Selective Amnesia

Story-thon - Running blind, Part 1

Snatches of conversations – “I am telling you, she is a bad one. She had a tattoo on her arms”; “No, you go pick the ball…last time you hit into uncle’s garden, we got a roasting”; “listen sweetie- I swear I didn’t look at her” followed by “Ithudan seydhigal mudigindrana. Vanakkam.”

The hissing and frying and clanging of tonight’s dinner in the flat across the window; a hodgepodge of smells – garlic meets jasmine blossoms meets the stench from the Mambalam Canal. In short, time is 6.30. The last of the day’s lights would soon go out, meekly surrendering to the sultry nights of Madras. A kind of quiet will settle down here, save for the buzzing mosquitoes that give our cricket team their name.

I heard him coming in to my room, one shuffling hesitant step after another. “Anna, do you want me to open the windows?” “Anna, can I get you a coffee?” “Anna, do you want the radio turned on?” Anna this and anna that.

The cloying sweetness of his disposition gets to me. Always. And no amount of shouting at him purges it. All I do is light up my cigarette and blow some smoke, hopefully towards him. But, a radio wouldn’t be bad now. Nor would an open window.

He tried describing the room to me now, small-talk quota for the day. I listen, my eyes closed. Not that it matters I keep them open. The room looks not as dirty as it is, in the half-light of the evening. He tells me I strike a poignant figure, sitting in the half dark, the light from the one open window highlighting my nose. My cigarette sending out wispy little angels towards the window across the block, to make love to the smell of Takkali Rasam that’s almost a permanent resident there.

Though I have never seen the room in my 22 years, I have come to like it. My chair is always here, 10 counts from the door, set so I can reach behind to the table where he lays out my wills packet and cheetah fight. The old radio is in the corner – just out of reach of my hand. He now goes across to fiddle with it. I don’t know why he bothers with the radio. It is much too old, too much treble, too little bass – all I can hear is the tinny voice of the old buggers from all India Radio announce the time every 30 minutes. When you are where I am, time has no consequence. Tinggg ting, goes the radio now, clanging like a wheezy old Hercules cycle. “Ipozhudu neram 6 mani, 55 nimadam, 15 nodi. Innum sila…….kssksss…tsk…Peraasiriya…….kssskksss”

The radio at least, static or no static, had kept him silent for a while. But now, he gets up. “anna,” he coddles, “do you want dinner now, before I go?”
Poor kid, if only he lets this cynic mumble in quiet. I dismiss him for the day. He potters about for a while, washes a plate or two, comes back to my room, drags the radio closer to me and goes out. Banging the one swollen wooden door of my house tight.

I ignore the radio. God, I wish I had asked him to get me dinner. I am hungry.
Perhaps, if I just concentrated on the music. But no. All I get is static, punctuated by time announcements. Is it already 8?

I am hungry. Ah! At least I have my smokes.
I light up, and settle back in my chair. I love the first aroma of a cigarette. So does every asshole who’s addicted, I guess. That bitter sweet smell and the feel of the ash as it settles in your fingers, that delicious raspiness in your throat.

Mine is your regular 2 bedroom armpit of a flat. In the third-floor of an apartment block with other, even danker arm-pit houses. The government called it MIG flats. Middle Income Group, my sorry foot! We’d be just a shade above poverty line, considering the prices these days.

Across the landing, a Christian family manages to hang on to their morals and their rosary beads by selling insurance policies. On the floor below, is the old bugger who can help you set your watch. Every morning, at 7, he farts loud enough to wake up the deaf-dead, and exactly 20 minutes later, flushes his loo. In the block across my window, a divorcee mother and her two sons manage to frustrate the Nadar who supplies rice to our colony. These are the people I hear, and the people I smell. They know well enough to not come knocking on my doors.

But now, I hear a knock.

All yours dude

Tags: Story-thon, Fiction, Story-thon Ravages, Story-thon Suman