As the black and yellow three-wheeled vehicle with black leather roofing got in further the colours and the beauty began to change. It was dark, and the sides of the alley were occupied by rows of shop houses, the sky was virtually invisible and what was opened as a narrow strip was crisscrossed by cable wires. From the shops lighted up yellow bulbs and fluorescent tubes loud Bollywood numbers thundered out forcing their likes on others. Had the path been a bit smooth and less crowded as it appeared from the outside the driver could have driven faster. Seeing this labyrinthine behind the high-rise modern glass building and the one which could soon be replaced by it I felt that the buildings were the thick walls holding some sort of boiling liquid ,and when it couldn’t contain it would explode and spill over the well-kept area and the littered road.
The vehicle moved in with one side of it over small hills of bricks and the other side of lower hills of the same material; thus sending me from one side to another over the seat. After this rocking-in-the-rickshaw journey I was brought before a large Marwari-owned grocery shop where sacks and the hanging items concealed everything leaving only a strip wide enough for one to place feet to walk up to the counter where the owner sat with his rigid face behind an electronic weight scale. I tipped the driver but he was reluctant to accept, I insisted.
It took him a while to reverse and then to go out from that place, and when he had left I shoved in my pocket for a piece of paper bearing the detailed address of my friend. Though I had the scrap with the address I believed it would be quite impossible to locate my friend’s by looking at the house numbers. Most of the house numbers were either rubbed out or many of them were concealed by the hanging; strands of soot and entangled cables. Confusion was what I had in my mind, and it was a kind which could make you give up easily. This time I realized the amount of labour, both physical and mental, necessary while travelling through any city in India. My upbringing was in a quiet mountainous region and then later on I had gone to live in small towns and the quiet outskirts of big cities. During my stays in big cities I frequented the hearts of some big cities but they never rendered me confused and hapless, I could still walk without feeling any threat to my long-nurtured personality, here I felt that I would have to surrender some part of me or may be all, in the later stage, to survive.
With the large rucksack on my back and from one hand dangling an ocean pack bag I stood looking at the scrap of paper. I tried looking at some of the houses to discover the numbers, my effort yielded no results. Finally I took the narrow strip between the sacks running towards the counter to ask the man behind the electronic weight scale. His eyes moved ,but he said no words. When I gave him the address he glanced quickly and handed it back and extended one hand, which had been rubbing his neck, and then the index figure bent backward to tell where I could find the house, following his direction pointed by bent figure I craned my neck and was able catch the direction. I came out with careful steps minding the sacks of rice, chili, grains, flour and more. Soon I had walked through the narrow strip I realized I should atleast thank the man, for that I turned around, but the man was busy talking to a veiled lady and he was heard talking in a harsh voice. The veiled lady’s head stooped and she stood receiving more words from the man. I didn’t thank him.
The place he pointed with the bent figure was an iron door painted thick with green colour ,and now over the green thick paint stains had made marks clear, altering the colour slightly. Behind the door were steep steps and they ran up between white walls with bottoms painted in brown. Each time I ascended the rucksack rubbed against the walls and then came a landing and more steep steps and another landing, a part of it below a dusty doormat. A perforated thin scarlet curtain hung concealing the face of an iron door. I wasn’t sure if that was the house so I grabbed the think perforated curtain and searched for the number. The number on the door matched the number in my scrap paper and the number was below a bright swastika mark. I gave a knock ,and then another, there was no sound behind the door. Finally I gave a loud knock and a remote voice was heard behind the door, it must have been the voice of someone who was still in bed and responding to my loud bang from his sleepy state, then the sound of sandaled feet sweeping over the floor was heard and his hands worked on the latch, and with a loud clang the door was opened. There appeared the face of my friend, the back of his right hand rubbing his sleepy eyes. He was still in his pyjamas, his voice grumpy and still smiling reminding me of the bygone days in university.
to be continued...
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