Love Story

51

Once upon a time... For there is always a time for anything and everything... From germination to repetition to resurrection... In one such time there lived a crow in the mountains far, far away. There was nothing special about this crow except that he, like most romantics, had been badly hurt in love. And this had turned him into a thinker. Had he lived today - depending upon his city of residence - he would either have been a successful director with several sentimental hits about physically challenged maidens and drunkard lovers under his belt. Or he might have made a fortune on his first novel about chutney smells and mango orchards from a London publisher. But in that was an age of limited opportunity he would spend days and nights brooding the past and speculating the future. Analysing and reanalysing what went wrong. Now each gust....

Mala

4

"Mala is dead," my reporter's voice crackled on the phone. The news left me stunned. I felt a sudden sense of loss overwhelm me. Not that she was supposed to mean anything more than a colleague. Yet she was someone I had grown to like. Perhaps she was already dead when several years back the man she loved the most, left her. Despite belonging to a well-known family in her city, she put up with a lot. Her hectic schedule at work, evening parties where she ended up meeting the same people, her boss's rasping laughter and his friends that she was often required to entertain. In her prime she would make heads turn. Men fawned over her while their women's opinion bordered on ambivalent... they adored her, yet they were also envious of her good looks. She had that rare ability to win over people in....

Bombay

7

Bombay. My first images of the city are from films that I saw at Delhi's Chanakya cinema with my parents. In the late 70s, of ABBA and BoneyM and an angry young Amitabh Bachchan, while Delhi was a quiet city Mumbai had something or the other happening all the time. Even while not living here I had seen it all. The sea, chowpattys or beaches, shanties, chawls and highrises, suburban railway, gangsters, Helen, Padma Khanna and Bindu's cabaret numbers (sight of whose gyrating waists and deep belly buttons would for reasons inexplicable excite even a five-year old) and of course the great Bollywood factory, whose images fed a fertile imagination. For a toddler those images were impressionable. Housing was so hard to get and expensive that it broke relationships. Pot-bellied millionaires kicked shoeshine boys around outside the Mahalaxmi racecourse. Newcomers had their only piece of belonging snatched on....

Monsoon

4

It was like any other monsoon morning in Mumbai. The sky covered by a grey veil of clouds was in mourning. The gloom seemed to have descended from the heavens to the rushing multitude below. As often happens here, suddenly the clouds frowned and the mood became even more sombre. The breezeless, muggy day, drowned in the din of automobiles and hurrying steps, readied to destress itself. It started quietly. First a few drops licked the earth. Then they became more regular and brisk. Invigorated by the water's touch the atmosphere turned hurried. At the station the trains enjoying the feel of water on their metallic skins arrived and departed languorously. Inside the railway compartment a man and a woman stood at the exit. "... This happened in office last week," the man said. Both giggled. Water fell in slow motion on the world....