I cross the road. I’m here for the book reading; I’ve nothing to do this afternoon – or later this evening. I didn’t have the wit to notify my friends in advance. But, then, I don’t have friends here. The idea is a fiction that I hardly ever bother to examine – which is why I’m often taken by surprise when I find myself at a loose end in Bombay. My mind tells me, ‘Bombay is teeming with people you know, or have known.’ This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The people I was close to in school I’ve lost track of. Except Ramu.
*
I have crossed the road. Opposite me is the building that came up out of nowhere in the late seventies and partially blocked our view. Before then, we had an unbroken vision of the Arabian Sea. The building is irrelevant to me now, but still causes a pinprick of irritation. It was an interloper – a tenant on the landscape – and continues to be one.
In front of the building, upon the road – there’s no pavement here – sits a woman on her haunches, displaying a basket of fruit. What she offers that the grocers’ opposite don’t, I can’t say. In another area, there’d be a gaggle of squatting women. Here, she is one. One is enough for Little Gibbs Road.
Next to her there’s a narrow pathway or steps that fall precipitately seaward. Itinerants descend. I catch a blue glimpse of the horizon. I have never been down there. That’s because we’ve spent so much of our lives, even in places we’ve grown up in, being driven around. Walking, we take expected routes. Even our unexpected routes are well worn. There’s much I don’t know in Malabar Hill. Like that glimpse of blue.
*
I feel no nostalgia. What I encounter is an impossibility – of recovering whatever it was that formed me, which I churlishly disowned. Bombay was never good enough for me. Even now – as before – I hesitate to write about it. It is my secret. It was so, even when I lived here. For instance, the Mercedes. My father’s white Mercedes-Benz, ‘Merk’ to my friends. ‘Mercheditch’ to the proud driver. I rode it but disembarked ten minutes before reaching Elphinstone College. The final bit I covered on foot. Sloughing off my life. And no sooner has the thought suggested itself than I confront the bus terminus near the Kamala Nehru Park. From here ply the 102 and the 106. Red double-decker and single-decker respectively. Sturdy carriers – not like their derelict Calcutta counterparts. With the Mercedes presenting itself and escape from it becoming a necessity, I began for the first time to take buses. Incredible cocoon they took me out of. The 106 put me in the middle of the seabreeze and dropped me close to Elphinstone College. Sometimes, I lugged my guitar along. Fittingly, my hair would be insanely tousled by the time I arrived.
