Over the cupboards things could be stored all the way upto the roof. We usually stored suitcases there, to be pulled out on our next trip to Hyderabad, or Nani's suitcase when she was over. The pelmets for the curtains in the bedroom were simple wooden ones without any carvings. The curtains were maroon and worn out for most part. When we closed them on afternoons we napped, they would make the bedroom look maroon. You could watch reflections of people walking by on the street on the roof through the small openings on the top of the pelmets where the curtains did not stop the sunlight, an interesting thing that sunlight did. In these reflections you could watch the cars on the street. And amid the constant sound of cars and crows, children playing in the parking lot of the neighboring building and the cool air being blow downwards by the ceiling fan making a constant sound, one could sleep the soundest sleep ever. On winter nights we would huddle up inside a black woolen blanket with red, blue and cream lines running across it, and peek through the little tears they had until the lights went out. My father would say a short prayer, and we kids would all chime in. He would clap thrice, and he said that the evil spirits would not dare to come to any place where this clapping sound was heard. Perhaps he said this to reassure us so we would not be scared at night. We would then say another short prayer for all the dead in the world. Finally we would say Shab-e-Khair and lie down in our sleeping spaces or 'addas' as we called them. Often our father would tell us stories of his childhood in Amravati, and gradually we would go to sleep, as the car sounds on the street outside faded away. The lights in the apartments in the opposite building would go off, one by one, each house having its own story to tell.

The Rise of Arcana

For eons Arcana had waited in the murky waters surrounding the island city. Every midnight she rose her slimy torso out of its depths and gazed at the city lights. Not with kindness though, with the combination of the most unimaginable rage and envy. A gaze that could freeze humans if they could ever saw her and then set them ablaze. But humans had long become immune to perception, and they relied only on what their eyes saw and what their ears heard. So the strange fear they witnessed while walking down streets in the heart of the night was not only the killing of the innocent that had happened in the past few years. It was the gaze of Arcana, that grew stronger as their hearts became more fearful of their own wrong doings. As more blood spewed on the streets the more powerful Arcana became.

Finally Arcana had completed her transformation. She could soar in the sky too, just like Abar and the other rain dragons. And so she stood in their way as they began their journey to the lands north west, that took them first over the city that was their home, then they rose over the mountains, flew past the rivers, past the farms where Abar was considered Holy and so on, until they turned into a gentle wind that blows over the seas, and found their way back to their dwellings in Bombay. They hovered over the city, spreading in all directions to distract Arcana's gaze. But as they hovered overhead, it continued to rain incessantly. Gradually Bombay came to a grinding halt.

Ariana stood at the railway station, which by now was in complete chaos. The heavy rains had delayed the trains, and the number of people waiting at the platforms increased with each passing second. She fished her pocket for coins, and then walked
across the bridge to the weighing machines at the ticket counter. The weighing machines had lights in them on a board that spun around to make dizzying patterns. She stood at the pedestal of the weighing machine and put in two coins, still mesmerized by the patters the lights made. Out came the weight card. Weight: 55 kgs. But this is not what she wanted to see. She quickly flipped the card around, to read the fortune printed on the back.

Make haste. A creature most loathsome waylays us.

The Flight of the Rain Dragons

Ariana walked down the street, gripped by nostalgia again, its winding tentacles sensing her weakness and grabbing her tighter, pulling her harder down a memory path. She fought, using all her strength, kicking at the monster to save her life. But suddenly, she was left alone, the monster had gone. She got up, dusted her clothes, and here she was in wonderland.

A winding road awaited her, and with each step she was pulled back further into time. She sees the gray clouds in the sky, a few birds fighting a gust of wind, mothers hurrying up home with their kids before the storm began, the loafers just standing around, maybe because they have no place to hurry back to. The shopkeeper sets out a blue tarpaulin so that his grains don't get drenched in an unexpected shower, the tarpaulin catches the wind and make an angry flapping sound, wanting to be set free, wanting to fly, almost like it would cease to exist if it were chained to those cold, colorless poles for any longer. Watching the tarpaulin, Ariana is transformed to a little girl, sitting in class, watching the blue tarpaulin on the balcony of the adjoining building. It is monsoon, school has just begun. It always began on 14th June. Everybody has been assigned partners, some accepted theirs happily some with sulking faces. New books are opened, there were always those few who had not covered their books, the cardboard having a picture of a vintage vehicle, there were those who had covered it with the schools brown paper with no plastic, and there were those with brown paper, plastic and labels with names neatly printed over them. The ten guidelines for parents printed on the back of the brown cover, and a tiny angel holding on to the papyrus. And how many times has she tried to trace the angel out on the first page of her "My Rough Book". With the pretty sunflower her mother has drawn on the first page, it could not have been anybody else's but hers, the 'my' was unrequired. The new books smell different, the smell becomes synonymous with new beginnings, with monsoons, with times when the sky gets hijacked with clouds, and the girl sits in class watching the blue tarpaulin flap. The attendance is taken, everybody having a different style of responding to roll numbers. There are those who did not remember them at all, and had to be nudged by their partners, at which they stand upright and say present miss a couple of times just to make sure they were marked followed by giggles. There are those who said "Present Teacher", like they were in kindergarten, there are the prim "Present Misses", and there are the cooler "Present Ma'ams". The teacher then starts the class, turning towards the boards and reading the thought for the day, glancing approvingly at the girl who wrote them. You sat right behind if you were among the taller ones, and you could hear the teacher from the next class as well, sometimes teaching the same thing as your teacher. As she sits in class, playing with her new magnetic pencil box with WWF characters on it, Macho Man and Jake the Snake Robot, she thinks about what her mother would be doing back home, and what is in her lunchbox. She imagines herself sitting in the window at home holding the wooden bars and watching the rain, a new idea for a motorized boat forming itself in her head. Classes fly by, and soon it is recess time, and there is a bun with jam and sugar for lunch. Children run everywhere, yelling for no reason, until the bell rings. Hushed silence follows the shrill sound of the bell. Like obedient ants, everybody stands in straight lines for their class numbers to be announced so they can march back to class. Nails are checked for being too long, girls are pulled out, for wearing nailpaint, for not tying their hair up, for socks that were rolled all the way down, for talking, for almost anything. But that was in winter, in the rains lunch was eaten in the corridor outside with colorful raincoats hanging to be dried, heavy smell of plastic looming in the air. When the bell rang for the recess to end, people walked into their classes without the assembly, and classes resumed. One class followed the other and it was time for the evening prayers to be said and time to go home. One class followed another, one day followed another, one monsoon followed another and soon there were too many monsoons to remember.

The memories were all blurred, except on days like these. On days when it rains, each day emerges from the fog, wanting to be remembered, wanting to be lived again. Rains always bring sadness with them, and memories. Ariana knew this was the bewitchment of the rain dragons, and she like any other was not immune to their magic. She looked skyward. The clouds disappeared from her vision and just as she had imagined, she saw Abar the rain dragon fly overhead, safely over the cover of clouds. Abar was not the only one, but from among the first, the oldest and the wisest of the rain dragons. From other parts of the city, arose others like him. In places unimaginable they lived - in Banganga Tank, under the Hanging Gardens, in the Kanheri Caves, under the rocks by the sea, and one right in the tree in the Governor's backyard. They flew in unision, each flap of their wings sending waves of nostalgia among the people. Beautiful and graceful creatures they were, from the days of old, and always hidden to the human eyes they remained unless they were humans from the days of the dragons. The rose gently over the hills and looked at the people under the clouds with kindness.

Then something went wrong, stopping Abar and the others from taking their regular journey to the land far away in the North Eastern part of the world. Over the murky waters of Mahim creek loomed Arcana.

Recreating a Dream

I miss those 8 O' clock traffic jams, with the sun glinting on cars, kids in buses, the usual rush not to miss the 8:31 train, shops opening up, that sound of shutters as they are rolled up, the gradual waking up of a city which hasn't rested since years. I miss winter mornings in mumbai, waking up for an early class at dadar, walking out of the building watching the watchman sleep comfortably with a maroon sweater and monkey cap, milk men on cycles with cans clanging against each other, stray dogs barking at the rag picker trying to make an early start, everything in shades of blue. I miss the background sounds, people speaking in marathi, secret conversations of girls in the local trains, the conductors coaxing the passengers to move in and create space in the bus, announcements on railway platforms, aunties discussing which prayers are more effective, little babies smiling around at everybody, men swearing at each other in street fights, my window seat on the ladies' seat of the bus. I miss my evenings of solitude at the beach, watching the reflection of clouds on golden sand. I miss those rainy afternoons, when I would sit in class, smell of fresh books, new compass box, watching the rain fall and wondering what mummy would be doing at home. I miss those afternoons spent in the college library, completing assignments in silence. I miss reading ads in local trains, offering solutions for everything from piles to elongated earlobes. I miss the rush of the wind on my face as I threw caution away and stood at the door of a fast local train, the camera in my hand, the comforting khrr sound as I clicked a picture. I miss traveling on roads with cables running overhead. I miss watching powerlines against the evening sky. I miss walking on those familiar roads, knowing where to watch out for the stone or stub my toe. (repeated from: Sept 2006)

They always said I saw the city through rose colored glasses, but I never did. There was something beautiful, something inspirational everywhere. Something to make one stop and stare, and then think about later. A simple trip to college on a foggy Republic Day morning would make one spend the rest of the day in introspection. But perhaps it is pointless to miss Bombay, because it is not the same anymore. It can never be the same. Some places can get permanently scarred in ones memory. Can one get a happy picture once again, with the Taj in the backdrop and not think about the bloodshed? Perhaps it is possible, but then would that be right?

So I attempt to recreate a Bombay in words from memories of the time I spent there. Bombay was never as beautiful as it was in January 2008. Fantastic Bombay. That is what my Bombay is. Call it exceptionally good. Or call it unrealistic. Perhaps foolish. Or maybe it treads the fine line between reality and fantasy.

Encounter at Mahim Creek

The train pulled into Bandra Station. At Bandra girls in low slung hipsters blended in with the women in sarees, modern nose rings blended in with the traditional ones, trampstamps blended in with traditional tattoos, in a mixture that would be a visual delight to a compulsive etnologist. Voices mixed with each other as did languages to create a comfortable din. Ariana stood by the door holding on to the yellow door handle with her left hand, facing the direction in which the train was moving, hair flying in the wind. She listened to the conversations around her, putting together the words to learn about the lives of people, who perhaps she would never see again. The girls discussed classes and tests, crushes and clothes. The women discussed jobs, mother-in-laws, recipes and children. The children were the only ones who did not talk. They looked outside the windows, their keen eyes taking everything in. Once in a while they looked around the compartment, unwittingly staring at anybody who caught their attention. They handed out shy smiles to anybody who smiled at them. Then there were the handkerchief sellers selling handkerchiefs for prices everybody thought were a steal, but tried to bargain anyway. Then there were the earring sellers, who sold shiny glass earrings to college girls who tried them on and asked their friends how they looked. Then there was the eight year old girl playing a harmonium too heavy for her, strapped around her neck. Dhara was her name, and she played her brother's harmonium to make some money to go to school.

The train took a bridge over a creek, there was a distinct change in the rhythm of the trains - the metallic click-clack sounds the train made began to sound hollow. The horizon opened up to reveal a creek with mangroves, a pipeline running parallel to the tracks on one side and Bandra West on the other. An unmistakable stench overtook the compartment. Where it came from, nobody knew, except that it arose from the waters the train was going over. The water in the creek itself was of an indistinguishable color, murky and dangerous looking. What lay under it, nobody knew. In the train, conversations become hushed and smiles nearly disppeared.

And then people started dumping their secrets into the creek. Hands snaked out of the windows and the doors of the train to drop mysterious parcels into the creek. Flowers for a God they worshipped but had lost faith in, letters with words of love that were no longer true, finely printed prayers that had never been said, old shoes, anything that they did not need, they threw into the creek. The objects fell on the surface of the thick water and sank. The train moved on, conversations were resumed.

Invisible to the human eyes, from the murky depths of the water arose Arcana - a damned creature. It survived on those very secrets people dropped into the water, and it's power grew as people continued to lose faith. It raised it's slime-coated arms skywards, and opened it's mouth in a silent scream that would freeze the heart of anybody who heard it. Only Ariana turned and looked at it and it looked back at her with bright red eyes that receeded as the train picked up speed. She could sense that beyond the superficial fabric of normalacy, people were shaken on the inside by what their souls heard but they did not. She looked at Dhara who smiled a serendipitous smile. Dhara then began to play a strange tune and sang a song of love and happiness that put people's hearts at peace. The train slowly pulled into Mahim Station.

The Advent of the Fancy Eraser

I remember them saying the word globalization. It was all over the place. On Doordarshan, in the verandah gossip and even at school. I do not understand what this globe word is, I thought as I spun the inflatable globe we had on it's tilted axis. Faster and faster till the whole world was a blur. The geography teacher Ms Rebecca clarified this one day. She said it meant that we would have nicer erasers available in shops. Sure enough I realized the change the next time I was at "New Grand Stores" with my mother to buy stationery. (No, there never was an "Old Grand Stores"). There were many colorful erasers to choose from. Each one had a different smell. They were soft, even if you rubbed them hard against the paper, you would not leave an ugly hole in it. Nor would you leave black smudges. There were also fancy pencils, not just the black and red Natraj or the Pinky pencil with pink flowers on it to choose from. "Howdy Lady" were the pencils we bought. They were not 'kaccha' pencils - you would not break the lead by accidentally dropping it on the floor. At another time, Mummy bought me a sharpener for Rs 25 from Step In. I felt guilty for days together that such an expensive sharpener had to be bought for me. Afterall, my siblings were in secondary and wrote with ink-pens. This was the nice sharpener that would always stay home and could be carried to school only during exams. Then at another time, my sister bought something that a six year old hallucinates about. It was the fanciest thing you could own in school. It cost Rs 8, but if you got beyond the price, you could appreciate how lovely it was. Why, it was a three-in-one! It was a rectangular beauty, with an eraser, a sharpener and a brush to get rid of eraser residue - all in one! I carried it to school, and it sat proudly at the corner of my desk for every period. A realization of how lovely this globalization thing was.

Hindi to English translation of the day:
kaccha = raw

Samantha Fox

And then Samantha Fox came to India. Why, I do not remember, just as I do not remember when. What I do remember is opening the Sunday Review on a Sunday morning and seeing a picture of a 'foreign lady' splashed on the front page. She had golden hair and light eyes and she stared back from her two dimensional world, completely unaffected by the low neckline of her leopard print top in a blatant display of cleavage. I flipped the newspaper around in horror, less Mummy-Daddy think I had been seeing her picture. How is it that she doesn't feel shy with clothes like that, I thought. This was ofcourse discussed in school the next day. Sharon said, Samantha Fox was "like that only" and she was even naked in some show. Naked! I tried to not look embarrassed with Sharon using bad words like that. Afterall, did it not mean somebody who did not wear clothes. Oh, how terrible. I wondered if they would have a picture of her from that concert the next Sunday. I drew a picture that day in school, just another girl with sickly arms to her side and knock knees, a blunt cut and extra big eyes like Sridevi. After I had completed the picture, I drew a line beginning awkwardly at the middle of her chest and then running down into the invisibility offered by her stiff yet frilly frock. I looked at the drawing, tilting my head at different angles, then hurriedly crumpled my blasphemous creation and threw it in the dustbin with the pencil shavings.