This Day, That Age

And then there are those who love a good contest. Stiff competitions are what keep them pumped. Not me. I say this neither with conceit nor guilt. It is just the way I have learnt to perceive things over a period of time.

There is something about contests and competitions that make me shrink back. Something that makes me feel I am giving short shrift to my craft.

There is something inherent about contests that curtails my creativity. It robs my freedom to gambol on the page. It makes me shift my focus from my job at hand to what will ensue, and that is a great distraction. I feel that unwittingly I will compromise my creative integrity and natural manner of doing things.

It is not the fear of not making the cut and taking the trophy home. I have instituted my own trophies and medals. My winning moment is when I punch in the last word of my story or article and sign it off. That way I win with every piece, you see.

However, there is one contest that will remain a milestone in my life because it was in that moment I realised what great things I was capable of doing, if only I wanted them. Now, ‘wanting’ is an operative word in any endeavour. A majority of things don’t land in our kitty because we have not willed or wanted them intensely. We will set that topic aside for another day.

It was one of my earliest pieces of fiction- raw in style, crude in content and lax in attitude. Who would have thought at that point, when I wrote a tiny story and sent it by post to the contest organizers, that I will make the headlines? Winning it was not the intention, not by a long shot. I clearly remember that I didn't even consider myself good enough to be in contention. If someone had suggested it to me then, I would have laughed like a hyena and died.

I wrote it only because at that point there were no avenues for me to test my talent, to know what scope I had as a writer and how far my writing could travel if it winged its way. I had to fling it off the ridge to know that.

The result was unexpected. Jaw-dropping to be precise. My story was declared the best of all entries. I had ‘beaten off challenges from budding writers in all parts of the UAE’. Once the enormity of the moment passed, I pondered what this meant for my future and the message I got was that my relationship with words and thought was now for keeps.

I got betrothed to writing that day. In a quiet ceremony. Our years of courtship prior to that found consummation. It was unequivocal. We would tread the path together.

I am unable to say if I would have strived day after day and stayed committed to the craft if I had not won that contest that day. No doubt, the nascent fire that was crackling inside me was stoked by the win. There was nothing else to propel me in those days.

The fire that was kindled by the coup twenty-one years ago went through its own life cycle, flaring at times, sobering at the other, and even threatening to die out, occasionally.

Now, after weathering storms of all kinds, it has settled to a flame. Soft and diffused. Gently swaying with the cadence of my breath, with no burning desire to invade the world. It now essentially illumines my inner domain and the light spills into the lives of those who pass by it. Some by chance, others by choice. Whatever else happens to it is dictated by the stars.

Way back then, I blindly released a story from my fold to find its destiny. Sans the thought of what would happen next. This news clip saved from then is probably instructing me to do the same as I prepare to float 'That Pain in the Womb', my next collection of stories into the universe.

Why else should it materialize from a box file and jump at me unexpectedly while I was searching for a document three days ago, exactly 21 years hence? Note the date in the news report. 20 August, 2000.

(I don’t know if the contest was held in the following years. We relocated to Oman soon after.)

The Hanky Seller

The ladies compartment was unusually crowded for that time of the day. Especially for a Sunday. The mid-day sweat soaked the skin and an acrid smell filled the spaces between breathes. The train dragged along without reproach. From station to station, retching out crowds that never ceased to infest its innards. Carrying travellers without definite destinations. People with habits that became routines, routines that spilled over to Sundays.

I managed to corner a seat by the window. I preferred window seats to others. I could rest my head against the metal hardness of the train and the poisoned waft of city breeze would lull me to a sleep. I slept, oblivious to the human substitution around me. In the midst of women who babbled and squabbled.

The cacophony waned as the train chugged into the fringes of the city. Vendors took charge of the vacant spaces left behind by the clattering chunk of women.

Little boys and girls vending inexpensive things from their baskets. Ribbons, bindis, hairgrips and fancy beauty aids of inferior quality. Some carried a wooden crate full of small eats - snacks that the crowds munched on their way. They tapped me out of my sleep every five minutes, nagging me with their persistence to sell. They all looked the same, the unhealthy tan of their skin, the pallor of their face and an innocence usurped by poverty. I despised them for the reality they portrayed. I disliked them for the sense of helplessness their plight evoked in me.

Street children, or at best, slum children. Adults who lived in little bodies. Navigating through the hideous lanes of sustenance. Selling odds and ends to travellers.

“Didi, hand kerchief…” the thin voice accompanied by a tender touch stirred me out of my delicate slumber.

“Want kerchiefs?” he asked, encouraged by my fleeting glance over his cardboard box of ladies hankies.

I shook my head. “No. I don’t,” I said hurriedly in an attempt to shoo him away.

But he stood there waiting for me to reconsider my decision, as though he knew that I would eventually pick something out of the assortment of things he carried.

“No, I don’t want anything”, I said again.

But he refused to go. He smiled at me. It was a smile that was unlikely on a face wrought by destitution. It surprised me that privations could initiate smiles. But he continued to smile and it made me feel uneasy. It reflected an obscure hope. A bona fide appeal. It was a commentary on their lives that bore the toxicity of the sewage running along their shanty’s courtyards.

I wondered why he had picked on me for his sell. Did he know that I dropped my handkerchiefs too often?

He continued to stand in front of me, his head now tilted to the left, in anticipation. An obligatory stretch of my lips made him grin once again. He felt encouraged.

“Three for ten rupees, didi” he said holding out the handkerchiefs.

“Give me five for ten” I haggled. A bargain for no reason.

He shook his head.

“Then go away”, I said defiantly. The rudeness in my tone embarrassed me.

“Four for ten, didi”, he offered.

“No.”

Like a persistent sales man he tried all his wheedling tactics on me.

“You won’t find this quality at this price anywhere, didi. It is made of fine cotton. It won’t shrink or fade.”

I was unmoved.

“Didi, I am yet to make my first sale for the day. Please buy some.” He was close to pleading.

I turned away to look out of the window. Time to alight. I was close to my station. I arose and proceeded towards the exit. He was in tow. He tapped on my arms lightly, but urgently.

“Not now; next time,” I said hurriedly and waited for the train to halt. I stepped down.

The train pulled out in a minute. I saw him at the exit; the little face fell in disappointment. There was no hint of a smile on his face. The vexed look on his tanned face left a lousy feeling in my heart.

“Next time, at any cost” I promised myself.

************

I was certain about seeing him in the same train the next Sunday. And I was resolute about not haggling. Three for ten Rupees.

Stations passed by and the crowds receded. Vendors went about their business, coaxing and pleading, their baskets full. Baskets made of little dreams. Dreams that induced small laughters in their lives. Like the taste of water filled in an empty can of orange soda. They sipped it and smiled at the vicarious pleasure the semblance of sweetness it provided. The disguised gratification of life’s tiny delights.

I waited to see the smile of the hand-kerchief boy appear at the entrance. But I never saw him again. I wondered if the city crowd had devoured him.

There were similar faces that made look-alikes of him. But they were never the same.

“Where is that little boy who used to sell kerchiefs in this train?” I asked a look-alike, describing whatever I could recall about his looks. I was convinced of the frivolity of my question, yet I pursued with my search for a nameless train vendor in an insane metropolis.

The look-alike ransacked his memory for what looked like an eternity.

“Are you talking about Rahim?” he asked finally. “The boy with a scar on his forehead?”

I was not sure if that was his name, but I nodded.

“He is dead, fell on the tracks last Sunday,” the look-alike said nonchalantly, as though falling on the tracks was commonplace. The easiest way of deliverance from their everyday trials.

I was appalled.

“But how?”

“Madam, we are all illegal vendors in the train. We pay the police to escape the law. That silly guy had not paid the police for weeks. Bad days in business, you know. The police chased him and he jumped out of a running train to escape.”

My mouth went dry and I felt nauseous. My station was nearing. Pulling out a ten-rupee note I whispered to the look-alike, “Hand kerchiefs. Give me three for ten rupees.”

It was a strange buy of self-vindication.

(This story was written in the year 2000. What makes it special to me is that it unexpectedly put me on the headlines by winning me a national short story contest in the UAE. I stumbled upon the newspaper report last week, exactly 21 years since it happened. Thought it might make a good read to you all.)

An Onam Feast for Life

Nearly a year ago, I released my book, Life is an emoji, which is a collection of Life articles curated from my column in Khaleej Times, written since 2010. It is a brilliant book with such refined nuggets chipped from everyday things that I was certain it would be lapped up by people, instantly.

Did they?

Come on, when the world is at its wit’s end, without a frigging idea of how to stay alive, when each morning brings with it a new set of ‘will we, won’t we’ kind of colossal challenges, what will a book on Life’s little things cling on to? Do you think it will even appear on the periphery of people’s mind? Fat chance.

It was a dismal period that gave us all a taste of real-time apocalypse. Readers had priorities that were more important than a book called ‘Life is an emoji’. Understandably so. We were in times that played trapeze between life and death. A book that should have been a lifeline struggled for breath. But there is one good thing about books. They may bleed but they will never die. They may lose steam but will never vaporize. Like the Bard wrote in his Sonnet 55, the words we write will outlive every memory and monument.

So ‘Life is an emoji’ spent its time in relative oblivion for a year until yesterday, when time blew a powerful gust of air into its Covid-hit lungs.

You must notice how tiny miracles happen in life. So tiny that you will miss them if you don’t pause and pay attention. Yet so big that you will sink to your knees in gratitude if you reckon their random occurrences. They appear from the most mundane spaces of our daily life.

A friend I hadn’t met in nearly two years invited us home yesterday. She was among those who had booked a copy of ‘Life is an emoji’ at the time of its release, but things went south for everyone after that, and the book couldn’t find its way to its deserving owner. But yesterday, when I got an invitation to her house, I duly remembered to take the book with me.

I didn’t know if the book still had any relevance to her; if she still coveted it now as she did back then. I wasn’t sure if she would love to read the articles that I had gleaned from Life spread over the years on a news page. Her love for my writing was undisputed and this conviction alone prompted me to take a copy with me. Call it hope or faith.

Thus, after a year of waiting, the book reached its destination. As I signed my name on the first page before handing it to her, I wondered for a fleeting moment if I was imposing it on her.

Allow me my candour.

Authors always doubt their place in their readers’ hearts, no matter how many books old they become or how much support they marshal around them.

Just as common it is for writers to take their readers for granted and dish out mediocre fare after a point, it is equally common for them to underestimate the loyalty and love of their readers. Blame it on the writer’s innate sense of insecurity. It is inevitable in a domain where there is no fixed demarcation of who is excellent and who is half-pint. In a space where, as a friend remarked, there is no clear ‘entry point’.

But I was in luck. My friend’s joy at receiving the book was boundless. And when she paid for it, without the slightest demur, I felt Life (is an emoji) had come a full circle.

Doubts briefly dissipated. Self-belief found new pastures. The voice that buffered my spirits in bleak times spoke to me again. “There are people who value your work. There are people who feel it is worth the wait. You don’t own your writing. Your writing owns you. Forever.”

For a writer, every penny that comes from her book is tantamount to a fortune. I took the money with gratitude, shoved it into my husband’s chest pocket. Upon return from their place, he put it at the altar, a practice that we always follow as an expression of gratitude for every little grace and blessing.

Now, here comes the tiny miracle that I was referring to earlier.

It was Onam today.

In a house of two, preparing an Onam sadya is tedious and a major waste because our appetites have significantly shrunk now. So, following the current trend, we ordered in our feast today. When the delivery man rang the bell, I knew where exactly to reach out for the money to pay him.

At the altar.

The exact amount that I had to pay him had come from the book I had sold yesterday. I hadn’t made a million from the sale of my book, but it paid for my Onam feast today.

It might come across as a show of cloying sentimentality to many, but to me it was remarkable. The next time I am prompted to tell someone as a matter of fact that writing doesn’t feed me, I will remember this day and swallow my words.

For once, literally, my writing fed me. Sumptuously.