Traveller shorts

Goa / Escape routes 

The path was so pretty he knew it would be a dead end. It was six in the morning and he had crept out of bed without making a sound when she was still sleeping. A few months ago he had opened the windows of their hotel room in Pondicherry waking her and she had given him hell. It was a sunny ten and he wanted to fly his drone before the harsh light of noon. Yes, she was taking medication for depression and bipolarity and needed her sleep but they were planning on a bicycle ride to a seaside village. This was of course cancelled eventually. This time he wasn’t taking any chances: he carried his shoes, slid out of the room of the homestay and walked towards the historic jail facing the sea. Tucked in his arms was the drone camera. 

Around the bend, dead end

Little doubt, when he returned, she would still give him hell. Even ask him things like ‘who were you going to meet?’ or ‘why don’t you then vacation by yourself?’ and the usual, ‘this is the last time I am travelling with you.’ He kept walking along the narrow road. Peahens appeared from the rainwashed foliage and sauntered ahead of him like showing the way. A song appeared first as a hum on his lips and soon he was whistling and singing which probably prompted the birds to scurry away. If she were around, she would have ribbed him for his off-key singing, probably miffed at prompting the fowls to take flight. It seemed to him that when she was in a fighting mood, nature conspired to give her ample reason. Maybe squabble was what she really wanted.

A baroque house lay on his left, down an ancient stairway, on an elevated promenade by the sea. Guards in neatly pressed safari suits stood watching a gardener prune the hedges sipping from small ceramic cups on saucers. The sophistication amidst the idyllic charm gave rise to a hundred questions in his mind – the kind he usually put to her and she ignored. 

Between the fort and the sea

He turned the corner and peered through a locked gate at the low-lying prison not very far from where he stood. Waves lashed against the laterite rocks upon which the jail was built, white spray rose high which might have washed away thoughts of escape from many an incarcerated mind. Behind the jail were cliffs forbiddingly high on top of which was an erstwhile military fort. Soldiers once roamed the ramparts, rifles ready to shoot a fugitive on the run.

Imagining himself to be a prisoner, he flew his drone camera for an aerial reconnaissance of the area. Merely looking for an escape he felt free.

Ahmedabad / Sizing up 

It is easy to detect resistance in people – the eye steels over and almost stops blinking. Even in those for whom resistance is everyday, this is a dead giveaway. But the experience holds them in good stead and they effectively make up for this telltale – their mouth and limbs become fluidic and actions more effusive. If you have been out there for long you know there are ways of breaking in, of going past this façade. My favourite technique is a ploy – I pretend to be taken in by the generosity while not wholly ignoring the stiffness, the hold-back. While the first communicates an earnest intent, the acknowledgment is telling them that I am not skimming over their emotions. This is especially required if they are a persecuted lot – as most of the resisting ones are wont to be. Any flippancy, perceived even, or lack of empathy, you lose them. 

Looking for the wall

When you are surrounded by a group of people, most of the eyes are, understandably, gauging – you can see them move from your footwear to the visible brand name on your tee shirt, your neck and your arms. As you walked in, they would have watched your gait too – which tells a lot about musculature and bodily strength. Sizing up applies to all genders, probably with different ends. Here it is a perfect summing up – you as a potential threat, a possible friend, a benefactor or a bloodsucker. Fear has no place here; nodding and smiling a lot shows that you are scared. Or merely an idiot. Of course when you are in a strange and/or hostile territory you have to keep an eye out for yourself. Don’t even try to feign you have a backup; it never works because it doesn’t matter.

Then there is the tougher route – you can actually worry less about the adults and focus on the children. This is a favourite, may I call, tactic? A more daring one and rewarding if you can pull it off. The easiest way to a tough man’s heart is by having his kid on your lap. Then, this is easier said: kids are so sinisterly spot-on when it comes to assessing intent. From a five year old to an infant, you’d be surprised how they can call your bluff.  If you are trekking in the higher Himalayan villages, you can get away by doling out lollipops but not somewhere where it is easily available. A few kids eyed me without expectation. I ruffled one head. Talking about school in straitened circumstances makes you a well-meaning persona non grata. 

Beyond the new beautiful forever – inside the Trump wall 

Around me were tin-roofed hovels where people lived and lean-tos from where small businesses were run. Women sat around in groups chopping vegetables for dinner, used the same knives to scrape mosquito stings off their far backs. Some lads hunched around a carom board, exulting and groaning. Vehicles plied a busy intersection on the other side of the newly constructed Trump Wall.

Chhattisgarh / Game cock 

Hari returned from the river carrying the man-mitti, or the bed soil, in a basket over his head. This he needed to make the basic mould of his bell metal wares; he had to give a demonstration to a tourist tomorrow. He was expecting a group but the tourism coordinator with the department had called that morning to tell him that there would be no group but a single tourist. Even if the tourist bought one dokra-dokri from him, it would be worth the effort. Making one or twenty was the same. And as only one person was coming he decided to make do with the leftover rui-mitti, anthill sand, which went into the layering. In case there wasn’t enough, he would ask his wife to bring some when she went to collect ants for the chapda chutney. 

Survival games

He sat down on the mud floor of the veranda and his wife brought him a steel plate of watery rice and lentils in a separate bowl. On top of the lentil was some chutney. He ate the rice with the chutney and went to the little shed roofed with a tarpaulin sheet. Unlatching the door, he stood at the threshold for a few moments to adjust his eyes to the dark. What began as a confused, agitated low crooning grew into a menacing low growl and soon became a murderous high pitched shrill. Hari heard a furious flapping of wings and with a strong swoosh of air the rooster leapt at him, towards daylight. Instinctively he ducked which wasn’t required as the rooster fell back with the same tenacity with which it took wings.

“Arre re, babu, why do you always forget your feet are tied?” Hari asked with genuine affection as he walked towards the bird which was still trying to escape a little less frantically now. “You must save this energy and anger for the fight. Here, look, what I have brought you.”

Seeing the familiar contours of a food bowl, the rooster calmed down and began cluck-clucking in a different way as it sank its beak into the lentil.

His wife came and stood at the door watching him with the rooster. 

Haat day – sideshow

“Today is haat day,” she said simply. Mondays have been haat or market days in Tokapal for as long as Hari could remember – there was nothing new in it. Hari looked at her in askance though he knew very well that she was going to ask for money. But she didn’t.

“Is your rooster ready to fight?” She asked instead. It was the first time she ever asked him about his fighter cocks – sometimes they brought money but mostly they ended up as fried nuggets sold with the local brew mahua in the haat only.

“I want it to put on a bit more weight,” he replied. “Then there will be more power when he lashes out.”

He didn’t say ‘next week’ which might have infuriated her; they were both from the Gadwa tribe and both were as temperamental as they came. ‘Gadwa’ came from ‘galna’ or to melt; whey they were courting Hari would joke that she could fire up his smelting kiln just by looking at it.

“Aren’t some tourists coming tomorrow?” She asked.

“There is no group, just one person.”

As she turned to leave, Hari stopped her.

“I think he has what it takes to win one round at least,” he said looking at the rooster now pecking an empty bowl, agitation ricocheting in metallic echoes in the dark. It was a risk he would take, he had to take.

“I just hope the tourist turns up tomorrow,” he said as he bent down to untie the rooster. 

The arena of life