The Red Umbrella

I liked rains, but that was before I came to Mumbai. Also, I hate change. After coming here, though, and seeing Mumbai rain, and how it never stops, never slows down, and just keeps on showering day and night, my preferences for rain have changed. I hate rains now, and I hate the fact that my liking for the rain has changed too.

For the third time in a row, I had been caught in that rain. Like a whining child that just doesn’t stop crying, the rain fell down all around us and drenched us all. The puddles were more dark sludge than the clean mud I remembered from my good old childhood days, and I didn’t want to step into those. On top of that, as luck would have it, I didn’t have my umbrella with me that day either.

I had no choice but to stand under the leaky old bus-stop, waiting for the rain to subside just a little bit, and then venture homewards. As the rain pounded overhead, rattling the corrugated dilapidated tin sheet overhead, wanting to make it come crashing down on my head, all I wished was that I hadn’t forgotten my umbrella at work. So, as I sat there, contemplating the exact reasons and the precise moment when I forgot to pick up my umbrella from the desk, the scarred old dirty man with the bright red umbrella came and sat next to me under the old bus stop as well.

I didn’t pay much attention to him initially. Truth be told, at the moment the mini-vortex in the black stinking water seemed more interesting (but only because it was repulsive and disgusting), but after a few moments, I was bored from watching the dance of the filthy water, bored about the fact that I was stranded and stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a city that I barely knew, and a strange stranger sitting beside me.

There seemed something wrong with that old man there; a manic glint in his eyes, perhaps. He seemed detached from the world, the city, and the storm that surrounded him. I wasn’t too sure if it was the glazed look in the eye, or his bushy unkempt hair, or his dirty matted beard, but there was something sad, and yet almost sinister, about him as he sat there. Almost like a wounded dog, gone wild and unpredictable, and although it broke your heart seeing him there, you dared not pet it for you were sure it would bite your hand if you tried.

As these thoughts ran amok in my head, the man sat silently, staring at me with his smoldering sight. As always in moments like this, panic seized me – was this man capable of reading minds? Had he heard all the things that I was saying to myself about him? Maybe the analogy of this angry old man and the wounded crazy dog wasn’t the best, and I hoped and wished that I hadn’t thought those thoughts. But, of course, it was too late for any of that. I had thought those things already, and he knew exactly what was going on in my mind. His eyes told me about the anger he was feeling, how his hands were itching to strangle me. If only I had known how to shut up, and kept my thoughts bottled up inside, none of this would have happened.

The grey clouds rumbled again, while the grey hair on the old man’s head shook with anger. The lines on his face deepened, like angry potholes aiming for the next set of wheels, desperately trying to break them. His fingers clutched tightly to the red umbrella, and I wished he would leave. He had an umbrella – what did he have to fear?

But he didn’t leave. Even with the red umbrella, held tightly between his hands, he sat there. Even with his mad anger, dripping down like the grey water dripping down his matted grey hair, he sat there. Smoldering in silence, with his eyes fixed on me, he sat there. I was scared, but I dared not look away from his eyes. There was something almost primordial about the way he kept staring, as though he would attack me at the first sign of weakness that I would show. In spite of the chills because of the steady stream of rain water pouring down the back of my neck, I resisted the urge to move even slightly. And thus, we sat, while the rain poured from the sky, and the water gushed through the streets. We sat, motionless, while the mud mixed with the dirt and the filth, and flowed through the sewers. We sat, silent, while the mud squelched beneath flip-flops and sandals, and tied dirty old plastic bags between the toes of the men and women and children running in the puddles, racing with their lives, racing against the city. We watched each other, while the city roared around us, and moved around us, till we became the immobile, absolute center of the city that surrounded us, beneath that old, dilapidated, rejected, near-shattered bus stop.

“I hate this city,” his voice rumbled. He said it softly, but it carried over the noise of the buses as they waded through the water. “This filth, this stench, this knee deep water everywhere. I hate the rain, and the way it never seems to stop!”

“But, you have an umbrella,” I said, while my eyes flitted for the tiniest moment from his eyes to the red umbrella in his hand, and then back into his eyes. Even though we had started communicating, I was still scared of this man, and didn’t wish for him to see my weaker side.

He looked down at the umbrella, but the look of anger didn’t leave his face. Instead, a mild tinge of lost love seemed to be added to it as he looked at the bright red umbrella that could so easily protect him from the downpour.

“Yeah, I do have an umbrella,” he said in the same soft, rumbling voice. “But I wish I hadn’t. And it’s not like I can use it, either – it’s broken.”

A short cackle of laughter followed the stranger’s strange words, as he looked back at me again, the anger in his eyes more pronounced than ever – yet, I knew that this anger was not directed at me. It was an anger aimed at something much bigger. Instantly, I was reminded of that wounded dog again, and I fixed my eyes into his again.

“This is my daughter’s old umbrella. It’s broken, and it’s useless, but she’s not here anymore so she can’t take it back. I wish I didn’t have it with me, though. I wish she had it instead of me, but my wishes don’t come true. I don’t have my daughter anymore, but I have her old, broken, useless red umbrella.”

“What happened to her?” I asked, still not looking away from his eyes.

“She was swallowed by the city,” he said, and he got up. Tenderly touching his tattered feet to the black water that waited just beyond the shelter of the bus stop, he looked back one more time at me, and spat in disgust as the revolting black sludge sucked in his feet, “Swallowed whole by the city.”

He turned away from me, wading into the knee deep water. I waited for him to whip open his umbrella; because I knew even a broken one can give some respite from the rain. He didn’t, though, preferring to feel the impact of the thousand droplets hitting him from all around all at once. And all the while, he kept an iron grip on the bright red umbrella, like a red beacon of sanity and safety in a cold, steely, grey world.

I wanted to call out to him, ask him, plead with him, beg in front of him, to let me have the red umbrella that he wasn’t using, so that I, too, may go home; but I didn’t. I was still too scared of the wounded dog, and didn’t want to stick out my hand to pet him, lest he bite it.

~

Written for Magpie Tales.

“Say ‘Cheese’!”

I hated antique shops. I hated the concept, the idea, of owning something that was previously someone else’s. Almost as though it was an encroachment on their private lives, and their memories from such a long time ago. Anyway, I’ve never had an eye for antiques, and paying to buy old grimy black things that stand out ostensibly somehow didn’t seem to be for me.

Even so, when Carla told me that she wanted to go to the antique store down the street, I couldn’t refuse. Partly because, in the few weeks that I had spent in America, Carla had been my only friend. And in those few weeks, we had fallen madly in love with each other. I knew going with her to the antique store would make her smile, and so I went with her.

Carla had a way with things like that – old letters, old furniture, old books, old photographs. In her life, memories were the most powerful component, and although I didn’t quite understand the importance those memories had for her, somehow, I knew they were important to her, and made her just the person who she was. She was a romantic, a young passionate woman with a raging and wild imagination, and she loved weaving stories around the little things that she found in her favourite antique stores and flea markets and pawn shops she always seemed to know about. We never really knew if any of her stories were even close to the truth, but it was fun nonetheless. “Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose,” she used to say, and even though it was just a cheesy line from an old TV show, I thought I knew just what she meant.

Now that Carla and I aren’t together, I understand what she meant about memories. It’s also one of the reasons why, out of all the forays into the local antique store, there’s only one that stays persistently on my mind. It was a usual drizzly day, and we hadn’t really planned to go and check out the antique store, at least not for another week or so. Still, there was nothing better to do as we were caught in the drizzle, and somehow the thought of dancing in the rain didn’t quite seem very alluring in that moment. So, Carla dragged me into her favourite little store, and I followed silently.

The shop didn’t really look very different, and as always, I felt like I was in a strict library, not allowed to speak one word. “You’re in the company of memories now,” Carla told me. And then we spent the rest of the evening in silence, lost in the past of the strangers who had left their possessions there, in the company of second-hand memories.

There were a lot of things in the store that day – an old wooden cupboard, grimy chairs with dirty cushions on them, letter holders stuffed full of old letters that the previous owners hadn’t bothered to throw out. I also found an old diary, one that belonged to a 13 year old boy named Brian McWallace. I wondered if I should read through the diary, contemplating the morality of the issue, but it had been taken care of Brian in his boyhood – he’d never written a word in the diary. The first time when I had wanted to be a little like Carla, and wander into the world of imagination, and making up stories befitting the lives of the former owners of the things we held in our hands, Brain McWallace had thwarted that desire, by leaving the diary entirely blank. I threw it back on to the shelf, surprised to find myself so frustrated for something as insignificant as the inability to think up a story. I wasn’t Carla, and I knew I couldn’t make up a story for the fantastic life of Brian McWallace, so I left the diary back on the dusty shelf and went about looking for her amidst the old junk.

I think back then, I was immature to think that there was no value to old violins and old guitars, and was a bit too quick to judge them based on the amount of grime they had acquired over the years. Maybe if I knew everything I know now, I might have been able to see those old things in the dingy shop in a better light. However, I didn’t know anything about the value inanimate things absorb over the years, which can make them seem priceless to some people, even if they seem worthless to others.

But Carla knew. She knew just what every single one of those grimy little artefacts were worth, because she knew how to calculate something’s worth in more than just monetary terms. I found that the slight bit of allure that I had felt a moment back had faded off, and I was bored. I wanted to sit with Carla again, even if it was just to hear one of her little stories. I picked up the first thing that I passed by – an old, faded violin with just one string – and went to Carla looking for a story.

I knew she would tell me all about the violin’s incredible journey, and the applause it had received (maybe at the Carnegie Hall?), but she didn’t. When I found her, in the back of the little shop, she had already found her treasure for the day, and didn’t really seem too interested in the violin I had so painstakingly picked out for her. Instead, she was looking at an old, faded picture.

It was a normal looking picture, something that can be found in any old family. Three people, looking out of a car. Nothing great in that, right? Sure, they looked happy, but then, isn’t that how most people have their pictures taken? Don’t their faces automatically go into the ‘smile, there’s a camera pointed at you!’ mode the moment they know someone’s clicking their picture? I didn’t know why Carla was looking at that picture, and sitting there waiting for her story to come out, I felt a little bored. And a little stupid, too.

But the story didn’t come that day. For some reason, Carla didn’t want to venture into the lives of the people who made up that picture, and she didn’t want to talk about the travels they may have had in the car with the window rolled down. She didn’t want to know the reason why they looked so happy in the photo. She just sat there, silently, staring at the picture in her hand. So, having nothing else to do, I started looking at the picture, too.

And then, a very interesting thing happened in the dark, dingy shop. From looking at the picture, I went to looking at the people instead. I started wondering where these people were, the two women and the young man, all of them so full of life and laughter and happiness. I found myself wondering if the photographer had said “Cheese!” before pressing the button that bottled their moment of happiness forever, capturing them on that little piece of paper that Carla was holding. I wondered what they were so happy about, and if those dreams, those fantasies, they came true. I wondered if they made any memories that day or not, and how long they were together after that picture was taken, to cherish those memories. I wondered why the photograph, the tangible proof of their intangible memories, and their intangible happiness, lay forgotten in this old Missouri antique shop. And I wondered who these people were. Even then, as I sat there with the girl I was so crazy about, holding a photograph that had neither of us in it, I knew I’d always remember this moment.

“We can ask the store manager who these people are, can’t we?” I asked.

“No,” said Carla. “Let’s not do that.”

“Why not? Maybe he knows these people,” I said.

Carla looked strangely thoughtful, and finally said, “Because life – both ours and theirs – deserves a sense of mystery.”

In the end, we bought just the picture of the three strangers sitting in the car with their happy smiles that day. She said she would want me to keep it. She thought maybe it would help to get me started building some memories (second hand though they were), and start living life the way she did for a change. I never thought it would work, but in a strange way, it did.

Carla and I broke up six months later. It wasn’t a pretty break up, and I returned to India soon after that. In the wake of the fights, and our fallout, I had thrown away all of our pictures. It’s been many years since I last saw her, and I’ve sometimes found myself wondering where she is, and what she’s up to these days. In those moments, I take a look at that picture, the one that we stumbled upon all those years ago in her favourite little antique store. And even though I have nothing else to remind me of her, that old picture is all I’ll ever need – even though it doesn’t have Carla or me in it. Because I understand now what she meant when she talked about memories – how they really are a way of holding on to the things that you have loved in the past, the person that you were in the past, and the things you never thought you would lose, in the past.

~

Inspired from Magpie Tales. They asked for a poem, but I’m no great shakes at that… so, I wrote this one instead.

The Monument

I dream, in the city of walls

The ones that crumble

The ones that fall

At my feet, they lay still

Stones and sand and mortar

Stripped of their beauty

They lay bare, and silent

Forgotten by man, reclaimed by the untamed

Made wild by time

Over eons and a hundred years

As inch by inch that tree grew

Amongst its nurtured care

Till the day it stood, proud and strong

On the land where once stood

That mighty wall

Till the cracks ran deep

And the rain trickled down

Eating away stone

Planting seeds of life where it ran

Little by little, the seeds take root

Little by little, the leaves unfurl

Little by little, the plants bloom

Little by little, the walls are forgotten

Where once they stood with pride

They stand today, stripped away

And Man, the creator of that forgotten boundary

Moves off to find a new way

~

Live Your Dreams

To smell the sea,

To taste the salt,

To feel the water,

As it pushes and pulls,

To hear the voices,

Oh, how the children laugh,

To hear the anguish,

Of promises they broke,

And the tears and the joy,

Lay before you now,

Tread gently, please

For on dreams, you walk...

~

Image courtesy: Sehnsuchtsort

The Invisible Man

It was a tangerine sunset, lit by the last few rays of the sun
And on the bench, between the wrought-iron armrests
Watching the sun sinking slowly towards the ocean
We waited, my silent, patient, invisible friend
Waiting for the day to slip by quietly
Without an applause, without a hurry, without bidding farewell
While the dancing waves awaited the moon
Hoping to dance to the lunar tunes
An ordinary day had come to an end
Forgotten by many, but not by that invisible friend
And he watched in silence, those little evening waves
As they ran ashore, kissing our naked feet
Pushing the sand and ocean between our toes
The invisible friend, he wept, for the time he had lost
For the years that had passed, for the chances that had slipped by
Unseen and unheard, the invisible tears rolled down
But he didn’t wipe them off
And they fell into the ocean
Water met water, salt met salt
The sun touched the ocean
Slipping under the blanket of the night
And my invisible friend was pulled under
Still sobbing, into that darkness, into that night
As the evening crept up, as the lights dimmed out
As the night spread over, where the day had been
My invisible friend vanished,
Invisible stayed he…

~