ā•multiplicity

The clouds are too thick to allow morning. The earliest hour remains in shadows.  There is the smell of rain but not a drop has fallen. Whistling through the apartment windows is the wind. It chills the dawn, and Dheeraj, sleeping next to me on the floor, pulls his cover over his head, a head sprawling with locks of hair like weeds thicker and blacker than the night. He still sleeps like the boy I remember. His mother, his father, his brother: all would scream his name and he would not waken. He would sleep through the crash that ends the world. 

In the birdsong of morning, I try to imagine the color and shape of the birds I hear but cannot see. Their song is alien, the only thing alien about a world that became a part of me so long ago that I cannot remember a me before monsoon. 

My first monsoon was at the opposite end of India, in Delhi, at a time when I still had dark hair—although nothing like Dheeraj’s. I ran out to the rooftop with the family to receive the blessing that fell from a sky so thick it was olive green. The fat raindrops stung, but it was a pleasure after the excruciating heat of summer. I remember the smell. I understood why the fragrance of the first rain after summer has been bottled since ancient times. The cooling scent is soothing like no other.

I fall back asleep. Then I am awakened by the stirring of the maid. She sweeps the floor around me. I see her small, ashen feet. Her toenails have chipped polish and she has silver bangles on her ankles. I try not to look at her as she does with me. She does not acknowledge my presence as I lie on the bed in a white kurta pajama. Dheeraj has gone to work, and the maid picks up his bed. I peek as she leaves the room. There is a colorful scarf covering her hair. She neither looks back nor closes the door as she enters the kitchen. The kitchen is so alight with activity that it sounds like a bus station. It is impossible to sleep any further with the chattering and the clanking of steel utensils in preparing the days delicacies. Listening to the prattle of the women with the maid, I realize they are conversing with her, and I wonder how the maid speaks Hindi.

She is Nepali, Dheeraj tells me later. It appears to me that all of South Asia is migrating to Bangalore, including this family that has always received me over so many years. The Kannada-speaking natives of Bangalore are not only accommodating and friendly with outsiders, but their Hindi often amazes. The opportunities are here and the climate is better, everyone says to explain the choice of Bangalore.

Before I rise, I hear the rumble of a city awakening. The motorbikes and auto rickshaws are noisy even in the distance. I smell the fragance of morning prayers with the waft of sandalwood incense from the window. There is the sound of water but it is not the rain. The kitchen and bathrooms do not stop in the morning rituals. When I smell onions and spices frying in ghee, I rise.

Outside the window of the apartment is Chikka Banaswadi, a village that had been swallowed by a voracious Bangalore. In the lane outside their apartment building are the clichés of India: the dogs skirt around unconcerned cows sleeping in the street; there is an auto-wallah, barefoot, resting with his mobile in his green and yellow rickshaw. Shops crack open. Flowers bloom on trees shading littered corners.

I feel healthier here in the South than I do in my beloved Delhi. The climate is tropical, and monsoon feels like Rio de Janeiro’s winter. I remember how I always get sick in Delhi—that monster scheduled to surpass Tokyo as the world’s most populated city in just few years. Regardless, like all things cherished, that monster is both loved and hated by me, the way that loved ones infuriate—just like Rio de Janeiro.  Cities like Delhi and Rio de Janeiro are not cities; they are states of mind, a way of living.  I don’t feel that in Bangalore, but I set out to the old city, to Chickpet and to Malleshwaram to try to connect to the city that is so welcoming. I had always been unsuccessful bonding with the city among the glass and steel shopping malls of India’s silicon valley. But now, I think I finally caught on, via the food – as always. I finally catch on to what coconut catnis do to idly, what garlic and red pepper catnis do to dosa, and now South Indian food has opened a new world to me that I hunt in lanes.

On the television on the living room, there is tragedy. I decipher enough Hindi with the help of horrific images to understand that Delhi has been submerged under water. The pictures are jaw dropping, and they are followed by images just as shocking from Jaipur—to say nothing of the news from the North, where monsoon hits the melting Himalayas in deadly cloudbursts every year now. Bridges and roads are destroyed. The death count around the nation under monsoon is increasing. 

I see the news from Wayanand, and I shiver. That is exactly the place in the green mountains of the Western Ghats of Kerala to where Dheeraj had been bent on going during our road trip vacation. As the weather forecast started coming in before we got in the car, my intuition told me that Kerala simply would not work out.  Dheeraj, look, I think we need to change plans, I had said, presenting my arguments that north Karnataka seemed clearer of rain. To appease him, I had offered Goa to substitute Kerala. Although on the same Malabar Coast, the forecast seemed a little better for the ex-Portuguese colony. In Goa, we would still be able to see the exuberant nature that a city boy like Dheeraj loves, with all its forests, waterfalls and beaches—things that are not novel for me in Rio de Janeiro. And our direction would still take us past other wild places of tigers and elephants, places like Wayanand.

As I write these words, the death toll from the landslides in Wayanand is past four hundred. The Prime Minister is scheduled to visit. The images are shocking.  Entire villages have been wiped out. Dheeraj had asked me, Didn’t that happen in Brazil recently?

It was a couple of months ago when Dheeraj, my brother, and other friends reached across continents to check in on me when what was described as the world’s largest flood struck Brazil’s south. The world is connected in ways that were unimaginable when I was a child. We see tragedy live on the other side of the world. Yes, I say, remember I told you it was in the south of Brazil, far from me? But it is like I am seeing the same images from Rio Grande do Sul.  Tragedy simply baffles, and I sigh. I conjure empathy, although it is almost impossible to imagine what it would mean to lose all I had, to have loved ones buried under mud. The way hell and high water are rising in the world, I wonder how long before they reach my doorstep.

I can’t believe our luck, Dheeraj says, pointing out that not only did we not go to Wayanand, but everywhere we went we were spared the worst of monsoon. We had sun in North Karnataka and even in Goa. We just had one moment of strong emotions driving down through the forest of the Ghats into Goa. The rain came down like a curtain over the windshield, blinding us with a shimmer of pewter and green. We could barely interpret the curves of the road.

Luck. The word reverberated in my mind. Luck is the great mystery of the world. I think about the Universe, and how it protects us until it doesn’t. There is that inexplicable order that delivers what we want, more than we want, less than we want or the opposite of our desire. That order closed the doors on the coast and waterfalls of Goa for Dheeraj and me after others had paid with their lives for daring the waters. Out of safety concerns during a horrific monsoon, the government shut down much of the tourism. Despite the closures, I had never had a vacation so lucky, where all our dots connected without any stress, although everything had been completely unplanned. Dheeraj and I had only decided we would take a road trip, but surrendered to our plans to the monsoon that would decide. Accepting situations that were not ours to control, I took him to see the Portuguese culture of Goa’s capital Panjim, what is today Panaji, a wonderful little city—a different India, but India nonetheless. I had been there years ago when nobody went to Panjim. Tourism focused on drunken Europeans at beach rave parties of Goa’s north coast, none of which was of interest to me. In a time before the “New India” – before youth with disposable incomes – I remembered clearly how the abandoned, crumbling lanes of old Goa fascinated me. Their familiarity was baffling. At one point, I couldn’t believe that I had crossed the world only to wind right back on my street—at the time, when I lived in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro. It was the same. I could have been at home in Brazil. I realized the Portuguese had been the world’s first astronauts. They had navigated the world. I contemplated the incredible.

Today, the streets of Panjim are hardly abandoned. In world of Instagram tourism, young Indians now flock to Panjim, often with make-up and hair stylists to snap their pictures in front of the colorful Portuguese doorways and windows, driving proprietors crazy. The natives cannot stand it anymore. They often scream at interlopers to get off their property. There are signs everywhere: NO PHOTOGRAPHY.

In my mind, I judge the vanity of such tourists. I conclude there are many problems with such people. But I then remember the philosophy of Iris Murdoch and her very profound definition of love: Attention is love.

Everyone wants attention, I think, practicing a yogic method called pratipakṣabhāvanam, whereby one offsets negative or unconstructive thought or judgement with its opposite. I try to clean the mind by remembering that I also want attention. Everyone wants recognition. Everyone wants to be loved. And I release the young people I remembered, posing for incessant pictures, blocking my path on the main street of Fontainhas, the old Portuguese quarter of Panjim. Without attention, without love, no one would create anything. I wouldn’t write anything. And it may be that the young people’s pursuit of perfection leads them to create their best. Then I think of attention’s opposite, when it is snatched away, and how hurtful that is. I wish the youth with all the Panama hats, posing with foot resting on colorful walls and doorways, never suffer such disregard.

Dheeraj and I have always paid attention to one another. Until today, I call Dheeraj my chota chuha. My little mouse, because when he was a boy in Delhi, I could find him anywhere by following the trail of namkeen on the floor. At one end were his hidden stashes, the bags of crunchies crumpled into dark cupboards that I would steal; at the other end, I would find him, pretending to study, hiding from the family that gave him incessant errands. We’d talk for hours about many things, including yoga. At the time, yoga was something he had only been remotely curious about because it was a physical activity, and he loved sports.

In the way that only children surprise, who would have imagined he would become the yoga teacher that I never was? Today, both of us have changed. We are too disciplined to snack on namkeen between meals, and we both have an unshakeable need for daily physical activity. It is what had always made us perfect travel partners: we combine cycling, running, kayaking or yoga practices with hikes for history and culture. Yet our fondness for gastronomy also lends itself to urban exploration of both the simple and sophisticated. And Dheeraj and I can eat. I mean, a lot.

In the cool of a monsoon morning after Dheeraj had gone off to teach his classes, I was already hungry and decided to think like a chota chuha and find his stash. Dheeraj had bought us dates, walnuts, pistachios, and dried figs for our daily breakfast with coffee. He served me every morning, so I didn’t know where they were kept. I knew they were kept separated from the dry fruits of the family stock, but where to look? In the immaculate cupboards, everything was organized in uniform containers. I did find dried fruits, but not the ones in the crumpled, unbecoming bag we carried for thousands of kilometers.

That little chuha! I am hungry and I am going to find his stash!

Naturally, I found them, crumpled in the back of a bottom storage cupboard. I smiled: Some things never change!

So, Dheeraj, I write these words on your birthday to tell you that I found your stash and you have probably noticed by now that I finished the dates. And although you are now thirty, know you will always be my chota chuha, and I will always smash you like one! And also, know that attention is the greatest generosity, the greatest gift a person can give another. I thank you for all the attention you gave me, taking care of an old man who will always steal your stash!

आप दीर्घायु और आरोग्य हों, और जिंदगी में हमेशा ही यश प्राप्त करें, जन्म दिवस पर यही शुभकामना है कि आपको हर कदम पर जीत मिले।