Kindling

1997

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~:To Blu:~

Amor Vincit Omnia, but in Dust We Trust

(And) My birthday wishes...for Feb 20

[traffic in Bangalore]

[...and my thoughts bounce back to find me: alone]

What is so special about sitting in a cab and going to my friends'? I could have troubled him, because he'd volunteered to do it all by himself, like a gentleman; but I kept that as an option. I wanted to give him the advantage he was entitled to; and I guess he was sort of relieved when he asked me over. At least for an instant he must have surveyed his vast playing field; I was relieved, because I'd been bored stiff⁽¹⁾. Only, he wasn't long here in this city so he hadn't the free time that he could know.

His place was some ten kilometres from where I was staying; ten kilometres in a taxi or an automobile, that is. Something struck me as odd. It was plain that he was not playing his full hand; his place felt familiar; likewise, his demeanour—what little of it he spilled in the few seconds it took me to tiptoe to the settee—was composed, but suddenly jittery now that the hour was upon him.

The drawing room had a studied laxness to it, most of which effect was due to the stifling multiplicity of books. Books of every kind, but, as I said, somewhat too easy in their lack of order. I wouldn't have cared but for the fact that there were a number of trade paperbacks—ones you rarely saw even in the television channels. You really couldn't get them from even the big stores. I'll fix you down yet, my brawns and noble man! First discordant note; but I wasn't going to make an issue out of it. I could just as well have walked into a room stuffed with cannabis or grass or mush; this was a lot better though it was quite out of the ordinary. Of course, being the egomaniac that I was, it only inflamed me; like I'd somehow missed an important clue. But I had never even noticed this comic-strip side of his personality. Could it be—but that alarming thought never struck me then.

The room was lit in packets of incandescence: there were at least half a dozen lamps, all carefully calibrated and focused, to highlight artifacts, so that the room looked queerly like a cave. He was a collector, and that would be one of the starting premises for the amateur of crime. He split the line dividing art and technique; but often, an artist needs to be technical. I noticed a luxuriant quilt, Farsi in its rich detailing, carelessly slapped on a sloping divan. It was so tempting that I suddenly allowed myself to be Pauline⁽²⁾ resting on it. For a few moments I felt like winner. And then, I noticed him, looking at me intently but still with that dissipated, studentlike quivering. But I'd still not played my hand.

He seemed quite all right but for his heavy, sleepy eyes. It was obvious he'd not slept well or much. And it was then I noticed in a lowly lit corner of the room an easel covered with gauze. O, dear me! Another blow! He was taking me down really quickly.

Luckily, I'd taken that devastating sidelong glance whilst clutching at one of the spokes of a rather Danish looking steeply chair. And I vaguely recollect swirling down and slowly bottoming in its reassuring felt upholstery. Felt? Velveteen? I fairly bounced myself from the bottom of pitiless despair, as though to make sure it had sunken in.

I braced myself for a light-and-sound show. It was just a question of bedazzling each other, I thought. I cursed the day I took it upon myself to descend upon his senses in all my intellectual fluorescence. My bulbs were faintly blinking, right now. But no; the lights did not glimmer or fade, I'd just been buttered up for something else. He twisted it in even further, delightful wretch! He offered me coffee, and toast seasoned with mayonnaise, jam, and a little chocolate. Even as I sunk my teeth into a third helping, I wondered if it was a mistake or culinary virtuosity. Delicious either way—so it mattered little.

Naturally, I was thirsty after my swept-off gastronomic abandon. His carefully chosen menu ensured that: It was almost 75 percent fat. After a while I sensed it was not me munching munchies but it was a huge succulent black forest chewing on me, gulping me down, as I wound down a circuitous and treachery country-lane in Schwarzenwald on my 911⁽³⁾.

♫

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We both sensed the instant when we were both alone, intent, heads on the anvil—the moment of decision. Like bees buzzing, our minds full and our thoughts reeling in all directions, extending its spread and licking in the little flies and prey. But we both knew that every bee would tire in its time, and so also did ours; we were waiting merely for the eyes to lock up. It would come any moment because we were no longer shy, having gauged each others egotism and selfishness and found all in working order. And, in a sublime moment, almost idiotic in its ardency, the lock was acquired, and we were alone and isolated and we felt rather lost but resolute. No one, indeed nothing else, existed, pure consciousness, awareness of each other, awareness of another body, heaving, measuring, calculating, quivering, on the balance. Not simply awareness, it was as though something had been clasped into yours; it was not a decision to be made but inevitability. We felt clapped together, and it was only our selfishness that delayed the obvious. It was delicious because we both lazed under the impression that the other was forcing it whereas we were going at the same things and with the same ardency or lack. In lust, the inevitable is merely prolonged for obvious reasons. And it often is merely a habit, not a decision; supremely fit specimens could do without tarrying.

We fell. But afterwards, we talked. Which is to say, it was quite a pleasurable evening. And then it dawned on us that we'd been right in deciding not to talk, right in pursuing the course of events as they unfolded. In short—we were quite happy for each other.

♫

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We talked quite a bit afterward. We were not tired, not unduly, that is to say. And we just chatted...chattered. About the weather, about the books, about art, about chemistry...and about each other and about our prospects. He was a hard man, and it almost surprised me how he could forget his hardness. That is to say, he was speaking his harsh views of things with such a mellow tone that for a few moments you forgot he was actually tearing things down. I was amazed at how clinically precise his casual observations were, how cutting, and how devastating it would be to be at the end of his stick. But he talked only when prodded. Or he would have been lynched long ago, he had a knack of hitting you where it hurt worst. If he chose to talk, the other ones would have no option but to kill him outright. It was not his logic, it was not his eloquence; it was the firm conviction with which he shone forth, so you could say it was a combination of everything lethal the spoken word could offer. And he was—if you were careless enough to let him be—quite insufferable, because his words always pointed a finger at you no matter who or what he was talking about. He swallowed everything, himself included, and he spat it out like putrid flesh. And he shadowed you like a con man.

I don't recall how the conversation turned and I started my bit. And then I guess let myself go. I fell for that trick. In hindsight, I could perhaps console myself that he was soliloquising. But my repartee was the opening of floodgate. Traditional, bitchy, I felt like a cow afterward but I recall that I loved it while I poured it out. What was I thinking? Maybe it went like this. One confidence deserved another...or, rather, one ear deserved another. We couldn't either of us assume the Odysseus-Penelope roleplaying. He wasn't Odysseus because he was suitably stacked; he didn't want my riches. And I wasn't exactly Penelope, because I was not exactly ugly though I wasn't rich by any yardstick. I was independent but not a vampire; I just moved on when it became too hot to handle, and I similarly appreciated it when the guy thought likewise and slipped from my grasp.

...But my headhunting days were over.

♫

⁽¹⁾ He was convinced I would buy his version of whatever he was selling because my position, too, was plain to see.

⁽²⁾ The sculpture by Canova.

⁽³⁾ Try it on NFS Porsche Unlimited, just like I did...!

---

Note
This... is where we actually rejoin the protagonist of Distances. Five years have passed. And I myself have taken quite a while, sufficiently long to again grow distant from my characters. But...I'm digressing. No more spoilers. Let's just say that in the meantime I've suffered quite a bit, endured an ordeal of sorts, and am now in the right frame of mind and cushioned by the right sort of reassurance (cushion is always psychosomatic but the conditions for replicating it are not well defined) to continue writing. In contrast to what other writers may say, the only drug I need to write is peace of mind. And when I'm not even thinking about writing it, the events unfold and I just go there with an umbrella to shade me from the sun.

I had drafted about 300 words and then left to watch over Baby. The power failed (and it was not yet time for the daily half-an hour of load shedding), and the PC went out like the light. (I haven't replaced the battery set on my four-year-old UPS.) This is drafted in Composer, and since I was just starting out, I hadn't yet saved it. Poof! went the first version of the file. It was, arguably, a better, crisper version—ever more so because I am now burdened by a sense of loss, and am vainly trying to figure out the mood in which I had composed those fifteen odd lines.

To offset the loss, and to absolve myself of any continuing affectation, I am leaving out those four paragraphs which might have set the story properly. What we now have is a more dramatic cutting-in; but I guess this one's going to take a while coming, so I'd better put it all down immediately before it leaves me or before the power fails.

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[1549/321::1861. Minor edits and proofing. x15]

♫

And this specially for Raphæl: I had to make a start somewhere. This is just that, and you may yet get your serial. In time, in time. But I do have to say: the best things in life are episodic, those moments don't drag on. So too, those chance meetings pictured in Eleonora and in Distances. The great attraction of these meetings was their one-offness. From the moment those meetings became possible, the moment he and she became aware, they were aware of the uniqueness rather than awkwardness. Those moments would never ever come again. When the world was sleeping, when the rest were not looking, they were thrown together to confide in each other a little. That was the magic. I could not forget that I have carried meandering thoughts of this sort in my head for kilometres as the school bus spun around the same roads every day and i kept awake in a delirium. It was intoxication in anticipation of this tête-à-tête that never came. It never was love; there never was any contact, so it never escalated to that. My friend Mr S had a rather squarely-dismissive term for it—a pipe dream⁽⁴⁾. Love or attraction or whatever else had little to do with that magic. It was just the gravity of the moment.

And, much as I'd like to reinvent a story of true-blue love in Bangalore in 1997, I realise it's a near-impossible task if I'm to steer clear of all the cliché combinations of man-woman love. That is, I can't keep it sanitary and interesting at the same time. Perhaps I could do it short-term; all I ever try to do is short-term, and this will be no different.

⁽⁴⁾ He'd consumed his bit of Kubla Khan I presume. I was aware of his reading of Coleridge even then; he made no secret of it. He'd sent me a poem in which this motif figured prominently (It was an invective against the very teenage-boy habit of daydreaming, if I remember correctly.) (And sorry for this footnote to an endnote with parenthetical apologies. It's becoming a disease.)

[373, this special for Raphæl]
[1549|321|373::2243]

Eleonora Amore

'I’d no idea it would be like this…knew you were strong, clever…not that you’d be living in a hell, like this, by your own choice! But why…why?'

The pages blinked at her in motley floral hues. There was an entry for each day of school he’d attended that year: and special entries for each of those days she’d engaged classes for X A. But that came to just two days a week, plus those days for any extra hours engaged. In all, it came to seventy one special entries, each of which took up more than two pages, and the other ordinary days. He’d filled up the specials in a scarlet ink. Then there were long passages which were written in green and crossed out in black; some were still visible, and at times it gave you the impression that he’d done it after a lot of thought.

It was evident that this had been his major preoccupation for the whole year. But she recalled with horror that she’d been his teacher for the previous year also, and he’d probably first seen her a year before that. It was not just a crush, it was an obsession growing strong by the minute, engaging and disengaging like the tentacles of an octopus: but he was holding up well, his grades were still the very best, and he was hard to beat in anything he’d set his sights on. He was still the role model for the entire 2500-strong student-force of the school; there had never been anyone like him before.

She found herself in a bizarre situation: it was not her choice, it was not his either, they were thrown together not by the crush or by the rush of feelings; no, there had never been any chance for that sort of thing, and there certainly had been no dalliance. She set exemplary standards in teaching and he in learning, and this came at a price. They both paid with their time; it was well-known that they had little or no free time, and it was also well known that they were not teaching or preparing or studying all the time. He still took no private lessons, though it had been rumoured for a time that he might find her tutelage useful, maybe just to lessen his load. She knew all along that he was built for far more difficult tasks, this was a side-business to him. So she never harboured any notion of his coming to take private lessons from her.

And side-business it was, too. When she tested him three months into the year, she found that he’d carefully compressed everything into neat little pills to be reproduced later: unravelling like paper flowers, he was only concerned with the most efficient arrangement—a hierarchy—of the knowledge structure he built. In the end, she realised with considerable wonderment and admiration, it all reduced to several bullets of hyphenated analytical headings that told the story—but just to him and to those similar.

The school bus was gone now. In three weeks he would be finishing his business at the school. She was already thinking of that. Sure as a dumbbell he would top the state examinations; and sure as anything, the school would never be the same again, the disturbance would be immense. It would never recover from the huge shadow he would cast over it. It was nothing to do with the school at all: he had his own methods, and he would follow a course almost in opposition to the accepted curricular ones. It was a source of relief to her that she was the chemistry mistress and not the history or any other humanities mistress; the way he wrote in the examinations was an exercise in kindness. He would write answers in keeping with the invigilator, and he knew everyone and their level pretty well. But she was proud to be his chemistry miss: she was really good and she prepared well, and before she came to meet him she had a sort of arrogant self-assurance that bordered on the despotic.

In one day that had changed when in the course of a lesson she pronounced 'Raul' for Raoult, in whose name there is a famous chemical law ('the vapour pressure of an ideal solution...'). He casually remarked that it was “Ray-o”. It was a surprise but she had it coming: his reputation was such that every schoolmistress knew that the boy was special, and the first lesson everyone learnt was to realise that this was no ordinary boy. It was quite well known that the Principal used to instruct all teachers before engaging Std X A; the reason was this boy. And with the utterance of that single word, the equation between the two changed; it imperceptibly coloured her evenings and changed him.

In that first class, when she spoke out her taskmaster rules—which included the admonition that they should all take down lecture notes—she was transferring what she’d herself learnt at college a few years ago and found useful—when she spelt them out, waving the cane like a baton, he realised that his life would never be the same again. They were only doing the ninth standard and here she was, already launching them into young adulthood, on the path to true scholarship. He became immensely respectful towards her. And to everyone else it was not just respect of any sort: it was respect towards her superior technique and great battle-readiness. Though everyone grudged her these qualities, none wanted to be in her shoes. She came every day to school prepared to face the music; her preparations for class were legendary.

Short and diminutive; at 155 cm perhaps not everyone would call her short, but at 95 lbs she was surely petite. She walked very upright and briskly. She was very adept at draping the sari; she would habitually use ironed cotton saris that would keep their impeccable falls intact at the end of the day and even through the night if need be; she was very careful about dressing and being clean. But dusky complexion and acne played sore bed mate to her grooming, making her look like a prude and a tart. In the eyes of the boys, she was either remarkably depraved (which was a reflection of their own veiled sexual longing) or incredibly unfortunate. (It was a fact that her father had retired penniless from the army; she had an elder sister who has run away with a bus driver, and a younger sister who had tried along similar lines to the disgrace of the family, which was why they were changing houses every now and then.)

'Come…it’s getting dark.'

They walked peacefully beneath the lindens. It was the last week of February but the summer heat was already upon them; the trees were abloom. He had chosen a most delicate moment to hand her his most trusted secret…a huge, 500-page book, so carefully written and indexed that it did not take much effort on her part to understand that it was a boy’s life.

She was a much-misunderstood, much-exploited woman herself. She’d struggled to get her master’s, worked odd jobs until she’d found employment in this school, which still paid her a pittance. She took private tuitions and also engaged classes during the morning (pre-school) hours at a nearby tuition centre. It all added up to something more significant than her salary. She was unmarried, and her folks needed her badly just for the money. So they left her alone…to work, to toil, and make ends meet which were not hers to twine and knot. And…in the long run, her private tuitions—combined with her dressing, which was always decent but a bit too perfect for mere mortals to duplicate—gave her a bad name. In this little conservative place where an English song would be front-page news, an unmarried woman of 24 living hand to mouth had very limited options. It was said that she was a very frustrated creature. He never knew for real, nor did he ever try to find out.

So many distant doors had opened and all of them had closed…and she’d not even tried a few of them, she never got that far in her hurried life. But of one thing she was sure: when she was in the class, in front of the blackboard, her heart was stone and she poured it forth in a carefully modulated stream which was both effective and captivating. Her accent was superb, her method uncompromising. She summoned all her heart and all her life-force to beat the life out of those outstretched felon hands. She would cry horribly in the staffroom, and during those times she cut quite a sorry figure, and even the `felons' would often come in droves to console her. But she never stopped crying.

They’d walked the kilometre to the highway. It was now completely dark, and they had been talking all the while. He had written wonderfully, and it slowly bit into her to realise that she had been closely observed, her every word appreciated and noted by this maverick of a schoolboy who had been, by his own admission, just ‘looking to see.’ Ah, how he said it! He was looking to find her faults! The classic formula for falling…rising in love. But his words were kind; even her mother hadn't spoken so tenderly to her in years.

She enjoyed the strictly programmatic beginning of each entry. It merely described her getup, her hairdo (which was wont to be the same everyday, a ponytail—so he took his chances at the colour of the hair band, and noting if a few curls of hair actually evaded the clasp of the girdle), her first words (mostly the greeting, so he would note the exact phrasing and the look she wore when she said it), and of course, which of the legs she crooked underneath when she sat down to take the toll.

She was not hurt by this immense invasion of privacy: her every atom reverberated not with the sense of being violated, but with an almost helpless urge to cry out, ‘Why, why me?’ But it could only be she; and she knew it. They were alike in a lot many respects, and they knew it all along; the only thing that was missing in her was the realisation that he was in fact, filing her away in this big blue book whilst she toiled in the tuition home and in her little room up the stairs. An uncontrollable rage welled within her, and she glared at him: but there was no malice in his eyes, and she knew instantly that he too was living in hell. Each to one's own: they were so close, yet so far away.

She turned the pages once more under the sodium lights: she laughed at the monthly summaries he had written, which were mostly summaries of the saris she had worn, how she’d been during class…she broke out in a fit as she read his snide remark that he suspected her mother of running a laundry service. But it was not a totally naïve record either, he had noted additional details that spiced up an otherwise clinical report that startled one with the regularity of a striking clock. O! The things people cook in their pots! She was stuck for words so she merely asked him, ‘How did you manage to find the time for this?’

‘No no, the miracle was that I found the time to live,’ he smiled and said nonchalantly, ‘you are my life.’

At that moment, a long truck passed them on the road, cutting off the light for more than a few seconds. In darkness, she saw his silhouette bristling with an aura of orange backlight. This was a not a boy who would just look and look; he had transfixed her, and he himself has secured it all by transferring all his energies into this one concept he had drilled out and christened as his life’s motive. Of course he was playing, of course he was just making it all sound worthwhile. But she was at the end of it—she was the quarry, she was the object of his gaze, and she had been invaded—and she felt tiny, in a way she had never felt even beside her huge uncle. Silent and benign, he was just a shadow, a disconcerting fond gaze at the other side of the void: but he was there, and his faint offer (was it love? But he never said it, perhaps it was not required) only made her tremble every now and then when the realisation dawned upon her.

He was fifteen and she was 24. But how did it matter! It was not as if they were arranging something. But for the first time in her life, she felt respect for a man. She felt respect for a boy who appeared infinitely thoughtful, caring, and even chivalrous: he had written all of this magnificent book only for her, just to show her. For two years he had toiled for this; and he had completed all but the last dozen or so pages in a most regular pattern. She respected the man he already was, but felt like squealing a cry because there was nothing she could offer him to eradicate that huge chasm separated them.

‘No, wait…wait…’ She buried her eyes in her face, and slumped down on the rather wide road marker just beside. Sighing audibly, she dissolved in silent peals of gentle sobbing. He could hear the wavelike regression of her breath. He wanted to comfort her, to be the fragrant petal, tears meant something to him, and it scared him when a woman cried.

‘I am sorry…?’ She fished about and emerged in a strong rally, putting away her handkerchief. ‘You’ve dropped this on me…no, really. I’d like to talk about it…just talk, I’m not…I cannot…you know that, don’t you. You’re a wonderful person…but I have to live out my life just the way it is…but I’d like to tell you a few things. I don’t want…I want to know a few things, too. Tomorrow—’

By all means, yes, he was ready to hear her story. ‘Tomorrow’ would be a Saturday and it suited him fine. But his eyes betrayed him; and she assured him that she knew it was not for the tête-à-tête that he’d given up his secret to her. ‘Tomorrow’ would be a big day for either of them.

'Til tomorrow, then. What she'd not asked was his permission—she was already trapped anyhow—the permission to really be miserable, to feel disconnected and awful in a way her listless life had never afforded her to. But...'til tomorrow, it was a promise, and they both hung on it.


[2600, 12 edits, 100 min for basic text (2347), 90 min for edits]
[This had come to me today in a dream, but I'd probably lived this dream about 15 years ago, and hundreds of times. Coloured by selective memory and a fondness that grows with distance and irreparable loss; This to a very special person who remains...special.]