Kangleimaichou

In front of the shop facing the tarmac road edged with dust and litters were three able men: one quite hairy with long hair who could have been mistaken for some Bollywood star had it not been for his foul language, the rest squatting by a brown sack of orange and lemons. When the youngest among them two squatting rose to lift the sack with the intention to pour down the fruits. Some ran down towards the road, promptly he hurried off to get them. The young man said something which made the rest giggle, and then the Bollywood-wannabe’s face turned crimson red, he rose holding a long iron rod tipped with a hook, then the producer of the joke rose and darted off. He apologized, then the Bollywood man dropped the rod and went back to sit. Was he reacting in an acceptable fashion to the other person’s joke with the rod? Further down from the juice shop was a narrow bridge which ran over a dry creek with the bed filled with thick refuse. On the parapets of the bridge perched ...

On a cold day in Delhi you could jump into some decent thick clothes and go for a walk, and at nights on the roofs you could lay in thick clothes over a sleeping bag counting stars. You may not like an early shower. It’s bearable and pleasant as it is never like those snow-covered winters which could generate avalanches anytime. But those pleasant days had recently come to an end and the temperature seemed to have abruptly shot up. You could feel the sun through your shirt, and when you had a bag the back of the shirt could easily stick to your back. When required to walk long you would consider it wise to wear a wide-brimmed hat to avoid heatstroke. If you are lucky enough to be a in a house with enough ventilations and the openings don’t face either east or west ,and, say, your flat happens to be on the ground floor or between two floors with the one above yours drinking and sucking the heat, then you would find your place pleasant, and if you didn’t have to ventur...

In front of the main building those cars bearing blue license plate and those distinct ones belonging to the Indians rolled in chauffeured by emaciated-looking dark-coloured haggard people who lay in their bright and clean uniform as some malnourished people in borrowed clothes. Their anxious eyes below their lackey caps and the discoloured unshaven faces atop the buttoned up uniform, and when they stepped out in their oversized uniform as stick men in clothes one could see their unpolished cracked felt or plastic shoes . The colours of their uniform made them more indistinct. Through the opened doors emerging graciously were the obese middle-aged people with creaky joints, ladies who had been starving themselves , and the last kind was the new generation which had been made familiar and now more or less accustomed to intercontinental junk food, and who ambled sweating and slightly tinged in known branded shoes, slopping toward one side because of their physical i...

After that wrought iron gate with clean roads,  lined with Australia-imported trees, leading towards buildings, spaces between them all green; it was the place where one could breath fresh air and walk unmolested by noises, the stares and the density of crowds. But it wasn’t meant for everybody; the cars with blue license plates mingled with the latest sedans and SUVs explained who they were. If they spat on the roads, if they honked to show their arrogance, even if their children screamed and spoke like rowdy kind, and even if they habitually ogled with their computer-screen reddened eyes and saliva slipping through the corners of their mouths, here those were deterred and behaved themselves out of pretension in front those “embassy people”, whose association was much valued. It would be entirely fashionable when someone stuttering in English usually preferred to declare “I have an uncle in New Jersey” in the company of some white folks, and if ...

The voice on the phone could easily induce any man who hadn’t known happiness in years, there was also the prospect of meeting someone whom I knew and had used as a character in one of the stories. I was in a friend’s car trapped among tens of sedans occupying a narrow but long stretch of road in one of Delhi’s supposedly posh areas. There was no policeman to man the traffic of honking cars, instead a woman in white shalwaar stood at the intersection point of the road holding a Honda car key in one hand while the another directed the cars. By sheer chance a gap emerged and it allowed the car to turn left. With unexpected respite it rolled on between decades-old building blocks which had been discoloured and reduced to virtually dilapidated state by cheap architecture and inferior construction materials. The colour bleached by the scorching sun of Delhi must have been reclaimed, but the cheap paints wouldn’t stand the rains and dampness, and when it was almost washed out,...