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Of Silent Chairs and Mute Memories


Her name was Chameli. Once the jasmine flower she was named after, she had folded back into the bud that she had been a long time ago. Against the misty morning, in her delicate white dress, she looked radiant. She had been beautiful, and there were those who remembered that. Time had flown, though, and she had been trapped in her memories, and become that delicate flower bud once more. She had laid out the chairs in the field just the way she remembered it. Li’l Jo Singh, Mr Bakra, Mowgli Man, Alice Kumar Chautala, Maikalal Jaikishan, all members of the short-lived A-Team. She had long forgotten their real names, but their strange faces were still as vivid as the quirky names she remembered. That’s what they remembered her for, coming up with strange names. So lost was she in her memories, that she had forgotten her own name as well. She was Champa Chameli, presiding over this morning’s meeting on the dreary, bleak, misty morning.


I had hoped to catch her off her guard, so I moved through the empty chairs as silently as I could. Past experience had shown me that the trick worked – take her a bit by surprise, maybe startle her just a little bit, and she’ll suddenly become a lot more relaxed. Give her the illusion of being in control of me too, at just the right moment, and suddenly I would find myself a part of her little game, her periodic dance with the past that haunted her so much.

I crept closer and closer, and just when she was standing up after straightening an imaginary chair cushion, I leapt forward and whispered ‘Boo’ right into her ears. It didn’t have quite the effect that I had hoped. Instead of being startled, she turned around with a smile and said in her cute, little-girl manner, ‘I knew you were right behind me. You’re not good at trying to be a ninja, Makdee. You’re late for the meeting.’

‘I’m sorry, Chameli,’ I said with a smile. ‘I got caught up…’

‘In a web?’ asked Chameli, but I knew it was a rhetorical question. It was a joke at my expense, something that she found incredibly funny. I had no idea why she came up with the name Makdee, a spider, for me. I wasn’t a member of the imaginary A-Team, so Chameli didn’t really need to give me a name. I could have been me; but I knew she was scared of reality now. She preferred this dream world of nonsensical names and silly, childish games now. Somehow, I had become a part of that as well.

The chairs were laid out in the same way as they had been since I had known her. It had been so long ago that I don’t even recollect how and when I met her for the first time. Maybe it was at one of these meetings. Maybe we saw each other from a distance at a café. Maybe we met over lunch, and shared a meal a long time ago. I didn’t know anymore, and she was too lost in her delusions to care too much about those trivial things.

I had a job to do, though. I had to shake her up a little bit, give it another try. Maybe the infinity-plus-one-eth time would do the trick. I wanted to be tactful about it, I wanted to stall for a while, and I wanted to not tell her the things I knew she didn’t want to hear; but these were things that weren’t in my hands anymore. I existed only for Chameli now, and she had made me up for a reason.

‘Who’s the guest of honour today?’ I asked her as I took my seat next to her.

She giggled shyly, and said, ‘It’s Jaikishan; he finally told me that he loves me. Alice was wrong; didn’t I always tell you that?’

‘Why do you call him Alice? I mean, he’s a guy after all!’

‘You look at him! I’m sure he’s gay; he’s so effeminate after all. Besides, he likes it if I call him Alice,’ she said matter-of-factly, running a hand down her beautiful white dress.

‘Chameli, there’s something you should know,’ I began again, knowing well that it would be a fruitless endeavour. I had done this enough times to know it, but it was my job. It was precisely why Chameli had conjured me in her mind – so I could try, time after time, to snap her out of her hallucinations and back into the real world. ‘Chameli, are you listening?’

‘Yes, yes. I’m listening to you, Makdee,’ said Chameli absently.

‘You’re dreaming again, Chameli. It’s time you woke up and went back to your world. The people in the meeting, they’ve all gone, they’ve left. Don’t you want to know what happened to all those people? Wouldn’t that be good, to know them in real life, instead of inside here, only inside your mind?’

‘Oh, Makdee,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘Why do you come up with the same story every time? Look, Jaikishan will be coming soon; it’s going to be our first date. And Alice told me it would never work out!’

‘Chameli, Alice isn’t real,’ I said, taking another shot at it. ‘Alice lives inside your mind. Jaikishan exists only in your head. They’re not real, not here at least.’

‘Shush, Makdee!’ said Chameli, standing up suddenly. ‘Jaikishan’s here! You stay here, Alice will keep you company. I’ll see you later, ok?’ Another sudden smile and she ran off a little way off the cluster of chairs. I was sitting alone again, surrounded by phantoms just like me. They couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t see them – it was an arrangement that seemed to work just fine. My job, my purpose, my destiny, that wasn’t coming along so well, though. I could see Chameli animatedly holding a conversation with the thin air in front of her, no doubt speaking to Jaikishan. Things were going exactly as I had always known them to be. In a bit, Chameli would be lost, and there wouldn’t be any purpose for me to stay for the day. Would I leave then, though? Would I be able to walk away?

Chameli was taking Jaikishan’s invisible hand now. I knew I shouldn’t be watching this, but I couldn’t help it. She was putting his imaginary arm around herself, and getting lost in his warm embrace. I wondered, as always, if I should stop her or not. I knew I wouldn’t in the end – I never did. That wasn’t a part of my reason for existence.

She melted in his arms, invisible as they were. She crumpled to the floor, and lay down still. It would be over soon, I told myself. This day would end soon, I told myself. Beyond the circle of chairs, I could see Chameli kissing a phantom lover, a ghost-boyfriend from the past. I could see the beads of sweat glowing on her skin, could see her writhing with pleasure in the soft grass underneath her. It would be over soon, I told myself yet again.

But it wasn’t Chameli who had complete control. I knew it would last yet another lifetime; I knew Chameli was lost just a little more, yet again. While I could do nothing but sit and wait, and watch her falling in love yet again with Jaikishan – the imaginary, invisible man Alice had been wrong about.

~

Inspired by Magpie Tales. I looked for the source of the image, and found that it's by Rosie Hardy.

The painter at the Kulkarni Household

When he was a child, Mohandas Kulkarni was expelled from art class.  When his son died unexpectedly, for reasons unknown, he picked up the brush again. It had been a strange choice for him, one that didn’t seem to make much sense to anyone apart from him. His son had played the guitar almost all through his life; there were people who had expected Mohandas to maybe pick up that instrument, as a fitting way to remember his son.

Instead, he got lost behind his canvas, buried beneath layers of paint and dust. The words stopped flowing out of him over time, and he stayed mute for days, eyes glazed over, and thinking about whatever it was that he was painting. It’s easy to let grief out by crying, but Mohandas saved up every last teardrop he had. His wife cried, while Mohandas stayed stoic and silent. When the fire swallowed their son, Reena had been inconsolable. A day later, Reena stood strong, and in spite of it all, her life went on.

A week later, the first easel appeared, followed by the palette. Reena lost her husband to the easel that day. Mohandas lost the words shortly thereafter. The paint settled on the canvas overtime, and the dust settled on Mohandas; and unseen to his eyes, Reena aged long before her time. Two years passed like this, in a flash.

In Mohandas’ little art room, there was a pile of discarded paintings. They were all the same, but he hadn’t been satisfied. He had spent most of his time locked away in this room, looking for something in what he created so carefully, only to strip them down and begin anew. He wasn’t sure what it was that he was looking for all this while, but he was sure he would know when he saw it.

For two years, Reena and Mohandas hadn’t spoken to each other, or seen each other much. Weary and tired, Reena had wanted things to end quietly instead of going on like this. She had considered running away – but how can you run away from someone who isn’t even sure about your presence? She had thought about leaving him, but there was something about Mohandas that stopped her every time. In the way that Mohandas could never identify what he was looking for in the paintings, Reena failed to identify the reason that made her stop in her footsteps and bound her to the man she had lost the day her son died.

On an unremarkable Sunday morning, while the neighbours slept till late, catching up on their lost hours of sleep over the weekend, Mohandas emerged with the canvas and headed straight to the room that he once shared with his beloved wife. She was still in bed, but her eyes were open – almost as if she had been expecting him. He settled it down in front of her, and took his wife’s hands in his own. That morning, on an unremarkable, lazy Sunday, Mohandas broke his silence.

His voice, raspy from lack of use over many years, seemed sudden and cracked, but Reena heard him well; “I love you.”

“It’s beautiful, Mohan,” she said.

“It’s not original. I copied the idea from another painter. I forgot her name a long time ago,” he said.

“It looks just like him, but. How did she do that? Did she know him?”

“No, she didn’t. That’s what I was looking for, all this while. I was searching for him, searching for his face in that painting, hidden beneath the many layers of colour. I’ve found him now.”

Reena looked at the tears that streamed down Mohandas’ face, delayed by over two years while he had been looking for his lost son in another woman’s painting.

She gently put his arms around him, while he rested his wet cheeks on her shoulder. And they lived happily ever after…

~

Inspired by In Tandem.

‘An Eulogy’ or ‘Laughing in the face of Death’


Geoffrey wasn’t a deep guy. Not by a long shot. Maybe it was this that made Brad chuckle when he wondered if it would be better to have buried him in a shallow grave. He stopped himself from chuckling though – he was, after all, at a funeral. ‘I’d probably been hanging out too much with you, Geoff,’ thought Brad to himself, while Geoff’s smiling face twinkled behind the glass of the picture frame. The candles reflected on the glass gave him a holy look, which was ironic when Brad thought about the situation in which the picture had been taken. It had been anything but holy; the thought of it made Brad chuckle again.

‘Stop it, Geoff! You’re killing me – which is weird, considering that you’re dead now! I won’t be able to read out your eulogy if I go on like this,’ thought Brad, as the priest finished with the prayers. It was time for Brad’s last words for his best friend.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming here. Geoff was my best friend, we grew up together, and we knew each other like brothers. There’s a part of me that still has to come to terms with the fact that he’s gone, but right now his memories are still alive and kicking.”

Brad took his eyes away from the piece of paper in front of him, and looked at the crowd sitting in front of him. There was a hint of a smile even now on his face as he said, “It’s probably because of that, because of the fact that I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that he’s gone, really, that I was chuckling sitting back there. Call me crazy, but it still seems that he’s around me somewhere, whispering his endless line of silly jokes in my ears even now!”

The crowd laughed softly, nervously, and Brad went on reading from the little piece of paper.

“Geoff was a clown. He had a slightly sick, and a very weird sense of humour. Unfortunately, I was one of the few who got that sense of humour, which meant that while others were getting revolted or getting offended or getting ready to bash Geoff’s head in, I would be rolling somewhere, clutching my stomach in pain. He got beaten up a lot because of that as well, because I was too busy laughing at his jokes than standing next to him to save his ass.

“I’ve borne the brunt of his sense of humour at a number of places as well. I know neither of us can visit the local sandwich place anymore,” said Brad, and was smothered by a fresh bout of giggles. “That day was funny on so many levels! I don’t want to get into the details of it, and I don’t think any of you would want me to, either. Let’s just say that it had something to do with a BMT Sub, shall we? It was on that day this particular picture was taken, in fact – moments before we were thrown out of the establishment, and asked never to return…”

An uncomfortable silence filled the space while Brad stifled his laughter once more. The people sitting shared disapproving glances with each other. Most of the people knew Geoff as a young man full of potential, on the brink of his bright future. His sudden and unexpected death had reminded them of the fragility of life, and the overpowering stillness and finality of death. And yet, here was a boy, Geoff’s best friend, talking about his memories in such petty terms.

Brad didn’t care, though. He composed himself as best as he could, and went on reading from the little white, slightly crumpled sheet in his hand. “Geoff, you were a swell guy. You knew just how to cheer your friends when they were feeling low. You always knew just what to say in every situation. You always had a witty retort up your sleeve, and tried as we might, we never could figure out how you came up with those. You might have seemed to be a smart-ass, Geoff, but you cared about us. You cared about your friends. You cared enough to make us laugh, and you did that so well! I’ll miss you, my friend, for the rest of my life. I know this is farewell, but it doesn’t feel that way. Maybe that’s because we’ve never had a goodbye. We’ve always shared jokes instead, something that made us laugh through even the toughest days – when I left town, when you went to college, when our little group of friends was scattered all over the country. Those silly, shallow, and sometimes rude jokes were our way to say goodbye, Geoff. I’ve tried to do that here, but I wonder if it’ll work or not. Here goes…”

Brad’s voice choked up as he reached here, and he sniffled loudly. A fat, potent teardrop rolled heavily down his cheeks, followed quickly by another.

“A man walked into a bar…” he began, but the teardrops fell on to the nearly white, slightly crumpled piece of paper, washing away the rest of the joke with it.

~

Inspired by Magpie Tales

The Typewriter

As you can see, I’m a typewriter. As you can see, I’m not as inanimate as you thought I was. As you can see, I do remember a lot of things – the stories that have been written through me, channelized on to paper by my mechanics. You know how they say that a guitar remembers every song, every note that’s ever been played on it? And how they say that a book remembers every emotion, every bit of imagination that flashed through the reader’s mind? Well, we typewriters – not all of them, but just some of the more gifted ones amongst us – have the same ability; especially the ones that have been used to tell their stories to the world. I am lucky to be one such typewriter.

I’ve been handed around a lot, passed on from one hand to the next for the initial few years of my life. During that time, I was nothing more than a clerk’s tool – writing memos, printing an address – that was supposed to be my forte. Nobody wondered if the mechanical piece of equipment wanted to tell stories. Rather, if this particular piece of equipment wanted to learn about the art of telling stories. Things seemed hopeless (in hindsight, of course, because I never knew how fulfilling telling stories could be back then), until I was bought and paid for by her.

She was a romantic; an adventuress. She loved making mistakes, and she loved breaking the rules – not because she was a rebel or an anarchist, but just to test the waters. When people around her had started using a trusty computer, she stuck by faithfully with our kind. She picked me up at a flea market, lovingly cradled me in her arms, and carried me home like I was her first born child. It was love at first touch.

I never knew what she looked like, but I knew her better than anyone else can claim. We stood by each other, faithfully, for many years. I had never seen her face, but I knew her fingertips well. I knew her thoughts, and her dreams, like they were my own. In a way, they were my own. After all, it was only through her that I lived – really lived – my life the way I did.

She loved telling stories, but there weren’t many who were keen to hear them. She wasn’t beautiful in the conventional way (in fact, she used to call herself hideous!) and so never seemed to have many friends around her. She wanted to study. She wanted to write. She wanted to tell her stories. She wanted to build something, even if it was nothing more than an imagined, fantasy world. The world around her, however, wasn’t so keen to let her do that. The world around her wanted her to live a quiet life, have a family, make babies, raise them, and slip away once she was done in the silent arms of death. But she wouldn’t have it that way.

Having never seen her face, I never had the chance to make such judgements. I loved her for the way she told her stories, and the way she spoke them out to me. I revelled in the fact that I used to be the first one to hear those stories, and I nurtured them as if they were all mine. Now, I know I have a few of my own to tell, but they’ll never be as good as hers. But, I digress.

For fifty years or so, we made and broke people. We conjured up worlds together. We gave our characters strange names, people who came from strange places. We built those men, those women, and those children carefully, and breathed life into them. We felt the sting of the arrows, or the blow of a mighty punch. We felt the power of death, wielded by our hands. We made our heroes bleed, and we made our villains cry. We rejoiced in victory, we lamented for the dead. We fell in love, and we had many a lovers’ spat. You see, we built worlds together – intangible though they might be. And when the story was done, we stepped back to look at it for a while, before diving right into the next story.

It was only through her that I created something new, and I loved her for it.

It’s been many years since she passed away, but she lives on in my memories. And the stories she crafted so carefully; they still burn strong inside me, and I do churn one of them out from time to time – there are, after all, so many to choose from. But then, I’ve become old. I’ve become redundant now. I’ve been locked up inside a storage box and left alone for many years. The world has moved on, but I can’t.

I won’t have to. I still have her memories with me. I still have her stories with me. It doesn’t matter what her name was. It doesn’t matter what she looked like. I’ve never seen her face, and I’ve never known her name – but when those fingertips touched me, and when a new story poured forth from her mind into me, and on to the paper that was being hammered, I knew that none of that mattered.

Because I knew then, just how beautiful she really was.

~
Inspired from Magpie Tales.