memory

Ronny wakes up to realise it’s a dream.

Flames rose from the ground, consumed everything that he could see. He’s Bengali, and so he thinks, Gelusil. He thinks it’s acidity. There’s nothing in the night to suggest that it could be acidity. Except the acrid taste of smoke that’s set in the back of his throat. He wonders if this is hallucination, but he hasn’t smoked in over twenty four hours, so it could well be a craving. He gets up, and his fingers look behind the books on his shelf. Nothing.

Wonders, he does, whether he finished it all. Suddenly, his throat wonders what the Classic Mild tastes like. He looks again behind the books. He can’t fine the little Goldflake packets. God bless Indian cigarette sellers. He rations cigarettes, our Ronny does. Pulling one out of a little box every time he can’t fight that feeling. Running into the toilet, standing on the commode, his face inches away from the exhaust fan. God forbid they find out. But maybe they did. He can’t find the little box anywhere.

Ronny tries and tries to remember what box it was. If it were the Goldflake box, it’d be small. And if that were the case, maybe he’d look through the bookshelf again. Slipping his bony fingers as far as they could reach behind the volumes of Kafka and Camus. Not that he’s read much of either. He read Metamorphosis, and considered himself the guru on Kafka. He read the Cahiers, and wondered if he was Albert Camus, living on the colonial French sea shore, wondering about the weather and life. It’s summer, and nearly 5 AM. The dogs on the streets are getting restless, and rickshaws and cars pass, puncturing the silence of the night.

Ronny’s bony little fingers, they grope into the depths of his bookshelf. And grope at nothing but air. A little sliver of doubt passes his mind – he passed out drunk. Did his mum get to the books before he did? Mother,when she sets her face with a disapproving frown. Her brother, Prakash, is a drunk. When Ronny visited them three summers ago, him and his cousin emptied the bottle of whiskey halfway, and filled it with water. His uncle, the psychological drunk, got drunker than ever, and laughed at Ronny’s attempts to be invisible the whole time. When Ronny left their house a few days later, it was the end of all cousinly summer vacations.

Wondering if 5 AM panic is justified, Ronny tries to think of something else to ease his mind. He thinks of his cousin Shreya, the one who’s wanking his elder brother. He wonders if he should feel sick, but ends up feeling nothing. He remembers a tented sheet over his brother’s waist, and small, almost inaudible gasps that his cousin makes as his brothers hands do god-knows-what to her. Incest is necessary, Ronny thinks, and laments that he has no younger cousin to help him pass through adolescence or teenage. Then, as if remembering why he woke up at nearly 5 AM, he rummages around one last time behind the bookshelf. Nothing.

He looks under his pillow, inside the pillow cases, under and in-between the mattresses, and through his drawer. And there’s nothing. He tries his best to remember what packet he was smoking out of. He wonders if it’s a pack of Classic Milds or if it’s Classic Milds pretending to be anything from Goldflakes to Davidoff to Marlboro. He can’t remember. All he remembers is his cousin passing him the smallest bottle of Old Monk. 180 litres. Rupees fifty three. And the sound of breaking glass as he threw it out after he finished it. And stumbling into his bed, trying to fall asleep to soft but ecstatic sounds his cousin makes as his brother’s hand does things to her. He looks over at them, but they’re sleeping now. He doubts his brother knows he has been drinking. He’d been talking to his betrothed while Ronny was getting drunk. Ronny blushes a little thinking of the word betrothed. But that’s better than fiancé. He hates fiancé.

He looks around, trying to plot a route over the sleeping bodies of his cousins and his brother. He needs to find his cigarette packet before the 6 AM alarm on his mother’s annoying UFO looking alarmclock rings. The route he plots is circuitous, though he knows he can as good as walk over them, and they won’t budge. Summer vacations are excruciating. He does his little balancing act and reaches his drawers. His hand gropes once again, blind in the darkness. He finds a matchbook. He wonders if he should light a match to help him look, but just then, his other cousin mumbles in his sleep. Something about being James Bond and wanting a strong tea, and he nearly drops the matchbook. The Bond cousin mutters just once more in his sleep and turns to his other side, facing Ronny. And continues muttering. A courier service van passes outside, and Ronny curses the fates under his breath. And matchbook held tightly in his left fist, continues to make his way to the bed, and peers into the darkness under it. He stretches out his right hand, and paws at the floor, as if the accursed cigarette packet will show up if he paws hard enough. Sure as the earth is round, it doesn’t, and Ronny takes it in his stride.

Gingerly, he uprights his body, and shoves his fingers through his slightly overgrown hair. God bless summer vacations – his mother hasn’t mentioned a haircut yet. He retraces his steps to the feet of his sleeping cousins. By now his eyes are accustomed to the dark and they’re looking wildly for the elusive little pack, and now that his brain is awake, he remembers vaguely that his cousin hands him a big-ish box, Classic Milds. Filled with five Classic Milds. And a copy of illegal music downloads. He smoked it at the window. Three out of the five sticks of Milds.

this and that.

"Who she?" I want to ask him, but i hold my tongue, it has a habit of getting ahead of itself. Naturally, in the present place that we are in our relationship, I can't be asking questions. Nor can he. But then, he doesn't. And I'm curious.

He's talking now about Casino Royale. My fault. I said, "do you want to come over later and watch Casino Royale? I've finally decided I like the new Bond." Of course, he said no.

"Poor Bond," he's saying now.

"Why poor?"

"He loses his only love..."

"Hahahaaha. You're feelin' sympathetic, are you?"

"...and then realises she didn't love him at all."

"But she does care for him," I say, wanting to add that, "maybe yours didn't care for you at all," but I don't. Because I dont know if she did. Maybe she did care. Frankly, I'm thinking I want some more chai. The sunlight is making it all seem exceedingly relaxed.

"But she does care for him," I say again.

"Only a little. Her true love is that Algerian guy, who gave her that bracelet, who she was trying to save."

"You gave me a post card, which I saved."

We're sitting at the window. An empty street outside, with a few birds chirping. Yesterday, at this time, it was hot enough to have sweat trailing down your back when you sat under the fan. Today, the sun licks my face with a dry tongue, and the breeze teases my just-washed hair.

"I'm going to make some more chai," I say, and get off the ledge, stride to the kitchen with a sense of purpose that I didn't really feel.


i lock the door behind me and i take a deep breath, and plunge my head into the bucket full of cold water, and i let out the loudest scream i possibly can. it goes on and on and on, and my eyes are open so i can see bubbles forming, fragmenting my scream, taking it to the surface and letting it out of the water. suddenly, as the bubbles hit the surface, suddenly, there's a loud eruption of my voice, strangely distorted, as if hearing it under water makes it heavier, louder, deeper, wider.


Making chai mechanically hasn't ever happened with me because I always forget where the adrak [ginger] is and then spend atleast five minutes looking for it.


I go back to my room, with two mugs of chai. I'm slightly disconcerted to find he is still there. He's sitting in the evening sunlight, pointing his camera outside the window. It occurs to me that there's a temple outside my house, red and yellow, shaded by a beige building built in the same semi-Grecian blockish structures that most builders are so taken by these days. It occurs to me that architects don't really do much these days. I say as much. He looks up at me, and says, "That's a piece of shit."

I place his mug in front of him. The mug has a dog on it. "So tell me a newly constructed building whose architechtural brilliance had you blinded."

"I wasn't talking about the architecture."

"Ah. Do go on then."

"The problem with you is that you can't take things as what they seem to be when they are all they seem to be."

I am silent. The sky is pinkening slightly, and the breeze is rarer. I pick up a cigarette and light it. I like to think doing something not immediately related to him shows refusal to respond. My fifth standard English teacher would have said "I will not dignify that with a response." [In the fifth standard, we scrambled for our dictionaries as soon as we went home, those of us whose questions ere not dignified with a response.]

"The girl did not love Bond. Perhaps she didn't even care for him per se, but rather out of humanitarian beliefs thought of helping him out. Eventually."

"You may not remember, blessed as you are with selective memory among other things, that she died eventually."

"So see, it was all pointless, because the Algerian died too. And she died."

"So what's your point?"

"Tell me what you want from me. Because I'll give it to you."

Looking back, that was probably a line fit for the movies, the beginning of something overwhelming. It would have been a lot more than just this. Sitting in limbo, shooting the breeze. It cold have been a lot less than that, making a man in a bid to save another that you loved.

"Nothing. I don't want anything from you."

"Okay then," he said, in the evening light, through cigarette smoke, and packed up his stuff and left.