Trip Home

Lull is a funny word. And that’s what this place has been going through for a long while now. I have forgotten how to structure a post to the level this blog has been used to so far. Staccato shall be the norm in whatever drivel that follows.

So I went home for two weeks to celebrate Diwali. Supreme confidence with a false sense of control, in combination with a strong tendency towards judicious procrastination, ensured that I was yet again the last man to check-in thereby having to settler for the middle seat in the last row of the plane. Sandwiched between two adult males, one of whom carried a one and a half year old kid with a strange mythological name, the meaning of which he shall be obliged to explain for the rest of his life to those who enquire, I resigned to two more hours of discomfort to this three decade old body. The father was very careful in the beginning of the journey to keep the baby and himself within the domain he has paid for; by the time the pilot announced the landing, expressing the practiced gratitude, a ritual as unnecessary as the safety instructions, the kid’s shoes were resting on my lap. I pretended to ignore the inconvenience and kept my eyes closed throughout the journey.

On the eve of Diwali, when mom was finishing the pooja, I finally finished reading Lolita for the second time. Scared by the noise of crackers, a street-dog rushed in our house and trembled till well past midnight in the passage. I thought of taking its picture and uploading it on facebook with the title “Dog in Distress” (haa haa). But I was in throes of laziness which was furthered by illness (such a demeaning way to be reminded of mortality).

There was another interesting subject which I didn’t click. Three female models, one with a seductive expression, one in black mini, and the third in a dress typical of mid nineties, adorned a packet of crackers called ‘Priya’s Chakkar”. The cover should be acknowledged as a remarkable piece of diligence if all of those three models were named Priya in real life.

The place where that dog trembled in fear all night once used to be home to a stray cat, which, despite being pitch black, managed to give birth to white little kittens. When I was nine, mom told me to take those kittens to a park about three kilometers from our place. Chores, more often than not, aren’t as easy and straightforward as they sound. Catching and putting those kittens in a bag while their mother was out, gathering food, wasn’t really the hardest challenge as I had perceived before beginning to execute the task. Having done with that triviality with ease, as I walked on the road to the park, I was surrounded by the most ferocious dogs of the kind found only in small towns (dogs in Bangalore have been reported to be shooed away effortlessly by cats on more than one occasion).

The dogs had smelled and heard the little kittens. And their number increased with every turn I took. The knowledge that those dogs aren’t after me, but the kittens, gave me the courage to keep walking. However, after a while the dogs began jumping and growling greedily. Before the situation could turn graver, I opened the gates of a big bunglow , emptied the bag full of kittens, quickly closed the gate and returned back home, leaving the hounds barking on top of their voice in front of the house. To this day my eyes search for white cats whenever I pass by that house. Mother cat meowed around our house for the whole day and then left the place for good.

The journey back to Bangalore found me again on a middle seat of an Air India flight. The muffins they serve on Air-India flight are worth all the risk and nuisance. The gentleman on my left snorted regularly and so made me listen to some good music on the in-flight radio programs. Being forced to sit with seat-belts tied around the waist, while the air-hostess walks and shuts the overhead cabins with great difficulty with her nail-polished tender hands, never fails to make me feel helpless and guilty and yet I find the situation sexy in a way.

So the trip ended and it’s great to be back sleeping on the most comfortable bed in the world.