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.