Monday 12 May 2014

My Mother's Magic Madness

I remember London’s cosy underground more vividly than I do its drizzly above-ground. That was the trip… the one where I started inheriting her magic madness for travel.
When I was 15 years old, my mother insisted on spending an entire day exploring the London underground. We were on vacation and the nomad-at-heart, who had long fantasised about visiting said city, declared that the Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and Madame Tussauds could wait. Down under before all else, she announced. So, armed with a day pass, we got into our first train. At Paddington, we de-boarded and began walking around- never leaving the station itself (we’d cleverly packed sandwiches and fruits). Pierced and patterned stray buskers vended their electronic art, two men smooched, a homeless old man sang the blues... we took photographs of them all. When we’d exhausted all the entertainment options, we got into our next train, only to jump out at the next stop, regaled by the sight of a man who seemed to be reciting poetry. On closer inspection, we found the bard was crooning loony tunes. He began chasing us, angered by his own madness. We ran for our lives and right into an incoming coach, laughing our heads off, half scared. We kept at this flighty behaviour- trainspotting and hopping- until sunset. Then, it was back to ground reality and ground level.
The adventure was not to end yet, however. As we ambled onwards arm-in-arm, we chanced upon a wig shop decorated with plastic streamers and Moulin Rouge lights. She pulled me in excitedly. At this dystopic Barbie-land, we spent a good hour trying out a series of outlandish mock manes- blue, blonde, curly, poker straight, crimped, satiny, cheap, exorbitant. She looked like the most beautiful woman in the world, in a certain black silken wig that brushed against her hips. The amused shopkeeper wanted to gift us a smart bob. No thank you, bye. Skipping, conversing, cackling, we next made our way to an empty Indian restaurant that was dying to the tunes of an outdated Hindi film song, in which my dear vegetarian vagabond asked the waiter a million questions about the peas pulao before settling for a simple dosa. Back at the hotel, she tucked me into bed and secured all the locks. Together, we made great plans for the next day- riding a red bus, tickling the royal guard, posing by the Big Ben, a Happy Meal at Mc D,  waxing eloquent at Madame T- till sleep shut us up.
Such was the average day spent with my mother. And I inherited some of her madness.
In Dandeli, where I went on a short trek last year, I encountered a poisonous cobra. I near fainted but could almost hear my mom giggle and inch closer to the reptile, to stroke it. In Bangla Road, I knew she was ready to drag me back to the hotel as I continued dancing towards a tequila sunrise. She was the perfect company on my drive to Auroville- she didn’t change the music, she didn’t tell me how to drive, she left me be. When I held the pocket-sized Olive Ridley turtle in Hikkaduwa, I felt her blowing them tickly air kisses past my ear. In Melaka, I sensed her guffawing at the young mother who had her two tots on a cotton leash. In the Himalayas, she and I had great, wordless conversations as I trudged through snow, water, mud and silence. On my many train journeys to Bangalore, she tells me stories of my younger days, just as she always has.
Except nothing is as it always was.
The travels are many, the adventures aplenty, and I’d be a fool to grumble. As long as she’s there in spirit at least, I shall resist uttering words of complaint. After all, her magic madness is forever and inextricably entwined in my own DNA. 

Faded blue hat

The faded hat was once a regal, royal blue. The faded man who wears it now was a regal, royal boy when he first saw the hat on his pillow.
He was 14 when his mother left the striking new cotton helmet on his bed. ‘Wheee!’ he had cried, spotting it in repose on his pillow, when back from school. The pages of the much-thumbed magazine in which he’d first laid eyes on the royal headgear perched on a blond model’s crown gently rustled in the sleepy evening breeze, as if celebrating with the young man. In front of the mirror, the proud owner stood for hours, taking in his newly-regal reflection. The blue perfectly matched not his deep brown eyes but the depth of his determination. To be worthy of the hat someday.
Fifty years on, the boy, now a man of 64, twirls his hat absent-mindedly, till his eyes settle on the vanishing words etched on the inside…
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
Love forever,
VA
So used is he to seeing those words, he merely regards them as a part of the hat these days. But today, the memory haunts him.
They studied in the same college and she was taken in by his wit from day one. He took his time acquiring a taste for her, but when he did, he wanted her to be his every meal. They spent all their time together. Reading, creating, loving, just being. Seven years later, she was taken by the Grim Reaper. The pain was acute and he buried his head in his hat, weeping endlessly. That’s when he noticed the tiny inscription from his lost love. He didn’t even know when she’d written it there- lines from her favourite poem. She’d loved him in secret between the shadow and the soul; now, between his head and his hat.
The years succeeding the death of VA went by in an OH-and-ho fuelled haze. Some of the drunken nights were really not too bad. His mates and he would hit the local pub and drown their respective worries in pegs and pints. The revelry was there; so was the occasional rivalry. The rust-coloured spray on the brim of the hat was testimony to the swipe he’d taken at his best friend who’d sneezed blood as a result. It was a silly fight and the swipe was meant to be light. The stain stuck; luckily, so did the best friend. 
His buddies, most of them collected during his school days, are just as faded as he is. Jaded as he is. And to think something as stupid as a food fight could excite them back in the day. The tiny stains strung together during those chip wars now present themselves as a necklace of persevering oil beads. A chain of good memories.
A memory he isn’t too fond of… the period when he’d abandoned his hat at the back of the closet, in favour of a shiny silk fedora. He was a successful businessman at that time. With a dog, a house and a trophy wife who’d picked the new hat out for him, to go with his newly-acquired invincibility. When it had all come crashing down two decades later, the vultures fed hungrily on the remains, leaving naught but the faithful blue hat. It was in quite a state, having been fed on by all manner of pest and pet, but came back to life after a wash- retaining only a few itsy-bitsy holes.
Wearing it, he ventured right back into the rat race, starting at the bottom of the pyramid- where the perks are few, but perspiration is aplenty. The streaks of sweat decorated the hat too, in the manner of an ECG, as seen through the eyes of a drunk.
It was stressful. The hat has the rapidly-falling hair to show for it. Brown hair, grey hair, even white hair sometimes. His hair is fading. The memories seem to be fading faster. His eyesight too. And his sense of smell and taste.
He hangs up his hat. On the steel bridge beneath which lies a sea of eternal solace.