Image credit – pxhere.com

On a beautiful mid-January afternoon, Ashish tagged along with his Aai to the railway station to greet his Uncle Vikas who was to visit them all the way from Kadbanwadi. The skies were a clear turquoise blue, and the vast settlements of clouds had arranged themselves in an unusually non-threatening way. As he wandered all over the dingy Nalasopara railway platform with his mother, stepping between turbaned men in dhoti sitting in clusters around baskets of fresh fruit (and flies), Ashish wondered if his Vikas kaka had really changed all that much from when he had last visited him at their ancestral home in Kadbanwadi.

The railway stations in Mumbai were a world of their own. The platforms ran thick and blackened for miles on end and porters haggled with yet another sets of visitors to the Paradise. Families displayed themselves as limpidly as did monsoons the early June sky, and the stench of disparity rushed through the swarms of people that huffed and puffed and jostled.

Aai, while feeding them their usual lunch of dal bhaat, had instructed him and his nine year old sister Pallavi to be on their best behaviour around their kaka; he would, for instance, offer them gifts of fruit (which they might accept), and money (which they were to refuse, lest their kaka were to spread stories back home about how ungrateful these city-bred children had become lately).

Ashish could remember, for instance, how distasteful their baba had found Mumbai in their early years in the city (although, to many people, Thane was not really Mumbai); he found the commuting tedious and tiring and the local trains sweaty and dingy but over the years, Baba had begun to enjoy the long ride in those gruelling locals. Every morning, aai packed fresh bhakri and bhaji for Baba and the siblings; while they walked their way to a local school in their pin striped uniforms, Baba took a train all the way to Dadar to sit behind a heavy desk stacked with papers (he worked as a clerk in the Vimla Vashist Cooperation Bank). Ashish had never really known the whole of Bombay, apart from their clammy one-room chawl in Nalasopara which consisted of a traditional mori and a common loo outside, and his day school which, to many, was rather roomy and congested.

He could hardly remember his childhood spent on a farm in Kadbanwadi accept for the fact that it had space; vast expanses of space that opened before him like the skies rushing toward the horizon, and the green that bled into the row farms like water spilled into cans. There was hardly any stench of fumes or hardware, but Ashish could remember the creeping smell of freshly dumped dung that his Aaji picked up with her own bare hands.

Mumbai gave Ashish a feeling of receding space that seemed to corner him like perhaps the cluster of chawls on the edge of his own, littered with naalis pungent and grey in the dead of the night, and rows and rows of squares that rose up straight into the skies and pushed out the view of the clouds. There was always something far beyond his reach that Mumbai only magnified. His window overlooked amber murky waters, naked midget bodies, the stench of urine and tar and steeled tracks and stones. The sound of passing trains often permeated his sleep, and on wet days the streets ran full and ashen, with scratched twigs standing abraded, protruding from open manholes.

His own house consisted of a room whose sooty walls had witnessed years of kerosene lamps lit and relit against the reeky air. On one side was a wooden bed large enough to accommodate his family as they slept (or sat up and played), and on the other side was what seemed like a kitchen with a kerosene stove and a few sparse utensils. Against the wall that overlooked these was a Godrej steel cupboard that his baba had bought right after their arrival in this home about three years ago, with a mirror on the side that had stickers of Pokeman and Power Puff girls stuck on it. A small boxed television played snippets of raunchy Hindi films and Marathi soaps. Patches of paint were already coming off of the chunky walls, and up against these were pictures of the Mother Goddess and Siva that his Aai and Baba venerated and implored each morning after a bath. A traditional mori in the corner nearing the kitchen (but not quite next to it) completed the house, where his family washed and bathed, his aai cleaned utensils and the siblings peed (when all the washing and bathing had been done). A steep narrow balcony ran alongside his room that stood stacked alongside other similar rooms (with their own kitchens and Godrej cupboards and moris).

There was a common loo for each floor right at the beginning of each balcony that housed a squat commode, and that entire families often pushed past their way to use. Ashish could never get to it in time for some reason, no matter how early he woke up each morning or how steadfastly he kept an eye on it in the evenings. It stank of a myriad hues of shit that sometimes streaked its walls, and which had to be cleaned by a sanitation man (in a blue topi and an orange lungi) every week when people had to restrain from using it.

***

‘Aai’, Ashish had asked his mother on the day she had announced the arrival of their kaka; he was to stay with them in their own house for about a fortnight, during which time the siblings could neither pick their nose nor scream. ‘Aai, how will Kaka use the sandas every morning? There is a queue no matter what hour you wake up.’

‘Aye silly boy, you,’ his mother looked up at him from amid clouds of smoke as she fried papads. ‘Your Kaka is a smart man, he knows about Mumbai much more than your Baba does.’

It had piqued Ashish’s curiosity, this description of their uncle’s, although it had also faded from his mind as easily as the countless other concerns, much like the perpetual queue outside the community loo, or his sister’s constant pinching of his forearm (Aai, tell Pallavi to stop pinching! Look at how she’s now imitating!)

From what he remembered, Vikas kaka had been a naïve country-born while his Baba had been the mature heroic son who had had the brains (and the bravery) to move into the monstrous City to earn and send home money. Family members, cousins and distant relations often visited their dingy chawl in the early days to borrow some cash or even seek advice, while his father sat glaring at them from the height of his bed, patiently like the wise old son who had exceeded everyone’s expectations. In the years since then, however, Baba had had little money to spare; although the rent was markedly low according to Mumbai standards, it still cut a hole in the pocket. There was the meagrely clerk salary that was barely enough to subsist on, school fees and monthly train passes. From the past couple of years, Ashish had also noticed how the twice-weekly Bombil servings had reduced to weekly and then again to twice-a-month only. They often only had rusk and chai for breakfast (although aai had promised that that would soon change once Vikas kaka came over). Vikas kaka, on the other hand, seemed the happier and, to many, the more prosperous of the sons now. Having remained on the farm that was often the source of so much misery for their family, he had slowly graduated to becoming a middleman, and entered into a sly and treacherous contract with the many farmers of their district in a way that seemed inexplicable and rather shady.

Soon enough, Kaka had upgraded their farm house in a way that looked almost as sleek and well-constructed as the suburban houses of Borivali, according to Vikas, from what he saw in the photographs sent home. They now had a sleeping room, a kitchen and a guests’ room, and the dying old farm had been rented out to workers. Kaka smelled of prosperity and happiness, while Baba struggled each month with rent and school fees and rising debts that refused to subside. Still, the brothers seemed to respect each other and basked in each other’s company, even if somewhat bothered by past comparisons and the gentle awkwardness that came along with it.

Ashish, for reasons unbeknownst to him, had always taken to his kaka like moths to a tube light. His own father was bent and warped with struggles, but his uncle seemed sharp and wittier; Ashish knew that his slick manners and crafty ways had ensured his happiness. For a few months now, ever since Baba had discontinued the siblings’ education at a middle-income private school and forced them to attend a dank, overused, rumbustious public school, Ashish’s soul had been somewhat shattered. He didn’t mind the decreasing portions of fish or the old reusing of canvas shoes that they hadn’t upgraded for three years, but leaving his friends and much-loved school behind to attend one that only seemed reminiscent of the crowded, slightly hostile and antagonistic atmosphere of his home (that he strove to escape), made him bitter and wild at his father. The struggles only seemed to pile on in their everyday life like the monsoon rains that swamped the gutters and spilled over on the streets outside their chawl every season. Ashish couldn’t understand why, if at all, the miniscule little obstacles that they had encountered in their early years had not diminished or even remained as they had been but had instead had swelled and swollen like the presence of the City; the more he tried to escape it or push it out of his mind, the wilder and more enormous it grew in size.

Every year, therefore, as he patiently waited for news from Home, it became to him a thing both distant and fantastical in proportions. He couldn’t really remember much of his early years as a little naked midget running around in the fields, but in the absence of a better, generous and more benevolent world of possibilities, Ashish endowed his former home (of harsher sunlit arenas, bleeding greens and the looming presence of the Famine) with fanciful and extravagant qualities. Vikas kaka became to him everything his own father was not; astute, clever, witty, successful, happy. Kaka was not bent and beleaguered with struggles, neither was he choked by the hostility of the larger City. He was one with the ground, he was of the gaav, and the gaav to Ashish was a more natural substitute for the bleak, infiltrating Other, the City.

***

There were puddles of water on the cement platform, and the stench of engine smoke and urine roused the air. Destitute mothers sat begging with their drugged babies, and quadriplegics whizzed past people on wheeled chairs. There was also the scent of cheap perfume that often escaped his senses. Freezing coloured cola drinks were displayed in flattened glass cases that Ashish pestered his Aai to buy for him.

‘Kaka will be here any moment now’, Aai said as she patted rather gently the pleats of her sari. ‘We don’t want to miss his arrival.’

Ashish attempted plenty of foolery to pass his time, but it was rather hard without his sister by his side. Pallavi and Baba had decided to stay back at home and wait, and for Ashish, Time seemed to represent a molten state of mind that stuck like gum to his senses.

There was the arrival of a train and a swarming of a sea of people that seemed determine to push him and his mother away and into their waves, but it was not his Kaka’s train.

‘Strange’, said Aai as they began their third hour standing, ‘He had said he would be here by 8. Could it be that the train has been delayed?’

‘Trains don’t get delayed by hours, Aai,’ Ashish said. ‘Perhaps he has already arrived and is looking for us. Perhaps he did not expect to find us here and took a rickshaw home.’

‘No, you yeda, it’s not possible,’ Aai began to calm down her heavy breathing. ‘He won’t even remember the way to the house anymore. It’s been six years, remember?’

But Ashish couldn’t remember. It was hot and the blazing rays seemed to hit down on them like a parade of bricks. ‘If only this mother of mine would buy me a cooling drink,’ Ashish reflected as he munched on fistfuls of chewda from a stained yellow plastic pouch. He loved his Chewda, but the flaming sun meant it made his throat parched and his legs became numb from the too-long standing. Aai seemed to get restless with each passing hour. Her hair frazzled, wet patches of sweat began to form in her armpits like puddles of rainwater. Her sari starch softened with the heat, and her shining silver chappals formed deep red welts around the corners of her toes.

‘Maybe we can have one cola drink,’ she mumbled after another 45 minutes had passed, and Ashish almost jumped with relief. ‘Only one huh,’ she clutched his wrist as he immediately attempted to wrestle away, ‘Any more than that and we won’t be able to take a rickshaw back home.’

But Ashish didn’t really care by then because he was sure his Kaka had already set out for their home. It wasn’t possible that the man had yet to arrive almost three and a half hours later than his set time. Trains were usually tardy but they were never this tardy.

‘Aye yeda, Ashish!’ the station master yelled out to him from the other end of the platform. His mother pushed him out of the way but by then he was mildly miffed because he had just been about to take a sip of his cola.

‘Here is a letter your kaka sent through another middleman. He cannot be here because of some delay in harvest time.’

‘Hain? Delay?’ He sighed as he glanced at the sheet. ‘How is that possible? He should have been here three hours earlier and we get this message now.’

‘Don’t ask me,’ the station master turned away, mildly slapping Ashish on his forehead.

Ashish seemed defeated and disheartened as he traced his steps back to his mother. ‘How could he do this!’ he exclaimed. ‘He had promised us this time!’

‘Don’t mind, silly. You know how harvests are.’ She passed him his cola as they scoured for a bench.

‘This isn’t even fair! What about all the things we bought in anticipation? What about…’

‘Harvests are an uncertain time, son.’ Aai looked at him with some love. ‘You know your Kaka means well.’

‘I don’t. I hate him.’

He ran away, far away from his mother as she attempted to catch up. He knew she wouldn’t bother after a point, and that they would both catch a bus home and meet there. He was wild at his Kaka. They had been preparing for this moment for the past two weeks, and to think that that worm didn’t even care! Ashish wiped the sweat off of his face. This had been going on for far too long. That uncle of his always believed he could get away with anything.

As he reached the yawning arches of the bus stand, Ashish began to regret the impudent way he had treated his Baba. Sure, he wasn’t as smart and moneyed as that worm in his stinky old farm, but Baba had always stood by him and worked hard for his family. He had been rather sincere in his ways.

Ashish looked up at the sign board at the stand and began to think that no matter what, deep in his heart he was really like his father and not his uncle. He reflected also that this was rather a good thing.

Then he turned and scanned the vast littered depot of Nalasopara. The streets seemed to surge with people rushing towards the station. Turbans, saris, nylon salwars and twisted chappals whisked past him in a delirious sensation of colours. Men with towels wrung around their shoulders sat behind mountains of luscious fruit. Begging children with dirt caked on their faces laughed with the mild sunshine glinting in their hair.

“Bombay’s a fine place”, he thought to himself, as he turned to look up at the sign board again. “It may be filthy and dirty and maybe we don’t own a house yet, but one day we will.”

He dragged his old canvas down the stained old tar road. ‘Yes, very soon. I’ll be a big man one day. We’ll buy a house in this very city. Pallavi can be a singer and we will own many houses. Baba will repay all his debts for sure. And Nalasopara?”

Ashish took a deep breath as he smiled at the stalls of barbers lathering faces on the footpath.

“Nalasopara’s really fine, too! Our room is pretty good for now.

“I wonder what Aai has made for dinner…’