Upstairs 3 or the Thundering Thump!

Any other girl in her place would have let common sense get the better of her, and left. Or looked elsewhere. But in Gladly’s overactive mind, a faceless figure was already up high on a stool and hanging himself from a rusty ceiling fan. Gladly loved studying handwritings, she could tell it was not a woman.

She looked around and found a chunk of concrete that must have come off one of the walls. Then picked it up without any hesitance and brought it down on Donny’s main door with a thundering thump.

Donny heard and fell from the commode.

Upstairs 2 or Donny was in the Bathroom

Gladly walked up the stairs of an old building whose tenants had either left the place or were all dead. There were mollusk –like growths on the sides of the steps and spider webs adorned the corners of the walls.

She somehow managed her way up and made a calculated assumption that the paper ball must have come from the 2^nd floor window. She knocked.

Donny was in the bathroom, wasting time; just staring into space and lazing on the toilet seat whenever he was out of depth.

He didn’t hear her knock.

But she wasn’t one to give up.

kaleidoscope kaleidoscope

The neon-lit kaleidoscope showing pictures of yesteryear stars and playing an old Raj Kapoor song took him back several years, to a past where he was an itinerant manic force storming his way through the streets of Hazaribag.

The boy who left his open skies for the multistoried condominium he owns now. He has a M.F. Hussain in his drawing room, luxury cars in his garage, vintage alcohol in his cellar. But during purposeless lunchtime conversations, his heart still races through the emerald fields chasing frogs. 

Was he humming something?

Dil dhoondta hai phir wohi fursat ke raat din.

Gulzar.

Do you remember?

Some say reading is a dying art. But in a dying race struggling to remember simple ideas of humanity, it’s still more alive than the rest. Most of us remember important things through associations; heartbreaks become a song, first job becomes a wristwatch, someone’s death becomes the reminiscence of a conversation.

I always remembered things with books. The face of the writer became the face of the feeling then.

Stephen King became Nightmare.

Franz Kafka became Delusion.

García Márquez became Magic.

Woody Allen became Confusion.

Ruskin Bond became Leisure.

Haruki Murakami became Loneliness.

And Memory always remained a bittersweet getaway.

Showdown!

Sundays were when Dad walked in from the bazaar with the entire fish market in his hands.

TEESRI MANZIL, TUMSA NAHI DEKHA, GUIDE, TRISHUL, AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY. Forget the blockbusters, we had CHHOTI SI BAAT, CHASHME BUDDOOR, KATHA, SHAUKEEN, MOHAN JOSHI HAZIR HO!, SALIM LANGDE PE MAT RO.

Show me another Sai Paranjpye, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Gulzar or Muzaffar Ali. Or a Khayyam, Naushad, Vanraj Bhatia, or S.D. Burman. Barkhoordar (he smirked), humare paas Shashi Kapoor, Smita Patil, Farooq Shaikh the. 

Tumhare 90s ke paas kya hain?

The answer was Ma.

MA…DHURI DIXIT.

Bollywood was all about Sunday morning showdowns.

Artful

Girl: What do you do?

Boy: I am an artist.

Girl: Don’t you work?

Boy: I am an artist.

Girl: What do you want?

Boy: Is that jazz playing?

Girl: Why?

Boy: Because I want to make love to you with jazz playing.

Girl: (laughs)

Boy: ?

Girl: You are sick.

Boy: I will buy you coffee.

Girl: And I’ll say yes for a Latte?

Boy: Artistes make terrific love.

Girl: But terrible lovers.

Boy: You don’t know me.

Girl: Why don’t you try that with someone who is not on a wheelchair?

Boy: Oh, there’s no art in that.

Right Person

How often do we find the right person?

She could be in another country, which will never give me a Visa. Or worse, born in another time. She could be Janis Joplin.

She could be Dominique Francon. For love I can cross borders, but how do I enter Ayn Rand’s imagination?

What if I see her and words fail me?

What if she is sitting across from me in the bus, reading The Fountainhead? Do I just say excuse me and tell her that she is the one? She may have already found him. And I am no Ethan Hawke.

Upstairs

Her parents named her Gladly.

His named him something but he preferred Donny.

Every Sunday morning, Gladly headed out to read poems to a blind man.

Every morning Donny tried finishing his novel. Every morning he failed.

She missed having a friend.

His deadline was near.

Donny wrote on paper, and filled his room with crumpled pages.

Gladly always carried her green umbrella with her.

That morning when Donny felt useless, he wrote “HELP” on a piece of paper and threw it outside his window.

When it fell on Gladly’s umbrella, she opened it and read.

Then she went upstairs.