Kutch evokes a canvas of white to a novice gaze. Everything is bright under the sun. The crystals pooling in the salt pans, the white-washed walls, the dust clouding every moving vehicle, the cloudless sky, the windmills swirling their giant arms over bawad infested land, wafting through the mirages that play on the horizons. Every step forward on these dusty roads thumps up a white puff. The dust coats everything, filming over the eyes and hair, and transforming all into its shade. The clay on the parched river bed is white, caked with wide cracks. The pebbles on its bank are grey studs, discarded pieces dislodged from another planet on a full-moon night.
The moon is bright and large over the desert. It rises over the white rann like a disk of silver, large, metallic, majestic, and under its reflecting light the entire stretch of the rann acquires a sheen of ethereal neverendingness. The tourists are stunned into silence, afraid to crumble the snow-like salt under their feet, become ghosts to each other.
Devang sees the colors behind the white gauze of the rann. The blue on black ajrakh, the bleed of red hemming a dupatta, the wrinkled blue tattoo on a grandmother’s skin, the light reflected tiny pieces of mirror on a young girl’s skirt, the twinkling yellow of a bloom on a bawad. The Kala Dungar, the earthy meanderings of the red stones at Khari Nadi, and the pink flamboyance of the Gulf of Kutch. The colors swirl back into white behind his closed eyelids.
The white is the pachedi wrapped around Devmati muni as Devang accompanies her on a vihar from one village to another. Only her cracked heels are visible, leaving cracked impressions in the dust. He sees his tiny feet falling into the large shallow of the impression, as he follows the group of monks.
He rubs his eyelids and opens them to the conference room of his office. Every few minutes, for the past half hour, he has looked at the watch on his left hand and run the fingers of the other hand through his thick hair, patting them down on one side. The Samsung phone is kept screen down on the table in front of him. He swivels from left to right, one foot quivering. When the chair turns left, he looks at the door of Rajan sir’s cabin. The secretary sitting outside the door smiles at him, inclines her head and mouths, “Two minutes.” He smiles back nervously.
He was supposed to be working on a comparative market analysis for a leather goods manufacturing company this week. It’s already Saturday, and he has been unable to dedicate the time to a priority client. He thinks of the excuses, what he would say to Rajan for the delay, the exact words that would help him find a way out of this client. He had tried working on the report, tried to get his team to work on it, but images of dripping red stalled his attempts. Screams pierce his ears. He jerks the sounds away and looks at the secretary again.
He wipes his palms across the front of the crumpled cotton shirt. It was crisp in the morning. He tries to make it look smart again by pinching it down around his waist, then pockets his cell phone, finger-combs his hair one last time, and steps out of the room. Outside the cabin, he sways lightly on his heels as he waits for the cue to enter.
Before he could utter any of the rehearsed answers, Rajan sir points to the chair before him.
“So, Devang, what’s wrong? You are never late on your deadlines.”
“I am sorry, sir.”
“Listen, I am not angry. We can figure something out. I am sure we will. But what’s happening?”
Devang can feel the blast of the air conditioner on the right arm. He shuts his eyes, then wets his lips in an attempt to speak. It seems like too much effort to make an excuse. He opens his eyes and looks at Rajan sir, his gaze helpless.
“Sorry. Sir…”
“Devang, I am unable to understand what’s happening with you. This is disappointing. Please leave, and I hope we can have a proper discussion tomorrow.”
Devang gets up, palms down his shirt, and leaves the cabin, aware of sir’s eyes on his back. He marches to his own cabin, stuffs his laptop and tiffin bag into his backpack, slings it over his shoulders, pats down his hair, and steps out of the office complex. Once outside, he looks at his mobile screen. He is an hour late to meet Khyati. He hails a rickshaw. “Chowpatty chalo. Jaldi.”
Some of the tension stiffening his shoulders relaxes as he slumps back. As the rickshaw starts, a dusty wind rages into it and Devang sighs with relief. The shirt sticky against his chest funnels into life. Closer to Bandra, he realizes his mistake, quickly pulls out the phone from his trouser pocket, and calls Khyati.
“Hello. Listen, I am running late. You can eat something if you are hungry.”
“You are very late. What happened, yaar?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I will be there in less than an hour.”
“I will wait for you. We can eat together.”
Devang bites his tongue to avoid an argument.
“Hello Devang? I am saying I will wait for you,” Khyati hollers into the phone.
“Why are you arguing? I said I don’t want to eat. Please. Am I stopping you? Do whatever you want, please.”
He can almost see Khyati cutting the call and throwing the phone into her handbag. All the anger we feel is felt in our muscles most – taut, clenched, tense sinews looking for relief.
“Bhaiya. Bandra station chalo.”
He drops a text to Khyati saying he is not feeling well and would prefer going home. Her ‘K’ in response feels appropriate. His forehead ripples with tension. Relaxing back into the seat, he runs his fingers through his hair, and rubs his palm against his forehead, trying to restore stillness. He closes his eyes.
He is a child at the edge of the throng below the peepal tree. The sun dims under the wave of a white muslin cloth. Senior munis are sitting cross legged, and the novice Devmati is bowing before them. She runs her joined palms around her face three times, mutters prayers under the white piece of cloth covering her mouth, bends her knee, brings her palms down, touches her forehead on the ground, and gets up. She does this more than 20 times, more than 50 times… till Devang loses count. Her red saree is disheveled with the exercise. Hot white wind blows on the audience, their heads bowed. The peepal tree bristles in the wind, a lonely shimmer of green in this stark white landscape.
The young munis below the stage take her back behind a white curtain. They pull out strands of hair, one at a time, again and again, till Devmati’s head is a clean round globe. They wipe drops of blood off her skull. When she emerges from behind the curtain, she looks like one of them – clad in two pieces of white muslin, head and mouth covered. She carries all her possessions on her back, one change of cloth, a cotton patheno to cover the ground, her rajoharan to wipe the ground before each step, and an enamel bowl to collect alms.
The monks climb down the stage in an order of seniority; she is the last to follow. Devang is struck by the calm on her face, how serene and confident the new muni looks, as if the ceremony has created a new human and the old one has been dissolved into air.
He has seen these scenes so often that sometimes he forgets it is not a recurring dream. Devang wakes to the sound of the meter being turned back to zero. He slings the laptop bag over his shoulder, heavier every day. He wonders what it would feel like if he forgot the bag in a rickshaw one day. Would he have to feign panic? He feels the fatigue crawling over his body like the black garden ants on white washed walls. He has a long journey back.
He had expected the local to be crowded, and manages to wedge himself in. It would take only five minutes, but he wants to avoid the precarious position near the entrance. He slides down the crowd, poking his face amidst arms raised to grasp the handle bars. His body rubs against other bodies; arms, shoulders, ribs, thighs, fixing into each other like jigsaw pieces, frayed on the edges at the hands of a boisterous child.
Devang almost misses Dadar station and pushes himself out just when the train jerks into motion again. The men around him mutter in resentment. They close in as he steps out, eating up the space after him as if his body never existed. He walks the bridge from Dadar West to Dadar East, a long bridge littered with human smells and noises, a mindless push through the crowds.
He does not have to wait long for the train to Mulund. He manages to get in, and finds a safe spot pressed against the last window of the compartment. Men are sitting on both sides of his feet. His body acquires the shape of the space offered to him. He throws the laptop bag on top of another on the packed rack above his head.
He is walking barefoot on the dusty tracks in his village. The returning throngs of cattle, led by a lean herdsman, are creating whirls of pink dust in their wake. Kids from the village are scrambling back and forth at the periphery of the long procession, infusing an unwarranted excitement to a routine. He hears the shrill cries of a peacock, perched as a silhouette on a neem tree across the village square. Dusk is a beautiful time in Kutch.
He is dressed in a white pachhedi, one end of the white muslin cloth swung across his right shoulder. He clutches the cotton bag with his prayer book and strides to the temple, happy and light. With no electric lights permitted, a cool darkness permeates the temple. It resonates with the sound of the muni’s voice and the ticking of the old grandfather clock. The solace of empty quiet and bare spaces washes over Devang.
Somebody pulls his shirt. “Dikra, Mulund aavi gayo.”
It is only a few minutes to midnight by the time Devang climbs down from the full compartment at Mulund station, and starts walking home. He sees Paresh standing with other college students below their apartment building. Paresh turns his face away when he sees Devang and pretends to laugh at what a friend is saying.
Everyone in the family hopes Paresh would mend his ways soon, stop wasting time under the pretense that he is studying for chartered accountancy exam, start working somewhere seriously, but these expectations have gained the weight of loaded canon for Paresh.
Devang has stopped hoping that his younger brother would help in any way, with the increasing stack of bills, with the possibility of moving to a bigger house. Whenever anyone broached the topic, Paresh retorted, “Just watch out. You will come to your senses when I become CA and buy a flat near Mahalaxmi Race Course.”
An end to this conversation only meant the beginning of another argument. The 1 BHK house seems to dictate emotions in this family. Devang feels that the walls will squeeze in one day, strangling their throats. When tempers rise and someone loses steam, it falls on Devang or Maa to stay mum, not add to the noise, or if it comes to it, remind the person shouting that it would disturb the neighbors.
Paresh is out, and it is the appropriate time to broach the topic of Devang’s wedding. Ba says it is wrong of Khyati to buy an expensive engagement dress and choose a ring without consulting the groom’s family. If they were going to pay, it was only right that they should be asked first, Ba keeps repeating, like her summons to Mahavir whenever she has to get up and her knees cramp with pain. “Ae Arihant,” “Ae Prabhu,” she keeps lamenting, as if the word is a puff of pain relief spray.
“Devang is paying. He earns. Let him decide.” Father raises his voice to counter Ba’s decibel.
“I know he earns. He is a big man now. But see what this girl will do when she comes into this house. She will start demanding diamonds, and a bigger house. Just you wait and see.”
“It is Devang’s decision what to get her or not. Stop interfering in his life, like you interfered in mine.”
Devang can hear the screams from the landing of the first floor. He can barely summon the strength to climb one more flight of stairs. Maa hears his knocks, despite the screams, and opens the door while the commotion continues in their only bedroom.
Maa goes to the kitchen to warm up the khichdi. Devang changes into a faded blue T-shirt and cotton lungi and follows her into the kitchen. He pulls Maa down to sit next to him. His head on her lap, he curls into a fetus on the floor of their small kitchen.
Maa runs her hand over his hair, soothing away the frown on his forehead. She finds a tear rolling down his left temple. “Are you not happy?” She wipes the teardrop away. “Khyati is a good girl.”
“You know how it is. You also know I will never be able to get what I want. So, what does it matter? I am doing what I have to do.”
The arguments in the bedroom simmer down when Paresh rings the bell half an hour past midnight. Papa opens the door. Paresh drops a perfunctory “sorry” before rushing into the bathroom. Devang sees Ba slouching on the dewan in the living room. He rolls out cotton durries across the living room floor, an attempt to deter any more fights when Paresh comes out of the bathroom. Ma calls Papa into the bedroom, helping Devang in his attempt to maintain some semblance of peace in the house. Devang looks guiltily at their bedroom – they would have to give it up for Khyati and him after the wedding.
He is walking with the monks as they start on their vihar, a long hike to the next village. White dust steers wherever they move. He keeps his eyes on Devmati muni’s feet. She is young too, and her smooth heels have not walked many miles yet. Born in the family of a rich merchant, she has just stepped out of wedlock, clean, untarnished, and steady. The white muslin cloth covering her sheared head frames her cheeks and he can see the sturdy black of her pupil when she turns back to speak to her followers. He can feel the steely resolve inside her petite body. A jolt of shame strikes him, she makes bareness so majestic. The empty bowl of her alms resounds with elegance for him. Drop something in your bag and it sounds like the rattle of greed. Fling away possessions like Devmati muni, and then even the impressions your feet dig into the dust are light and discreet.
The road from the temple to the village periphery is a dusty track, like all the alleys in the village. The followers are amused with the small boy who has decided to accompany the monks, instead of joining the games with his siblings and cousins. An uncle tells him that if he does not return now, he will have to walk the entire stretch till the next village. No one will accompany him back mid-way. Devang agrees to go the whole distance.
He sees the monks adjusting the pacchedi over their heads after trucks and buses speed by on the main road. Dust whirls up under the noon sun. Between the sound of passing vehicles, the road is completely quiet. Even the crows and mynahs have taken to the shade of the neem trees, and the babblers rustle in the bawad bushes. Only the hawk swirls on the wave of heat above them. Devang can feel the struggle to swallow, and wets his parched lips. He tries to keep pace. His bare feet are burning on the cement road, and he cannot see any shade or shadow for miles ahead. He keeps his eyes on Devmati muni’s fast nipping heel, and tries to match steps with her, till he gets a stitch in his side.
Devang wakes up feeling feverish and weak. He has a headache, and a pain pulsating somewhere on the side of his stomach. Papa and Paresh are still sleeping. He nudges Paresh to move to the bedroom and rolls up the bedding. He wipes the floor and sits down for the dawn prayers with Mummy. It is still dark outside, and this hour of prayer is the most peaceful time in their house.
He wants to skip work today, even considers calling Rajan sir or dropping a mail to the HR for sick leave. Ba wakes up and demands tea. Devang goes into the kitchen to bring her a cup, then heads for a bath. It would be easier to go to work than explain himself to everyone.
He pushes the tiffin prepared by Maa into his laptop bag. Papa is still sleeping. Like all retirees in their community, it would be apt for him to move to Kutch, but that would deny him the regular drama supplied by this city.
At the railway station, Devang is pushed into the train along with the others. His body limp among other bodies. After Ghatkopar, he finds the fourth seat on the three-seater berth. It is a strain on his legs, sitting precariously on the few inches available.
He starts checking the team updates from interns on the WhatsApp group. The problem comes back to haunt him – the leather manufacturing client. He consciously puts his mind to it, and tries to find a solution, scrolls endlessly through the mail and chats, hoping his restlessness will birth some solution. Or at least an escape. His head tilts back, an uncontrollable urge to close his eyelids takes over.
A village where the white washed walls have cracks running from the roof to the ground. Peepal leaves and roots spread like veins under a pale skin, the old shoots eating away the walls. The stone vessel outside the house is dry. A thin calf bays weakly, waits for a woman to empty her kitchen waste into the vessel. The house is locked, and the calf stands there, waiting till it is too dark to return. Dust has settled on the village lanes; nobody has moved along them for a long time. The ghosts wail with loneliness and a green layer of algae has grown over the shallow water in the well.
At CST junction, a stranger taps Devang’s shoulder.
Devang steps out of the platform, and tries hailing a cab to his office. After the fourth taxi driver denies a ride, Devang realizes that he does not have his phone with him. He checks his pockets, the tiny compartment on the outside of his laptop bag, his back pockets. When he is convinced that the phone has been stolen on the train, he rests the bag near his feet. His shoulders stretch against his ironed shirt; he runs his fingers through his hair. He waits for the panic. What should distress look like? He almost forgets the bag near his feet when a taxi stops near him and he gets in.
Midway, he tells the driver to stop at the nearest police station. Devang keeps running his fingers through his hair every time the cab jerks into motion after a signal or jam. The driver pretends as if he has not heard Devang, and he has to repeat his request a couple of times before the cab changes routes. The whole exercise seems futile to Devang. Both of them know that thousands of cell phones are lost every day, not one of them is found again. The constable who speaks to Devang and notes a FIR also knows this. He knows Devang also knows it.
It is close to noon by the time the cab drops Devang outside his office. The sweaty ride through the congested traffic signals, the street urchins knocking on the window at every signal, and the dusty patched upholstery inside the cab make Devang feel like he wants a bath again. He wants to go home. He wants to go somewhere quiet. He knows that in two hours, the Kutch Express will leave Bandra Terminus.
Devang climbs up the stairs and goes to Rajan’s office. He tells him that he has lost his phone. He goes to the open cubicles where his team members sit and tells them that he has lost his phone. An assistant manager asks him if he could take over the leather presentation. Devang does not reply; the junior does not wait for a response.
The thick slump of the cell phone in his pocket is missing, and his legs feel weightless. He can feel the weight of his hair, the cotton shirt on his back. The belt holding his waist. He wonders how it would feel to fling off all this baggage. He wonders if the police would have helped him if he had tried to make a sincere complaint.
He stays back in the office past dusk. Rajan sir is the last to leave. The office boy comes to ask whether he would leave soon, or could he take the keys and lock up later. “I have to go to Virar. Can I leave now?” The boy has to ask three times before Devang responds. “Haan. Haan. Let’s go. Sorry.”
The boy stares at him for some time, then waits till Devang picks up his packed laptop bag, runs his fingers through his hair and leaves the cabin door open. The roads are spacious, the railway station empty, the train emptier. Devang feels as though his body is moving through a hollow world. The night breeze ruffles his hair, and he can feel a touch of cold on his forehead. He sticks out his tongue in the fast train, feeling a ripple of air on its tip, and sucks it in with a sliver of pleasure.
Everyone is sleeping by the time he reaches home. Maa opens the door to his knock. “Should I warm the khichdi?”
He pats her back. “Na. Na. No need. You go back to sleep.”
Devang waits in the kitchen, for the silence that comes over a house when its people are breathing deep in sleep. In Mumbai it is never completely quiet, but the night has different sounds – of vehicles driving past, dogs barking, a lonely person watching television in the next building. It is never silent, just quiet enough for solitude to become slightly possible. When he is confident that his family is making the wispy noises of deep sleep, he gets up and goes to the bathroom.
He closes the door, turns on the yellow light, and begins the lochan. He plucks out one hair near his right temple. The skin feels a slight twinge of burn at its root. Devang plucks out one more hair. The skin feels a burn. This time Devang picks out a hair above the back of his neck, and feels a sharp pain. A drop of blood stands out on the spot. Devang distances himself from the pain by chanting the prayers.
He plants his feet firmly and plucks out one more hair. One more. Then one more. Then he tries pulling out a clump. He gains courage, and tries plucking out more strands together. More blood pops out on the white patch. He continues working his way from the sides to the center of the scalp.
When done, he collects the hair at his feet and dumps them into the waste bin below the wash basin outside the bathroom. His scalp is stinging. He rubs a few drops of water over it. The skin burns with the touch of water. He presses his palm on the bare skin to cool it down. He strokes the scalp with his fingers to feel its texture, to check if he has missed any hair.
In a few minutes, it would be time for the morning prayers with Maa. He steps out. He feels weightless and awake.
He performs the prayers with Maa in the dark, but daylight has sliced into the room by the time they are done. Maa opens her eyes and screams. There is not a strand of hair on Devang’s blood-speckled scalp. Paresh can’t stop laughing and Papa has anger tattooed on his face. “Now pakka, Khyati will call off the wedding,” Baa says.
Devang’s head stands out stark amidst the crowd at the railway station. The men in the compartment keep their distance from him. His closed eyes, smile, and blood-speckled baldness lends him an eerie look. He doesn’t look for a place to sit, but stands in the center, between the doors on the two sides. The men pass around him, as if a magnetic force repels them from his body.
He is walking behind Devmati muni, barefoot, alone, empty handed. The moon rises on his side, large, slow, a metallic disk that shimmers white on the desert. He can hear only the crunch of the salt at his feet, and the swish of the wind as it whips the white fabric around him.
Devang breathes. He smiles at the men, at the passing city outside the train. He hears the wind swishing around him, like it does in the open salty Rann of Kutch.
