Oh, is it Towel Day again?

Things haven’t turned out too badly, you know. This year I managed to read … And Another Thing, in which Eoin Colfer dared and surpassed most expectations. Of course, he isn’t you, but he wasn’t expected to be you.

As for the rest of it, I kept escaping the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, though to be fair, it wasn’t much of a challenge, given its IQ level. Staying away from Vogon Poetry has been way more challenging. On the other hand, there has been no sighting of Eccentrica Gallumbits either, so it wasn’t really a win-win year for me.

May you outlive the Bowerick Wowbagger.

May there be Babel fish everywhere so that I don’t need to go around explaining what Towel Day is all about.

May deadlines keep whooshing by you.

May you be allowed to become President.

May you miss the ground every time you throw yourself at it.

And in hindsight, coming down from the trees was a big mistake in the first place. You see, not only is this wretched place big, hard, oily, dirty, and rainbow-hung, it is also a microscopic dot lost in the unimaginable infinity of the Universe.

And yes, common sense has slid from 79. It’s nowhere in plain sight anymore, and I’m not talking only New York here.

Known for great conversation

Chances are that you have not heard of Harold Gimblett. I won’t blame you if you haven’t. He’s too niche a subject to be savoured if you are not a hardcore cricket fan.

Note:

In the unlikely case that you are really, really interested, you may want to read this to get a basic idea of his biographiability.

However, this is at best indirectly about Gimblett. This concerns David Foot’s biography of Gimblett, as wonderful book a book as any written on the sport. It’s completely worth it.

This also concerns me. In fact, I am the protagonist of the tale.

Since I travel for at least an hour a day, I prefer to split my reading. My backpack always carries a cricket book, while I read on cricket at home only for reference. The arrangement suits me.

It was Bombay-May hot and humid the other day, which made me compromise on speed for comfort. I was supposed to show up late, so I decided on Uberpool.

I should have been more careful. When I booked the cab, the app warned me that the driver was “known for great conversation”. If only I had chosen to act accordingly.

I was also told that there were two others, which almost invariably meant a front seat for me. That isn’t a problem per se — but on this occasion I was thrust into the front left corner of the car, next to a person who thrives on chirping.

I decided to play safe. I started reading Foot’s book within a minute. Even checking the arrival time was out of the question. The trip was afoot.

The man to my right was obviously disappointed, but I could really care less. He went into what he definitely thought was an intriguing conversation in Marathi with my unfortunate co-passengers, destined to endure half an hour’s suffering.

This will teach them to carry a book next time.

Then that dreaded moment arrived: they got down before me. I contemplated escaping to the backseat but decided against it. It would have been too rude, no?

I could sense the driver (let me call him X) casting impatient glances at me. I stayed put. I was getting uneasy — uneasy enough to not being able to focus on Somerset cricket of the 1930s.

Minutes passed by.

I could sense something brewing. I could feel he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back any longer.

I flipped a page. Regular readers of non-fiction (not motivational nonsense, but factual non-fiction) will know that the photographs are stacked together for the benefit of the publishers.

This was that page, the one with photographs of cricketers — Gimblett included — in various modes of action and inaction. And then the car stopped at a signal.

He couldn’t hold himself back. It is difficult to read a neighbour’s book if he holds it strategically, but it’s not as huge a challenge to look at the photographs.

He has seen the photographs. He will try to pick up a conversation. I can sense it. I can sense it.

The inevitable happened: “Ye saare cricketer log ke baare mein likha hai?”

Cricketer-log. That was precisely the phrase he used.

I nodded.

Focus. Focus. Focus, Abhishek, focus.

The signal turned green (I hope it did, for the car started moving). It was impossible for me to concentrate at that point. I cast a glance at the man.

He is thinking. He is thinking something.

“Aap cricket ka kitaab kyun padhte ho?”

Dang! How is one supposed to answer that?

He sized me up. Of course, I had neither the age nor the girth of an athlete, so being a cricketer was out of the question.

Cricket writers probably do not exist in his universe. They are too peculiar to exist in any universe anyway, but let us not get into that.

“Aap coach ho.”

It was not a question. It was a statement — a statement with a finality so decisive that I almost believed him.

I could see him nodding and smiling in the most ha-got-you way imaginable to mankind.

“Mera beta dus saal ka hai. Aap use sikhaoge?”

My heart went out to the poor boy. Coexisting with a father who enjoyed conversation was torture enough, but this?

He concluded as we approached our destination: “Mere paas to aap ka number hai. Main aap ko call kar loonga.”

I looked down at my phone instinctively.

He might have won the first battle, but it’s going to be an uphill task for him. My cell-phone is also equipped to save numbers, you see.

Never challenge a Maharashtrian cook

When your mother shows up, the gastronomic aspect of your life invariably takes a better turn.

Food is important, which is why I seldom outsource buying raw materials, especially vegetables and fish. For the same reason, I am typically reluctant to hire Maharashtrian cooks.

Do not get me wrong. Maharashtrian cooks are honest triers who put in every bit of their culinary skills. They try very hard, incredibly hard, but there is only so much you can do if your armoury consists of, and ends at, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and curry leaves, with coconut for variation.

You cannot blame them. They simply attempt to win a war with pea-shooters. Perhaps it is some sort of guerrilla warfare that we are too mainstream to figure out. Perhaps they can be good in an unfathomable sort of way.

The one that works at my apartment is professional but restricted in a very Maharashtrian sort of way. She toils hard without much success, but expecting quality out of her would be akin to expecting me to sing.

The matriarch of the family had tried to mentor her. She got the cook to prepare fish the proper (Bengali, in other words; machher jhol) way. The cook grumbled at not being allowed to use curry leaves but came to terms with that.

Tomatoes, of course, were another thing altogether. I have known people who seem to think I do not rate tomatoes very highly. That is an understatement. I detest, hate, loathe those squishy red orbs from hell, and even that – or any other synonymous verb, for that matter – is an understatement.

Over years I have mellowed down enough to accept tomatoes in dishes (though never in excess). The raw ones continue to remain inedible abominations.

But we are digressing. She was obviously unhappy about not being able to add tomatoes to machher jhol. She had tried to convince us, but we had stood firm: there was to be no compromise on machher jhol.

So by the time she had showed up yesterday, there was not a single atom of tomato (or even ketchup) in the household. There was not a slice of lemon, not the tiniest morsel of tamarind, not even vinegar. The yoghurt was tucked away safely. There was no contraption she could use to turn machher jhol sour.

But she won.

My mother had forgotten the raw mangoes, kept aside for superior culinary ventures. She had never expected chunks of them to show up next to fish… kajori, especially...

February, Kolkata, and all that

It’s me, Kolkata. Bhule to nahin?

It has been ages since I wrote to you. A lot has changed since then. A lot. My life has turned upside down (by that I don’t mean LIFE looks like ГIŁE) over this period. The year – since February last – has been way, way longer than what the lying calendar reveals.

At times I feel I have got over you. Did I miss you because you were you? Or simply because you were home – and I would’ve missed Kamchatka had I been from there? I keep telling myself it’s the latter…

Navi Mumbai was different, you know. She was – is – idyllic. She is polite and warm,  often whispering sweet nothings in my ear till late at night.

This insomniac leviathan of a city is different. She doesn’t know how to pause for a couple of seconds on footbridges and look at passing trains. She shoves you away, even asking you ugich kashala?¹

But even she has February. She has a February she does not know of, a February where the fan seems harsh in the wee hours and the sun, harsher as the clock ticks to noon.

Let me tell you a story of a teenage boy I saw at the station today. I never saw his face, but I knew he was trying to woo a friend, probably a classmate – or that was what my limited knowledge of Marathi told me.²

The girl had her face towards me. They probably had an argument, and she turned her back on the two of us. But then, right at that moment, a fast train³ sped past the platform.

Her temper tried to fight a valiant battle against the laws of physics that govern the sudden wind you associate with a speeding train. The reluctant cascade of hair brushed his senses, probably his irrelevant cheek as well. And then she walked away from him, every stride authoritative enough to put Cleopatra to shame.

He stood there. I wished I could see his face. But then, I didn’t need to, for he raised his hand, almost hypnotically, to touch his cheek with his palm. And he stayed put.

I did not read on my way to work that day. I didn’t need to, for home beckoned. I left you on the platform that day, Kolkata, just like I had abandoned you four years ago.

And as non-summer⁴ tries its best to keep summer away from the city, you somehow find ways to come back to me, Kolkata – as you did today.

You are far, far away from me, but in this month – the most magical of them all – you come close enough to hold me, to absorb all the fire pent up this spent, fatigued man, close enough to whisper in my ear to send every bit of me to the land where time stands still.

Perhaps there is February somewhere in the ruthless relentlessness of Mumbai as well, refusing to let me age.

_____________________________

¹Don't ask. Google instead.

²Marathi is easy: it’s basically Hindi where you need to end every sentence in aahe or naahi. That almost always works.

³A train that travels faster than the usual ones but loses relevance by showing up late.

⁴Mumbai doesn’t have a winter.