Midnight Sojourn

Chucking plans for a pizza dinner and a movie, we went for a different weekend-ender.

***

Wafts of cooked mutton rushed into my nostrils as I looked around. We were standing in the middle of a bustling and bursting Karim’s. In the shadow of the Jama Masjid, we crossed skullcaps and dark burqas to get here. It was dinnertime and I was reminded that a woman wouldn’t normally venture out into this locality at this hour, unescorted. That was a well-meant admonition for me, lest the restlessness within me drags me back in here on yet another night, sans the company that I am currently enjoying.

After a sumptuous mughlai dinner, we walked out into the once royal, now unsafe and impoverished streets of a Delhi long gone. Remnants of majestic havelis, now housing countless shops, raking in an almost vulgar amount of cash. The infamous GB road with female silhouettes calling out to prospective customers, while they look the other way. Go-downs and granaries—the biggest in Asia—retail stores, and midnight business activities. We stumbled our way through the narrow, winding streets battling with the rickshaws. The famous paranthawali gali, which has now dwindled and shrunk to a meager number of shops. Six-generations-old shops that are not any younger than 1875.

Driving into the cosmopolitan Delhi, we found ourselves standing in a queue at Nirula’s. Delhi’s very own 1931-founded ice cream parlor. Slurping on a Manhattan Mania, I listened to business banter. Walking about in Connaught Place, competing for space with untimely hawkers, I watched the panwala folding betel leaves with the condiments. He ceremoniously ended his activity by pinning the leafy packet with a toothpick.

***

As we drove back home, we passed by the pizza joint that had just lost two of their regular customers, for a long time to come...

Orange

“Come fast!” she urged as she ran quickly towards the shelter. They had to shout to make themselves heard while the rain poured down and thundered on the crude tin roof. Her non-stop banter was like the rain, he mused. Refreshing and evergreen. There was not a moment dull, when they were together. They were at the theme park he had promised to take her a couple of months ago. He sipped scalding hot chai while she savored an ice candy bar. Orange flavored. It always was orange. Was there a tinge of orange on her lips? He wondered.

Today, when the rain poured down over a cluster of black umbrellas that had mushroomed, he wondered if her lips were orange. They must be orange for sure, he decided as he played with the dirt. It was an unusual thought to ponder upon, at her funeral.

Earth, Water, and Air

I am still journeying across the face of Earth. There is so much to see, hear, and savour. Sitting down and mulling over a non-returnable past is such a futile exercise. So I decided to take my bag and walk away. While a pal drove me back to sanity, I watched droplets flirting with the windshield and the cloudy sky. And this is what I saw.