To Sonali.. wherever you are..

With the Great Britain being under heavy attack from the gales and storms outside and an equally feisty Big Brother claptrap that has soaked into all conversations inside, I  thought it would not be a bad escape to go through  my old notebooks quietly in the corner room  along with  some liberal  supply of tea.   And as I was peering over a few , I  found this  Travelogue from  India from a couple of summers back.  It instantly took me back to the exact evening in Bombay .Going over it again, made me reflect on a lot of things, personal and beyond. Although It was nothing compared to how I had felt that evening, Strangely, it felt both good and sad to be reminded. Because unless we are not reminded we don’t remember. And we all know how important  it is to remember in the great art of learning and unlearning.

Anyway, here’s the entry..

She must be some ten summers old. When the waves sweep over the shore, a breeze nudges her tresses onto her face. Her ragged old skirt flutters.
Ask her name and she smiles shyly revealing a half-bent tooth that looks like a piano key held midway by an invisible finger.
On her bare feet, she travels hurriedly across the sands, through this vast maze of shifting humanity asking in her low voice “ Mehndi lagaon*? Mehndi lagaon”?
After a while someone would oblige. Mostly for their own delight. Sometimes out of sympathy to her plight.
As the mehndi grows and takes shape they would sit there enamoured by the colour and the design that unfolds, unmindful of the tiny hand that colours.
It is beautiful and complete now.
Between the coloured and the colouring hands, a note of currency, is exchanged. And with that a silent social denomination too. After that, the hands withdraw to their respective worlds.
Her world is simple. Through her colours, she is permitted only to touch another world. And to keep on touching as many worlds.
No less. No more.
To the sea with its sinking sun, there exists just one world, a world in which another day of summer has ticked. Just like any other summer wherein a dream melts and flows as shame.

~Juhu Beach , Bombay. (Summer of 2005)

Mehndi- N.Hindi.a colouring extract from a plant called Henna ,used as an application to decorate the skin.

PS:~ Please Come to Edinburgh, July 2 / 2005 / www.makepovertyhistory.org /