zara see chahat bhi beimaan hai

dhuan sa uthe hai kahin jism se, kaho baadalon se baraste rahe.

The heat kept coming back, emerging out of the night. I often woke up sweaty, still under my suddenly too thick blanket. The fan was no respite, and the sun streamed through the window directly onto me. It was an uncomfortable way to wake up, but there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe when I finally got my hands on a table, I would have put it by the window, shifted the mattress a little to the side, and slept directly under the fan. Until then, this had to do. Of course, unless it rained. There would have been no problem if it rained, but it felt like a rarity in the gleaming months of August. The passage of time had become unpredictable, and was getting worse over time. I remembered a couple years back when it would rain from July until October. Now, it has rained for a combined duration of two weeks.

The ever hopeful sentiment in me guided me. I waded through the beginning of August, going to work in the sweaty heat, and then feeling the cold office air corner me in my corner cubicle – I forgot my jacket quite frequently. Things were not going well, neither inside, nor out. I kept my head bent, headphones in, staring at words on the screen until it all turned to a mush. The words would rearrange themselves into something else – a sign. Desperation leads to delusion, I was plagued by both. Waterways and traveling turned into waterworks and unraveling. I lingered within my mind, putting together the sights I had seen, trying to make sense of it all.

It was a particularly hot day a while ago, my armpits already blotting the cotton fabric, and I was not even in the auto yet. The auto guy stopped to piss, right next to a washroom, onto a tree. He kept asking me for directions, despite the map streaked with blue, red, and yellow. I was trying to keep calm, but it was a struggle. He cleaned both his mirrors with the sleeve of his shirt, while driving with one gear shifted permanently to leisure. I reached the office on time, a reward for keeping my cool.

By afternoon, it had all turned gloomy, both inside, and out. Sms warning about thunderstorms and cloudburst and whatnot. Everybody packed up and started to leave. I had my umbrella, but I had no jacket. I got an auto, the clouds swirled together in the same pattern as my skirt, blue black white.

We fared well until traffic hit us in the usual spot on the route. I had started crying by then, my fourth auto ride in the past six days with the same outcome. The auto guy turned back twice and offered me a baffled yet gentle look. Inside and out merged again, the sky bursting open and pouring down in an intense manner. The truck in front of us had a bunch of young men who got down and started covering their wares with the blue plastic they had kept handy. Three men on a bike next to me started giggling and surrendered to their fate. I felt like standing out and crying in the rain, just so I could find some humour in it. The universe decided to get in on the joke as well – my auto ran out of diesel and the guy dragged the auto to a corner and disappeared for a good 20 minutes with an empty Bisleri bottle. I sat tight, smoked a cigarette, let the water drench me. I held the laptop bag close to me, as if I were nursing a child, and I thought of robots and babies and baby robots and maternal instincts and why my mother lacked it specifically in my case. Those are the things you write out, churn a story out of, but I had already cried about it, churned myself to the point of curdling.

Auto bhaiyya was successful in acquiring diesel, and he apologised profusely. I told him to relax, and he seemed to loosen up. The next fifteen minutes were cold, wet, and colourful. The lights reminded me of the first dance party thing I attended in university, when I could not stop talking about Succession, and the blue pink lights there too reminded me of Kendall Roy in that bisexual lighting, looking a bit more pathetic than usual (who knew what was to come in the subsequent seasons). Random men tried dancing with me, I tried making friends with nonrandom nonmen. By the time I reached my place, I was drenched, my socks soggy and my feet mushy. I bought chips, curd, shampoo, hitched my skirt up like a lungi, much to the amusement of some old men who cheered me on for that decision, and I ran home. The fatigue hit me a little bit, but I was comforted by the thunder, the lightning, the downpour. I rested myself half-propped on the wall, and thought about how things have a way of getting tied up, each knot in the fabric of time a reminder of memories that accumulate within yourself – weighing you, not necessarily down.

credit

I wrote of heat, and it started raining before I could even finish the piece. The auto guy wiped his mirror with his shirt sleeve in the morning, and so did the guy on my way back home. I dreamt of death extensively, never my own, and I was worn down by the end of the week so much that I had to leave work early. I mithered away in my journal about Something and that Something went on to be disproved, a pleasing breeze on the back of my neck.

August has made itself comfortable in the nooks of the city. It is hot and torpid until the sky unzips itself, torrid. This routine is easy to adapt – wear slippers at all times, carry an umbrella, don’t wear mascara. After a point, the watery air doesn’t bother much – you can easily sit in front of a closed shop and smoke, watching vehicles pass you by.

Right now it is sunny, just before lunch. I am praying for a rain warning, so that I get off of work sooner than later. My dignity and shyness come in the way of throwing a Broad City-esque scene at work (yet again) to get excused. So I sit and wait. Patience is rewarding, or so the dog theory goes.

Mark Horn

दीवानी दीवानी, जवानी मस्तानी,

गर्म साँसों में तूफ़ान है

दीवाना दीवाना, समां है दीवाना

ज़रा सी चाहत भी बेईमान है

धुंआ सा उठे है कहीं जिस्म से

कहो बादलों से बरसते रहे

Deewani, deewani, jawani mastani

Garm saanson mein toofan hai

Deewana, deewana, sama hai deewana

Zara see chahat bhi beimaan hai

Dhuan sa uthe hai, kahin jism se

Kaho badalon se baraste rahe

Infatuated and crazy, this youth is intoxicated

The hotness of breaths carries a storm

This air too is frenzied

A bit of want is at the risk of turning wanton

A smoke rises up from somewhere in this body

Tell the clouds to keep raining down

The Priyanka Chopra in the rain universe is something that can be so personal to somebody, often me.

ok!