My first attempt at what "Streams of Consciousness" writing! Heartfelt thanks to a beautiful angel who bummed a cigarette for me. The cigarette was perhaps the triggering factor for the events unfolding below...
The rains were on the verge of leaving and the air hung listlessly as if a leg of beef hung from a meat hook. Perhaps it was the air or was it perhaps the cigarette that i'd bummed, or was it perhaps a combination of both; i know not but this state of mind (which could've been a conspiracy of the universal elements for all you know!) started the snowball of the events to come.
To think and yet have nothing to ponder, aye is it possible? Yes, why not! If forty winks could be had without either of the eyelids ever batting, immortality had from death, it's verily possible to think and yet have nothing running in the mind as you think :)
It was nearly sundown or atleast 30 minutes before the sun made bade farewell to our side of the hemisphere when the peregrination began. As if guided by a divine compass, the feet automatically turned westward and trudged onward toward the huge stretch of reclaimed land, a seamless necklace of tarmac and streetlights also known as the Queen's Necklace. All along the promenade were people. People thronged thick all along the stretch of the place and as far as my eyes could see, i could still see a huge congregation where the promenade ended at a small shingle!
All along the way were everyday common folk. Tourists, touts, families, lovers, artists, beggars, drunks, beautiful single women and a good many more perhaps representing every inch of the social fabric that's called Bombay. Sunday's the day when Marine Drive becomes a living, breathing museum of anthropology and maybe you'll find atleast one individual representing every race, caste or demography of the megacity.
Having seen such sights one time too many for once i too used to gaze at the setting sun from the safety of the boundary wall as the waves crashed into the tetrapods below. The winds they come from distant lands. From the land of the Arabian nights, whooshing over the famed Persepolis, stirred and egged perhaps from the dry winds of the North African Sahara; it was here the winds culminated blowing inward the fragrances and tales of these fabled lands, and recently, the smell of chemicals and polluted brine inland. Entwined with this mish mash of smells was slight smell of damp tobacco and old tar, hanging on to me like a secret lover's lipstick.
People laughed, cried, spoke, sang, lived, loved and did what society'd allow them to do on one free day they could wrestle out for themselves and their beloved. How i wish i could join them and for a moment's worth share their joy and sorrow if i could at all, but Time, that ever present guardian was standing next to me tapping his right foot impatiently as he was wont to. I could almost imagine him giving his stale, milennia old one liner "Time and Tide wait for none" and before he'd open his mouth, i left the place leaving the mortals to their life and fate...
Maya walked alongside walking just as briskly as i was. She'd always surprise me from behind whenever i least expected her to turn up. I once used to dread her presence and fear for what'd happen next, but now it was something of a routine. Smilingly, "Where's the young man headed to...? Where'll it be this time? You weren't supposed to be marching like this alone!". For those among you'll who don't know Maya, she's the silent seductress who slips into your mind in the twinkling of an eye, and makes the heart long for something or someone who's not close at hand. Further conversation with the temptress would only mean she'd get in and it's a tad bit difficult to get her out once she claims your heart for herself!
"Some questions need no answer! Some paths lead nowhere. And walking along the path to nowhere doesn't mean i'm lost..." the subconsciousness aka the alter ego answered on my behalf. That was too much for her and she fell back sulking and grumbling. Every once in a while, at a place along a straight road comes a turn which may perhaps turn the wheels of Destiny, perhaps change the very essence of life. Well, in this case, this was a diversion along the Marine Drive which lead further inward into Marine Lines and a veritable maze of roadways, open sewers and secret fantasies and unspeakable horrors! What lay in store here? i didn't quite know and so a turn eastward was inevitable and with a final goodbye to the setting sun (the darned clouds obscured the sunset!), i made my foray inward.
Places of work, peopled to the point of suffocation on weekdays are eerily empty on Sundays, specially during the evenings and the only few who wander around are those single, young, enervated men deep from the heartland of the nation who have no family to call their own and have no other means to kill time. The more endowed make their way to a place not very far off where they could have their libido's urge satieted for a few hundred rupees (it is fabled you could score a woman for nothing beyond two dollars in the place they call "Street of a Thousand Whores") The others with much cleaner (hopefully!) sit around street corners chit-chatting, whiling time.
Along the way, a drunk man was fighting with a posse of non-descripts who seem to be the man's cronies or friends. The man excitedly gestured and called upon a hapless soul's ancestors and a few invectives to the women in his family. No sense in butting into this fight, you never know what can a drunk man swing or throw at you! Perhaps it was frustration. Frustration with his family, his work, his home, his workplace, and this man who by some stupid twist of Fate, opened up the vents of frustration unwittingly! Frustration is a way of life in this city for many, and they deal with it in one way or the other...
The street twisted and turned and a decrepit signboard read "AarPee Specialty Chemicals, Princess Street, Mumbai-400001". From the road to Kalbadevi, how'd i land here, don't ask me the same question that Maya did. Some journeys wander and meander across the world and yet reach nowhere! Princess Street, for the uninitiated was the place where chemicals could be obtained in bulk and at cheap rates. It wouldn't be very surprising if the place also catered to the chemical abusing segment of humanity. It wasn't dark as yet and hence maybe the denizens of the dark still hadn't made their way out craving for a fix!
The place, including the surrounding areas of Kalbadevi, Pydhonie and Girgaum were built successively. The oldest building i could find in the area was one dating back to 1872 A.D. Most other buildings date back to 1924 onwards, but as the world was discovering itself, it wouldn't be very surprising if someone had try to discover Bombay as well! The area is predominantly an industrial area, and hence for reasons mentioned before, weekends are short breaks of silence. On any given weekday, you could scream out loud and people may not even spare a second glance for you, but on holidays such as these, you could hear your heart thump. The streets spoke out loud in the lingo of silence. In moments of quietude, you could almost hear the city's blood flow in its veins!
Although i had the dream catcher with me, for a mysterious reason, i didn't quite feel the need to get it out and capture some images, some fleeting memories of the place. The streets had their own way of silencing desire. "The best memories are those fleeting moments in time where amidst the most mundane and ordinary, you see something beautiful and honest..." the streets whispered. Perhaps the romance was in the moment's kiss itself. No sense in capturing them within the dream catcher staid and dead for posterity's sake!
Time and space were now relative, and street after street did trudge along my two sturdy feet. After what seemed like a while, humanity made its presence felt in a very different way indeed. I'm not too sure what's the place, i think it was Manish Market or something like that (i was too lost in thought and smoke clouded the mind from that bummed cigarette!)
The place was teeming with people almost like the way Marine Drive was clogged, except that there wasn't any sea or setting sun to lure them close, it was something more ordinary, shopping! Locals who worked their asses off during the weekdays, made some time out for their families and shopping is but an essential chore in a family man's life.
Colourful fancy dresses, daily household items, and just about everything under the sun that could be covered under the broad umbrella of "Utility" could be found there. College girls pored over modern fashion, children squealed and mothers spanked and fathers were only too happy to be ignored from the general humdrum. After the deafening silence of Princess Street, this place almost frightened me with the people, the number of voices and general cacophony!
Just a few hundred meters away lay the famous Crawford Market, the place where everything and anything could be bought for a price. The last i'd heard they even stored fruits i as an Indian could've never found anywhere else in the city. Not to mention the illegal animal bazaar, the place where exotic birds and strange animals could change hands from dealers to owners for the right price.
The road turned yet again and as is my wont, i turned along with it too leaving behind Manish Market and its wares forward toward a huge enclosure which looked like a municipal market for vegetables. There was a strange smell that hung around in the air, and it wasn't fresh vegetables. I was walking alongside the butchery in the market and the strange sweetish smell of death pervaded the air. Today wasn't market day and so there wasn't any activity, but the sight of the meat hooks didn't make visualization of a busy day very difficult. This was by far the coldest and most eerie of all the places i'd seen in the evening...
The road ahead snaked on toward Mohammed Ali road where the faithful would break their fast on the call of the muezzin announcing the end of the daylong fast they'd been observing as tradition demands during the month of Ramadan.
The sun had set and it was time to count back footsteps homeward perhaps by some other way, if possible! Along the way were the denizens of this city who'd made their peace with life, their peace with loneliness, some signed their tryst with Fate, others tried to fight bravely only to fall back into the wayside ditches in the dark.
The "homeless" prepared their beds to rest for the night for there was yet another day to begin tomorrow, yet another day to start afresh, and a rumbling stomach hailed me homeward...
The rains were on the verge of leaving and the air hung listlessly as if a leg of beef hung from a meat hook. Perhaps it was the air or was it perhaps the cigarette that i'd bummed, or was it perhaps a combination of both; i know not but this state of mind (which could've been a conspiracy of the universal elements for all you know!) started the snowball of the events to come.
To think and yet have nothing to ponder, aye is it possible? Yes, why not! If forty winks could be had without either of the eyelids ever batting, immortality had from death, it's verily possible to think and yet have nothing running in the mind as you think :)
It was nearly sundown or atleast 30 minutes before the sun made bade farewell to our side of the hemisphere when the peregrination began. As if guided by a divine compass, the feet automatically turned westward and trudged onward toward the huge stretch of reclaimed land, a seamless necklace of tarmac and streetlights also known as the Queen's Necklace. All along the promenade were people. People thronged thick all along the stretch of the place and as far as my eyes could see, i could still see a huge congregation where the promenade ended at a small shingle!
All along the way were everyday common folk. Tourists, touts, families, lovers, artists, beggars, drunks, beautiful single women and a good many more perhaps representing every inch of the social fabric that's called Bombay. Sunday's the day when Marine Drive becomes a living, breathing museum of anthropology and maybe you'll find atleast one individual representing every race, caste or demography of the megacity.
Having seen such sights one time too many for once i too used to gaze at the setting sun from the safety of the boundary wall as the waves crashed into the tetrapods below. The winds they come from distant lands. From the land of the Arabian nights, whooshing over the famed Persepolis, stirred and egged perhaps from the dry winds of the North African Sahara; it was here the winds culminated blowing inward the fragrances and tales of these fabled lands, and recently, the smell of chemicals and polluted brine inland. Entwined with this mish mash of smells was slight smell of damp tobacco and old tar, hanging on to me like a secret lover's lipstick.
People laughed, cried, spoke, sang, lived, loved and did what society'd allow them to do on one free day they could wrestle out for themselves and their beloved. How i wish i could join them and for a moment's worth share their joy and sorrow if i could at all, but Time, that ever present guardian was standing next to me tapping his right foot impatiently as he was wont to. I could almost imagine him giving his stale, milennia old one liner "Time and Tide wait for none" and before he'd open his mouth, i left the place leaving the mortals to their life and fate...
Maya walked alongside walking just as briskly as i was. She'd always surprise me from behind whenever i least expected her to turn up. I once used to dread her presence and fear for what'd happen next, but now it was something of a routine. Smilingly, "Where's the young man headed to...? Where'll it be this time? You weren't supposed to be marching like this alone!". For those among you'll who don't know Maya, she's the silent seductress who slips into your mind in the twinkling of an eye, and makes the heart long for something or someone who's not close at hand. Further conversation with the temptress would only mean she'd get in and it's a tad bit difficult to get her out once she claims your heart for herself!
"Some questions need no answer! Some paths lead nowhere. And walking along the path to nowhere doesn't mean i'm lost..." the subconsciousness aka the alter ego answered on my behalf. That was too much for her and she fell back sulking and grumbling. Every once in a while, at a place along a straight road comes a turn which may perhaps turn the wheels of Destiny, perhaps change the very essence of life. Well, in this case, this was a diversion along the Marine Drive which lead further inward into Marine Lines and a veritable maze of roadways, open sewers and secret fantasies and unspeakable horrors! What lay in store here? i didn't quite know and so a turn eastward was inevitable and with a final goodbye to the setting sun (the darned clouds obscured the sunset!), i made my foray inward.
Places of work, peopled to the point of suffocation on weekdays are eerily empty on Sundays, specially during the evenings and the only few who wander around are those single, young, enervated men deep from the heartland of the nation who have no family to call their own and have no other means to kill time. The more endowed make their way to a place not very far off where they could have their libido's urge satieted for a few hundred rupees (it is fabled you could score a woman for nothing beyond two dollars in the place they call "Street of a Thousand Whores") The others with much cleaner (hopefully!) sit around street corners chit-chatting, whiling time.
Along the way, a drunk man was fighting with a posse of non-descripts who seem to be the man's cronies or friends. The man excitedly gestured and called upon a hapless soul's ancestors and a few invectives to the women in his family. No sense in butting into this fight, you never know what can a drunk man swing or throw at you! Perhaps it was frustration. Frustration with his family, his work, his home, his workplace, and this man who by some stupid twist of Fate, opened up the vents of frustration unwittingly! Frustration is a way of life in this city for many, and they deal with it in one way or the other...
The street twisted and turned and a decrepit signboard read "AarPee Specialty Chemicals, Princess Street, Mumbai-400001". From the road to Kalbadevi, how'd i land here, don't ask me the same question that Maya did. Some journeys wander and meander across the world and yet reach nowhere! Princess Street, for the uninitiated was the place where chemicals could be obtained in bulk and at cheap rates. It wouldn't be very surprising if the place also catered to the chemical abusing segment of humanity. It wasn't dark as yet and hence maybe the denizens of the dark still hadn't made their way out craving for a fix!
The place, including the surrounding areas of Kalbadevi, Pydhonie and Girgaum were built successively. The oldest building i could find in the area was one dating back to 1872 A.D. Most other buildings date back to 1924 onwards, but as the world was discovering itself, it wouldn't be very surprising if someone had try to discover Bombay as well! The area is predominantly an industrial area, and hence for reasons mentioned before, weekends are short breaks of silence. On any given weekday, you could scream out loud and people may not even spare a second glance for you, but on holidays such as these, you could hear your heart thump. The streets spoke out loud in the lingo of silence. In moments of quietude, you could almost hear the city's blood flow in its veins!
Although i had the dream catcher with me, for a mysterious reason, i didn't quite feel the need to get it out and capture some images, some fleeting memories of the place. The streets had their own way of silencing desire. "The best memories are those fleeting moments in time where amidst the most mundane and ordinary, you see something beautiful and honest..." the streets whispered. Perhaps the romance was in the moment's kiss itself. No sense in capturing them within the dream catcher staid and dead for posterity's sake!
Time and space were now relative, and street after street did trudge along my two sturdy feet. After what seemed like a while, humanity made its presence felt in a very different way indeed. I'm not too sure what's the place, i think it was Manish Market or something like that (i was too lost in thought and smoke clouded the mind from that bummed cigarette!)
The place was teeming with people almost like the way Marine Drive was clogged, except that there wasn't any sea or setting sun to lure them close, it was something more ordinary, shopping! Locals who worked their asses off during the weekdays, made some time out for their families and shopping is but an essential chore in a family man's life.
Colourful fancy dresses, daily household items, and just about everything under the sun that could be covered under the broad umbrella of "Utility" could be found there. College girls pored over modern fashion, children squealed and mothers spanked and fathers were only too happy to be ignored from the general humdrum. After the deafening silence of Princess Street, this place almost frightened me with the people, the number of voices and general cacophony!
Just a few hundred meters away lay the famous Crawford Market, the place where everything and anything could be bought for a price. The last i'd heard they even stored fruits i as an Indian could've never found anywhere else in the city. Not to mention the illegal animal bazaar, the place where exotic birds and strange animals could change hands from dealers to owners for the right price.
The road turned yet again and as is my wont, i turned along with it too leaving behind Manish Market and its wares forward toward a huge enclosure which looked like a municipal market for vegetables. There was a strange smell that hung around in the air, and it wasn't fresh vegetables. I was walking alongside the butchery in the market and the strange sweetish smell of death pervaded the air. Today wasn't market day and so there wasn't any activity, but the sight of the meat hooks didn't make visualization of a busy day very difficult. This was by far the coldest and most eerie of all the places i'd seen in the evening...
The road ahead snaked on toward Mohammed Ali road where the faithful would break their fast on the call of the muezzin announcing the end of the daylong fast they'd been observing as tradition demands during the month of Ramadan.
The sun had set and it was time to count back footsteps homeward perhaps by some other way, if possible! Along the way were the denizens of this city who'd made their peace with life, their peace with loneliness, some signed their tryst with Fate, others tried to fight bravely only to fall back into the wayside ditches in the dark.
The "homeless" prepared their beds to rest for the night for there was yet another day to begin tomorrow, yet another day to start afresh, and a rumbling stomach hailed me homeward...
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