Before you read this, read:
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The passageway was dark despite it being
daytime. That’s because the walls that hemmed it in gave no permission for the
Sun to visit it. A stray beam from a tubelight or two in the rooms that shared
the passageway tried to make it a bit comforting, but that was half-heartedly
done.
Often, writers describe a cold sweat that
breaks all over their body as they do something they are frightened of. Some
say that they start to tremble and find their feet turn to stone. And some get
all dramatic and describe how terrifying scenes from their lives flashed before
them like ads meandering about on a Facebook page.
Well, nothing of that sort happened to me. I
could hear my heart beat faster as I walked towards the stairs (we were on the
second floor). And I sensed I was breathing slower than usual. It was as if
something had stopped my lungs from inhaling the standard amount of air. But no
scenes from my life projected themselves on any screen nor did any sweat bathe
my neck. I could only feel the place grow colder and colder as I neared the
staircase - as if I was about to enter a cold storage.
At the staircase, I saw the first floor
landing all awash with psychedelic stains. Each stain slipped into the other
and did not quite know how to deal with the mix it had gotten into. Evidently,
they had sprayed themselves here first before deciding to take the mess out
onto the road.
I started to make my way to the first floor
landing. I tiptoed down the wooden steps. The steps creaked with each toe that
tipped itself ahead of the other, the railing trembled, and I hoped I’d go
invisible in broad daylight. However, all that happened was I made it to the
first floor landing without any incident.
I could hear the boys/men talking among
themselves. They were right across the road and they could not see me as yet.
So I knew I wasn’t the topic of conversation. And that encouraged me to speed
up my trip to the ground floor.
On the ground floor though, I had to be
careful. The exit (which also served as the entrance) opened its mouth on to a
footpath that clung to the outside of the chawl. I had to take that very
footpath and follow it as it bent a little towards the right of the chawl’s
exit and made its way to the hardware store. Next to the footpath ran a road.
And on the opposite side of the road, exactly in front of the exit was the
place where the boys were.
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Cars and lorries were parked on either side of
the road. And I was just about the height of a car. So I could duck down and not be spotted by
their gaze. Besides, for some reason, they were too caught up to inspect people
who were exiting the chawl. Which is when I decided to duck and move towards
the hardware store would be the best line of action.
Now to duck doesn’t require you to tiptoe.
Yet, I did both! I ducked and tiptoed behind the cars lined up along the road.
My heart tiptoed ahead of me for it had already come out of my mouth. And since
my body, knowing that it would not survive without the heart, tiptoed a few
nanoseconds behind it.
Every second seemed like a month and every
minute, a year. Going by that, it should have taken me a few years to reach the
hardware store. However, only three minutes idled past me by the time I stood
in the store and looked at its owner.
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The store owner was least interested in my
troubles. He had his own: not many were buying things from him that day and he
did not want to look absolutely gleeful when I turned up lest I ask for a
discount.
Instead, he looked at me in the usual
disinterested manner that he had perfected over the years and asked what I
wanted to buy.
I told him about the screws/nails. I said I
wanted a dozen of them.
In front of him lay a matrix of wooden boxes.
And in each box slept screws and nails of various types. He screwed his hand
into one of these. He then let his hand look around in there. And then he
raised a fistful of nails and said: “Will these do?”
“Yes yes!”
“Ten rupees!”
“Okay!”
I got a reluctant ten-rupee note out of my
trouser pocket. In response to that, the store owner wrapped those nails in a
newspaper, gave the parcel to me, and shooed the ten-rupee note into one of the
drawers to his left.
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Nails/screws in hand, I got out of the store
and began to walk to the building. I looked around. A sprinkling of cars and
taxis together with a double-decker BEST bus made for some sparse traffic to my
right. It was a holiday of course. So the scant attendance on the road was
totally expected.
I continued to walk towards my building. The
footpath that clung to the chawl’s outside had rectangular stones. Each had its
own shade of crookedness added to its irregularities and almost all of them had
conspired to return my stare with a deadpan look. An occasional stain of chewed
tobacco or paan added colour to
the look; but otherwise, it was as ashen as the stone could make it to be.
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I kept walking and came to the bend at which I
sensed I was spotted. The din the boys/men were making subsided a little. I could
feel a dozen eyes turn towards me. And a few seconds later, those eyes climbed
to the second floor. There, standing in the balcony, were Mother Dearest and
Father Dearest. Both peered down the kitchen window and put on their sternest
stare to discourage all those pairs of eyes from doing anything to me.
For a moment, as the boys/men and my parents
exchanged stares, I thought I’d be able to slip away unnoticed. After all, the
chawl’s entrance was just a few yards away and if I made a dash for it, I’d be
in and up the stairs in no time.
I quickened my pace, instructed my head to
look nowhere but down at the footpath, clutched the nail/screws packet in my
hands, got past the entrance, and paused at the beginning of the staircase. All
that exercise had made me rather breathless. I was within the dimly lit
ground-floor passageway. So, I relied on its safety and allowed my head to look
up and around.
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The meter boxes twinkled with red and green
lights that jumped up and down within the metal cubes that kept a tab on how
much electricity each room drank and made merry with. Next to them on the wall
opposite was a notice board. A wannabe artist had decorated its contents with
some white and pink chalk. As a result, the notices took on the air of an unsolved
mystery: They were illegible and left no hint about what they were about.
I thought the notice board funny and so,
smiled to myself. And then, I started to climb the steps. I had hardly made it
to the second step when someone appeared out of nowhere behind me and said,
“Gary, the thing is I have been wanting to ask you…” As this someone - who
turned out to be one from the gang - asked me that, he touched my face and
smeared colour on my cheeks.
To know what happens next, read: The Holiday: Part 4
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