Puri Subzi

It’s a beautiful, rainy evening in Bangalore. I fixed the leaky windows at home, mopped the stagnant pool of water by the bed and now am enjoying the cloudy indigo of dusk and the amber of an Amrut Peated. Life feels good. Yet, over the last few weeks I’ve let a few things slip away—not writing enough, not being in touch with the people I love and care and not exercising enough. I need to rectify all that soon.

—

I don’t think I realised the extent of the Faustian bargain I made with myself a few months ago when I took on this startup gig. I was recovering from a deep bout of depression (and in many ways I still am), my physical health had deteriorated and all I wanted to do was to take a break, write and head to the hills. Here I am now, struggling with a great many things—things that a once bitten, twice-shy entrepreneur is familiar with. However, the number one issue I’ve struggled with and this is where the depression makes life most difficult—having an opinion.

Startups are all about having an opinion. The reason why a product exists is because of an opinion you hold. The reason why it looks, reads and functions the way it does it because of an opinion. Opinions drive the market you want to target. Opinions foster the culture of the company. An opinion is what keeps the brogrammers away.

All that a depressed mind wants to do is to retreat. All I want to do most days is to not talk. All I want to do is to not opine. All I want to do is to drift and not wage battles with my mind.

Yet, these are battles that must be fought and won.

It used to be that I could write my way out of sadness. Not a particular sadness, but that all compassing, persistant layer that sits above everything and barely lets anything past. I would pick up my old notebook, open a fresh page and let the pen loose. But try as much as I can, I can’t do that these days. The pen acts as if its set in concrete. Keyboard and screen are a poor substitute. Sadness requires you to feel what you write. That physical contact with paper and that scratching sound. Both have a rhythm and metronome that propels you forward and at the same time deeper to draw out whatever is causing the sadness.

So I’ve taken to making bowls of ramen.

At first, just like writing, it seemed an odd choice, full of difficult things to wade through despite the end product being simplicity itself. But like writing, it takes practice to make a good bowl of ramen and that practice is what lifts you out of whatever it is that’s pinning you down. In this case, the process and outcome (so far) is far more intense and fulfilling than any words on screen or paper.

To make a good bowl, it takes a day.

One starts with the broth — a big pot of water, some 10-12 cloves of garlic, a 2-inch cube of ginger, 2 large onions, a handful of carrots and celery, dried mushrooms of any kind, plenty of salt and pepper and the magic ingredient, sea kelp. First time I made ramen broth without kombu, it was utter shit, worse than sambar made with North Madras water. To bring all of this to a rumbling boil takes time, lots of time — an hour atleast. Time for you watch the steam and ruminate on the sadness that hugs your heart like a tight sweater in the summer. See, broth making is perfect for those times within the great sadness when you just want to stew in it. You don’t want to get out it, you don’t want to talk about it to anyone, you just want to be with your sadness. Then you add dark and light soya to the broth and it muddies up the whole thing. Then you really aren’t sure about what to with your sadness, so you go do something else, like watch Anthony Bourdain eat great quantities of offal and enjoying it.

The muddy broth keeps on simmering. 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours. Then you’ve had enough of Tony Bourdain so you switch off the gas and think about what’s next.

Noodles for the bowl can’t be made when faced with the “let me stew in it” kind of sadness. For that you need a brief flash of anger, a moment of regret and the ensuing sharp sadness. It has to be directed at someone or something. Most people would describe making udon a very zen like process. It is. But it is precipitated by something entirely un-zen like.

So you wait until the next day. Or two days. When inevitably the sharp sadness comes on. This is when you get cracking. You have at most an hour or two tops before the sadness is blunt. A good udon takes three or more.

First, the dough needs to be combined. This is not as easy as it sounds. Chapati/Roti dough making is violent — you stretch and pull with all your might. Here, you can’t. Brute strength will only make the dough too stretchy and therefore too chewy in the end. You go about it with a cadence, that for lack of a better word, you’d call effiminate.

Then you seal it in a plastic bag and let it rest for half an hour. 30 min later, you cover the bag with a nice thick cloth, lay it out on the floor and “knead” with your legs. This sounds like fun and it is, for maybe 30 sec, then you start worrying about whether you are overdoing it. Your sadness meanwhile is confused. It has worries of its own. It feels like it is losing its battle, but then it finds new vigour and attacks the vanguard. At this time, you slow down and focus and wait for 2 minutes for the dough to rest. You then take the dough out, roll it into a ball, put it back into the bag and set aside for half hour again.

Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.

Now comes the rolling. At this point, the sadness more confused than ever, its vanguard attacks failing tries something different. It attacks you deeply, questioning your competence to do the next task. When one writes, there is a point in time in the whole process where everything seems to be in place, yet nothing is done and you are lost and on the verge of tearing up the pieces of paper. This is that time.

Rolling is daunting. True masters roll dough with the precision of a calliper and the economy of a ruler. The goal is get to an even 3mm thickness. The key to this is dividing the dough into a lazy grid. You focus on making each square and its adjacent square as perfectly level as possible. Then the next set and then next one and so on. This is where you’ll fail the most initially. There will be an unexpected lump that wouldn’t flatten, an unseemly tear that will mean starting from scratch, some extra flour on the rolling pin that will mysteriously distribute itself unevenly across.

The sadness has followed me for close to a year. I’ve gotten to 6mm in that time.

They say that attack is the best form of defense, so you take up a sharp knife, preferably a cleaver, and cut through the dough and the fog of grief and anger. You transfer the rolled out dough carefully to a flat, raised board and fold in half gently. Any loss in focus here is disaster as the dough can break, ruining your ramen forever and pushing you to more despair.

Take a steel ruler and line it up along the edge of the dough, 2mm in. You should picture a strand of noodle before you take the cleaver down. Do it once. Move the ruler another 2mm in and take the cleaver down. You’ll know have a few strands of noodles. The sadness will scream inside of you — it knows its being defeated, it will fight back, but the cleaver means business. Slowly, but surely, the rhythm and metronome of pen on paper beings to appear in the cleaver and ruler. The sounds are remarkably same.

The sharp sadness is gone and you are left with a fresh batch of noodles. You bring to boil another pot of water, but now the steam doesn’t make you ruminate — it’s time will come again. You drop the noodles in for 3 minutes and immediately after put them in a bowl of ice water. Good noodles should be cold, just as your heart as is when you’ve managed to deal with the sadness and won a small victory.

When you retrieve your broth from yesterday or the day before, it will stare back at you with the sadness that went into making it, but you no longer care about that. You heat it up, drop the cold noodles in and be surprised at the warmth it spreads through you.

Outside, the rain is falling in sheets. Inside, the room is sparse and dimly lit. Enough to cast deep shadows on my wrinkled face. A gaggle of children is gathered in a semi circle.

I am telling them stories of a beautiful railway that existed decades ago.

Of a railway that ran through the jungles that Kipling made famous.

Of a railway that celebrated its reach despite its dimunitive size.

Of a railway that even in its last days, the light shone upon beautifully.

A railway that had the likes of the hardworking and gentle Mr. Khandekar check tickets.

A railway that let its passengers finish their tea in peace before getting going again.

A railway that was obsessed with its distance from Calcutta.

A railway that gave Ms. Rawat her job of handing over signal tokens and making possible for her daughter to attend college.

A railway that encouraged — no matter how late you arrived at the station to buy a ticket.

A railway that was built for lazy, late afternoon conversations.

A railway that had within its station compound a library with a steam locomotive at its gate.

A railway that had broad stations that doubled up as the evening market.

A railway peaceful enough for romance to bloom.

A railway that was source of water supply for the village and allowed cows to feed on the green grass that were its platforms.

A railway that gave its office goers a chance to unwind before starting their dreary days.

A railway that once welcomed me with a dining car and served a wonderful dinner.

A railway that didn’t evict cobblers from its premises.

A railway that was the kids’ school commute option every day.

A railway that preserved its schools.

A railway that made possible for Mr. Deo to collect his pensions every month.

A railway that kept reminding everyone that there were too many people for it to carry.

A railway that stopped at places like Jhilimili and allowed one to walk down its platform lined with beautiful old teak and peepul trees.

A railway that flew in the face of normalcy and plotted to have its busiest hour in the afternoon.

A railway that constantly reminded me that speed is no guarantee of reaching somewhere quicker.

The Leica Q will teach you the art of walking. Good walking shoes is the first important feature of any photographer.

That’s how a beautiful, meditative piece on the Leica Q starts. It is comprehensive in its coverage — both technical and the emotional.

I can’t own an Leica and probably never will, but I have shot a few frames with it and can attest to the deep, mystical connection it engenders the second you hold the gorgeous, machined, smooth body.

But this isn’t about a Leica or a Pentax or a Hasselblad, it is about what happens when you hold a camera, any camera in your hand.

In my case, it has been a phone — a Nokia Lumia 730. I am not kidding when I say that it has been the best camera I’ve ever owned. That oft-repeated adage, “The best camera is the one in your hand right now” has never been truer.

Taking photos requires a sense of elevated seeing — you must have your eyes set on a combination of elements in a frame at one particular point in time that will almost never be repeated. Filter out the noise, preternaturally will the brain into reducing the things it is processing.

Click.

The 730 makes that possible. That zen moment of calm and immediacy. That rush of seeing something that has been framed and saved for posterity.

I don’t claim for a second that there aren’t other phones that take even better pictures. They do and they are beautiful.

But the 730 is all I’ve got. And a pair of good walking shoes.

It’s been a longish day, unusually hot for Bangalore. Mother is at home, fussing over some piece of furniture that hasn’t been cleaned properly when I enter. This is how the routine goes when she’s staying over and I return from work: Hi how was your day was it ok are you tired do you want juice what do you want for dinner will you be cooking or should I? On most days, I end up picking the knife and ladle but today, she sees my disinterest and volunteers to fix us something.

The heat has me sapped and confused so I head to the balcony to catch some breeze.

“We’ll make koftas. I have lauki at home”, is what I think I hear over the wind. “Did you just say we’ll make koftas?” “Yes, you don’t want?” “No, no, just the extra effort is what I am thinking” “It’s ok, I’ll make most of it.” Which means I’ll be involved in it a lot more than I bargained for.

This is a thing we have, the both of us. My father and I have words and egos to throw at each other. Mother and I have cooking time. It is a time where both of us are more relaxed than usual and we talk and trade stories. Often the same ones. Us storytellers practising our craft.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, the photo guys finally sent the courier. They’ve restored it very well, am really impressed. Thank you!” I had sent a few pictures my father had taken in the early and late 70s to clean up dust and get fresh prints.

“Anyway, you want to help me out a bit? I’ll manage the rest.”

She points out the photograph in my hand. “He was being such a baby on that trip. Always complaining about something and never enjoying much of it. See his face.” It appears so. My father, who usually has a smile that is either a centimetre wide or lips scrunched together in disinterest (his son takes after this), seems angry. My mother on the other hand is all smiles. “It’s the Arc de Triomphe in the background, the least he could do was pretend to be interested”, she adds. “Am telling you, for all his intelligence and resourcefulness, he’s a baby, like most men.”

The onion chopping duty falls to me. Two large ones that need to be diced as finely as possible, almost a puree, but not quite. I’ve always been proud of my knife skills and today doubly so, because the onions induce many more tears than usual. “Oh, stop crying. You always have cried too much.”, she almost hisses. This has always been her lament. That I let go of myself far too much for her liking.

The onions are put to the side as I turn towards the tomatoes. 3 medium sized ones need to be blanched and pureed, but first the skin is scored so that it can be peeled off easily. After about 30 sec in hot water, I take them out to cool. She’s peeling 6 cloves of garlic which she smashes into a rough paste. A small cube of ginger is also given the same treatment. The holy quartet of a gravy — onions, tomatoes, ginger and garlic — the ones that give the body and heft and strength.

In the photo pile, I pick out one that I suspect she’ll recognise instantly. “Is that a view of Chakri’s house from our verandah?” “Ya, ma.” She grew up mostly poor under a very hardened, strict mother and a father who wanted to be as hands off with his children as possible, preferring the mute company of ointments and tablets that were nearing expiry in the pharmacy he ran. From her home in Chengalavaryan St, she walked every day to the Lady Wellindgon school, taking the longer route in the morning via Singarachari St and past the Parthasarthy Kovil simply because she liked the smell of the sakkara pongal that is distributed in the mornings. “Evenings, I always came back by TP Kovil street because at that Ganapathy St corner, one old thatha would sit and fry up vadai and appalams. Sometimes I would just watch and he would give me one for free.” She never tires of telling this story. I’ve heard it for more 30 years and yet everytime I hear it, there is something new in it. The way she cocks her head back, a faint smile that sometimes is wider and sometimes narrower. Hopeful and wistful.

The hardest part of making the kofta is grating the lauki. You skin and quarter the vegetable, then take out the box grater and run the quarters through it like no tomorrow. There will be a heap of lauki by time you finish. It is messy and can get watery. Which it does become this time. “What’s with the sloppy work, huh?”, she asks. Her dream of attending college shattered when her father passed away when she was 18. “For me, that moment was when all illusions of what I wanted in my life disappeared. Quaid-E-Milleth went out of the window, a history degree, a few more years of carefree fantasy, all gone.”

With 4 more siblings to feed, shelter and take care and her own mother illiterate and unable to do much, she and her elder brother went off in search of work. The first few months were hard, there was no work to be found for a young girl with halting, hesitant speech and anger and resentment for having being denied choices in life she so desperately wanted to make. With only one sibling making money, she and her brothers and sisters survived on one meal a day. Sometimes a few relatives would drop by with a kilo of rice and veggies. Sometimes they would come to sneer because her father had unpaid debt. She eventually found work in a stationary shop on Patters Road. “The job didn’t pay well, but it was reasonably fun. I at least had the chance to get out the house. I needed to do that desperately.” To save and give everything back to her mother to run the house, she walked to work everyday. “I think I saved 20 paisa everyday by not taking the bus. I think. It’s been so long that I don’t remember the exact amount, but yeah something like that.”

It’s suddenly become muggy in Bangalore and the prospect of spending time in the kitchen dulls me. She gives me a hardened look. To the grated lauki she adds a few spoons of besan, one finely cut green chilli, a pinch of red chilli powder, a bit of roasted jeera powder, some turmeric powder, some garam masala, teeny bit of asafoetida and salt. She mixes everything well and starts forming small balls of kofta to fry. The trick here is to add as much besan as to keep things a bit dry and to hold the water lauki together. Too much besan and the kofta becomes a shot-putter’s object, too little, it’ll disintegrate.

“Your father basically rescued me and my family, but you know that”, she says. They’d known each other for a while because he’d stayed at her house for a few months completing his M.Sc. They’d grown fond of each other during that time but never making any attempt to take matters further. He got busy with a Ph.D and she carried on selling notebooks. When the time did eventually come, her mother found that the stars and signs did match. He came down from England, in the middle of a post-doc, married and whisked her away.

The oil in the wok is heating up well. She drops the sticky kofta balls into the wok slowly and one by one. “How long do you think we should fry them?” “Oh, I don’t know? 2-3 minutes. I don’t like it when it’s too brown.”

England was hard for her initially. She was 22, with only a few words of English and absolutely no clue about how most things work. “To his credit, your father did help me a lot in those first few days. Showed me the place, practiced English daily, made me write etc. etc.” She started working at a garment factory, initially sewing buttons onto cardigans, moving onto cutting collars and pockets before ending up as a typist/secretary. “The worst part of the whole thing was the train ride in the cold and rain. The skinheads near the station would taunt me daily. I was afraid if I told your father, he’d come and there would be fight and then it’ll get ugly, so I just took it. I was sending back the money I was making. That was the most important thing, so I couldn’t let anything happen to it.” Her brothers and sisters, now managers and school principles and entrepreneurs went to school because she and her husband sent back generously.

I ask her about her generosity in those days and how it seems to have dwindled with her ageing. “Oh, I don’t know. Age and cynicism, I suppose.” Maybe, but not quite. For all her caring, she’s always been a selfish person. She’ll do certain things only for her immediate gain and then abandon it when it no longer suits her. That she always has and still does look for accolades when she’s done a good deed. “Why do you expect it, ma? This thing that people need to acknowledge?” She growls.

“Do you want to make the rest of it? Or will you slink back to your room?” “I’ll do it”, I push back. The koftas are crisp on the outside and soft inside. A beautiful, medium brown. Into another big wok with ghee, I add some jeera, let it splutter and then add the finely chopped onions. After a couple of minutes of browning, half the garlic and half the ginger go in. This now needs to sweat until the onions are soft, but not caramelised. At this point, the rest of the garlic, ginger and tomato puree goes in.

She returned from England to deliver me. My brother followed a few years later and we moved to Bangalore. Bringing up two raucous boys mostly on her own initially must definitely not have been easy, but from this point onwards, the stories and recollections trail off. They have always. Like all storytellers, she’s built a myth and person around the key things in her life that has made her who she is. In her case, the struggles of her early years. These are stories she loves telling. These are the stories that seem to change subtly over the years, often revealing a glint of something new. The later stories, the ones that involve bringing up my brother and I, the ones that involve her struggles with my father’s struggle with his identity and purpose, the ones that involve briefly living in near penury in my teens, these we’ve hardly talked about or heard.

I ask her why this is so. “The onions and tomatoes are good now. Add the masala now, please?” So in go the turmeric powder, coriander powder, chilli powder, a pinch of jeera powder, a few flakes of kasuri methi and a bit of roasted saunf. This needs to be sweated again, until the oil separates from the onion and tomato. “Why are you being so combative today? I thought we would have fun and it would be nice.”

So I do what I have always done when I’ve brought up these questions and she has refused to answer them. Back down. My questions, about how she allowed her husband’s weak shadow to loom oversized above us, about how her dominant, combative personality wilted in that shadow, about how she’s never forgiven the world for taking away her college years, have to wait for another day.

The onion tomato base has browned and reddened beautifully. To this thick, luscious paste, I add a good measure of water and stir everything vigorously so that no clumps are formed and remain. The fried koftas are gently put into this gravy and the whole thing is brought to a gentle boil.

I suppose all of us, especially storytellers, guard our secrets carefully. Never revealing things too early in the tale for that might do grave damage to the arc and plot we want to construct. To hold back until the last possible moment is a good story telling tactic. I am hoping that she is still constructing the one she wants to tell in a few years time. But as her first listener, it seems unfair that I have to wait.

Sprinkle some freshly chopped coriander over the koftas and gravy. Serve hot with rotis.

There’s a baby at home.

As of this time, he is just under three weeks old. His voice is clear, loud and has a pitch that could shatter a thin, low quality wine glass. He expresses his voice most fervently when most of the world is asleep. I suspect my neighbours have either installed double glazed windows by now or battle sleep deprivation each day. We of course, are firmly entrenched in the later camp.

The first day he came home, I couldn’t go anywhere near him because I had the flu. I am not the father, yet even my underdeveloped paternal instinct cried out for his touch, his smell. An excruciating 48 hours later, I held and cradled him, carefully balancing his neck, nuzzled his head and gave him a kiss. From the corner of my eye, I could see a couple of tears running down my mother’s cheeks.

Over the next couple days, I held him and walked about the apartment. His tiny eyes straining to focus on various things hanging down from the ceiling. He poo'ed many, many times, often into a good shirt. Yellow poo, slightly orangish poo, sometimes tinged with green, sometimes an off black blue. He peed into my nose, my eyes and once into my ear. That last feeling is quite indescribable.

One night, my sister, exasperated, exhausted, sleep deprived and on the verge of tears, gently knocked on my bedroom door and asked if I could watch over him while she gathered herself with a few steps up and down the cool balcony. So, I snuggled up beside him. He smelled of baby, with a waft of musk and curdled milk. He shifted a bit on his side and with his tiny, tiny hand tried to grab hold of my palm. He found the webbing between index and thumb. Satisfied, he let out a small grunt and settled down. I put my hand on his chest, covered in a yellow t-shirt that said “Waddup, bro” and with the dim night lamp casting a small shadow, watched as it heaved up and down a few centimetres. The first few weeks are full of overwhelming, irrational fear that something might go wrong. This despite everything showing up as normal and the doctor’s stern gaze when asked. So it is an oddly most comforting and reassuring thing to sit, watch and feel a baby breathe.

***

A few nights later, my sister wakes me up again. I go to her room and both of us watch a peaceful, sleeping baby. “I am tired. And I want to be held”, she says. So I hold her. The pregnancy and first few days of motherhood have taken a toll on her. Her once lustrous, thick hair is a lump. Her once shiny, sparkly eyes are blank and exhausted. Her spirit, seemingly escaping from her by the day. She sleeps soundly for an hour until her son’s wail wakes her again. I go fix coffee for both of us. The sharp acidic hit at 2AM is very welcome and we soon are whispering to each other. About how she isn’t suddenly happy anymore, about how that already she hopes that her son doesn’t inherit her (and her husband’s) inadequacies, about what his dreams are full of, about his sudden, mysterious smiles. About why poop is so many colours, about why for boys the wiping is from back to front and for girls the reverse, about the incessant air guitaring with his arms. About how he is as much an object of near continuous curiosity as anything else.

One evening, with the breeze rattling the wind chime, I tell him stories. About his mother, his father, his aunt, his grandfather, his grandmother who would have absolutely pampered him were she alive. I tell him about the stars, the clouds, the moon, the sky. I tell him about flowers and trees and dogs and cats and other animals. I tell him about steam trains and loud hissing noise they used to make. I tell him about how because of the fickle nature of one chromosome, he became a man thus eliminating a huge chunk of hardship his mother and his cousin sisters have faced, are facing and will face. He listens attentively, eyes blinking furiously, until I pause to catch a breath. If I stop for too long, he contorts his face, threatening to cry.

A few hours later, in bed, I wonder if he’s taken in those stories. Does he realise that he was told something? I wonder about how little he knows. What would it be like to not know things at all, yet be conscious of it? What would it be to grow up learning things again yet knowing that you are re-learning them and that you deliberately chose this path?

***

Here’s the thing: In the short while he’s been home, he’s healed me. From not wanting to head home for hours after work, I now count the minutes to dart back. To see him, his ridiculous, I am so full of angst face, to smell him, to have him grip my little finger and not let go. He’s not my son. He’ll soon leave. It breaks my heart.

He’s hungry and screaming. I pick him up, look at him and realise that no matter, there is never going to be a moment when I won’t love him.

If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with oversized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there’d be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.
And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn’t know where he was,
a clown without a context?
What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?
If then the clown said to you
that he was on his way to a kid’s
birthday party, his car had broken down,
and he needed a ride, would you give
him one? Or would the connection
between the comic and the appalling,
as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear
that you’d be paralyzed by it?
And if you were the clown, and my friend
hesitated, as he did, would you make
a sad face, and with an enormous finger
wipe away an imaginary tear? How far
would you trust your art? I can tell you
it worked. Most of the guests had gone
when my friend and the clown drove up,
and the family was angry. But the clown
twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird
and gave it to the kid, who smiled,
let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,
the birthday boy, what from then on
would be your relationship with disappointment?
With joy? Whom would you blame or extoll?

— Stephen Dunn, If A Clown

A few days ago, as is wont during the morning commute to work, I turned to Twitter. It is during this commute that I extract the most value out of it. Most of my friends are online around the same time. Many people I admire, but never met are also around. We are either cracking jokes about the terrible traffic in Bangalore or share pictures from our gardens after a rain soaked night or link to an interesting bit of news or make a pithy remark about something.

It feels like each one of us sitting on our verandahs and conversing. Or at least it used to feel like.

It doesn’t anymore.

It now feels like you are standing in the middle of a busy, chaotic road shouting while others on the road do the same. Slowly, the verandah has been land grabbed by people who once were humble and interesting, now masquerading as performance artists. Land grabbed by incompetent, unwelcome marketers. Land grabbed by people who revel in outraging at the drop of the hat. Land grabbed by those who are trapped in the Perpetual Indignation Machine.

These land grabbers, bulldozing the cosy verandah and making a new, brash road.

I don’t like this new road.

I’ll keep protesting now and then, but I suspect the road will be built and there is nothing I can do other than go in search of a new verandah.

The weather is scorching, as it is during this time of the year, in this part of the country. The two people standing next to me in their clean, crisp uniforms have been smart and wrapped their heads with towels dipped in cold water. I have been foolish. My head feels like it is on fire.

“Wait till you get on the loco, then see the fun”, the senior among the two chuckles. Warning cloaked as a joke. Sweat runs down the side of my thighs, carving through chaffed skin.

***

For as long as I remember, this has been a favourite train of mine. Stories were told about it before I set eyes on it – its beautiful exterior, its polished interior, the gleaming, uniformed staff, but most of all about its speed. Galloping past stations where other trains would stop, raising dust in the wake of its airhorns. I saw it first cradled in my father’s arms – the green and yellow coaches glistening in warm evening light, the two locomotives at its head proud, gently throwing plumes of smoke, brilliant blue and raring to go.

***

Today, the locomotives are a bright orange and the coaches blue. Both of them neither clean nor glistening, but I don’t care. I take out an old sheet of paper that I’d kept in a box for long and put a mark against an item on the list. I am going to drive my favourite train. It all feels thrillingly expectant.

***

It has been a beautiful run so far, devoid of usual slow downs and uncooperative traffic at level crossings. The three of us are relaxed. Just an hour at the most to home. Past the station with the huge canopied trees, I stick the green flag out in delight, a white figure across the platform acknowledges. The clackety clack is muted by the concrete to the side and I can hear two sets of giant V20 engines growling and whining. The whistling turbo adds to the effect. The surge of 6200 horse power shoots out through my fingers.

There she is around the bend. A small child, next to her, gripping one hand. The other is cupped around her ears, holding something. A phone? A blast of the air horn, the child turns around, looks and tugs her hand. She doesn’t seem to care. Another round of the horn, the child tugs again, but she tightens her grip around him.

5 seconds to go.

There are alarms going off in my head. An infinitesimally small amount of time registers panic. Blast the horn again? Grab the emergency brake? Or do nothing? A flash of judgement making to do: Should I trust the physics of emergency braking on a bend? Should I risk the lives of 1500 people for the sake of two? Should I register more panic and resign myself to fate? Should I bang the horn again? Should I put all my hopes on the hope that the woman will hear what is barrelling down behind her?

3 seconds to go.

I seemingly reach for the brakes, but hit the horns instead. Just for the smallest possible time, my instinct has told me to save the woman. But training and reality intervene. Is this how it is for people who have to navigate this often? Save one and risk thousands? Or sacrifice one and save thousands? I’ve navigated this before, at least a dozen times, but why does it feel different now? Because of a child? Why am I questioning myself? Why am I questioning my morality now? Can I really save her?

A desperate blast of the horn.

Now she notices. She tries to shove the child away, but it is too late. One definite thud. I am on the other side and can’t quite see what has happened. Vomit rises from the deepest parts of my bowel.

“What happened to the child?”, I scream. “What happened to the child?”

“No one survived”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The brakes are hissing and the train is grinding to a halt. I lean out and vomit. It feels like guilt. A couple of numbers flash in my head. The deepest part of me wants to keep count first. I vomit more.

***

2 hours later, we part company. Still shaking, still with hot lead in our stomachs.

“What are going to do now?”, I ask.

“I’ll go home, tell my wife, have a ritual bath, pray and hope God forgives me for this. What will you do?”

“I’ll go home and cry.”

It is 5.15AM. Grubby eyed and disheveled, I look around the Afzalgunj bus stand. Sleepy passengers, early commuters and the homeless bunch around in small groups. There’s a faint whiff of the stench that the Musi is famous for. I head out of the bus stand and onto the road leading to a bridge across the river. A few hundred metres later, across a ghostly traffic signal, I spot the familiar neon sign of Basra Hotel. I walk in – the interiors are just the same as they were years ago – dirty and yellowing with tables that were new decades ago. The walls have a patina of brown grease. The owner sits at one of the tables, stroking his not so magnificent beard and swatting a fly that comes dangerously close to his mouth. From inside the tiny kitchen at the back of the place, I can smell the heavenly, thick milky tea that Hotel Basra is known for. I order one. And a plate of kheema samosas.

I am in Hyderabad.

****

Bus No. 45F is belching smoke as we lurch through the dimly lit streets around Kachiguda. The lanes of Nimboliadda are quieter than usual, empty pushcarts lined up at the end of each. Garbage. I hope that since this is the bus’ first trip, it might make an exception and pick up passengers at the railway station, but it doesn’t. I am content to merely observe the bright lights of the roundabout that precedes the magnificent white building. Buzz. Tightly spaced buildings of Narayanguda come and go, each filled with students cramming various equations and formulae. EAMCET Factory. Speeding across the RTC ‘X’ Roads, with its empty cinema theatres is a thrill. Post 7AM this usually turns into a nightmare. Musheerabad with its busy Irani cafes and the devout streaming into mosques for prayer. Kavadiguda with its narrow main roads, rusting garages and small industries. Crossing up from the Bible House and onto Kingsway and the hundreds of shops selling hardware, electricals and other things one normally doesn’t think of. The staid, yet proud building of the Secunderabad Post Office at Patny. The smelly MCH swimming pool and then past Paradise circle and Yatri Nivas. Shyamlal Building and Begumpet. Sheeshmahal and Ameerpet.

****

It feels strange this morning. There’s a warmth in the heart, but it feels somewhat unwelcome. I hadn’t been to Hyderabad and travelled on its roads for more than 3 years. I had made a big deal of moving out. Of moving on. Of letting go. I was determined during this brief layover not to get drawn in by the seductiveness of the familiar. The comfort of a geographical blanket. Yet, here I am.

It feels like your first love inching back into your life and demanding friendship and space. Possibly even more. Like first love, this city knows how to push my buttons. It does so fearlessly knowing that I’ll give up. It does so knowing that I’ll cry my guts out. It know that no matter how much I’ve moved on, there’s a tiny, tiny part of my heart that beats exclusively for it.

3 years, I stopped calling it home and was determined not to come back and call it that again. It’s taken me all of 3 hours to change my mind.

I have known my friend S for a long number of years. She was one of the people who helped me really settle down when I moved to Bangalore. A couple of years ago, she went through a messy separation and eventual divorce during which time I helped around by playing babysitter to her wonderful daughter N. Like most friendships strengthened by a calamitous event, we eventually drifted apart once the event was over.

Sometime during later part of the last year, I was out shopping when in the cavernous walkway of the mall, I heard a familiar voice call out my name. It was S. We caught up over coffee that afternoon and then eventually over more coffees and beers, we told each other our stories. A common thread running through both of them.

This is her story.

*******

“I’ll ask again. Why?”, S asks with a voice barely audible over the hissing, steaming pressure cooker in the kitchen.

“Because I am a selfish storyteller.  Because I want to somewhere during our conversations try and find something that I can connect to. Something that I can hear and say, ‘Aha, it was like that for me too’”.

“So, you want to be validated?”

“Don’t we all?”

“Ok, if I cry too much, you buy me ice-cream?”

Deal.

“At first, I didn’t know what it was you know? It came on suddenly as well over a few months. Building and building and then bam! like some bus hitting a tree or something. You know how it feels no?”

I nod in agreement. This is the part that always has me in knots and confusion and teary. That for each of so different in every way imaginable, this is the way it begins for everyone.

S is a strong woman, capable of withstanding great emotional turmoil, but the last year and half of her marriage had changed her in ways I hadn’t imagined.

“At first, I thought it was just a phase. The grief of having something ended. The endless back and forth in the head about the what-ifs and whys, but then that was replaced by something that felt more primordial, something deeper than I thought existed. Maybe felt is the wrong word, but I can’t communicate this well.”

“Do you want to try?”, I ask.

“One day I took N to her classmate’s birthday party. On the way there, the radio played that song from Swades, the one on the boat?”

“Yeah… and?”

“I love that song, you know that. But that afternoon, it was just blank. I could hear the tune, but couldn’t feel it. The one song that made my laugh, cry and feel with goosebumps did nothing to me that day. It felt like it was the end of the world for me. The crazy beatings, the separation, the broken back all never came to feeling this way.

I stopped the car on the main road and started crying. N became hysterical the sight of me in tears and all the traffic honking and cursing. I had no idea what was happening to me. I felt alone. My baby, my love was right next to me saying, ‘Mama, stop. Mama, it’s ok, I love you, mama’ and yet my head was exploding with a blankness that I didn’t know possible.”

There’s a deep sigh. Her mind racing back to recall that day, that afternoon. She’s nervous and shifts every few seconds on the divan.

“I am sorry to put you through this. I’ll stop. I am sorry.”

“No, no. Let it be. Give me some time, I want to talk to you. Please?”

I head to the kitchen, turn off the cooker and make a couple of cups of coffee. We then sit and talk. Slowly and surely, she talks about the last days of her marriage – the incessant verbal abuse, the occasional physical throw down, the always present threat of his hunching figure.

“It was difficult, no doubt, but once I made up my mind to walk, I thought it would all be over. Here I was, free from a monster, free from all the tension and fuckedupness that it brought about. But no.”

“At first it was ok. I was simply too busy with work and endless meetings with lawyers and family to get it over with, but then once I grew confident it was all turning out to be ok, it began. I would lie in the room and not sleep until 4 or 5 in the morning. N would get up every few hours, ask me why I wasn’t sleeping then go back to sleep herself. This went on for close to three weeks. You should have seen me, Bharath, I was like a zombie slut, walking around at home with red eyes and a tank top and nothing else.

Then the car thing happened. For the first time in life, I was scared. Truly scared. Not the beatings, not the abuse. Nothing.”

“Listen, don’t dredge all this up too fast, ok? In fact, I am not sure I want you to dredge them up at all.”

I suddenly feel guilty of exploiting someone like this to help me understand my own troubles. I feel even more troubled by the fact I set out to do this not as an act of empathy and compassion, but to get a story out of it. I rationalize it by thinking that more stories like S’s and mine might make people understand the true nature of the disease that is depression and seek help, but at that moment, nothing dominates me more than guilt.

More than a week and a half later, I call S again. I suggest that we meet at a popular coffee shop both of us know well. I can sense some hesitation in her voice, so I offer another place to which she agrees.

When we meet the next day, I ask her why she didn’t want to meet at a coffee shop.

“I can’t stand them anymore. They are the most fucked up places in the city.” S always been somewhat more inclined to displays of anger, but this level of vehemence is new to me. She tells me that it started when she was walking back home after shopping for groceries. A couple looking romantically at each other across a table in a coffee shop triggered it. She tells me that it was such a fierce reaction that she started breaking down even before reaching home.

“I came running back and went straight to my bedroom while throwing the groceries in the hall. I shut myself up, shivering and started to cry. Only that I couldn’t hear my voice. I wanted to cry loud, but nothing came out. I was terrified. In complete, utter panic.”

“I know how that feels”, I say, “that moment when there are terror waves in your body, you want to run away, but your feet feel like they are set in concrete.”

She nods. Her eyes show fear and recognition. No doubt mine do too.

“Thankfully, N wasn’t home that evening. I don’t how she would have reacted and how I would have deal with it.  I sat and hugged my pillows for three hours, crying and rocking and not feeling anything but utter terror.

“Until this time, I hadn’t told my parents of the issue, but when my father called to ask if he could drop N home, I couldn’t even speak on the phone properly. At first he thought I was simply grieving and let it be and that it would be for N to stay a few days longer. But after a day of me being shut down in my home, he grew concerned. At this point of time, I had taken three days off of from work and had to get back, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t taken a bath in two days, hadn’t eaten more than a slice of bread and I could smell the stench of curdled milk in the hall. I hadn’t even cleaned up spilled groceries.”

“Then what happened?”, I ask like an eager wolf waiting for a catch. In an instant I feel ashamed. I shouldn’t be leading the conversation. I knew exactly how difficult it is talk about it. I knew of my own reluctance at that time to spill my guts out. Why am I goading this beautiful person to do it? Selfish bastard. Selfish bastard.

“My father then took me to our local doctor, who had almost no clue as what was happening to me. The anxiety had reduced, but I could still feel it. I tried to explain to him, but he just didn’t get it.

I somehow knew I was in trouble and I knew I needed help but the one doctor who knew me best was the doctor I hated. But I put it aside for now. The wounds were still raw and dad accompanied me to the park where I met him. He suggested that I meet someone at NIMHANS. At this dad was completely taken aback. ‘My daughter is not a mental case’, he screamed. I remember this well. Despite his protests, I went one day and met the doctor. He was nice and gentle and patient and he listened carefully. Then he told me what might be wrong with me. The first time you hear the D word earnestly from a doctor, it hits you badly. No?”

“Yes”, I agree.

The idlis we are eating have turned cold and taste like chalk.

“The Tranax he prescribed started working after a while, but getting to work was still a bitch. I still struggled to take a shower or eat some food. Things at home were sliding. My parents couldn’t understand what was happening to me. My father still thought I was simply play acting to stay at their place for longer than expected. And N, what to say about how this was affecting N?”

“What about her?”

“At first, I think she was ok, lost in her own world, but as the days wore on, I think she realised her mom was feeling well. She never did ask me anything other the usual stuff, but I think she knew that I was really, really unwell. I mean, how can a child not get disturbed to find her mother not respond to hugs and cuddles? She used to jump in delight at the sight of me entering the house and try and give me a hug, but I simply couldn’t respond. I would just stand there and not extend my arms. ‘What happened, amma? Don’t you love me anymore? Why are you sad, amma?’. I was a frozen statue, my arms trying to extend, but my brain refusing to send any signals. Only the tears came, for hours and hours after that.

“This was my baby and I couldn’t comfort her, hold her, feed her, kiss her, nothing. I would go to the bathroom and sit on the floor crying, shrivelling. I tried not doing it when she was around, but on some days, she was at home when I broke down and she would knock on the bathroom door for an hour waiting for me to respond. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I felt like I was dying in front of my child, Bharath, withering, dying.”

This is the most upset I’ve seen S since we began telling our stories to each other. The restaurant is almost empty and all eyes are on us. I feel uncomfortable and my anxiety is starting to build.

“Let’s get out of here”, I tell S and we walk out into bright sunshine. The rest of the evening we spend walking around the beautiful Sankey Tank watching water birds splashing and kites making swoops. N and her grandfather join us after a while. Everyone’s mood perks up at the sight of the little girl trying to pluck flowers from the trees.

“Very often I used to think about cliffs and ceilings and edges?”, S says as N is finally asleep and we both pour ourselves small drinks. I hadn’t talked to S about her struggles after the painful recollection at the restaurant. Instead, we just began to spend time as normal friends – grabbing an occasional dinner, trading interesting reading links via email and discussing both our professional lives. So, this came as a surprise.

“Huh?”

“At the edge, man. I used to think about standing at the edge all the time. Sometimes I could see the vast sea from the edge, all blue and calm, sometimes I would look below and see the beach, all the way down. Sometimes, I would stare at the fan and ceiling.

“I wanted to, you know. I really wanted to. Even with N beside me on the bed, there were so many nights where I just wanted the nightmare to end. The kitchen and the knife were too far. The fan was just above me. I was wrapped up in sheets. Once, her soft breath hit my cheek and I broke down. I wanted it to stop. I took a pillow and cried into it, pressing it harder and harder into my face until I started to gag. Just at that time, N shuffled in her bed and her arm just brushed mine. That was the moment I let the pillow go. This was my baby, I can’t die. Where will she go? What will she do?

“I then wrapped my arms around her and slept for hours. Peacefully. First time in months I think I did that.”

“Jesus, S, wow. I had no idea”, I am slurring and blurting. I had often thought about these things when I was in the deepest of depression, and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when someone else tells of their own thoughts on it, but it did. I was sobbing.

Soon after this evening, I went away on several outstation trips for close to a month and half and don’t meet S. We only keep in touch occasionally via phone calls.

On my return, we decide to meet as soon as possible.

“Let’s meet at the coffee shop you suggested a while ago”, she says.

“Are you sure?”, The last time I suggested the place, it didn’t turn out well, so I make doubly sure.

“Yes, yes, lots has happened since I’ve seen you!”, there’s perk in her voice.

I had noticed some of that in a few previous phone conversations, so I head to the coffee shop with much enthusiasm.

N is there too and she gives me a wide, beaming smile and bar of chocolate.

“Amma says I shouldn’t eat the whole thing myself, so you also take some”

“Your amma is correct!”, I say.

S seems relaxed, her eyes seem like they finally have some clarity, she is wearing a nice, flowery dress and her face has a smile that can’t be forced.

“So, what’s up, S?”

“I feel alive, Bharath. Alive, after a long time.”

 ****

The last few months S has made great progress in her struggles. She is on regular medications, no longer crippled by panic and anxiety and her low points are far and few in between. She has switched jobs and regularly cooks at home for her and her daughter. She wants everyone who reads this to know that help can be had, needs to be sought and that depression can be beaten into submission.

After I had somewhat recovered from my episodes of depression towards the later half of the year, I had written to some of my friends giving them an update of my well-being. One of them, Prasad, who works tirelessly in the border areas of AP/Orissa with an NGO dealing with hunger and nutrition wrote back to me asking if I was willing to meet a woman who might be interesting to talk to as a parallel to my own sufferings. He also knew how deeply I was interested in tracking the issue of mental health in India, especially among its poorest.

So I went and met Pushpamma.

***

The trek up here is hard. We’ve been walking for close to four hours through thick shrub on a high wide ridge. Below us, a rivulet branched off the Machkund flows. The humidity of the monsoons adding to everyone’s discomfort. Leeches on my legs are feasting. I repeatedly protest that we could have taken the jeepable road to the village, but Prasad doesn’t trust it. “I am not taking a chance and then getting blown up”, he says angrily. The rarely spoken, but ever present sword that hangs over these parts.

After three quarters of an hour of more walking the track descends into a small high backed valley. Smack in the middle of the valley is Doppiguda. Like 99.9% of villages in these parts, it is ramshackle, has no flowing drainage, electricity or reliable water supply. One small track runs through the centre on either side of which are about 15 huts spaced well apart. Towards the back of the village are two smaller huts. To one which we are invited to proceed towards by Erranna, the headman.

***

I recoil the instant I enter the hut. It’s dark, smells vile and at one corner Pushpamma is squatting in front of a pole. Her feet are tied with thick rope. Her head is immobile because a long piece of cloth has been wrapped around her forhead and fastened to the pole with a tight knot. We step towards her when she lets out a loud wailing scream. Her eyes dart from side to side and I can see the blood rush into them. He arms are flailing violently. Prasad quickly pulls me back.

“Let’s leave her alone for a while”, he says as we all step out of the hut.

It’s nearly sundown now and I take to a small hillock nearby to catch the sunset and reflect on the day. It’s been a tough one, physically. I am anxious and terrified that I might not be able to talk to Pushpamma without subjecting myself to more painful recollections from my own struggles. I pace up and down the track that rings the hillock, with each climb adding to my state of panic.

I forgo dinner of rice gruel, sauteed onions and chillies and pull the cover over my sleeping bag and try to catch some sleep. It doesn’t come and for close five hours I hear muffled cries from the hut at the far side of the village. Pushpamma seems be in a bad way tonight.

***

Pushpamma seems calmer this morning. She is still restrained and when I move towards here to unhook the cloth around her forehead, her eyes suddenly light up. For a moment I think she might jump up at me, but she remains calm and seated. Prasad undos the rope around her feet. She stretches her leg out a bit. Half a smile appears, grateful for the chance at physical freedom. A bit of a struggle to get up, but once she’s on her feet, she starts pacing around the hut at great speed. I am bewildered at this sudden shift in her energy and want desperately to ask her what is going on, but she seems blissfully unaware of the people around her. This pacing goes on for a full five minutes before Prasad intervenes.

“Are you well enough today? You seem very active. I haven’t seen you like this in two weeks”

A grunt.

“Saar, who is this other saar?”, she points towards me. The voice is crackly and barely audible.

“He just wants to talk to you. Will you?”

“What does he want to talk about? I don’t know anything”

Seizing my chance I ask, “What happened the first time you lost your mind?”

She turns around, squats on the floor and wiggles her finger asking me to come closer. Prasad and I shift a feet ahead.

“I saw ghosts. They were black and green and came riding dogs and took me away to a far off place in the forest.”

“I see. What happened after that?”

“I don’t know”, she balks.

At this point Erranna intervenes.

“She wouldn’t talk to us at all for days. I thought something was wrong with her throat, so we gave her hot water, but still she wouldn’t talk. She used to sit in one corner and not do anything.”

“Can you please get me some rice, I am hungry”, Pushpamma breaks in.

“One day she got up, took a long stick and started beating a dog. All of us in the village ran and grabbed her and locked her in a hut. She still didn’t speak. We thought God had taken her voice away as punishment for something she had done.”

“What had she done?”

“Nothing. She was a very good girl.”

Erranna then proceeds to tell me about her other extreme displays of behaviour: About how she would suddenly get up in the middle of the night, open her dress and defecate in the middle of the house; about how she wouldn’t clothe herself for days and wander about the village; about how on the day of her wedding she went to cooking area and overturned all the food being prepared.

I turn to Prasad.

“Listen, this woman is most probably paranoid schizophrenic and needs big time help. This isn’t a case of severe depression like you told me.”

“Whatever it is, they won’t let her go out. I only wanted you to come and see because I thought you might connect with her and learn something about what you went through.”

“Prasad, on a scale of 1 to 10, what I went through is 4, this woman is bordering on 15. She needs help, really.”

We hadn’t realized it, but our voices had raised and soon half the village had gathered outside the hut to find out what was going on.

“Saar, they took me by force on a bandi and dropped me off in the forest.”, Pushpamma suddenly breaks her silence.

“Oh, why and then what happened?”

“They beat me very badly, left me with one bag of rice and no water. I did not move for the next one day because I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“I don’t know. Then I started walking back the way I came. I got lost once and got bitten by something and there was blood all over my foot. I walked and walked and walked. I ate all my rice and I was thirsty but still I walked. I wanted to go back home and wear my favourite red saree.”

I turn towards Erranna shell shocked.

“Yes, this true. We left her there thinking that she’ll go mad, have no food and die soon. We couldn’t handle her. The spirits had taken over her and when that happens, nothing can be done.”

I look on incredulously.

Prasad picks up the story.

“I was here on a routine visit when she returned. Everyone was shocked that she was back. They were sure that some evil spirit had taken her over and was punishing the entire village. They then proceeded to tie her up and beat her.”

“What?”

“When I objected, they threatened to have me beaten up too. So I went to .. and got the police back. When they got here, they took one look at her and said, ‘She’s mad, it is better if we don’t do anything and let things take their course’”

“What did you do then?”

“What could I have done? These people are beyond any reason. I told them they could do anything but they can’t beat and kill her.”

Erranna has had enough of this by now. “You people please leave. She is mad and you can’t do anything about her, so go back to your cities and leave us alone. If God wants her to be cured, she will be cured.”

I protest. But I have no support.

“Please don’t beat her”, is all I can say before Prasad and I are forced to pack our bags and start walking.

I can see Pushpamma being led back to the hut. The rope in Erranna’s hand.

***

It is the easiest thing to recall in this world where you were when you first listened to a piece of music that continues to move you after more than twenty years. 

The musty room at the back of the house with its thick wooden pillars had the sole free power point. It was into this that my cousin sister and I plugged in the recently purchased National Panasonic cassette player and radio. It was compact beauty, this. With its matte black plastic shell, a shining steel handle and a solitary speaker that was bigger than anything I’d seen, it was love at first sight. I had probably listened to a couple of songs on it when my father presented me a recorded TDK cassette of Rettai Vaal Kuruvi. 

There’s one in particular you’ll like, he said. 

My love affair with Ilayaraja’s music began then. Raja Raja Cholan.

Throughout the late 80’s and early to mid 90’s, every visit to Madras would involve at least half a day’s visit to the record and music stores to scour and buy cassettes. We would buy all sorts — rock, pop, jazz, Elton John, Grateful Dead, Genesis, Richard Marx (we’ve all had our weak moments!). But the most anticipated purchase would be the latest score or compilation of Ilayaraja’s.

I had just begun to appreciate music, its tones, its nuances, its ferocity, its rapture. As much as western music gave all this to me, it was Ilayaraja’s tunes that gave me that most elusive of feelings — one of simpleness and gentleness. That the most complex of melodies can also be the most simplest.

I soon wore out the tape that I had of Rettai Vaal Kuruvi. Disappointment written all over my face, I went to my grandmother, who while mildly disapproving of my musical tastes, sent me off towards a shop she knew that sold music and occasionally fixed players and radios. I had walked down TP Kovil street dozens of times earlier and even bought tens of rupees worth of pencils, erasers, paper and other stationary at the Excellent Stores, but never noticed Bright Musicals a couple of shops down.

If there ever was a misnomer for a place, this was it. Bright Musicals was a rat hole of a shop. It was a few feet wide and a litte bit deeper with an almost blackened ceiling showing years of grime and cobwebs. There were wires of all sorts of colours strung across like garlands. At the back of the place was where Mr. Mohan the owner, usually sat and tinkered with broken tape players. The front of the shop had one small glass cabinet that had blank recording tapes and a shelf full of new and old releases of Tamil movie songs. His son, Murugan, usually handled this part of the operations.

The evening I walked in, Murugan was playing a song I had heard vaguely, but never paid too much attention. The slightly nasally but immensely sad tone caught my ear. I stood there the entire length of the song, not speaking a word to anyone, trying to gather the mood of the song. The deadbeat progression, the tortured voice of Kama  Haasan, the vague, yet fitting sounds of the synth. I had heard Thenpandi Cheemaiyile. I had a new song to love.

As with most things one loves when young and growing up, the pull of Ilayaraja soon gave way to expanding and exploring other types of music. The obessesive visits to Raj Video Vision would no longer have half hour dedicated to sampling and choosing Raaja. The mix tapes and re-recordings no longer containing any tunes from him. But I made an effort to stay in touch with his music, knowing full well that this glory days were behind him and that his later compositions were tired. An occasional gem here and there would surface and I would lap it up, but then forget it soon after.

Not until this morning, after a brief conversation with Aishu did I realize how much I had missed listening to him. For the past five hours, with the old player dusted off and the BASF and Maxwell tapes respooled, I’ve reconnected. Back to the days of that musty old room. Back to the days of Bright Musicals. Back to days of joys of listening to Yesudas’ voice set to sublime melodies.

Raja Raja Cholan

The song that started it all.

Thenpandi Cheemaiyile

The song that defines sadness for me. Often, this song plays for hours on loop when I travel on the dusty, pothole ridden roads in the deep interiors of Tirunelveli and Ramnad. It is as if the song and surroundings become one.

Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu

Probably my favourite song of Ilayaraja. Just pure, unbridled joy and happiness.

Elangaathu

One of his later gems, this song captures so much meaning that it is impossible to qualify it in a few words. Like Thenpandi, I listen to it for hours when out traveling in the winding roads of Theni and the Cardamom Hills.

It’s a warm and balmy afternoon in Pondicherry, as I dig into crispy, yet soft dosais. Mrs. Sivaramakrishnan seems to be in no mood to listen to my pleadings about having had enough and quickly slides in another perfect roundel. Prof. Sivaramakrishnan looks on dispassionately. The vacant and blank face hiding a ferocious mind. He and I have been discussing the lamentable state of India’s transportation sector and in particular the Indian Railways that is so dear to both of us. The talk soon turns to general travel and how fast connections these days are ruining the pleasure of languid discovery.

“When Ian (Manning) and I started travelling in the late ‘60s, we hardly took any express trains. Slow trains. Passenger trains. They were the preferred means allowing us to stop at will, get down and explore and afterwards writing the journals and notes. These days all you young chaps want to hurtle to your destinations on the fastest trains.”

“But sir, there are hardly enough passenger trains these days. And what there are, offer no convenient connections onwards”, I blather, trying to save an entire generation from the broad sweep of the paint brush.

“You look hard enough, you will find a way”, he says with an argument-ending flourish.

*****

On a blisteringly hot day in Secunderabad, I ponder over that challenge. The heat haze makes the tracks heading out bend into weird shapes. “Apparently it’s 45 degrees today”, says a woman to her companion as they walk past me. I turn around and head back to find a seat on the Golconda Express - the slowest train between Hyderabad and Vijaywada. Like all things wrong with the Indian Railways, this once fast express is now a shadow of its former self. And since it is a stop-everywhere kind of train, there are hundreds of people waiting for the doors to open and occupy a seat. I bide my time reading “Under the Sun” – a collection of letters written by Bruce Chatwin. About ten minutes later, there is a slight commotion at the back of the platform, a sure sign that the doors are being opened. Soon enough, I spot someone unbolting my coach. I fight off a man around my age, but twice as hefty and a woman who seems to be a part-time wrestler, dart to the single seats by the window and put down my backpack. Behind me, a marauding invasion force.

There is an innate ability in people traveling by the Indian Railways to “adjust”. Find seats and space for themselves and luggage where there are none. And in the 15 minutes I spend watching the goings on in my coach, I couldn’t help but wonder why this courtesy and a sense of selflessness didn’t extend to outside the train. More or less everyone found a seat, even if it was two-inch square of a wooden bench. The jute sacks, bales of sarees holding stuff, the wicker baskets, the toolbox, the crowbar, the gumboots, all went either underneath the bench or above on the luggage rack.

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Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been taking this test every couple of days and then talking it over with my doctor. This morning it was different.

“Right, probably the last time you are going to do this in a while”
“Huh?”
“I can safely tell you that you are no longer what we term ‘clinically depressed’”

In my head, there is a stagger. Then a powerful, sweeping wind that rushes past. This might be the purest, most instinctive form of relief. It is overwhelming. There is a rainbow of joy. An explosion of happiness.

I don’t know what to do or what to say.

********

If anything has consumed me over the past several years, it has been my depression. Never continuous, but always lurking, ready to lunge and pierce the sharp sword of utter helplessness now and then. Much of what has happened to me, I have shared publicly in the hope that someone who suffers from it might draw a parallel, learn from it and find some comfort that they aren’t alone. I have also written about it for my own sake, to clarify my thoughts, put out my vulnerabilities, challenge my prejudices and above all try to help me feel my out. This is where depression strikes hard. The paradoxes that it contains and engenders devastates you and most people around you. In writing about it, I’ve alienated my friends and family. In persisting with putting my thoughts out there, I’ve lost the one person I loved the most in the last few years. On the one hand you want to talk desperately about it, on the other hand you are desperately, heart achingly unsure if it won’t drive people who love you away. And in juggling these two opposites, one completely loses the ability to even talk about it.

This, then is what depression does to you.

It takes away your identity. You are no longer a designer, a lawyer, a photographer, accountant, pilot, doctor or anything. You are first and foremost depressed. The very first thing you want tell people when you meet them is “Look, I am depressed”. Yet you can’t and don’t. You become something you aren’t.

It takes away your vitality. The seemingly infinite, invisible force that drives your life. That force that makes you get out of bed in the morning and brush and shower and take a dump. That force that makes you observe things around you. That force that makes you the wonderful cook, lawyer, accountant you are. Imagine that taken away from you. Replaced by the dark horror of a force that is the rank opposite. It stops you from doing things. Anything.

It takes away your capacity to love. It utterly destroys your ability to feel or share love. Suddenly, you don’t want to share warmth and compassion with the person whom you love. You don’t want to hold their hands or give them a kiss or a hug or a snuggle. You suddenly don’t even know who they are.

It amplifies your indifference. You are no longer happy or sad. You don’t feel anything. You are simply absent to everyone and everything.

It takes away your ambition. It suppresses everything you’ve worked hard to build up. Your career, your life, your wealth. It takes away your capacity to think about these things. In its wake lie neglect, contempt and utter sloth.

********

Am I glad that the worst is over? Indeed. Am I terrified of what lies next? Absolutely.

The first thing I ever fell in love with was the Flying Scotsman. It was green and black, full of exquisite lines and curves, intricate machine work and made by someone who cared and loved. It went around a set of tracks hauling coaches that on the inside looked like a rich man’s house.

“This is the first time he’s setting up the whole thing, you know? 7 years ago he bought it, much before you were born. He didn’t know you’d turn out to be a boy, but I suspect he would have turned a girl into a lover of that.”

In my head, my mom’s voice is still startlingly clear after nearly a quarter of a century later.

In that tiny dark house, we sat for hours one Sunday morning and assembled the thing for the first time. I was 5, I think. There was a procession of idlis, vadais, Horlicks, Milk Bikis and other food I cannot recall. The tracks held together by tiny metal clips, the station, with its tapered and raised platform, the waiting hall, beige plastic with a few window cutouts and the long roof made of thick, yet flimsy film covered everything. I didn’t know where to put the tiny sitting bench. “Leave that out for now”, I remember him saying.

The power was connected and the control unit attached. Finally, carefully he placed the locomotive, neatly aligning the wheels to the track, clipped on the assortment of coaches and gave everything a once over.

It was ready. He gave the guard’s whistle.

He handed me the control and said, “Take the speed to position 1”. I did. The wheels turn slowly, the connecting rods millimetering up and down. It was magic. Notch up the speed a bit more. Then another notch. Speed up a bit more. Then some more. So for the first and last time in history, the Flying Scotsman was circling its way to Madras from Bangalore. Two revolutions of the track and it was time to stop at Bangalore Cantt. Speed decreasing notch by notch. Inching its way to a perfect stop. 2 minutes and a glass of water later for the chief driver, it was off to Bangarpet and onwards.

*****

“Don’t speed it up that much, slow down, slow down, you’ll derail it”, I hollered. But my brother wouldn’t listen. That day, on its way to Arsikere from Yelhanka, the Flying Scotsman derailed on its 18th turn and went skimming across the room, finally resting to a stop after encountering a pile of The Hindu. I stared, disbelievingly, for a full minute. The Scotsman is lying on its side, the front most wheel still turning. But wait, something was wrong. The middle set is stationary and there’s a connecting rod that has broken off the wheel. The scene looks devastating.

6 hours later, I am still in tears. All our attempts at re-railing the Scotsman and making it run have been fruitless. Without the connecting rod, the wheels refuse to turn. The handsome, proud, green machine looks sad. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure out something and get it running in a few days”.

The days became weeks. The weeks became months. The delicate assembly required a special set of miniature tools which weren’t available in India. Every tool shop, every jeweler within Malleshwaram was hounded, but to no avail. “How about a replacement?”, I casually asked one day. “A new one would cost 30 pounds, son.” No disappointment like a middle class child discovering the concept of money and the unevenness of its distribution.

*****

“Come on, let’s watch this together”, I said to him. And so for the next hour we watched as James May attempted to build the world’s longest toy railway and run the Flying Scotsman on the track. We paused on many occasions, exchanging glances, grimaces, laughs, disappointments about our own attempts over the years of resurrecting the Scotsman. We grew up together because of that train set. He as a father, me as a son. We recognized each other’s faults and strengths building that set. We learned science and philosophy building those tracks. We learnt love and failure during the revolutions the Scotsman did.

James May doesn’t get a fairy tale ending, but we decided to see if we can get one.

*****

The Scotsman is dusted off after many months in storage and primed with grease and alcohol polished wheels. After nearly 2 decades the miniature tool set has made an appearance. “Let me fix it”, he says. The hands aren’t quite what they used to be. They tremble, struggling to find the tiny, tiny groove on the screw that will hold the wheel and connecting rod together. There’s a deep frown after 5 minutes of fruitless trying. “Can I do it, please?”. “No.” I can’t bear to watch this fallibility, so I leave.

Half hour later, he calls me in triumphantly. The wheels have been connected and the last connecting rod tacked on in place. Like 25 years earlier, we sit down (him in less comfort now than before) and assemble everything together. Idlis, vadais, coffee (all grown up), crackers and cheese.

The Scotsman is railed, the power control is attached.

“You do it this time”, I say and whistle the guard’s whistle.

It moves. The speed is notched up. There is immense joy in two hearts at this sight. Half a revolution of the tracks later, it comes to a shuddering halt. The rods come splintering off the wheel. We look at each in surprised disappointment. I want to cry. There are tears in his eyes.

When will my Flying Scotsman run again?

What I Have Lived For

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

— The Prologue to Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography

Some tiring days end with phone conversations like this.

“I am to do what tomorrow, mom?”

***

It’s 5.30AM at Bangalore City station. The shit has been washed away from the tracks by a torrential downpour that has just stopped. But one can’t fully escape the odour completely. Eating idlis right now seem the least appetizing idea in the world.

The Lalbagh Express is grimy outside, seemingly untouched by the rain. It is even smellier inside. Like a stale garlic infused vadakari vat exploded. A full one hour goes while the coach fills. People talking in Tamil. People talking in Telugu. People dressed in pink. People dressed in orange. People dressed in jigna yellow. People with moustaches the size of a small cat. People carrying rexin bags with G.R. Thangamaligai inscribed on it.

Suburban Bangalore goes by in a haze of unplanned, architectural horror and more rain. At Bangarpet, a wedding music troupe gets on board. The nadaswaram hits someone. Someone hits the nadaswaram. Soon there is chutney and sambar all over the floor and I suspect inside the nadaswaram as well.

Kuppam looks like Chandrababu Naidu has forgotten about its existence.

Mulanur. Patchur. Somanayakkanpatti. Like three corners of a weird triangle.

Jolarpettai. Yelagiri is shrouded in mist. Looks like a pretty ghunghat.

****

The Kovai Express arrives. A sprightly lady appears at the door of the designated coach. A huge box is soon given to me.

It’s a Laxmi idli batter grinder. With love from Ratna Stores, Ranganathan Street, T. Nagar, Chennai.

It is now my job to courier it back to Bangalore.

This is my Sunday.