When Ramesh would pour it from the kettle, into the glass cup… He would hold the kettle high and bring it closer to the cup and again take it aback… The mist that would cover the top walls of the cup… And the white, thin, steamy strands flying free into air, rising from the brown tea in that cup… sweet like the jaggery that they used to bring to my dad’s factory… The fragrance it would bring early in the morning, or in the dull afternoon or even thoughtless evening…
The glass cup, is the one I used to be amazed at… it had those straight dents made on it, never counted, but same on every glass. Those would get curvy just before the thick top wall… Guys from Engineering College in front of our tea stall would hold the cup, like some scientific instrument. I had once been to a chemistry lab, when I used to go to school… They had those test-tubes held tightly in rusty metal claws… these engineers would hold the cup by making a clamp using the thumb and the index finger… then there was Nari Chacha… He would hold the hot cup, his bare palm embracing it all around… he used to work Municipal Corporation… a sweeper.
Nari Chacha used to come to my Dad’s factory… Dad used to make the finest… hooch… And the butterflies… I would play with them… In the green fields… I would steal a little from the dad’s kerosene can like containers for hooch… then lying down in our hut, I would be running… in those green fields… it was so lovely…
But now everything seems so bland… The fragrance of tea is so unfulfilling… the jaggery is so tasteless… I don’t see those butterflies anymore… the night before, I don’t know where I slept… gotta make it to the tea stall… to beg Ramesh to let me wash some cups… to serve some tea… I just need 40 rs… to buy me the white powder…
I hate sunlight in my eyes… reminds me of the torch’s heat I had used for my dad’s funeral rites…
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
The Pinocchio
He used to make the boy read a whole book… often a novel, and he would expect the boy to answer anything from that book… from the leanest clues. But for how long, I would wonder… how long would the boy keep on answering his questions given that he gave almost no time to think… But it went on, longer than I had expected… The stack of books that he would bring for the boy to read, kept on growing… he would bring in more books than the boys read the last time…
It went on; the boy would answer questions from the books he read long back… often the boy would not even wait for the clues to get over… that made him happy or greedy rather… For the boy, I would wonder, if there’s joy in reading the books that he would stack up for him… or would the boy have the only joy when answering his questions…
Among these books and between him and the boy, I have seen it coming… I have seen the distinction between the lines from one book to the other becoming thin and thin… given that the boy remembers the words in the books so well, the excitement that those words in a new book can bring was replaced by methods rather to remember those words… to throw them words at him, when he questions… I have seen the building of a trust between him and the boy… For how long, I would wonder, he would persist on his stringent questions… the boy would always answer, one day he must be convinced about the boy’s abilities… and he was convinced…
And then; then its all between the boy and the books… I have seen it coming as well, the building of overconfidence… the boy knows the books already read so well, the boy doesn’t feel the need to read the same words in the new books… the boy would sometimes even wouldn’t read words in the letters I would write to him… or would he? The overconfidence made the boy play the one role he never did… the boy was very much prepared for the work he was going to take, the work to teach boys younger than him… to teach them to read those same books he once read… but never the boy was prepared for lying… his answers always had to be the truth, as he would have read in the book… but now when he questions and gives the leanest clues to his students… he knows, he can only limit himself to those books… I wonder when the boy would go outside his boooks, the Pinocchio inside him might have to hide his nose...
It went on; the boy would answer questions from the books he read long back… often the boy would not even wait for the clues to get over… that made him happy or greedy rather… For the boy, I would wonder, if there’s joy in reading the books that he would stack up for him… or would the boy have the only joy when answering his questions…
Among these books and between him and the boy, I have seen it coming… I have seen the distinction between the lines from one book to the other becoming thin and thin… given that the boy remembers the words in the books so well, the excitement that those words in a new book can bring was replaced by methods rather to remember those words… to throw them words at him, when he questions… I have seen the building of a trust between him and the boy… For how long, I would wonder, he would persist on his stringent questions… the boy would always answer, one day he must be convinced about the boy’s abilities… and he was convinced…
And then; then its all between the boy and the books… I have seen it coming as well, the building of overconfidence… the boy knows the books already read so well, the boy doesn’t feel the need to read the same words in the new books… the boy would sometimes even wouldn’t read words in the letters I would write to him… or would he? The overconfidence made the boy play the one role he never did… the boy was very much prepared for the work he was going to take, the work to teach boys younger than him… to teach them to read those same books he once read… but never the boy was prepared for lying… his answers always had to be the truth, as he would have read in the book… but now when he questions and gives the leanest clues to his students… he knows, he can only limit himself to those books… I wonder when the boy would go outside his boooks, the Pinocchio inside him might have to hide his nose...
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