I turn another page of the book I am reading and suddenly I am five years old and my first book is in my hand as is a glass of milk that my mother insisted on making me drink.
Another page and I am lounging in my great grandfather's chair- it's 8AM on a Sunday and that means luchi and alu-r torkari for breakfast, cooked by a maid who has since then left our employ because she fell in love and married for love, got thrown out of her house for her trouble and unlike Bruce Springsteen's brother in law found out the hard way that love is indeed a camouflage for what resembles rage. Perhaps it will take more than fifteen thrashings and the usual drunken babble of how she can't satisfy her husband who wanted a sizeable dowry, to convince her that she was better off working for us, while my mother taught her English, slowly and steadily. Perhaps that would have allowed her to get a job as a receptionist and become independent of the patriarchial society she was an unwilling part of.
Another page and I'm 22 and the world is my oyster. I hate oysters by the way, but I seem to be an expert at falling in love. My latest crush is a girl who studies in a certain college, is as tall as I am and can be seen walking a Labrador in my compound and smoking a cigarette that she palmed from her father's jeans pocket- always Silk Cut, but obviously not Johanna Constantine.
Another page, and another and another. The spell has taken hold. I feel like Hemingway felt in that cafe in Paris, where he said that all of Paris belonged to him and he belonged to the notebook and pencil in front of him, just as he said that beauty belonged to him and him alone, he had seen beauty's face.
Suddenly, I want to write what I'm feeling right now. Suddenly I am in the grasp of a story, gliding along on a river in a canoe, steered by a native in a rainforest. It is very exciting because I have never been down river before or in a canoe for that matter, and this native man is taking me to his headman, a sort of shaman who knows the cure for cancer.
Another page. This world feels familiar. I recall Ian McKellen in this world. I recall a sword and a name. The Flame of Anor burns bright and strikes down a Balrog. I am nine years old.
Another page. Where have the years gone? I was fat, I am losing weight. The Barasat Baruipur I am on is stuck at Patuli, while I am chuckling at a quote about how someone wants to tell a gold digger to go to the Devil but doesn't because he happens to be in love with her. I pull out my grayish black smartphone and type that into my WhatsApp status.
Another page, this time on a screen. A girl who reminds me of a dear friend drives downtown to a medicine man and asks a favor of him. There is a need to examine her cousin and some game is afoot in the house, but this is somewhere that Sherlock Holmes cannot interfere.
Before turning the next page, I want to hear Isaac Slade and so I drop the volume of the laptop to 30% and turn on How to Save a Life. We are now in the present, with the future beckoning, tea gone cold, book looking at me askance and Slade singing stuff about praying to God.
Never in my life have I felt more alive than I feel right now, in this moment, with cold dregs of tea in a green cup on the floor, a book to finish, a faint glow outside my window, not yet dawn, and seeing as it's a day off tomorrow, a good breakfast of an omelette made with Cheddar cheese to make for my father.
I realize that somewhere in these sentences is a story of a life that's entering it's 29th year, laid in front of your eyes. Among these lines is a world I have made and inhabit, sometimes only in my head and in that head of mine I am slow dancing with someone, as all around me buildings blow up. I look in my partner's eyes and whisper softly "You met me at a very strange time in my life".
You see, ever since I was a child, I always had one constant addiction. The written word. I loved writing letters. I loved stories. I loved to hear people sing. When my mother passed away, I cremated her with a copy of the book she held dear on her chest, so that when she reached her final resting place, she would carry what she held sacred with her there. After all, perhaps God would demand some form of tribute from her.
In short, I am a reader. What's your superpower?
The Bilge Master
Very well written
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