The traffic was noisy and the dust and fumes as eye-watering as usual. The ring road connecting the suburbs of the city was always busy. The lorries were the main polluters followed by the buses and the auto rickshaws. Thick grey clouds of smoke billowed from their rickety exhaust pipes and the noise was at the usual deafening level. I sat inside the car with the windows up and ran my eyes desultorily over the whole picture.
The kids were singing aloud to some song in the car and my husband was sitting near the opposite window looking out. This particular signal was a pain – it took too long to change lights and that meant only a few vehicles could inch along at the junction. We settled ourselves for a bit of a wait. The regular troop of vendors came out and started selling their wares. One sold guavas – ripe and unripe. I have a fondness for the strongly flavoured fruit but have never actually bought any from the on-road guys. They have a huge tray on which the fruit are piled in a half-cone with a little bowl of chilli powder and salt together with a knife that has probably never been washed even once in all the generations of its service. You can buy the fruit cut as is or cut and sprinkled with the chilli and salt. The guava guy is generally quite popular.
The next guy to walk by the car with his goods on display was the ‘car wipe cloth’ guy. I usually call him that because my driver invariably wants to buy the bright red badly dyed pieces of cloth that he sells in order to wipe the car. My precious sharkskin leather piece goes unused and fluffy cotton goes ignored in favour of the red threadbare towels. These highly-prized towels always lose colour and when my driver is feeling particularly energetic, leaves red stains on the car upholstery as well. But he cannot be moved - white is out, only red will do.
We also get a visit from the friendly neighbourhood hijdas or persons of mixed sex ( I honestly do not know the politically correct term for that) who prefer the motorcycle crowd. They rub their hands all over the poor victim and shimmy closer in their outrageously low-cut blouses teamed with filmy saris - if the guy is not forthcoming with the money, they then make lewd gestures and pronounce curses on the poor guy for the next couple of generations. Funnily enough a ten rupee note makes a quick appearance after the curse and all is well with the curse being withdrawn and effusive blessings given in their stead.
The samosa guy is a regular. He sells the south Indian style samosas which are triangular (not conical) and have a thin crisp skin and some sort of unidentifiable filling inside. He walks in between the lorries for the drivers are his best customers. He tries his hand at selling to the others as well. He walks quickly and purposefully while balancing a heavily and artfully laden tray of samosas, dodging the odd cyclist and perpetually moving scooterwallah who is always on the lookout for the smallest gap between vehicles. Suddenly I hear my husband laughing. I asked him what was so funny. He tells me to look at the samosa guy carefully. I see him wiping a sorry looking samosa on his shirt and then blowing on it before carefully replacing it on his tray. I missed the first part during which the samosa had rolled under the car in front of us and he had dived to pick it up. I couldn’t help grinning. Real street food indeed!
The light finally turned green long enough for us to pass and move on to the next signal where more slices of life awaited us. The next time you are in Bangalore and on the ring road, don’t forget to look out for the spunky samosa guy and more importantly, don’t get the urge to try one of his crisp samosas!
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Gorby
I used to know this cat. She was an occasional visitor to our place – she preferred the capacious ‘tharavadu’ situated a little to the south east of our house. She looked aristocratic so it seemed fitting that she live in a traditional Kerala home rather than in a modern day concrete affair like ours. So we called her “Thamburaty” (Thambu for short) which in Malayalam means a lady who is the head of a noble house (we Nairs are matriarchal so women were traditionally more important). Now this lovely cat was very elegant and spotless white with black tipping only the tail. She would come on the lazy summer mornings and I would talk to her – she would listen for a while and leave. This became a sort of routine. I was about 14 at the time I think and loved cats dearly.
Thambu appeared a number of times that hot summer and one day I heard a pitiful pained mewling from the loft. There was no easy way to climb to it so I ran outside, climbed the ladder to the terrace and peeked through a slit next to the top of the kitchen wall – there she was, our friend the queen, licking up three tiny little kittens. That was the beginning of our succession of cats. It all started with lovely Thambu...
The three kittens were very different in sight as well as temperament. There was Gorby, Spotty and Tiger or Tigu for short. Tigu was a wonderfully cute kitten. He was chocolate coloured with darker stripes and looked exactly like a chocolate tiger and hence the name. He was active and so ridiculously funny when he was seriously stalking a frog or some such creature for he was tiny and never did grow much before he died like so many of my later kittens. In those days, we didn’t have any knowledge about the diseases that could take the lives of cats and veterinarians in that backward spot only dealt with cows – cats were a waste. Spotty was not very lovable. She was white with three spots of black on her head on the left side – it made her look rather asymmetric and while she may have had a good enough nature, I never really had a bond with her. It is her children however that kept Thambu’s line going so I do have a soft spot for her.
Of course my all time favourite was Gorby. He is the reason I write this story. I called him Gorbachev simply because he was white and had an odd shaped black mark right on the centre of his head just like good old Mikhail Gorbachev did. I like to believe he was more than a cat because he had a very highly evolved soul. Generally tomcats (stray ones, not pedigreed ones – just the ordinary ones who would have died outside your front door had you not taken them in) don’t stay at home – they come to eat occasionally if they were hungryMore often they’d get their own meat and would just come for a look once every few months and then there would be no sign of them. Gorby was from the very outset, quite different. He was a house cat and did not show any signs of being ashamed of it. He was very well behaved and did not jump into the communal bowl of milk like his siblings. He was obsessively clean and licked himself like there was no tomorrow. He was also amazingly intelligent.
When Gorby and his brother and sister were very small, we’d get them into our huge hall and move the furniture to the side and play with them. We’d get them some little thing like a bit of string or a small ball or even a small pencil and drop it or wiggle it around. The three would jump up arching their backs and attack. It was hilarious. The string would metamorphose into a snake and Tigu would act very superior when he managed to subdue it. The ball would be too much for the playful kittens and they’d each bat it with their paws and start in surprise when it moved – they’d zoom after it only to slip and slide and land upside down when they hit the sofa or someone’s foot! This always happened because the floor was smooth and they never know how to control their speed. My sister and brother and I would be organized into three sections. One person had to keep the kittens engaged the other would watch to see they didn’t get hurt while I would hold a rolled up newspaper and deliver a running commentary while the kittens played their version of major league soccer. Innocent and cheap entertainment which also called for a little imagination like most of our modes of passing time in childhood.
Gorby was a wonder and a delight. He loved going for walks and would tag along whenever I had to go anywhere close. He would bound to the front and look back as if beckoning while I made my way through the dense grass and wild shrubbery that seemed to spring out of the earth constantly even if we tried to get someone to remove it on a regular basis. Gorby would walk all around me as I made my way to the communal well to get the pump started (to fill our water tank) and then we’d take a little time and walk around slowly so he’d get to investigate his little interests on the way back.
I swear there were many times I felt that Gorby understood whatever we told him and sometimes intuited more. I especially recall one incident involving my elder sister. She would study on a need-to-pass basis so she always waited till the last week before exams and then went overboard. She would tell everyone to call her at 4 in the morning and then go off to sleep. I slept on top of a bunk bed in those days with her on the bottom bed. He promptly walked in at 4 the next morning and jumped onto her stomach after mewing softly and getting no response. He then kneaded his claws on her tummy to get her attention and wake her up. She yelled and turned over but he persisted till she got up. Whether she studied or not, he never knew but he went away satisfied that he had done his bit in making sure she would do college!
I remember how gentle he was with one of us kids if we were unwell. He would sit close by and keep us company through our fever or stomach-ache and had the gentlest expression on his beautiful face. I have never seen a cat that could emote like Gorby. How devoted he was to the entire family as opposed to regular cats who only thought of people as their meal tickets and slaves!
We had Gorby for a few years before he started showing signs of an illness. His beautiful coat began to lose its shine. He lost weight and wasn’t overly bothered about grooming himself. Worst of all he developed a huge festering sore or canker of some sort on his right ear. We tried cleaning the sore and putting in antibiotic powder but it only got worse like an exposed cancer. He looked like a ghost of his former self and our pity seemed to wound his dignity even more. Then one fine day he just walked away never to come back. I never saw his body or found out where he went. This was a cat who never left the house for long and I explored all his haunts and found nothing. A part of me wanted to believe that he was away having a great time somewhere but I knew very well that he had passed and chose to go away and do it quietly with a minimum of fuss. Even as I write this story down, tears come unbidden to my eyes. I cannot forget my lovely Gorby who felt like a soul I had known before in a previous lifetime. Words don’t do justice to him and the delight he gave us by simply being. I hope Gorby is back in some other form and having a blast in his current incarnation. Rock on Gorby!
Thambu appeared a number of times that hot summer and one day I heard a pitiful pained mewling from the loft. There was no easy way to climb to it so I ran outside, climbed the ladder to the terrace and peeked through a slit next to the top of the kitchen wall – there she was, our friend the queen, licking up three tiny little kittens. That was the beginning of our succession of cats. It all started with lovely Thambu...
The three kittens were very different in sight as well as temperament. There was Gorby, Spotty and Tiger or Tigu for short. Tigu was a wonderfully cute kitten. He was chocolate coloured with darker stripes and looked exactly like a chocolate tiger and hence the name. He was active and so ridiculously funny when he was seriously stalking a frog or some such creature for he was tiny and never did grow much before he died like so many of my later kittens. In those days, we didn’t have any knowledge about the diseases that could take the lives of cats and veterinarians in that backward spot only dealt with cows – cats were a waste. Spotty was not very lovable. She was white with three spots of black on her head on the left side – it made her look rather asymmetric and while she may have had a good enough nature, I never really had a bond with her. It is her children however that kept Thambu’s line going so I do have a soft spot for her.
Of course my all time favourite was Gorby. He is the reason I write this story. I called him Gorbachev simply because he was white and had an odd shaped black mark right on the centre of his head just like good old Mikhail Gorbachev did. I like to believe he was more than a cat because he had a very highly evolved soul. Generally tomcats (stray ones, not pedigreed ones – just the ordinary ones who would have died outside your front door had you not taken them in) don’t stay at home – they come to eat occasionally if they were hungryMore often they’d get their own meat and would just come for a look once every few months and then there would be no sign of them. Gorby was from the very outset, quite different. He was a house cat and did not show any signs of being ashamed of it. He was very well behaved and did not jump into the communal bowl of milk like his siblings. He was obsessively clean and licked himself like there was no tomorrow. He was also amazingly intelligent.
When Gorby and his brother and sister were very small, we’d get them into our huge hall and move the furniture to the side and play with them. We’d get them some little thing like a bit of string or a small ball or even a small pencil and drop it or wiggle it around. The three would jump up arching their backs and attack. It was hilarious. The string would metamorphose into a snake and Tigu would act very superior when he managed to subdue it. The ball would be too much for the playful kittens and they’d each bat it with their paws and start in surprise when it moved – they’d zoom after it only to slip and slide and land upside down when they hit the sofa or someone’s foot! This always happened because the floor was smooth and they never know how to control their speed. My sister and brother and I would be organized into three sections. One person had to keep the kittens engaged the other would watch to see they didn’t get hurt while I would hold a rolled up newspaper and deliver a running commentary while the kittens played their version of major league soccer. Innocent and cheap entertainment which also called for a little imagination like most of our modes of passing time in childhood.
Gorby was a wonder and a delight. He loved going for walks and would tag along whenever I had to go anywhere close. He would bound to the front and look back as if beckoning while I made my way through the dense grass and wild shrubbery that seemed to spring out of the earth constantly even if we tried to get someone to remove it on a regular basis. Gorby would walk all around me as I made my way to the communal well to get the pump started (to fill our water tank) and then we’d take a little time and walk around slowly so he’d get to investigate his little interests on the way back.
I swear there were many times I felt that Gorby understood whatever we told him and sometimes intuited more. I especially recall one incident involving my elder sister. She would study on a need-to-pass basis so she always waited till the last week before exams and then went overboard. She would tell everyone to call her at 4 in the morning and then go off to sleep. I slept on top of a bunk bed in those days with her on the bottom bed. He promptly walked in at 4 the next morning and jumped onto her stomach after mewing softly and getting no response. He then kneaded his claws on her tummy to get her attention and wake her up. She yelled and turned over but he persisted till she got up. Whether she studied or not, he never knew but he went away satisfied that he had done his bit in making sure she would do college!
I remember how gentle he was with one of us kids if we were unwell. He would sit close by and keep us company through our fever or stomach-ache and had the gentlest expression on his beautiful face. I have never seen a cat that could emote like Gorby. How devoted he was to the entire family as opposed to regular cats who only thought of people as their meal tickets and slaves!
We had Gorby for a few years before he started showing signs of an illness. His beautiful coat began to lose its shine. He lost weight and wasn’t overly bothered about grooming himself. Worst of all he developed a huge festering sore or canker of some sort on his right ear. We tried cleaning the sore and putting in antibiotic powder but it only got worse like an exposed cancer. He looked like a ghost of his former self and our pity seemed to wound his dignity even more. Then one fine day he just walked away never to come back. I never saw his body or found out where he went. This was a cat who never left the house for long and I explored all his haunts and found nothing. A part of me wanted to believe that he was away having a great time somewhere but I knew very well that he had passed and chose to go away and do it quietly with a minimum of fuss. Even as I write this story down, tears come unbidden to my eyes. I cannot forget my lovely Gorby who felt like a soul I had known before in a previous lifetime. Words don’t do justice to him and the delight he gave us by simply being. I hope Gorby is back in some other form and having a blast in his current incarnation. Rock on Gorby!
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