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I remember this building well
At the end of a row of buildings
Each tenement had a balcony at the front
Two rooms and a kitchen at the back
Overlooking the suburban rail link.
Trains roared past
All day and late into night
But the noise didn’t matter; it was all around us.
In the front yard, children screamed and cars honked
The radio played music, jingles and news too, always loud.
Silence would have been odd here
For silence was death, noise was life
Yet there was no conflict or dichotomy
They were all part of a fabric
Fashioned and pared down, stripped of mystery.
Life was laid bare in full view
A world of its own accord
Moving at its own pace
A miniature drama unfolding, unfurling
A richly variegated tapestry of human drama
Bubbling above the surface.
A soap opera was played out
In all its multi-layered glory and sub-plots
By the denizens of these apartment buildings.
Everything was public, nothing was private.
Like an act within a play, even the banal and the humdrum
Encompassed a ritual of bizarre theatre.
The man going to work, the child to school
A man pulling a cart, carrying lunches in tins
The college girls, the university professors
The office workers, the local jester playing the fool.
The milkman, the postman and the fabric weaver;
The fisherwoman bringing fresh fish from the sea.
Peace at last by late morning; the housewife relaxing
Her morning chores done, a few hours of solitude
Till a knock on the door in early evening.
In the midst of this cacophony
A boy grows up, waking up to a new adventure.
Playing with his peers, in the forecourt in front
Impromptu games of cricket and marbles, hide and seek
Enacting scenes from popular films and ancient epics,
Sometimes pausing to watch the metal sprayer
In the car repair garage
Buying sweets from the corner shop
Before walking en masse to the ice-cream parlour
In anticipation of an evening visit with his mother.
It was a daily ritual, our little haven
Little things in small measures
So precious to a boy of ten.
But there is one thing missing
The absence of a senior paternal figure.
Other boys had their fathers
Returning home to be reunited and welcomed
Into the bosom of the family.
For me there was no such joy
No one to look up to or emulate.
Instead there was a void and emptiness
That a young boy deeply felt
An irreparable and lifelong scar, lamenting an absence.
The boy now changed; angry and deprived
Withdrawing into a shell, into his own world.
The pain, the hurt, the cries of anguish
Spreading like a disease; then the void claimed him.
Where is the boy who tripped over the wooden partition;
The boy who ran up the stairs
To put a garland over the head of his father
As the P&O steamer, the Chusan, docked.
It was the first time son met father
A distant figure materialising, from across the water
On the other side of the world, the morning fog
Welcoming the stranger into Bombay harbour.
Where is the same boy who cried
As the father left him behind, not to meet
For another 7 years, in a different world
In a strange frigid land?
Where is the boy who stood
Below the steepling staircase
By the side of the bridge
Wondering whether to run up
Two steps at a time
And to come down the same way again?
There was bravado and daring
Etched on innocent faces, fear unknown back then.
40 years later, below the same staircase
The boy, now a man, is filled with apprehension,
Can barely climb up the stairs
Even one step at a time. |
