Chapter 8 - Cricket

The afternoon sun keeps people off the roads in south Mumbai. Pedestrians perpetually seek shade. They venture timorously into the sun and dive back into shade like a frog leaping from one leaf to another. Early evening sees the return of the Mumbai schoolboy – that species in the animal kingdom, which lives and breathes cricket all day everyday. The Mumbai schoolboy has a few distinguishing characteristics. The cricket bat hangs from his body like an appendage he was born with. And he instinctively hits with his bat any object remotely resembling a cricket ball.

That day from the 11th floor of Sea View Apartments, Maan watched eleven such bat bearing schoolboys coming back from school. The previous day Mr. Batliwala had sweet-talked Maan into taking a month long vacation. So most of the day had been spent strumming the old guitar and figuring out the new ‘effects’ unit. Maan had had his breakfast at lunchtime and had even spent a little while after lunch lazing in bed wondering if he could spend the rest of his life thus spread out in bed. By 3 PM he was bored out of his mind and kept looking surreptitiously at his old cricket bat in the corner of the room. When he saw the eleven schoolboys from his 11th floor window, they seemed to crawl like ants to their respective positions on the playground. He snatched at his bat and hurried downstairs.

Minutes later he walked in to the playground rotating his bat-bearing arm like a Tendulkar and squinting at the players. “Sameer, I am opening the innings.” Sameer nodded meekly, as Maan strode into the pitch and took stance. As he walked over and occupied the crease at the non-strikers end, Sameer shrugged his shoulders at his hapless teammates. On the second floor balcony, Riya appeared near the clothesline to take off some clothes that the sun had diligently dried during the day. On seeing Maan with the bat in his hand, she decided to stay on, partially hidden by a huge bedsheet still hanging from the clothesline. Zubin, the Parsi boy from 5th floor, decided to lengthen his run-up and gave the rubber ball a decent rub on his clean pants. Then he came sprinting in and delivered a decent ball that Maan expertly defended on the front foot with a straight bat. The second ball swerved past the outside edge and Zubin scratched his head and smiled a toothy smile at Maan. The third delivery resulted in a superb cover drive that beat a diving Raghu and crashed into Mr. Thakur’s car in the parking lot. Riya held on to the bedsheet but couldn’t conceal her wide grin. The security guard looked apprehensively at the stricken car, but was reassured when he saw that there was no visible damage. Then he moved his chair to a position where he could get a better view of the game.

The game lasted a couple of hours, until the sun decided to retire for the day. Maan emerged beaming with his crooked schoolboy smile. Mr. Vartak with a briefcase in his hand met him just as he was coming into the building lobby with a bat in his hand.
“Maan, is that you or did they mix something funny with my tea today? ”
“Oh Mr. Vartak, are they doing it to our tea as well! The papers only talk about the funny things they mix in the colas.”
Mr. Vartak couldn’t suppress a laugh and Maan smiled with his eyes. Mr. Vartak was a very popular figure. He was a big-sized penguin, waddling about in his own little way, in harmony with everybody around him. He could be discerned from a distance both for his large size and the genuine, goodhearted laughter that always emanated from him. A good friend of Maan’s uncle, he had known Maan for a long time.
“Lets find out if it really is the tea. Why don’t you come over and we’ll know for sure!” he said. Maan politely excused himself for he felt too sweaty and needed a shower badly.

It was the second floor and Mr. Vartak was about to get down from the elevator. Maan looked at him and saw the face of that kind gentleman who had ruffled his hair and smiled so warmly at him the day he had arrived in Mumbai as a teenager. Mr. Vartak saw in Maan that reticent teenager again and the bold eyes that had stared back at him. As Mr. Vartak got down on the second floor something caught Maan’s attention. He saw a man in a black T-shirt and as the doors of the elevator were closing this man looked back at him. He had the same glass eyes. Maan pressed the third floor button frantically and ran down the stairs. Mr. Vartak who was just about to enter his flat, stopped midway and looked quizzically at the alarm on Maan’s face.
“Maan, what is it?”
“Did you see a man, Mr. Vartak? A man in a black T shirt.”
“Yes, but he went downstairs.”
Riya, who had heard Maan’s voice, came back to the door she had just opened only to see him run downstairs.
She looked at her father’s face to see what he was thinking about all this. Mr. Vartak frowned and said, “Poor boy”, as he remembered those bold eyes that spoke of such sadness.
Maan ran out into the streets and found nothing of the man with the glass eyes.

Chapter 7 - Morning Blues

Dark clouds went around each other in circles like blades of a ceiling fan. It must have been nighttime, for amidst the swiftly shifting clouds, Meenakshi caught glimpses of a bleeding moon. She felt cold in the terrace so high up in the sky. To one side of the tower lay the vast Arabian Sea, in a state of fury, provoked by the winds from the west. In the corner of her eye she caught sight of Maan standing at the edge of the terrace. He stood there, his hands on his hips, daring the sea to come and get him. She ran to him, pulled him down to her side and began to cry on his shoulders. “Don’t stand so close to the edge” she chided him. He pushed her away, edged closer to the perimeter, smiled his crooked smile and said, “See, this is easy”. But this time the waves reached so high that they washed him away.

Meenakshi awoke in a cold sweat. It wasn’t morning yet. She felt a sharp pain in her heart that brought tears to her eyes. She folded her knees and wrapped her arms around them. To her side, little Frodo, the stuffed frog looked on at her, puzzled at what was going on with her. She noticed her sympathetic friend, and reached out to him and gave him a hug. “Maan”, she whispered and watched the blades of the ceiling fan rotate nonchalantly. The clock ticked and even the smallest sounds were perceptible now. In her mind she replayed yet again the chain of events and all that was said between Maan and her that fateful night. Then she glanced at the clock. It was still not morning. Time passed like solitary drops from a leaking tap. Drops that fall on a tin surface and each time evoke from it a shrill cry of pain.

Hours later, after so much twisting and turning that even Frodo could barely endure, it was finally 7 in the morning and the phone rang. Meenakshi snatched at it and saw that it was her Mom.
“Ammaaaa”.
“Meenu, you are awake already. Are you alright?”
Meenakshi wiped her tears and said, “Yes, I am alright. How’s Appa? Did you check his blood pressure?”
“Appa is much better, don’t worry. But I am worried about you Meenu. I know there is something wrong with you. Do you want me to come to Mumbai? I can take a few days leave.”
“No Amma, I am perfectly fine.”
Yet this emphatic affirmation lacked any real conviction.

She got dressed, perfunctorily. She waved mechanically at her roommate Anna, who was eating her breakfast, reading the funnies in the newspaper and nodding her head to some hip hop music coming from the big earphones that emerged from the pink ipod that her wealthy boyfriend presented her last week. The auto rickshaw roared away in silence, for the sounds were lost before they reached Meenakshi. At the Andheri West Railway Station, she lost herself in the crowd of human faces. She lost herself in her thoughts as the train chugged along silently past Santacruz, Bandra, Dadar, Mahalaxmi, Charni Road, Marine Lines and finally Churchgate. And she didn’t find herself even when she came out into the open from the buzzing Churchgate station.

Tears streamed down her eyes for the numbers on the screen made little sense to her that morning. She thought of the pigeons that lived by the seaside on Marine Drive. The kind people of Mumbai fed these pigeons golden grain. And they fluttered their wings freely across the Mumbai skies and came everyday to Marine Drive at feeding time.

“Meenakshi, madam wants to see you.”

She walked into Mrs. Krishnan cabin. Two little kids and a bald man with a french-beard stared out of various photo frames on the desk. Newspapers and magazines lay on one side of the desk and a laptop on the other side. Mrs. Krishnan took off her glasses and put down the report she was reading and shook her head. The clock on Mrs. Krishnan’s desk told her, that a long day awaited her. Outside two pigeons fluttered near the window and flew away into the blue skies.

Chapter 6 - The Glass Eyes

The voices in the pantry had receded into the background. Just as the waves recede to the back of your mind, after a while at the seashore. Outside Maan’s office, it was a busy Mumbai city. Cars and buses raced against each other, even the bystanders were in a hurry. The sky was a clear blue and there was not a cloud in the sky. Well, what if there were clouds? Nobody would have noticed them anyways.

A dull drowsiness seeped into Maan’s veins, and he was about to nod off to sleep, when the phone on his desk leapt up like a serpent and began to ring.
“Hi, this is Maan.”
“Coffee?” It was Shila.
“Yes, but there’s a lot of people in the pantry and I could use some air. Wanna try the coffee shop outside?”
“Sure! See you outside in 5.”
Maan stretched his hands, and got up wearily from his seat. He forced a smile as he passed the people near the pantry and waved at Abhijeet who was wearing the “I know where you are going” smile. A few paces later he was at the elevator.

He didn’t notice him at first – the man near the elevator. The man stood there motionless, but Maan felt his presence like somebody had touched the back of neck. He turned around and saw this man. He was an average looking man. Slightly taller than Maan, of medium build and dark complexion. He was as composed as the walls behind – it felt like he had been standing there for ages. He had that strange, ironic smile. And then Maan saw his eyes. His glass eyes. What was it about his eyes?

The elevator doors opened and both got in. There were others in the elevator. Yet Maan kept looking at this man, and his glass eyes. At the ground floor, they all came out. He came out before Maan, and walked out without a word. And then a little while later as he was walking out the sliding doors, he looked back at Maan for an instant, before he vanished out of Maan’s view. It felt as though he had spoken. His glass eyes had spoken. Maan knew he would see those eyes again.

A while later at the coffee shop Maan and Shila were sipping coffee. Shila talked about different things. Different things like how she had gained a bit of weight and was very worried that she wouldn’t fit in her jeans anymore, her new friend Anamika who was stuck with some guy who didn’t care for her, her hair which was so thick and unmanageable, her trip to home this weekend and her boss who was the vilest, underwater creature on earth. It felt so nice, this light-hearted chatter – like bubbles from soap water. Now and then Maan would screw his eyebrows and say something funny, and they would both start laughing. But he was mostly silent today, and Shila knew this mood of his.
“Come on, what is it?” she asked.
Maan smiled at her and said, “What?”
“Ok so you quit your job because of her?”
“No. It’s not her. I miss her a lot but that’s not it.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s like an emptiness, a hollowness inside me. There is something I have to do, Shila. I can’t live like this anymore – everytime I look in the mirror I see a face, I hear a voice.”
“What voice?”
“At the elevator I saw a pair of eyes, that saw through me. Saw right through me, everything I had ever done. "
He suddenly stopped, almost choked with emotion. Then a smile spread over his face like a wave that washes away the footprints on the sand. He was in control again.
"It's just that I can’t live like this Shila, I have to go.”
“What, right now?” she said and smiled.
Maan glanced at his watch and with his twisted, impish smile said, “I guess I could stand your company for some more time!”
And they spoke about her sea-monster of a boss.

Chapter 5 - Did you hear?

“Did you hear it, Mr. Sen?” said Mr. Naik as he poured out some coffee from the vending machine. Taken by surprise, the vending machine coughed out some coffee powder before covering it up with some frothy milk. Mr. Sen, who was eyeing the ‘new girl in pink’, merely raised his eyebrows and muttered a lazy “What?” as an afterthought. The girl in pink perhaps felt his eyes on her and became pinker. She smiled coyly and bypassed Mr. Sen to the coffee machine.

Mr. Naik smelt his coffee and rubbed his fleshy nose. “About Maan”, he said and sipped his coffee.
“That he quit? I knew it for sometime”, said Mr. Sen his eyes still focused on her.
“Really? How did you know?”
“I know, I know”, replied Mr. Sen, and by now he had undressed the new girl and was imagining himself alone with her in his favorite beach.

Just then, Abhijit walked in with his hair standing up (propped up by a new hair gel), clean-shaven face and a goofy smile. He had his fingers around his belt and felt his nascent tummy. His tummy had popped out like sponge cake the day after his marriage or so he imagined. He arched backward and addressed everyone, “Dada how have you been? Hi Mr. Naik. Oh helloooo Anamika”.
Anamika, with her well fed coffee mug moved away from Mr. Sen’s sun-tanned gaze and said, “Hi Abhijit, how are you today?”
“Lets see now – the stock market, as you are well aware, has crashed, and the Mrs., influenced by some different, or should I say indifferent, market forces, went on a shopping spree. There you go, laugh at me some more. But it’s a great day, isn’t it? Have a nice day, Anamika”.

Anamika smiled and walked away swiftly. Mr. Sen breathed easy and looked around, and Mr. Naik repeated his, “Did you hear?” to Abhijit.
Abhijit stared at him with big eyes and Mr. Naik asked with redoubled eagerness, “What’s up with your friend, Abhijit?”
Abhijit burst out laughing. Mr. Sen looked amused and Mr. Naik positively blushed.
“Oh Mr. Naik, what questions you ask me! You are the grapevine – you tell me what’s up with him? By the way, how’s your little boy doing? Is it true that they have interviews to get into kindergarten?”
“Not kindergarten. Its primary school!” corrected Naik, sounding exasperated.
Abhijit laughed some more and said to Mr. Sen, “Just imagine, Dada, interviews for primary school”. And he made a caricature of their ‘big boss’, “Show me your CV little boy. Looks like you have only 3 years experience in kindergarten. Not good, not good!”

All that laughing in the office pantry raised a few heads in the nearby cubicles. It felt like a host of scuba divers popping their heads up above the surface of water, after a good long session underwater. They all knew Abhijit’s voice – and it was probably time for a break. Some of them got up to go to the Pantry – Abhijit always drew crowds!

In one of the cubicles, Maan stared at his computer screen and saw nothing. He heard the ‘big boss’ say, “No, you can’t do this. You have a brilliant career ahead of you” Where was it that Maan had heard that before. “In a movie, or was it a book? So trite!” And he smiled at the computer screen. The screen smiled back at him and began to look rather like the big boss.
”Take a month off, my boy. Come back and then talk to me. Ok?”
Maan heard the ruckus in the pantry, but didn’t catch a word of what they were saying. He was probably underwater doing some serious scuba diving and thinking to himself – what next?
“I am not so sure, Mr. Batliwala. I am not so sure.”