Hide and Seek- the Third

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity...
Hide and seek

Now, she pushed herself up, trying to find traces of that day in the air, breathing in purposefully. In vain. The harsh afternoon sunrays hurt her eyes when she tried to look up at the clear skies. She bent her head forward to shelter behind the curtain of her long, straight hair. But no reassuring curtain fell in front of her eyes. Of course. They had robbed her of that as well…

“You should cut your hair.” the younger man was lounging on the bed in her room. He twinkled at her mischievously, almost looking like a boy.

“No.” she said firmly, well aware of the fact that he was well aware of the fact that she had hair- tampering phobia.

“Seriously!” he said, “It will give you a whole new look. Come on! You know it’s a silly, baseless fear. Why not?”

“Ha!” she said, for lack of a better retort.

“Couldn’t think of anything else to say, na?” he said knowingly.

She threw a cushion at him, “Certainly not. I don’t need to justify my reservations to you anyway. So give it up!”

He threw the cushion back at her, “Hey dad, help me convince her!”

“Sort it out kids.” his father said distractedly, absorbed in the book he was reading.

“Kids!?” the two of them shrieked and two cushions flew towards the offender.

“Ouch! What?” and he looked up, annoyed.

“Hey dad give her a haircut” and “Your worthless offspring is irritating me” were said simultaneously.

She turned to the younger man, “Did you just ask your father to cut my hair?”
He spoke at the same time, “Did you just call me worthless?”

“All right, break it up,” the older man put his book away, “yes, she did call you worthless, my progeny, as you undoubtedly are. And yes, I am going to cut your hair.”

Outrage from both sectors at this controversial statement. She started to giggle soon enough till she realized he was serious about his intentions regarding her hair.

“You don’t even know how to! What are you, a CEO who works weekends at the local parlour?”

“Don’t be daft. I was in the army.”

“The army?” incredulously.

“Yes, in addition to my military duties, I gave about a hundred haircuts a month. My own unit."

“Where did you serve? And how come you’re out now? You’re not old enough to have 'retired with distinction…' ”

“Israeli Army. Gulf War.”

“What?! But you’re Indian!”

“Yes… I was working there actually. When the Gulf War began, the government resorted to emergency recruitment. Almost all foreigners working in the country had to sign up. I signed up before they forced me to. I managed to get back to India a while after the war began. Managed to see a considerable amount of fighting before I left though.”

“But-but-“ she spluttered. Then she stopped short; a sneaking suspicion that he was joking occurred to her. She studied his face- he was dead serious. No, he was not fooling her. “But that’s ridiculous.” she finished weakly.

“Tell me about it.”

“It was not even your war. Not even your country!”

“Yes. Though I wonder if that would have made it considerably better.”

She paused, thinking about that and the ex-soldier’s son took the opportunity to stick his head out of the window and shout for a pair of scissors, which were promptly delivered by the gnarly caretaker. Her attention came back to the matter at hand.

“No haircut!” she squealed.

“Yes haircut. You need a new look young lady. Do not argue with your elders.” his mock anger was totally ineffective.

“I’m not some Israeli soldier! I’m a woman! In Delhi! In peacetime!!”

“I gave haircuts to a couple of women too. There are women in the Israeli army too you know. And trust me, you don’t trifle with the tresses of women who have loaded guns on them. Since I am alive and well, you can safely assume that my handiwork was not too bad. Not bad at all, if I may say so myself.” and he gave them a little bow.

A last ditch attempt to run out of her room…the doorway was blocked by the younger man…

That was how she wound up sitting in a chair an hour later, feeling naked. There were huge clumps of lifeless hair lying all around her on the floor.

Long, apprehensive space of time between the moment the last strand fell, and her personal moment of reckoning. Persuasion and flattery finally worked their charm and she stood before the mirror. Almost elfish. An intruder from Middle Earth. She turned her face, first one way, then another. Examining the angles of her face, her cheekbones. Her small ears! The long hair had been part of her for so long that she could not recollect the last time she had looked at her ears. They were quite pretty really. Perhaps a pair of diamond studs…

“Not bad.” she told the triumphant hairdresser, smiling happily.

“A toast to your new look, what say?”, this from the one who had started it all.

She said yes.

They drove down to the marketplace and picked up beer and ships. Father and son had had the foresight to bring red wine along with them, from Delhi. Goan red wine. She had had that wine in Goa, long ago, in another lifetime. And as she tasted it again that night, she tasted the other, long-ago nights infused with the crashing of waves and the swaying palm trees and she wanted to cry. But she did not. Instead, she laughed and opened a packet of Classic-Salted chips.
A couple of drinks later the ambience was pleasantly companionable. When the caretaker entered with the dinner they had ordered, the older man requested him to sing them something. “I heard you singing the other morning as you were making the beds. I have wanted to hear you again ever since. Please do oblige us.”

His son added that they would love to hear him, and she threw in an entreating “Please!”

The worn caretaker sat down on the floor, obligingly. He thought for a few minutes, probably going over the repertoire of songs in his head, selecting a suitable one. She thought abstractedly about how gracefully the older man had put across his wish. She had often winced when tactless friends had asked locals to perform (yes, it was like performing.) for them during trips many years ago. Like they were specimens or something. Really, she had thought back then, that urban Indians were as bad as the ignorant Americans who loudmouthed their way into the country and expected to find elephants on Delhi’s main roads, and snake charmers in Mumbai’s high-rises. But this, this was different- the CEO wanted to listen, not click a photograph and stash it in an album to be shown to all and sundry. And it showed.

So when the old man sang, he sang for someone who was truly listening.
That showed too.

She had often wondered what people meant when they said music took them to ‘a different world’. “I’m transported.” Her sister used to say whenever she listened to Beethoven’s ninth symphony. The caretaker’s rendition of the hilly folk song helped her to understand. She was not ‘transported’. But she was swept up with the notes that flowed from one line to the next, that tripped from stanza to stanza. It was a local song, probably. She could not slot it. It was not racy, but it was not slow either. Cheerful yes, but tragic too. Simple yes, but with a peculiar inflection in the voice. And intense. Wholly and completely absorbed in its own existence. The man sang and it was like the whole universe was just a singing man and an audience of three.
Was he singing of life? Death? What lies after? Love? Pain? Jealousy? Crops? Mountains? Family? Goats? Electricity? Shops?

It did not matter. She listened, and for that short period, she was totally and wonderfully aware- of the brilliant masterplan that governed all existence in its merry chaos.

She simply was.

“Thank you.” this softly, from the young man when the last word (word? Was it in a real language then? It had seemed transcendental) faded away. And the wrinkled person bowed his head in acknowledgement, and left the room. A trance like state (maybe she was just drunk…she did not think so though…). A few moments of silence as drinks were reclaimed and the experience was stored. But not to be relegated to the depths of oblivion. The shelves had glass doors, and you could look inside whenever you wanted.

Followed by ghazals. AR Rahman. The Beatles. Britney Spears’ ‘Oops’ (and she rediscovered her talent as a mimic…the last time she had used that had probably been back in College…Mr. Sharma’s desperate attempts to flirt with his prettiest student). Michael Jackson’s ‘Heal the World’. Ghalib. The older man’s laughable try at the moonwalk. They all cracked up at that and their laughter must have echoed deep and far in the valley that night. The wonderment spread its wings and leapt off the peak.

A comfortable exhaustion after a while. The older man excused himself, “I’m getting old. I need my sleep.” he yawned. Left.

Then it was just the two of them. Glimmering intimacy. They moved out into the porch. Pitch black night and a zillion stars in the sky. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Strains of music in her head. His hand strayed towards hers. The clasp brought fireworks in her soul and the last pillar lay in the dust, reduced to nothing.
Epiphany.
She found herself in the contours of his body. The chilly air pierced their beings, and their love warmed the mountainside. And they were one. With each other. With the wind. With the mountainside. No whispering, no murmuring…a complete and absolute silence that shook the world and she trembled with it. Treasuring the moment and letting it seep into every fibre. The universe exploded, and she was as free as the wind itself.

Later, a deep sleep in her room while they held each other hostage in their mutual embrace.

Still later, he got up and kissed her goodbye. He and his father were going to a nearby hill station for the day. To take photographs of the famous scenic forests there. She had declined to go; it would be nice for them to have some time together. And she wanted to finish her book too. He said they would be back in the evening. She smiled mistily at him, and went back to sleep once he had left. She got up only at lunchtime.

They were not back in the evening. Or at night. She was worried sick by midnight and the caretaker had to give her a talking-to before she realized that it was impossible to get to the forests until tomorrow morning. She tossed and turned for hours before drowning into troubled dreams. When she awoke the next morning, the old man was waiting outside her door. The morning greeted her with the news of death.

A wreck on the winding pot-holed road on the way to the forest. Their jeep mangled with a Maruti Van. Both drivers died instantly. The Maruti had no other passengers. The second occupant of the Jeep was critically injured and lay in a nearby clinic.

“Who was driving?”

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity...
Hide and seek