Anand Prakash

            I had been searching for sandal incense sticks for a long time now. It wasn’t that they are tough to find but I was looking for locally produced sandal incense sticks, not the one from big brands such as Moksh, Cycle Pure, or Mangaldeep. I had told some of my friends here to get me good locally produced sandal incense sticks and they would give me a call during weekends, when they were out on family shopping, to tell me about big brand incense sticks. I would respond with thank you for trying. In search, I had gone to the shops adjoining temples, which are in plenty in Bangalore, I had talked to bicycle or moped incense vendors, and I had cut short my journey the moment many a times I saw a shop which looked promising.

            I would often go to shops. The owner would show me Mogra, Rose, Lavender, Chameli incense sticks and tell me they smell even better than what you asked for. “What you asked for by the way?” I had told them both in English and Hindi. But  when such suggestion and this question became frequent, I googled Kannada words for Sandalwood. I would even use those tongue-twisting words such as Ekkada, Kera, Padarakse, Mettu, and Srigandhada, at every chance I got to explain what I am looking for. Not many owners appreciated my hard work. I got two types of responses: some owner and people felt that I was making fun of their languages and would give me a hard stare (whenever this happened, I didn’t stay there a minute longer) while other people would ask me repeatedly what you want and urge me to speak in Kannada and then would giggle and not only that I had increased the sale of those shops, as they would call passersby to listen to me (I could be a sport for a short time but with repetition I felt humiliated). I don’t call this discrimination. I would have behaved the same to anyone from other state had I not gone out of my state to live or work. Other strange behaviors I had observed are: Some people would ask to me, “Why are you throwing your waste here?” I didn’t have any idea where to throw my waste, until I saw them throwing their waste there. Sometime, I would stand in a dosa place and working people would ignore me until I am the last one in front of them. How much more fun one can get in search of incense sticks?

            One would wonder that how tough was it to find out locally produced sandal incense stick in the Bangalore but I couldn’t. I might be possible that I hadn’t gone to the right place or hadn’t found the right place in my wanderings. I wasn’t always unsuccessful. I didn’t find some locally produced sandal incense stick. One I found smelled great. I bought it and lit it. It generated so much of smoke that I thought it would work better as an insect repellent. After some tries, I had almost given up on the idea of finding a good locally produced sandal incense sticks.

            I stepped down from the bus in Jayanagar, where I had come to get some clothes. I crossed the road and reached to other side. The moment I stepped on the sidewalk, I got the whiff of fragrance. Next moment,  I found myself standing in front of a vast stacks of incense sticks. There, to my surprise, was the box of sandal incense sticks. As I took a box of the sticks to check where these words produced, I noticed a laminated sheet on the left of the sandal incense sticks. In the laminated sheet, there was a black and white photo of a guy who remotely looked like him. Underneath the picture, Shivalingu M. was written. This seller was a differently abled person. There was white stick next to him and he looked away from me. Next to him, sat a guy in ICICI ATM bank uniform. Since I picked the box, I felt that his blind eyes had been shifted toward me, as if he judged a new customer by a smell of which incense stick he had picked it up or smelled the difference in the smell of that particular incense. Something was there but I just couldn’t be sure. One thing I was sure that this was a locally, as well as hand rolled, sandal incense stick.

            Even before I would be overcome by pity, he asked me in Kannada, “What do you want?”  Until now, I had gotten used to questions in Kannada but I had felt that people here had gotten used to get answers in Hindi or English (I asked him in Hindi, thinking that he wouldn’t know English) “How much for this sandal incense pack?” He replied, “170 Rs, sir.” I said, “Okay.” I took out two 100 Rs notes and passed it him. I told him that I have given him two notes of 100. At this time, I thought that the ATM guy, who sat next to him, was his friend and might help him out in dealing with currency. He took the two notes from me, took out a 100 note from his top shirt pocket, judged my notes with length and width of his 100 Rs note and then he said, “200 Rs, sir.”

            Then, put these notes in the top shirt pocket, pulled out changes from his pant pocket. There were notes of Rs. 50, 20, and 10. He straighten them out on his palm once again and once again he assessed their dimensions. He gave me a smallest one and then middle sized one notes.

            It took him less than a minute doing this.

            “Thank you!” It came out of my mouth automatically.

            He said, “You are welcome!”

            All the pity, I had after this sentence, was I had for myself.

       I was in the Delhi Metro, sitting on the edge between two seats. Then, she walked in, almost disrupting the entire crowd in front of me. Close to five foot and three inches tall, she was big and healthy, almost ripping apart the salwar kameez she had on. She dragged a boy, of approximately  six or seven years old, wearing yellow shirt, behind her. The boy chirped unnecessarily, “Ma, Ma” and loudly over the reverberation of the running metro, sound of metro’s bilingual directions, and passenger’s voices. She was followed by a young girl in her early teens, an exact young replica of her and a guy of her height, who wore a white kurta and a chudiaar. In front of me, and now in front of her, there were two seat assigned to ladies, with the slogan, For Ladies Only. She turned and stared at everyone sitting on my side, one by one, as if, actually I had this feeling that she wanted someone to get up for Her Majesty.  

            Since she walked in and since our eyes met, I felt this surge of dislike for her. I don’t know why. I haven’t seen her and she hadn’t done anything against me. But there was no way I liked her. There was a strange aura around her. The kind of aura that puts people off, or at least me, I had seen people like her. So, when she stared at me, I stared at her strongly, almost with vengeance, as if she had done a wrong to me or someone in my family. Her hands and whatever of her arms were in open were full of heena. Top of her eyelids had a plaques of unequal size, as if someone had injected something there and it had stayed there. I didn’t care how flawless her skin looked because of makeup and how much her son circled around her girth, I wasn’t going to give the inch of seat, where I was sitting and I mentally urged everyone to stare strongly at her. She wasn’t successful in getting any purchase on my side, I felt victorious.

            She turned again. I could see her and her expression in the opposite mirror as long as the metro’s running on dark background of the night. She stared at the ladies sitting in the ladies’ seat. When she couldn’t do with stare, I could see the plight in her eyes. I smiled. But when this expression didn’t do her any good, she continued with her staring. I don’t know what happened but one of the ladies had given up and emptied the seat with an exasperated sigh.

            Instead of sitting there, she forced his son to sit there. The son vehemently denied but she held him down there, still staring at the other lady. The lady was elder than her. The other lady stared at her but then looked other way: so many people to look at in the crowded metro. The kid jumped out his mother’s reach. “Can’t you sit straight?” She yelled and pulled him back. The kid retorted, “You sit down.” Seeing this all happening around her, and the efforts she was putting to stand upright, the lanky guy who sat next to the seat of her son got up and offered the seat to her. Domination flashed in her eyes instead of gratitude. She called her daughter to sit on that seat. Though she sat down but the kid kept jumping out of her reach. She was forced to sit down and pulled the kid on her arms, against his will. Her girth was too much for one seat of metro, plus she had widened her dimensions by taking the kid in her arms, who slither out of her reach whenever she loosened her grip over him.

            When she sat there, she stretched beyond her dimensions. The lady on the adjoining seat maintained her posture despite the fact the lady sneered at her and despite the fact that her kid’s shoes soiled her leggings. Keeping the kid in her arms, she had been putting effort even in breathing, let alone maintaining her posture. When she couldn’t hold the kid anymore, she pushed the kid away, toward the guy with a chudidar and kurta, “Go to your father.”

            She shifted in her seat and once again, stared at the lady in the adjoining seat. I don’t know whether it was her stop or not but the other lady got up and walked toward the door. In a flash, which I hadn’t expected from the lady of her size, she got up and pulled her son, who was busy pole-dancing around one of the pole of the metro carriage, on to the seat she was occupying.  She sat on the adjoining seat. So, in a span of ten minutes, she had occupied three seats: two of ladies and one general. On one of her two ladies seats, her son sat. Then, few minutes later, she got up and pushed her husband on to the second ladies seat, when other ladies were still standing there. She walked away on the other side of the metro carriage, and there, she made someone got up from his seat. He was a known person with whom her family first walked in the metro. She sat down next to other two ladies and started chirping how beautiful her heena was.

                Something fell from my neighbor’s roof, making a thud noise. From distance, it look like a block of wood. I went closer. I hadn’t seen a bread this dry.  A part of it was black also. Not tough to conclude it was infected with fungus, the one invariably grows in food stuff, if left outside.

                I didn’t touch it. I could have picked it up and dumped in the waste basket. But I was lazy, so I cursed my neighbors. I felt that I would never tired of cursing my neighbors, until the bread disappear.

                Sunday came. The cube of bread barely moved its place. Then, it rained. No wind,  just torrential rain. I heard an electrical transformer exploding nearby. I sighed. The light was gone. I was force to sit out.

                Then, from somewhere a pigeon came. The pigeon must have come before. Maybe he had come when I wasn’t around. So many birds fly over my roof that I had hardly time to notice. I didn’t move from my chair. The pigeon stared at me. The bread, now softened, was halfway between me and the pigeon. I started breathing slowly. My chest rose up barely from my slow breathing and my eyes remained fixed on the bird.

                The pigeon took one step, hesitatingly, toward the bread. Then, one step back when I suddenly coughed. I didn’t intend to cough. It came from nowhere, just like the pigeon. After that, a staring contest between me and pigeon started. It went until, my breath stabilized. First step was again full of hesitation but his next steps became smoother. He must have seen laziness in my eyes, so he approached the bread with fervor. He was coming closer to the bread and me. Though he didn’t open or move his beak unnecessarily, one could easily find hunger in his eyes. The way he dug his beak into the bread, my doubt of his hunger were confirmed. He seemed to be in some kind of hurry.

                Now, I knew for sure. He must have come here before. I hadn’t seen him waiting for the rain. He must have been waiting for rain to soften the bread. His wish had been granted today. He arrived. I bet he would have relished it more, had he not found me staring him.

                The pigeon poked the soft bread with his beak and kept gulping it. I thought to throw something at the pigeon so that he won’t eat the blackened part, infected with fungus but what would I know about hunger, the one who get to eat three times a day. The infected part might kill him but if he didn’t eat, hunger would surely kill him. So, I just stared. Once in a while, he would raise his neck to stare at me but for the most part he kept going. He kept on eating till he reached the black part. It might be that he knew the part was infected or it might tasted bitter like old and squished lemon.

                Or he might as well be full.

                If he would ever comes back, I would throw some biscuits toward him for making almost all the bread to disappear.