CELLOPHANE

Tell me about yourself?....

I had heard that question in Mumbai after a whole year. I was so overwhelmed at getting an opportunity to speak that i got tongue tied and almost forgot my lines. The lines that would tell my story because it was mine. That would relate those bits and pieces out of the gamut and suspend the listener in a universe of very temperamentally selective perception. To create an obfuscating galaxy of a brilliant, incessantly inspired reality which would envelop the spectator, and rid my conscience of the melodramatic suffocation of its cobwebs, i thought fickly.

I sat for a job interview in the office of the CEO of a media company which was four times the size of my one room kitchen in a barren smelly corner of Yari road where sundays were dead. "Amar, have some water", he said. Yeah if water could solve this, then i'd prefer scuba diving right now. I wanted to say exactly those very words at that point of time. Maybe i'd get hired because of the wit, i thought. Then, suddenly, with an insidious, enthusiastic spurt, I decided to fix my gaze on this man. Eye contact- they wrote chapters about it in self improvement books. So i looked up and stared back at him to realise instead that his listless stare was already fixed on me. Though, i soon observed that it wasn't on me. It was somewhere far beyond me or my physical reality. Almost like he was sleeping with his eyes wide open. I'd unassumingly been gifted with a chance to think what i wanted to say, though i couldn't help thinking about the live sculpture sitting in front of me...If only i could've made this moment count with a camera. Just then, entering a moment of blinding desperation, i subconsciously shared a deeply rattling insight with myself.

Cellophane Instinct, i thought. This city had made of him just what it had made of me. We were both in a prison. In the present circumstances, it was just that his cage looked more attractive than mine. There was nothing natural about the way we behaved. Our minds were engaged in an intensely obliviated state. Everyone, regardless of who they were in this city or out of it, bore a maniacal streak. You had to watch carefully and you were sure to spot it. It was present in their most silent moments, in the cacophony of their minds. They couldn't scream out though, or they'd be forced out of the act. And you couldn't afford to be out of this act, this act of a city. You were nowhere without it, but the tragedy was that you realised that fact only once you reached that deadline you'd set yourself -to quit the act.

The man in front of me, Mahesh Mahalingam, was a tall, 47 year old Tamilian Brahmin. As he had thrown open his tie closet that morning, to choose a slight variation of the same blue pinstripe that made up a large part of the spectrum, his son had announced his departure from ‘their’ house. The rest was supposed to be in the letter he'd left on the dining table.A detail that he’d added in a sharp note, as he banged the French oak door behind him.

Mahesh had two children. One from a marriage that had broken a year ago. The second from a woman who was fascinated with the idea of being a beneficiary of his gene pool which she thought would be a surefire recipe for the success of her child.

 He had won the case in the court for keeping custody of his son from his legal marriage. And now his fears had come alive. He had been afraid of the dark as a child, and lonely stretches of road haunted him. Now he would have to wake up to an empty house for the remainder of his life. A huge two storeyed villa with French furnishings, brimming with shadows. Shadows with promises of desolation and despair. A mistress wasn’t a bad idea, he thought.

This man, sitting before him reminded him of a day in his life as a 22 year old fellow. However, it also reminded him strongly of his 18 year old son. Mahesh was a single child who was doted on and loved to death by his parents. At 20 he had been pragmatic, idealistic and a dropout. Immensely talented, and a potential multi hyphenate, he was exuberant, confident, yet nowhere in the material world. Jilted and hurt around the same time, by an older woman he was smitten with, he had later proclaimed to the woman he would marry, that he had arrived at a truce with himself and he loved her, though did not expect her to keep any expectations from him. She had agreed and he loved her motherly attitude towards him. Though over the years, he had forgotten to be a husband. Like a son, rhapsodic in the shadow of her grace.

And then he had fathered the ‘other’ woman’s son. He had reasoned with her in clear terms that the settlement would be purely one sided and he would just be a sperm donor. Though when his son grew up, she insisted that he share the financial burden of bringing up his child. She had accused him of beguiling her and as he later realised, secretly been in love with him. She had almost lost track of reality, and was tired of being a single mother.

And all this chaotic while later, this sort of retribution seemed far too bitter for him to swallow. Still, he wouldn’t let his faith falter. He was a survivor and would remain one. His parents had always admired that about him. And he had been a good son to them in return.

"Uhh I am a self taught photographer, i run a very popular blog, and i'm a trained animation artist", I started, sounding reasonably in control of the situation. "I have also been actively involved in a theatre production outfit for the past one year and have performed in Delhi and Mumbai".
    And your working experience? You wrote in your Resume that you have four years of work experience, said Mahesh. A blizzard of images ran through my mind...a five square feet prison cell, a dog chasing its own tail and an avalanche. 'How could i best explain to him that i was one of those rare multihyphenates who would be great at whatever they put their mind and hearts to? Honesty I thought...... answering honestly was the best way here. So i said "I started as a copywriter in an Ad agency, and got saturated so i was a graphic designer for a while after which i decided to turn to documentary filmmaking. And then i decided to use that experience in Production though you know how Indian Television is at the moment, so i left that and started working as a photographer for a travel magazine. While i was at it, i realised that i had no editorial control over what i was creating, so i decided to apply for the post of a visualizer, and i was loving my job until the man who was running the production house decided to shut down one fine day. So here i am". 
"Don't you think that's a bit too erratic, Amar"?, exclaimed Mahesh, widening his tired eyes.

'Wow! so i had just spent most of the energy that i had stored for the day to dedicatedly summarising my life to a person who didn't have any respect for my breath whatsoever'. "Well, I was being very honest with you", i said, and looked up at him.

He had the distant stare again, though he was looking at me this time. He was looking at me and yet looking somewhere beyond me. This man really had mastered the art. He should have been an actor, i thought. His dull eyes still displayed that glint of years of piled up angst. Enthusiasm that he had probably bottled away in a corner of his dark cupboard. An old Dramatics Society sweatshirt, maybe.

"I'd put it down as a lack of tact", he snapped suddenly. 

"Well, you can choose to do that, but its the work that matters at the end of the day", i said. 
"Amar" he began in a very unusual dreamy baritone, "I began by making rundowns on the second floor of this very organisation and it has been ten years hence and now i run this place. A concentrated effort speaks for itself. You need to pay a price for consistency. There’s no way you can possibly resist the irony of that”.

"I don't believe in compromises ....I believe in living life in all its splendour!”, i exclaimed.
"You sound like a hollow Hollywood film to me, but putting personal opinions aside, If you carry that attitude with you, you wouldn't be able to work with anybody in any organisation today", he said. 
An hour into this languid, uninspiring conversation, I'd started to draw up a phantasmal caricature of this man in my mind, as a survival strategy. I could not help feeling even more staunchly about my ideals than ever before. And then, it dawned on me like a premonition. I imagined myself waddling about this office nodding up every whim of this man's plagued mind a year from then.

It was time, i thought and i started in the most controlled tone i could muster " I think that i am capable of handling the job responsiblities of four individuals in your organisation. It would make my job easier, my day more satisfying and would be called an Economy of Scale by you while appearing in an interview by a prestigious news channel. Mr. Mahalingam, the post that you are interviewing me for, is actually below me in terms of my skills but i still appear at such interviews for lack of a choice, primarily because of a politics pursued vigorously by the group of management officials in your organisation you call the Human Resource management team. I refuse to put up with this any further"......I knew i had blown it even as i stared at his gaping face.

So i decided to tear myself out of this seeming gas chamber and make for the door. Even as i reached for the doorknob something made me do this. I turned around and looked at this man sweating it out in his airconditioned cabin within the layers of his expensive corporate attire, tailored to his needs.
"Have you ever waited to see the sunrise from the bridge over the sea that connects the city to the suburbs?", I said. His gaze which was already unflinchingly fixed on me , suddenly took a break, as if in a moment of sudden realisation. Huhh? he groaned, unwillingly.... "I have", i said, and left him with a smile as i closed the door behind me.

   

 Now really, when was the last time he’d felt the sun rise, thought Mahesh. He remembered letting the warmth seep in and watching it resonate in his wife’s caramel eyes that morning they had woken up together. When they’d conceived their first child. He had told her then, I’ll run away after she’s all grown up. I won’t be able to stand it. I know how men think about women. I can’t see her getting hurt. She’d laughed out loud and asked him, and what if we have a son? I don’t know, then i’ll probably run after he’s married or something. And what about us? , his wife had retorted calmly. He had just embraced her snugly in response.

Though he couldn't put his finger on where he'd lost out on me, that young man who sat before him a few minutes ago. It seemed like he was slipping into oblivion looking for the answer. He was finally in the quicksand he had been churning knowingly, all this while. But then, why was he in here. For the first time in what seemed like a prolonged age -Mahesh Mahalingam seemed refreshingly devoid of even a morsel of a word, even as he sat on his desk made of the finest Ebony, holding a Cartier pen between his fingers. The silence within was just beginning to devour him.

A week later, as i sat before the ambitiously designed french window in my living room, which was probably the only dignified source of ventilation in my apartment, there was a knock at the door. The courier guy delivered a parcel into my hand. I opened it to find my portfolio which i'd forgotten on Mahalingam’s table. Enclosed, was a recommendation letter by him and also an offer to join the organisation. I laughed and smelt the sheets of paper. They smelt of the black printing ink. There wasn't even a slight crease on the paper. It was a dictated letter. He had not bothered to hold it in his hand and read it even once before dispatch. I slipped the recommendation letter into my portfolio and posted the offer to join on my souvenir board. I went back to sipping my Chai in peace as i penned down the next caricature for a national daily. With enough money in my bank to sustain me for six more months, i was absolutely sure that i did not want to work with Mahesh Mahalingam. 

AFTER DARK

Bum to crotch, crotch to crotch, bum to bum, crotch to shoulder, hip to crotch, crotch to ear, and all those other unimaginably incredulous permutations and combinations are a routine flavour for everyone on the go in a DTC on a typical day in delhi. For their insidious pleasures, the voyeuristic fluency of their minds, or the cheap thrills of ego boosts and adrenaline rushes of the perverse kind, the average man from delhi will be the man from delhi and for the very same reason, the delhi woman will be the quintessential woman from delhi.

For if equations were to change, wouldn’t the possibilities post the same be a life difficult to imagine! As a girl child growing up in a Bengali family, i was always protected from the delhi that was out there. I lived, in the delhi of my imagination. And oh my, it really was amazing to wallow in its wonders till one fine morning, on my way to college in South campus; i saw road rage at its best.

The DND flyway had just opened up and it was obvious that the delhiite’s demand for decent infrastructure had just begun to be answered. As a testimonial to that fact, it was packed choc a bloc that morning. However, our dear delhi man had found a way to display his angst even in the middle of this involuntary gathering. And with the bumper sticker backups of jat is king, the site seemed no less than an impromptu akhada. A spectacle to behold even as they undressed each other in furious attempts at ripping apart each other’s underwear which were of course completely successful for the fear of being proven the lesser mortal on those grounds.

That morning, on the flyway where no one was exactly flying, let alone moving, everyone got ten concentrated minutes of gawking at the scene, and some even cheered, of course not without taking sides. Our men had also found a great excuse to let their egos consume their itineraries for the day. Of course there were appropriate bruises to show the authorities they were accountable to, that is, if they did consider them authority at all.

However, in all those years of overhearing the regular behenchod maachod, there, and everywhere - my senses evolved in all crookedness. The remembered Delhi of Sunday mornings spent in a middle class neighbourhood in East Delhi remained intact while the lived ‘Dilli’ grew on me. As a woman, i was made uncomfortably aware of the seven o’ clock curfew, like i was living in a strife torn area. But my journalistic beginnings kept me out till late. Ultimately, my parents gave up on trying to maintain a curfew and just kept calling me an alarming number of times in a day. In those times when i reached places like Vaishali at 12 or 1 on a few days, i just had a strange spiritual conviction that nothing would happen and nothing did. I was not followed, teased, and rape was a far cry. But the strong realisation that i was roaming the streets of this city with these ‘terms’ in my backpack was enough to send me back home at a ‘decent’ time. I accepted my paralysed existence. The issue was, that given a choice between exploring the city and staying home, i was afraid that i would, in time, fall in love with the latter.

While this was the case, among a majority of us, on this side of the gender divide. The grass was undoubtedly greener, stronger, and abounding with strength and vigour on the other side. While we packed up for the day at 7, the men were just beginning their plans. And while those who had boyfriends and brothers were very fortunate, a lot of us cursed our sibling-less existence or just resigned to our fate, hiding in chocolates, family time, or books. Though a few of us, did manage to slip out for late night parties in the company of reasonably responsible men and the other lot of us thought we knew better than that; all of us who lived in delhi in those years can vouch for the fact that things seemed better back then. For we were to see, what we would probably term ‘worse’ in the years that followed.

In the times that ensued, I and a few other friends moved to cities like Mumbai, and Ahmedabad. We breathed in a fearless existence, staying out nights to quench our thirst from deprived years, even if it meant waiting alone for a local on a platform. We could embrace our sexuality freely, feel less masculine, and the unnecessary ruggedness disappeared from our personae in time.

But most of us left our parents, or what was the paternal or maternal ‘home’, back in Delhi. And somewhere down the line, the pull was inevitable. And so we gravitated back, more ‘woman’ than we were before. It felt ‘normal’, like we were finally breathing. We got back to Delhi, and were happy to note that the patrolling rounds were more frequent and we could see a larger deployment of police personnel on the roads. However, the fact that we had worn out a bit of our hardiness made our re-synthesis with the city a bit turbulent. Our body language on delhi roads was unconsciously different from what it used to be. We embraced a less alert, happier gait in no time. The metro made me feel safer, but those of us who could drive cars, did so.

On one of these happy evenings, as i sat in India Habitat centre with a friend at sundown, chomping away on momos, we gladly lost track of time. Catching up on almost three years worth of experiences, the clock struck eight and she piped up cutting a great evening short. “My god! ...Its eight! we have to head home now”. Sadly, the evening lost most of its charm as we called it a day and cooed to each other on our way to the auto about how we should meet very soon. As she stepped into the good old hari peelee, happily settling for somewhere close to the obnoxious fare demands of the autowallah, i said goodbye and decided to settle for one of my favourite walks in Delhi.

The two or so kilometre stretch from Habitat to the Khan Market metro station is one of my favourite stretches in the city, apart from the ridge area around North Campus. The evenings always seem nostalgic there. That was my claim to holding it so dear. However, on that day, five minutes after i crossed the India International Centre bus stop, i realised that i was being followed. Looking back to confirm, i overheard these two men commenting loudly about my gait and other details. As Khan Market drew nearer, i increased my pace and crossed the road more than thrice. But it was not before i entered the market premises, and lost them in the crowd, that i sighed with relief. However, for the first time in twenty odd years of being in Delhi, had i felt that surge of panic in myself. A few hours before, i had heard a friend recounting a horrific story about a common friend who was dragged out of her car in front of Akshardham temple in the early morning hours of a usual weekday, and beaten black and blue by a man with the city traffic rushing past them. All that the police personnel nearby could do was to plead the man to spare her. The justification that was given to her was of the order that this man happened to be holding a reputable position in a national bank. The incident was followed up by several calls made to our friends in the media, resulting in coverage by the print media. The perpetrator was jailed, post which he managed to get a bail. However, he was imprisoned a second time following a strict scrutiny of legal proceedings by the victim.

Between then and now, a considerable amount of time has morphed into indifference. A state of silent mourning, as i see it. My friend is driving her car to work again, and i am more cautious. I have even begun to think twice about wearing what i usually would, in a city like Mumbai. The Delhi police and their alter egos are on the prowl. One can’t be sure of which one to be more afraid of or of which is which. Amidst the delirium, Delhi women seem to know, that ‘Two is better than One’ and Gurgaon has posters and protests alike. In hope of a ‘someday’, they rest their cases in the comfort of their homes, conventions, and the arms of delhi men they know will protect them.

The larger question, however, remains ‘how do we define belonging?’ and when it comes to that. Do we belong to a city or a space at all? And what gives us the right to belong? The Oxford dictionary puts down the definition of belonging in three ways

·                     1 (belong to) be the property of

·                     2 (belong to) be a member of (a particular group or organization)

·                     3 [with adverbial of place] (of a thing) be rightly placed in a specified position

¹Though, what we know belonging to be, as individuals, or as men and women, completely depends upon how we build a ‘place’ into a ‘space’ in our imagination full of an accumulated sense of attachments and sentiments by means of everyday practices. We develop our belonging or attachment for a place on the basis of our spatial knowledge of the environment as well.

Growing up as women in delhi, we were mostly witness to supervised visits with our parents to sights and sounds in the city, that were relevant to the family. While conditioning was meant to be internalised by both the sexes, it worked that way only for the other half of us. The agency which would enable us to belong to the city faded away because we grew afraid to explore it beyond our fears. While the boys from our teenage days, and the men from our youth gallivanted or rode across on their bikes, and often made gifts of their visions of the city to their pillion rider of a girlfriend. We scurried away into our cocoons of ideas of Delhi by a safe time under the sun. We saw the city of the day and remained happy with our memories. And on a day or two, when we were stuck outside at an ‘indecent’ time, caught in palpable throes of distress (mostly in our imagination) and our thoughts ran amok in the middle of nowhere, we called up everybody we knew to find the nearest shelter we could escape to for the night. A crisis, a love affair, and paranoia. But mostly, a man. That is Delhi.

And the rest is determined by the fact that whether belonging, is at all, a choice anymore?

1.        Reference to ‘Gender and the City: The different formations of belonging- Tovi Fenster’