Selective Amnesia There was a point to this. But I forgot.

Neythal

Madras. The twang of salt spray and drying kippers on the banks of the silted Buckingham canal can do nothing to lift my spirits. Neither can the hot sands that give my coast the name and brought trading Arabs and Englishmen here. Madras, the muse for this failed writer, has failed when I needed her the most.

Madras. As the day winds down and as men and women grope and grasp, anonymous and private in a place teeming with millions doing much the same, like Poe’s purloined letter, and as the crows give way to the cricket, as the phosphorous sea reflects distant ships and near rafts, the city that was more home than the four walls and a ceiling I live in, Madras and the Marina have reneged on an unworded but implicit contract. And I shuffle aimlessly, forlorn and lonely, among the sands and crabs.

The girl, as it always is about, she with the soft plump shoulders[1] and wiry frame, she of the coast and the valleys, does not know. Once, as I walked the back streets of my city, showing her why Madras would never be another place and more importantly, why no place could be Madras, her eyes dark and smouldering like the sea not more than a few streets from where we stood, throwing question marks at the patina-ed walls and yellowed leaves of the fishermen’s tenement. And making small talk with the old lady selling sundal and murukku (and for special folks, deep fried fish and prawns) and spinning tales of men lost to the sea and the spirits that posses dogs in the night as they walk the streets made of packed and tamped down mud.

I now walk that lane again, little rivulets of brackish water, as invisible as borders and as intractable, showing friends and foes, and neighbours, where was what and who could sit where. Here a rusted hand pump creaking, hesitant to give up that last litre of water, there a plastic drum which would later in the evening support a carrom board and four elbows and pitched battle under a naked light bulb. Weeds holding together grains of sand and nests of the turtles who have found yuppie support. In all this, with the restless waves crashing on an immovable beach, I am still uneasy and depressed. As again, the shoulders and the eyes and the freckled triangular face give me not a moment of quiet.

Madras. In a short while, the moon will feebly light up this dark stretch of coast, and lovers and smugglers will prepare for the night ahead. Men, world weary and muscle heavy, will scrape away the sand in search of buried treasure: sunda kanji. Madras. There it is, stretching west and gently rising up from the sea that caused it to be. Madras, with all her faults she cannot be faulted, but has failed today. The city that made me forget it all, makes me remember the one person and the one betrayal I want to forget. Madras, despite all that they say, beautiful in this half light, with the sea the zari to her sari, can do nothing more than reopen the old wound. I feel the pain all over again, fresh as it was many years ago.

[1]
எக்கர் ஞாழல் புள்ளிமிழ் அகன்துறை
இனிய செய்த நின்றுபின் முனிவு செய்த
இவள் தடமெல் தோளே.
~Ammuvanar, Ainkurunuru 143,