Musings I

There was Shinoo. He was a domestic help and a little more than that. I’ve heard stories of Shinoo and Lakshmi, who looked after me when I was a bed-wetting twit. I don’t remember him, though. His name rolls off my tongue like the name of a familiar person, but that is where it ends. I’ve heard that he loved me. In my mind, he is inexplicably linked to that doll’s bed in the attic which no one could get. I’d like to believe that Shinoo was the boy who taught me to gather tall grass and make a broom out of it. But he was not. We had been vacationing in _, when that particular incident had taken place. This, too, is a story first, and a recollection much later. I’m not even sure if it was a recollection. I remember having taken floating images and fashioned them into a pattern according to the story that I’d heard. And, so, I’d much rather believe, for the sake of simplicity, that it was Shinoo.

The big, black man who had carried me to see the elephants holds a strange memory. He smelled strongly when I was pressed to his smooth, cool skin, covered with a thin layer of sweat. I was terrified, absolutely hysterical. I wanted to be free from his grasp and go to my mother. But everybody was greedily taking in the scene before them. I, for one, do not remember the elephants at all. I only remember the pungent smell, so unlike anything that I had smelled before, and the overpowering urge to escape from the man.

Situations change and mould themselves according to what you’re thinking. It’s like an animal that can smell your fear, see through your veneer of forced calm and breathe down your neck, surveying your agitation with jelly-eyes. The atmosphere snaps and you’re left there alone, shivering. I didn’t want to be seen at a particular place, yes, and the thought blew itself up inside my head, dribbling down my ears as hot sweat. It was a moment of exhilaration. The auto emptied itself of passengers, clean and dirty, until I was left there alone, at the back, trying to hide my face behind my hair. My hands did not tremble, but the tips were so numb. The driver looked back, gauged me, then went back to his unclean pouch and jingled money. The sour, addictive smell of coins filled the interior of the auto. Then he took a sharp turn and drove into a petrol pump. I writhed in the seat, the tattered rexine slick with sweat. There was innocuous chitchat choking my throat, and the smell of fuel wafting around, the man was nowhere in sight. The shopkeepers on the opposite pavement did not stir.