Candyman Dreams

Candyman Dreams

It is a straight stretch of glazed, ivory black granite brick road. Tram tracks have sank deep into it over the years of intense pressure. Millions of wheels roll bumping on the cracks across the graveled stretch. This is not a story of the street. Yet, streets have stories to tell.
Streets are brilliant storytellers. They never tire of telling them. More often than not they live up to their reputation. Streets have so many stories to tell. Some are hazardous and a rollercoaster ride with the shocked riders clenching their teeth under a deepening comic grimace – destinations are always far away. Some are murderous in the darkest hour where only few scurrying footsteps can be heard under the shady lampposts gleaming drearily in the creepy drizzle drenched city – a moment of silence, a muffled groan and silence reigns again. Some are deceptively fast paced and bouncy for the sentry religiously defending his castle from the onslaught of cannon balls, hurdled across with more aggression than conviction or accuracy – expectedly on a day when a strike or boycott, of any nature, has been declared. Some are monotonous like the everyday traffic snarls extending all along its stretch. Yet, it makes up for all that when the story is interspersed in between by the chapter where an unintentional blink made two pairs of eyes meet for the first time in their life and become unforgettable to each other. Such are the, occasional but obviously the brilliant sparks of a genius.
Some stories are mishaps. Precisely, an unpredictable outcome that is unfortunate. Yet, it must be a decisive outcome with no choices to the end. Why? I mean we all got choices for a solution to the situation but only decisive ends to them, which is in fact the most important time to make a choice. Well, but stories are just that – stories, and this story is just such a story.
The street was swarming with mid-day traffic. The pressure was far less compared to the morning office hours. Yet, dust, burnt petrol fumes, charred rubber on hot asphalt and bare, glazed granite bricks were aplenty to make it feel alive. For the street, however, it was getting a wee monotonous. All of these it beheld, day in and day out. Maybe, the street brooded under its skin; it was loosing its human touch.
They say thought is the fastest thing known. They even say there is something called telepathy. Then the plastic pack full of green, yellow and orange candies should have known the street well enough. For the response was just that – a mishap.

If you go up to him any day you will find two deep set blazing eyeballs peering out at your approach. The square lower jaw seems to hang down in most disagreeable fashion under the lax muscles and wrinkled skin over his cheeks. The nose sticks out like a wasted chewing gum stuck up and left in a thin stretch, poking at everything that beheld it. The lines on the forehead were deep enough to be portrayed in black, four of them uniformly spread across the ample width of the forehead. The hairline was a premature disaster, of black and white, cumulatively gray.
He was not the funny man. He was the candyman. Looks are deceptive and even more in black and white, on paper. One look at his face could tell the everyday story of a wife selling vegetables, two children well malnourished who helped their mother beg when times were worse and a life torn apart in pride and disability. Some are born free, some are born cursed.

Now let The Street tell its story...

He ran across the dangerously busy crossing. The only thing in his eyes was the bus on the other side of the road. The bus had stopped at the signal...

...Bus of route number 215A...bus full of passengers...passengers packed inside the bus, sweating...children nagging on mother’s lap...people bored of the wait...
...Green, yellow and orange candies...mango, pineapple and orange...quenches thirst...time pass...50 paisa apiece, two for a rupee...profit of 10 paisa on a candy...10 sold; a rupee rich...run, run, run...

Meanwhile, the plastic pack of candies was concentrating on the street’s thoughts.
The stopped traffic was let off. Like a simultaneous reaction to the revving up of the first gears of the waiting vehicles, candies, like marbles, rent through the bag and sprinkled all over the street crossing like colored, shimmering pearls of many little, precious dreams. They fell out off his arms like a brook of jewels, a brook of shiny little dreams.
But he was still running. He was thinking. He was not ‘thinking’...

...Many passengers...good omen for the day...a day of good income...will save five rupees for the children...Durga Puja is also round the corner...maybe fish curry tomorrow...

Somebody shouted out at the falling candies. He slowed, turned and looked down towards the near empty plastic bag on his relieved left arm, even as the bus of route number 215A ceremoniously picked up speed and roared past. His jaws hung low. The right arm, he had had raised to stop the bus, slowly crept down and fell limp by the other side. His eyes were slowly opening, dilated –

That was the very last picture of the candyman seen by the person, sitting in an auto-rickshaw, which the street beheld. But the street is not telling their story today.
It is a very happy day for the street. The street had so many colored marbles all for itself. It has got marbles to play with, today...

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Emancipation

Emancipation

Something happened today. Today? Rather, yesterday late morning – just like anything else that might happen and as memorable as none other. I don't know why but my experiences has never left me blankly staring into a de ja vue alley. Never. And so, I happily write on.

A cat littered in the kitchen - in the cozy damp corner just below the kitchen sink of our rented apartment, I guess on the night before yesterday. It was more of a shock than find. Pangs of hunger had at last broken my vow of laziness at noon. Food had just been delivered at my doorstep and it needed only one plate and one spoon to be served – rice, pulses and potatoes – simple and sumptuous. But not a single plate or spoon had been left clean, heaped in the sink for over two days I guess. Abhorrence of the stench or arrogance of being - both combined, had connived and so I proceeded to the sink.

Suddenly, a brush of fur – alive! The cat stealthily brushed past me and dived over the window still. Almost instinctively, the first thing I did was to stoop to check beneath the sink and straighten my back with a snigger of disgust crossing my face. Three – one spotted gray and two black bundles of sparse fur and throbbing, rolling over each other, kittens. Instinct again produced the 'F' word – deeply, smoothly through my clamped lips.

For a few moments, I was somewhere there, between the zone of ignorance and annoyance. Great! So much, for lunch! I looked outside the window and as expected 'momma' cat was right there, beneath the window still, looking up straight into my eyes, as perplexed and upset as I was. I hope I got her right. I looked left, I looked right and I located a small cardboard box and proceeded to do the most obvious thing - take that 'bloody' litter off my block, no place for aliens here.

I extended my right hand and touched the first throbbing, ugly fur ball - at first gently and then efficiently, to quickly transfer it into the box. In ten seconds flat the three were in the box and I lifted it over the window still. 'Momma' was still there. Now that I am saying this I might as well admit - it was pretty stupid of me to think 'momma' cat would understand. I just picked one up and showed it to her. I had thought she would understand that I wanted her to know I was beholding her creations and wanted to get rid of them urgently, as the responsibilities were absolutely out of question for me to handle. Stupid me. The snarl that emanated from her snapping jaws, with razor sharp, inch long canines on two sides showing, startled me. It looked vicious and so it felt.

There was no other way out. I locked the backdoor to the kitchen, the only way into my living room and proceeded, with the box, to the door. I latched it and went down stairs, stooping out of the quite low lying hallway and emerging just underneath the window still where scary 'momma' was perched, still looking up through my kitchen window, waiting for this to end as much as I did.

I whistled and there was an immediate turn of the feline form. First, it looked into my face. I didn't utter a sound and yet instinctively 'momma' looked into the box below her. I slowly walked up to the nearest garbage bin - a few steps away, and laid down the box and she followed each and every movement of mine - unpredictable and anxious movements, eyes transfixed on the box.

But as soon as I stepped away after laying them down and waiting at a distance to let her take her bundle of joy away, in a totally unexpected show of indifference, she turned on her back, tail slowly undulating and walked away in the opposite direction. That was the second and the last time the 'F' word hissed through my pursed lips.

I quickly picked up the box and proceeded to follow to 'momma' who was now perfectly sitting under the shade of a parked motorbike. At first it glanced away indifferently, but I was desperate to get rid of the three lives in my box. I gently upturned the box right in front of her and the litter rolled down on the ground, right in front of her alarmed and again transfixed eyes. stood aside.

I think gray is a good color - compared to black around. Otherwise why would she grab her 'gray' kitten over the other two and proceed to find a more private place, now that the old one stood busted by its original, yet, presently totally flummoxed tenant? I stood there waiting for it to come back for the other two. It was a long wait.

Some inquisitive kids from the block had gathered around. They had questions and an unwilling, famished me was the only one there. Perhaps it was horribly stupid of me but then I was not exactly thinking of my state. This is very typical of an empty stomach when the 'Gabrielisque' spirit takes over. Mind you, I was completely starved by then. I guess all of this lead to that point of great impatience when it just boiled over and the milk was spilt...

It was somewhere between all these kids and two litters that I forgot recollection of my position. Of the numerous cats in our block there was this certain black furred cat. It had been quite intriguing to me before and now it was approaching the very place we were standing over the two squeaking, blinking kittens. I recollected my general knowledge. They say these feline animals cannot bear the sight of offspring of others – not even one amongst its own species. I stared at the approaching, un-suspecting ‘stranger’.

It got the vibes – little, nearly inaudible squeaks of its own nature. It turned and headed straight for the kittens. I stood there transfixed. Whether it was my inquisitiveness or whether it was my foolhardiness, I don’t know, but I allowed it happen. I allowed the ‘stranger’ to approach the two defenseless cubs. Perhaps it was plain enchantment of witnessing a killing – the full rawness of nature that prompted to freeze my body as I concentrated on each and every excited quiver on the fur of the black furred cat.

It licked only once and in a flash it had got one of the litters by its neck. The kids took a step back and yet stared in amazement like me. They felt so weak like me – unable to comprehend and hence totally unresponsive to this display of violence. The jaws sank deeper into the neck and for sure now, I knew, this was getting murderously devious of me. At that very split second it happened.

Greed got the ‘stranger’ to drop the first and dash for the second and simultaneously, I don’t know what possessed me, I picked up the box that had been lying aside for sometime now and confronted the murderous ‘intruder’. Maybe it is the fear of regret. Maybe it was the sense of penance. I never knew then. I know not now either. I threw the damned box on the gaining black furred cat and it let go of the last living litter and bounced away.

I picked up the harrowed body of the visibly shaking figure of the fur ball and brought it over to the original place, place where its mother had left it to come back. I somehow believed it would come back and it did. I don’t know why, but like a man possessed I stood guard over the last live one that lay beside the badly mauled body of its sibling. The last few moments were the same for the broken neck. Quivering of body, stretching legs, jaws hanging and tongue lolling out with clenched phalanges and choking breadth squeezing shut the eyes such that it might pound the socket inside. For a moment the eyelids relaxed. Then there was peace.

I stood there waiting. After about twenty minutes, between which all these had happened, I saw the ‘momma’ approaching the place where she had left her possessions. This time she looked up to me with a look I have still not been able to decipher. A look quite similar to the first time my ex-beloved asked for a particular soft-toy for her and still inexplicable.

I pushed the live one in her sight. She grabbed it softly by its neck and with the gentle little body mass safely hanging between the protective jaws of ‘momma’ cat I snapped. With a last passing, inaudible sigh I strained my neck over my shoulders to catch a glimpse of the lifeless little body. Turning around I walked upstairs, back into the cool comforting confines of my apartment. Content, exhausted – blank. I kept the box aside and readied myself for my late lunch.
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