Dooriyaan : Part 1

महफ़िल मे तेरी

हम ना रहे जो

ग़म तोह नहीं हैं

किस्से हमारी

नज़दीकियों के

कम तोह नहीं हैं

कितनी दफा सुबह को मेरी

तेरे आँगन मे बैंठे

मैंने शाम किया

चन्ना मेरेया मेरेया

चन्ना मेरेया मेरेया

चन्ना मेरेया मेरेया बेलिया

~ channa mererya

~ amitabh bhattacharya

She loved being back in Delhi. It wasn’t the best thing to say to other people or even for that matter for her to accept it for herself. After all Delhi no longer had the colonial-mughal romanticism associated with it, it was no longer just a city steeped in history and abound with mouth watering street eats. It was (unfortunately) more than just the butter dripping Parantha’s from paranthe waali galli or the heartfelt patriotism seeping into you as you stared at the India Gate.Visitors unfortunately no longer describe the beauty of the long stretch of Rajpath or are in awe of the domes of the Rashtrapati bhavan or the tall minarets and high arches of the Jama Masjid.

Not to say that the inherent beauty of all these things has vanished or that they don’t invoke those emotions anymore - oh no, your heart still flutters and gets heavy every time your auto passes the Amar Jyoti at India Gate - but then the heart also does revolt when you hear every time you someone tweets about a rape in India, it is invariably in Delhi. Over the years, Delhi has become one of those - you can’t land here post 7pm without having someone to pick you up at the airport - cities. Not to say that it used to be safe when she was living there earlier - but it has gotten ugly over the years.

When asked if she will ever move back to India, she often takes a minute to think about the answer, searching her mind and body for an answer different from the one she instinctively jumps to and yet comes settles with a ‘No, I don’t think of that is happening anytime soon or ever.’ And when the other party  responds by nodding their heads and sympathetically understanding and making a remark on how unsafe it is for women and how the living standards aren’t the same as Singapore, she smiles and refrains from commenting. Again, in earlier times she would have refuted that argument by stating a million other things that are amazing about India and her otherwise dormant nationalism would rise as she articulated 10 reasons for why India was still a lovely nation to live in!

But not anymore. Now she kept silent, because having lived in Singapore - she realised the freedom that not living in India had accorded to her. Freedom as a woman to wear anything, be anyone, go out at any point of the day or night, with absolutely anyone or alone and not having to think about it twice from a security or ‘decency’ perspective. And not have “what would people say’ dictate every decision. Having lived for 25 years of her life that way she didn’t know what she was missing out on and that way of life was so natural that never did she or any of her girl friends imagine, that a nicer, free-er and safer way of living existed. That limited living was a way of life for them. Only when exposed to a better way of living in Singapore, did she realise what she was missing out on. And to now go back to how she lived previously was not a life choice she wanted to make.

Even with all that baggage about Delhi and how it was no longer the Delhi she romanticised about, she still loved to be back in the city. It connected with her, the way no other city did.

And even though she herself still cribbed about how difficult it was for a woman to be out by herself or the crudeness of delhi-ites or make fun of the delhi accent or imitate the coarseness of hindi abuses so peculiar to Delhi, she couldn’t deny the fact that a part of her came alive when she was in the city.

Delhi had her heart, not Bangalore, not Hyderabad, not Bombay. Delhi. That city with pathetic air quality, terrible sanitation standards, innumerable traffic jams, loud-bossy-flashy people - that city held her captive and she found random reasons to route her flights to India via Delhi - and sometimes she outrightly booked trips to Delhi for no reason to her immense excitement and her mother’s immense disappointment.

“Mehr”, the Starbucks barista called out and she pulled herself out of her reverie. She smiled at the Barista, said thank you and picked  up her cup all the while thinking : why do airports not have better coffee and food places - why do travellers have to make do with a mediocre cuppa from Starbucks or have some random Killiney Kopitiam serve sub-par Teh C?

Mehr was 28 and as Indian as any Indian woman her demographic could be: her Nehru jacket on a white kurta with grey leggings and heavy silver jewellery were proof enough of that. Actually that screamed more “Delhi” than “Indian”. She walked towards her gate, sipping her latte, running through her checklist of last minute things to do before she boards the aircraft and has to switch her phone off. Walking towards a boarding gate at an airport always made her feel like she was running away : like there was some thing, some unfinished business, some person even, some task or chore she was running away from. And even though, she had completed everything she had to do, said bye to everyone, paid her rent for the upcoming month, switched off the lights at home, replied to those irritating last minute friday evening emails - Mehr still felt like she was running away and checking her phone at such moments made her extremely anxious - as though, someone might catch her and stop her, as if her escape plan had been leaked and they knew she was flying away. Anxiety, that’s what it was. Overwhelming anxiety, often a sign of doing too much and a proof that you have just too much going on.

Mehr took a death breath and stopped right where she was - in the middle of the airport and closed her eyes and told herself it was ok, she was ok, she was safe, she was going home - it was all good. And with her sense of calm returning, she opened her eyes, took another sip from her cup and continued walking.

Security check, done.

Ma’am, you can’t take your coffee inside.

Damn, now she will have to gulp down this terrible coffee in 5 sips.

Why does she even bother with buying something to drink. This happens all the time.

But how can you be at the airport and not sip on something hot?

There, done. That wasn’t all that bad. Damn you Starbucks, if only you learnt to serve good coffee.

45A, all the way at the back. She trudges along, and finally reaches her seat only to find someone sitting there. Mehr, shows the person her boarding pass to prove her claim to 45A and the other person does the exact same thing : looks Michelle Koh has been issued a boarding pass for the same seat. Ok, very unlike Singapore Airlines to do this. So she looks around for one of those lovely air hostesses dressed impeccably in those kebayas synonymous with SIA.

Aryan watches her go by, she is obviously listening to something fun on her phone, because he can see her head bob as she patiently waits for the queue in front of her move, some passengers must be still trying to fit their luggage into the overhead lockers. She doesn’t see him watching, so he stares unashamedly. She is Indian for sure, that nehru jacket screams India - her curls sway as she doing a mental dance of some sort to that beat on her earphones. Her skin is the color of light chocolate and there is a glow on her cheeks - is that blush - doesn’t look like it. The only makeup he detects on her is that lovely shade of nude pink lipstick and a black eyeliner on her eyelid, nothing else about her is made-up. She must have  realised someone was watching because she turns to the  left to catch his eye. Aryan freezes for a moment and then realises she is giving him a warm smile : the kind you gives to absolute strangers. But there is something genuine about the way she holds his gaze and looks straight into his eyes - as though she is sending warmth and goodwill his way. He smiles back with equal sincerity, by then she has already looked away, since the line has now started to move and in less than a second, she brushes past his seat in business class, walking down the aisle to hers.

He exhales, as if for the five minutes in which he had stared with her, he had held his breath. She was gorgeous and something about her called out to him, like she had this story that he needed to know. Was she from Delhi? Could he maybe try and look for her when the aircraft is airborne and introduce himself - but that’s so cheesy, who does that in real life? These things look adorable only in movies - she would brush him away as a psycho and not talk to him at all, let alone tell him ‘this story’ he was dying to hear.

Ok, maybe this is one of those moments that you forget and move on from then. His phone vibrated and he realised he hadn’t switched it off, so he unlocked it to check who had messaged. Aryan was India’s rising star in the fashion industry. His designs were earthy, very suited to the climes of India and the evolving fashion sense of modern Indians - who didn’t want to be left behind in the global fashion scene, but also wanted to be fiercely loyal to Indian fabrics, designs and colours. He sourced his fabrics from rural communities of Sikkim and Manipur in the east, Srinagar - Kashmir in the north, Mysore - Karnataka, Balaramapuram - Kerala in the south and of course, Jetput - Gujarat and Bagru -Rajasthan in the west. There was so much waiting to be discovered across this beautiful land and so many communities and craftsmen whose work needed to be included in mainstream fashion in India and maybe someday, the world. He went to the corners of the country seeking out these communities and working with them. The email was from his assistant in Delhi - with a list of appointments he had for the upcoming week. Back to back commitments - from meetings with other designers to his craftsmen and tailors to social gatherings in the evenings. The festive season was already in full swing with Diwali only a week away and then of course the onslaught of winter Delhi weddings starting November. Busy times! He responded to that email and switched off his phone before the air hostess would come over asking him to do it. The seat to his right was empty and that was a good thing, a little more privacy on this 6 hour journey.

“Ma’am please take this seat, sorry for the hassle, we regret what happened and deeply apologize” says the air hostess pointing to the seat on his right.  Looks like someone is on that seat after all, there goes his short lived excitement. And then he sees her walk forward and clear the seat belt from the seat before sitting down. She keeps her bag in the space in front and buckles her seatbelt. All the while her curls hide her face and also hide Aryan’s immense disbelief mixed with immense joy that clearly shines on his face. The air hostess comes around with a hot towel and he uses that to wipe the stupid grin off his face and lets the towel cover his face completely for a few second before gently removing it. She seems to be letting hers rest on her eyes a little longer.

When she  removes it, Mehr and Aryan finally meet each other and do what strangers on a 6 hour flight sitting next to each other normally do : introduce themselves politely.

How did she not notice him when she crossed him : he was amazingly handsome, not the drop dead gorgeous kinds - but pretty close - those cheekbones and those deep set eyes and that voice - was he a singer - why does he look like someone famous?  They both send a silent thank you up to that Universe that has finally treated their life like a movie - it was going to be an interesting 6 hours !