A Transit Date

Ajeeb Rangaan​

"Poorni, hear me, hear me out."

"No Adi, you would mince away my standpoint into some nonsensical chow. There is no point in explaining to you anything. I am done with the —"

"Arey Poorni, what fun if I yield to my beloved and wild wifey
Ajeeb rangaan di tu hai badi
Lage alag hi jahaan di", he sings.

Poorni stops in her tracks. She turns around and strikes her gaze at his singsong languor. She flops her arms and walks coquettishly towards him.

"Adi, even the Demis Roussos in you cannot appease me this time. I am finding it challenging to talk through anything to you. You don't seem to get or don't bother to get my viewpoint. How can you be so obtuse. Why simple expectations escape your notice? I wonder, do you even love me. Are you confused that you love me when you don't love me. May be you are confused what love is, may be, you are so confused about how to love ...and then — "

"If you ask me, someone who twines love and confused so many times appears more confused to me. Poorni, I do love you. My expression is different to that of yours. You are quite an ajeeb rangaan though."

"I feel strange. I feel strange of my inability to communicate across anything to you without you writing me off as wrong. Tell me, how can a person be so wrong each time and every time. How is it that everything I do is wrong and everything I sense is deceptive and every thing I reason is fallacious. How can a person be so wrong from head to toe. Does that make any sense to you? It doesn't to me. Adi, why don't you see things from my point of view at times, too much, too little, too much, eh, too much of an ask. Does my point of view hold any ground or is it floating in midair for you to shrug if off so easily. Why? I am asking, why?"

"Are you burning mad?!!!"

"Yes, I am. Over myself and my inability to drill your thick head and pour my melted thoughts into them."

"That's a nice metaphor.
Ajeeb rangaan di tu hai badi Lage alag hi jahaan di", he continues the riff.

"Adi, if you don't clamp your singing the only colour that would glint in your eyes is my blazing red."

"Poorni ..."

"ADI ..!!"

"Hey Poorni...ajeeb rangaan."

"Stop it. No rang or bang", she turns waspish.

"Poorni, when a man sings in an unfamiliar language it means he loves the woman he is singing for madly. That is a given. What does it tell you?"

"It tells me you are having an earworm"

"Poorni, is that song Marathi or Bengali or Punjabi .."

"How do I know, Adi?"

"I don't either."

Poorni flings her arms in exasperation and swirls around.

Ajeeb rangaan di tu hai badi
Lage alag hi jahaan di, Adi raps his fingers on the chair.

Poorni rakes him from the corner of her eye. She reluctantly swings around

Ae to nazraan nazraan di gal ve
Tu vi sun le zaraa, she grates a voice to his rap.

Adi smiles. Poorni jiggles her brows and breaks into the tune again "Ae to nazraan nazraan di gal ve Tu vi sun le zaraa. Adi, do you know when a woman sings in an unfamiliar language, what it means?"

"It means tacky bread or mushy pasta for dinner."

"No, it means, what choice do I have but to love him madly, crazily, and insatiably. It means, this man has no sense of argument or no sense of order but he has aplenty sense of making his wife feel loved even in a quarrel with him. Do you love me?"

"How much affirmation do you need", he tugs her closer to his chest.

"More than you are willing to muster", she lowers her eyes on the whorls of the coarse hair on his chest.

"I can try singing Polish next time", he feasts on her rosy cheeks.

"Your Ajeeb Rangaan was not bad."

"Your Nazraan Di Gal was only passable."

"Do you love me, Adi?"

"More than you would like to confuse me that I love you when you I don't love you with a love as confused as how to love. In the midst of all that charged-up confusion, I do love you."

 

Mr Know-All​

'Adi, you know that I only love a part of you', she glides her finger along his cologned stubble.

'A slice or a chunky part? My wifey is picky, I am sure that part is also graded and sized', he seizes her stray finger with a curious eye.

'Adi, I love few things in you ...'

'Poorni, few ...accha ...few as in one or two or countable or innumerable? Any number here would help me.'

'Well, we are married, what good is a number now?' Poorni slumps further on the sofa.

'You always do a number on me'. He musses her hair.

'Huh?!', she gawks.

'Doing a number, figurative, deceive me, English figurative sense. Poorni, if only your dad had saved up more lucre, he would have sent you to a better school.'

'Then, I would not have loved a blip in you. Because he sent me to a street school, I chose you.'

'Clever man! Cleverer daughter'. He doodles with his finger on her head.

'Adi, you don't want me to fall in love with the rest of you?'. She glares at him.

'Pooh, not a pippity squeak more than you already love only a part of me. I am happy with that sliced and served up love. The more you love me, the more I would have to indulge your gratuitous love. Who knows, the other part is rotten and unwholesome and not to the mark. You are better off not knowing or loving the rest.'

'You don't want me to love everything in you.'

'Sure. Go ahead. Try to but then don't be flustered trying to figure out the undiscovered part. May be, you love the part I wish to expose and the rest is grotesque and unclaimed for a reason.' He jiggles his brows in a tease.

'You, you, are sometimes annoying in your all-knowing pose.' She straighten up from her slack position.

'All-knowing folks are sometimes kind to their brethren.'

'Kind?' she cocks her head.

'Did you not read that Mr Know-All story of Somerset Maugham? In that story, a pretentious and all-knowing man turns out to be kind at the end.'

'How are you kind to me?'

'For starters, I married someone who has no idea about the phrase do a number. He clicks his tongue. 'What has education come to these days. And she makes horrible tea.'

'Why didn't you marry someone who will bowl you over with cinnamon chai and booskets in the morning with haldi kumkum and aarti and sing chants and numbers to wake you up.'

He stares bewildered at her.

'What are you thinking?', she snaps her fingers.

'Thinking ...imagining you waking me up with haldi kumkum and that aarti and chant. Frightening!'

'So ...'

'I married you because you are gutsy, you are rugged, you are self-assured, you are feral, you are slightly confused, you are more so easily amused, you are ever brightened in your delightful spirits and you are a fierce opponent to the Know-all in me . At times, the Know-all prefer a wily showdown to obedient aartis.'

'Accha ..'

'Sacchi ... you and aarti ...nah, babe'

'Come again, what is that undiscovered kindness in the other side of you.'

'That, I married you despite your eccentric family which includes but not limited to your bhajrangi bro'

'My family! Always after my sweet and loving family.. Wait, next time, I will ask my brother to write a shaayari on YOU. Doom it.'

'Poorni no ..no please ...no more bleeding poetry of your brother ..' he fronts his crossed arms in anticipation of a pillow fight.

 

Barney in Shoes​

Part - I

Aditya slides open the bathroom door. The glass door is dewy from settled vapour and olive-scented gel. He rises his arm to draw a cipher on the steamy door for Poorni but he withholds the voluptuous doodle and grabs his towel.

He flexes his arms across to rub down his still warm torso with his light cotton towel. He smirks for a while and lingers at the thought of Poorni catching him doing that with his plain 'cotton' towel and repudiating him for his schoolboy manners. She prefers a soft and printed hammam towel, precariously hung in spas of Turkish baths, that can be flipped and worn as a shawl, folded and expedited as a scarf, and balled into a magician's handkerchief as a sleight of wizardry in her purse.

He could never fathom why anyone would desire such a resourceful towel unless they are warp-jumping in deep space with Ford Prefect or escaping from a galactic warship's brig, in which case her versatile towel could also be miniaturised into ear buds to block the haunting poetry of the Vogons. The terrestrial bound Poorni was conscripted in none such Heart of Gold adventures yet she preferred a swiss-knife styled towel. Poorni being the ferae naturae Poorni does not take kind to inquiry into her delusional armament. Adi was forewarned not to pry too much into her outlandish habits. Marriages are thorny hence survive only across such barb-fenced understanding.

He strides into the bedroom and frowns upon the crumpled bedsheet. Poorni never fixes the bed, not even her side of the bed after she hurriedly crawls out of the bed in the morning. Only if he had bought a larger hammam towel for her birthday, she would have rejoiced and purposed that towel as a bedsheet also and woken up enfolding the sheet-towel around her sweet body to shuffle around looking like a stranded ET. But where was she? He looks around and, hesitantly, under the bed. Poorni wiggles her fun-sized body into any spiderly crevice she could fit herself into, so far she has conquered sizeable wardrobes and subterranean hideouts and that one time she blew the hell out of him by lunging out of a well-draped dining table. Since then he ensured to watch out for her at every conceivable Houdini trap.

He is bolted by sudden music creeping in the direction of the living room. That must be Poorni. Are all wives so unpredictable? Poorni was NOT a common wife nor she has ever feigned to be one, as he would not have married her if he had found her decidedly conventional. She is unusual. She is a minx. She is a rolled up hammam weaved out of iridescent charm and flowing spontaneity. He hopes that she hasn't burnt the toast again.

Aditya walks into the living room and leans against the doorjamb, befuddled at a petite figure loosely covered in a silky night gown and swinging to music.

"I don't recall you sleeping in that skimpy peignoir."

"Peignoir?", she jams her brow, "what foozly doodly frenchie garment is that", she baby talks.

"The short night gown you are wearing that barely clads your fleshy mounds." He hisses in his seared lips.

"Adi ..." she languidly wraps her arms around his neck, "and what differentiates a lady's negligee from your pen-yoor? Is it the gaze of her man or the gauze of her fabric? Or, does a wee bit of French over English incites a ..."

"I am running late for work. Time your pranks, next time. But since you have asked, both are French, so you better revise your uncontinental undergarments also." He turns around.

"Hey ..", she pincers him from behind with her shapely arms and twists him around, "let's dance .."

"Poorni ..." , he squints and looks lost in the glint of her forestalling eye, "you know too well babe that I have no dancing feet. You resume your hip shakes. I will enjoy your spinning feet while I get dressed." He uncoils her soft arms around his waist and retreats into the bedroom.

No sooner he has hitched his trouser and buttoned his shirt, the music from the hall gets louder. He knows that she is onto something today but with Poorni it could be anything from spacefaring Klingons to carnivorous deep-sea invading krill. And he knows that he married her for this very reason that she is hypnotically whimsical and playful and utterly delicious through that invitingly veiled peignoir. If only he wasn't running late for work.

As he steps into the living room clutching the unshelved printouts from last night, she switches the track to an upbeat melody and glides across the room in her feathery gown. She coquettishly waves at him. No she is not doing that, he slides past her. She taps her feet to a familiar beat. The vintage and devastating 3-2 beat she once tried to teach him in vain ..what was that left hip and then right hip and then left sway and right ..burn it. He grabs his shoes. She is just playing with my mind. It is ridiculous for me to even indulge her scatterbrained vows and wily hemlines ...trying to make me sway like that Swayze. He gropes for the socks in the cavern of his shoes which is another of Poorni's delights to tamp the socks deep into the gorge of his shoe. I am getting late. I need to rush. Once I walk past that door, that pesky peignoir will be out of my mind.

And then he turned around.

(To be continued)

 

Holy honeycomb! I completely forgot about this unfinished piece of writing till you bumped. Thoonks! I will fold up the episode of the crank narrative today. Strange! How did I lapse?! I remembered the next day, and the next, I forgot. I still find it strange that I missed out setting myself a reminder to lace up Barney’s shoes. I will scratch something while making biryani that resembles a pulao today.

Hey, thanks.

 

I sat down last night to scratch away part II of Barney's shoes. Then, I baulked. What was that shoddy opening post? I read the introduction and choked. Did I write that? That is the most obsolete drivel I had ever written ...or so I thought ....nah ...no Barney ...let me rewrite that first episode again. Jeezio! Did I really crunch such a choppy narrative back in November?

 

Transit Date (reboot) ​

The midday check-in at the airport is a bustling sight with incessant flashes from overhead boards announcing the departures and arrivals.

She clasped her trolley bag making her way to the departure gate and heaved on a bench whose sole occupant till then was a battered newspaper abused in excess with inky hatches in a grid of persistent sudoku. Pushing the newspaper aside, she groped for a book in her handbag. She held the book high above her normal gaze to evade intruding eyeballs and to withdraw from the ambient buzz.

"Terry Pratchett's Amazing Maurice and his educated rats?!"

She peeks out of her fanned book. "Who are you? Do I know you?"

"You do. We met ten minutes ago at the check-in. You are Annapurna Nilakantan. And I am the claimant of that lovely newspaper you carelessly shoved aside."

"And what do I owe this pleasure of stalking me from the check-in?"

"The pleasure is owed to the Amazing Maurice which you were staring at held aloft your flagpost arms for the entire staff and passengers at the airport to purpose you as their guide point. The gate is just where that woman holding the book ....the stationery is in front of the woman holding that book ...the rest room is , nevermind, at the far end of that unengaging woman —"

She softly laughs and eyes him with mellowed suspicion and then lunges with a drawl. "How do you know me?"

He flexes his arms nonchalantly to prolong her inquiry. In a swift move, he locks his eyes with hers. "I read the name tag on your trolley at the check-in. What is a woman like you doing with an archaic name like Annapurna and a children's book like Amazing Maurice? That glamorous last name 'Nilakantan' is the only saving grace for me to have chosen you over other ravishing maidens and also your button nose. A cute nose, eh?"

She bristles. He senses her discomfort and throws his shoulders back in a conciliatory gesture.

"Who are you?"

"An IQ above 150 should be my humble introduction."

" — such magnificent IQ squandered on trolleys and noses."

He smiles and lowers his eyes playfully. Crossing his legs in a deep reflectively pose, he whisks his gaze back at her. "Coffee with me?"

"I hardly know you and just with a nose examination you intend to invite me over for a coffee?"

"Look Ana, is that how your friends call you?"

"Ana is hip. I prefer the modest Poorni."

"Look Poorni, watch my bag while I visit the rest room. I trust you. On my return let's go for coffee. Mm, slightly brighten up, do that womanly touch up, gloss, and look shiny but keep the button nose the same. Gussy up!"

"You think you are more amazing than the talking cat Maurice to wheedle the rat in me with the pied-piper tune into a small-minded caper of yours? Who are you?"

"No caper only coffee but if you insist, coffee might run into a caper. Who am I? Search for 'Aditya Ravishankar' with those tiny and nimble yet attractive fingers. Find me as I sought you."

He stood up to his towering five-ten height in white cargo pants and slate-gray t-shirt admiring her sunlit hair and blushed cheeks. Aditya set forth towards the restroom. Poorni reluctantly flipped her laptop open.

"Did you miss me", he startles her, "rather, did you find me?"

"Yes, I found you when I searched for suspicious men flirting with women at the airports."

"Fair enough! I like your shortcuts."

"You are 32, a hedge fund director, 156 friends in FB, hate poetry, love prose, hate tea, love coffee, hate idli, love upma, hate cubes, love circles, hate Foucault, love Socrates, hate Giacometti, love Alberti, hate Paris, love Madrid —”

"Do you make upma, Poorni?"

"Are wealthy and spoiled brats like you scouting for cooks in airports these days? Is that what this intrusion is all about?"

Flinging his arm precariously around her head rest, he dives towards her. "I only wanted to have coffee but now that the topic has come up, coffee with upma studded with capers is not a far cry. Poorni, let's do a coffee first."

She gazed at his desirous face. "Coffee is fine."

Arriving at a coffee parlour few minutes away from the boarding gate, Aditya gestures at a vacant table. She nods. Having placed the order, Aditya relapses to his smitten pose filled with impatient curiosity about his withdrawn acquaintance.

"So tell me Poorni, you have any, er, say, man in your life. Have you ever been courted?"

"What are you dufus, Ancient Istanbul? Courted? Why don't you inquire straight if I have a boyfriend or partner in my life."

He grinned. "Do you?"

"No. Never. No time for silly flirtations. Women are not born with the natural finesse to flirt with strangers at airports spurred by glamorous name tags."

He stole his eyes away from her caramelized mouth to the soft hair wishing to blow that tender speck of dust grazing her curled lock. "But you are born with the attention to make men like me, who otherwise are nerdy blinds, to trail women like you, though devastated by your first name but enchanted by your last name."

She teasingly curved her mouth into a reproachful smile.

"I like you Poorni, you are striking."

She pretends to fidget with her handbag to retreat from that amorous and gratifying drift. "We must hurry to the gate." She hastily rose. He wearily sunk back. As she is about to walk ahead, he tugs her arm from behind and turns her around. He lifts himself up from the cushioned stool and grips her closer. She locks bewildered into his soulful gaze.

“So soon Mrs Aditya Ravishankar Nilakantan? I don't even get to fancy you married for three years.”

She pouted. “Duh! I have an uninspiring first name. Why flirt with someone reading children's books?”

“I adore the silly child in her. And you should be thankful to me for giving you that glamorous last name.”

He lifts his arm, gently brushes her hair, and blows away the pesky dust speck.

"My gratitude is for all the upmas studded with capers you have fed me since our marriage." She sweetly blinks.

 

Odour of Chrysanthemums​

"Poorni, have you read that Odour of Chrysanthemums story by DH Lawrence?"

"Yes, I did, why such flowery recollection today?"

Aditya cocks his head and gazes at her in bewilderment.

"If you are done with your cinematic pose, would you mind continuing?"

"Pooh, remember in that story how Mrs Bates was frustrated with her husband, and one day when he did not return home on time she discovered that he had died in the coal mine. She recollects her strained time with her husband when he was alive and wonders ...how little she knew about him ...does she even know him ..who was he ...deep down ...who was he ..and now she may never know."

"Adi, I love your roundabout ruminations but at times when I want watch my favorite romcom on telly would you ..slightly ...prefer to excise your epic tale ...to a short quip. What in the holy smoke are you trying to tell me?"

Aditya grabs her shoulders with his arms and looks on. "Poorni, do you know me? like how much do you know me ...do you know how I feel or sense or perceive the world around me .." He lowers his eyes.

"Adi, you are going very Luigi Pirandello with me today."

"Pooh, do we stop to think from other's shoes."

"Adi, your shoes stink. Prefer not to exchange mine with yours. But if you insist as part of your psychoactive overdrive there is no way I could think like you or you like me because our faculties are too unique forged from our empirical accrual. I can only think like me even if I were to assimilate your situational factors. And when you are gone, there is no reason to even think of you or like you."

"Pooh, in that story Mrs Bates wonders on how little she knew her husband. You are that unapologetic wife who would rejoice when I am gone and jump onto another man for phrenic companionship."

"Wow! Shalini was right about men in Alaipayuthey. Men expect women to jump into the pyre, but they are Madavan who would excite away at the thought of marrying someone when their wife is in coma."

"Jeez! Kettle! You are that Madhoo who would hand over Arvind Swamy to the terrorists in Roja...go go take him out of Kashmir to Afghanistan while I study these flower patterns endemic to the valleys in Kashmir. Don't disturb me."

"Adi, in one frightful conversation you have swept from Odour of Chrysanthemums to Kashmir to Kali, what's your problem baby?"

"I love you, pooh, remember me. Think of me"

"Sure, when I remarry the next day, I shall name my future ward in your honour ..Aditya Megalomaniac. Happy?!"

"Bhoothnath would still love you ..". He hugs her.