cold water, again and again, as if that would cool the heat inside my head.
When Aai came to call me for lunch, I was outside, watching the summer rain. I know now that I’m still not well. I should have listened to Aai. I asked her to cancel my afternoon appointment with Dr Khanvilkar.
In the middle of all this, Anubhav called. He had seen me that morning, walking past the tennis courts. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he was upset that I hadn’t gone to visit him. What could I say? He said, ‘If you’re coming into the city, just tell me. Why bump around in a bus?’ This is the boy I taught how to ride a motorcycle. Has he forgotten that? Have I? I don’t understand anything. This town seems like a big city sometimes and sometimes it’s a village. You step out and bump into a dozen people you know.
I have started to feel that the friends you make in school, the ones you’ve known forever, begin to turn into fossils. They merge into their families, losing all identity. You don’t know the new ones as much as you should. They can fool you.
Why can’t Anubhav walk into my life as a new friend?
3 August
Orayan’s father had a riverside bungalow. It was empty and it stood in for a studio through the vacations. It had glass windows six feet high. Evening light streamed slantwise through these windows. The walls were painted in different colours, courtesy Orayan. The floor was wood; it echoed under your feet if you had shoes on.
My twelfth standard holidays were spent in this room. Now, I didn’t mind being banned from the upstairs room; after all, I was meeting him every day.
In the middle of the room, I sat on a variety of objects: on chairs, on stools, on paatis, on the floor and once on a ladder laid on its side. Around me, the trance team worked on their easels. He was right in front of me, all the time. His eyes swung from me to the canvas and back, barely resting for seconds before shifting again. No one let me peek. Nor could I get up in between. After lunch, I would sometimes begin to drowse. I would fall asleep sometimes, quick catnaps, but since I didn’t drop out of the pose, no one stopped working. I would wait for four to strike.
That was a break for tea, brewed on an electric stove. There was a coal stove outside. Sahadev would cook corn on the cob, spicing them and salting them and we would devour those too. Twenty minutes later, everyone would get back to work because they knew that on the dot, at six, I would be up and out of there.
At the end of the first week, they looked at each other’s work. (They had decided this before starting.) I could not recognize myself in any of their paintings, except in Bahaar’s. I told Bahaar, ‘You’re the only painter here. That looks like a photograph of me.’ Wrong thing to say apparently. Bahaar’s face fell and Sahadev started to smile but tried to cover it up. Then they started talking shop, the gobbledygook of art students.
The next day, I said, ‘What’s all this, sitting in a room and painting? Go out, enjoy nature, paint some trees and flowers and stuff.’ The next Sunday, I was to take the children of the Zilla Parishad school on a river clean-up. At least, we’d clear up the banks of plastic. I told them, ‘Take your boards and let’s go. Draw me as I clear up the river.’ And right enough, they all appeared on the banks of the river with their paraphernalia. They sketched for a bit and then began to help too.
By the time the vacation had ended, the trance bunch could have had an exhibition of portraits of me. I don’t know what they learned or what they got out of it. They were practising.
I never saw those paintings again.
By the end of the holidays, I knew I was in love with him. It wasn’t just a body thing. I’m not a halfway person. Either I love or I detest. Him, I loved. I loved his quietness, his understated way with words, his independence, his ability to respect your space. I had not fallen in love before so I
When Aai came to call me for lunch, I was outside, watching the summer rain. I know now that I’m still not well. I should have listened to Aai. I asked her to cancel my afternoon appointment with Dr Khanvilkar.
In the middle of all this, Anubhav called. He had seen me that morning, walking past the tennis courts. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he was upset that I hadn’t gone to visit him. What could I say? He said, ‘If you’re coming into the city, just tell me. Why bump around in a bus?’ This is the boy I taught how to ride a motorcycle. Has he forgotten that? Have I? I don’t understand anything. This town seems like a big city sometimes and sometimes it’s a village. You step out and bump into a dozen people you know.
I have started to feel that the friends you make in school, the ones you’ve known forever, begin to turn into fossils. They merge into their families, losing all identity. You don’t know the new ones as much as you should. They can fool you.
Why can’t Anubhav walk into my life as a new friend?
3 August
Orayan’s father had a riverside bungalow. It was empty and it stood in for a studio through the vacations. It had glass windows six feet high. Evening light streamed slantwise through these windows. The walls were painted in different colours, courtesy Orayan. The floor was wood; it echoed under your feet if you had shoes on.
My twelfth standard holidays were spent in this room. Now, I didn’t mind being banned from the upstairs room; after all, I was meeting him every day.
In the middle of the room, I sat on a variety of objects: on chairs, on stools, on paatis, on the floor and once on a ladder laid on its side. Around me, the trance team worked on their easels. He was right in front of me, all the time. His eyes swung from me to the canvas and back, barely resting for seconds before shifting again. No one let me peek. Nor could I get up in between. After lunch, I would sometimes begin to drowse. I would fall asleep sometimes, quick catnaps, but since I didn’t drop out of the pose, no one stopped working. I would wait for four to strike.
That was a break for tea, brewed on an electric stove. There was a coal stove outside. Sahadev would cook corn on the cob, spicing them and salting them and we would devour those too. Twenty minutes later, everyone would get back to work because they knew that on the dot, at six, I would be up and out of there.
At the end of the first week, they looked at each other’s work. (They had decided this before starting.) I could not recognize myself in any of their paintings, except in Bahaar’s. I told Bahaar, ‘You’re the only painter here. That looks like a photograph of me.’ Wrong thing to say apparently. Bahaar’s face fell and Sahadev started to smile but tried to cover it up. Then they started talking shop, the gobbledygook of art students.
The next day, I said, ‘What’s all this, sitting in a room and painting? Go out, enjoy nature, paint some trees and flowers and stuff.’ The next Sunday, I was to take the children of the Zilla Parishad school on a river clean-up. At least, we’d clear up the banks of plastic. I told them, ‘Take your boards and let’s go. Draw me as I clear up the river.’ And right enough, they all appeared on the banks of the river with their paraphernalia. They sketched for a bit and then began to help too.
By the time the vacation had ended, the trance bunch could have had an exhibition of portraits of me. I don’t know what they learned or what they got out of it. They were practising.
I never saw those paintings again.
By the end of the holidays, I knew I was in love with him. It wasn’t just a body thing. I’m not a halfway person. Either I love or I detest. Him, I loved. I loved his quietness, his understated way with words, his independence, his ability to respect your space. I had not fallen in love before so I
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