The Song of Stench

I wake up into a lazy sunday morning, the yellow rays of a mellow sun pushing through the fluttering curtains. I can't see the sun, but the distant horizon running parallel to my window sill has turned orange. The twinkling lights of the previous night have disappered. In their place, I see a distant hill, that has drawn oscilloscopic lines in the sky.

Someone has woken up early. Through the gaps of my bathroom door, I can smell his soap. I can hear puja bells ringing and get a faint smell of incense stick burning.

Such a perfect morning to wake up to, I think. I shake off the remnants of the night and slip into my slippers. I walk up to the window and look outside.

There is an assault on my senses.

A terrible putrid stench rises from below, from outside the boundary wall of my housing society. I see an open drain, filled with bubbling filth, brewing like a forbidden wine. I see a bunch of tin houses outside, their roof held down by bricks and old tyres. The shanty has recently come up. These are the construction workers working at the several concrete mosters that are taking shape nearby. Some naked kids try to put their feet into the maze of stacked steel rods. A woman without a blouse tends to her long pitch-black hair, looking at herself in a mirror smaller than my credit card.

I am gripped by strong emotions. How do these people live in such conditions? And what business do they have to spoil my surroundings? There was a time when, as you looked outside, you saw only the greenness of untouched grass. You saw long-winged birds lifting off stunned frogs. In less than a year, things have changed. All I see now is blocks of steel and concrete at a distance and stacked tin-tyre-brick just outside.

As I turn my face away, something falls in my ear. A long forgotten song, coming straight at me from inside the tin houses. Another assault on another sense. The lovely voice of Anuradha Paudwal freezes me in my tracks. "Hui aankh num aur yeh dil musquraya, to saathi koi bhula yaad aaya..." A song from the movie Saathi (1991).



Suddenly my heart becomes lighther. It wells up and fills my throat. My head fills up with images of yore. The days of childhood. The days of gay carefree living. Of unburdened innocence. Of dancing naked in the bathroom, spashing bucketfuls of water. Of running around the house in wet feet and clinging to mother in the kitchen. Of climbing trees in the rain and hanging like monkeys from the branches. Of looking at young girls, dreaming about marrying them one day.

The assault continues. "Kya karte the saajna tum hum se door rehke..." from Lal Dupatta Malmal Ka. "Jaane jigar jaaneman mujhko hai teri kasam..." from Ashiqui. "Mere rang mein rangne wali, paree ho ya ho pareeyon ki raani..." from Maine Pyar Kiya.

I find myself glued to the window, my adult self completely taken over by the child inside me. My eyes are shining from a layer of moisture on them and there is an unknown pain in my throat.

The stench has long ceased to matter.

Another Morning...

One morning, I wake up not to the hoarse sound of concrete mixers and diesel generators, but to birds tweeting and chirping invisibly atop the trees around my house. Sitting on the verandah, I see squirrels scurry about, pausing at little fruits dropped from the trees nearby, straighten their moustache, look around and run away. Instead of burning diesel in my SUV and leaving behind a streak of black smoke and coughing people, I pick up my bicycle left leaning against the wall and pedal away into the narrow winding road below a neverending arch of dense foliage. I hear dry leaves rustle below the thin tyres. I see the cool shade of leaves perforated by inclined shafts of light and honey bees humming around bright blossoms. I pause for moment, stick my fingers into the golden oozing sap and suck a little nectar from a wild flower.

I pedal away against the wind, with nothing but the tossing blades of endless greenery surrounding me. I feel the wind on my skin, and gulp it down through my wide-open mouth. I get down and leave my cycle leaning against the slope. I run through the paddy fields, sometimes pulling at the thin blades and sometimes running my finger among them. I hear mud squelch beneath my feet and water splash on my dress.

I return home and call my friends. I just run around and call out their names. No, I don't need a Facebook or an Orkut. Nor do I need a mobile phone or highspeed 3G to be in touch. Just peep through their open front door and call them out. We run in an unannounced race to the pond, our feet kissing and unkissing the dusty road. We jump into the cold water polluted with blooming lillies; not with any white frothy chemical of some factory nearby. We dive deep into the water and surface, playing hide and seek with each other. A couple of fishes rub against my feet and a dragonfly flies past me close to the water like a tiny remote controlled drone of some unknown enemy.

As the sun mellows down and our shadows grow taller, I don't sit in front of a flickering screen of pixels and hit away furiously at rubbery buttons that splash my screen with blood and smoke. I chase cows and ducks while they return home. I throw flat stones into water and watch them jump several times. I climb a tree and have a feast twenty feet above the ground.

As night falls, I lie silently on a woven cot listening to unknown insects making an imprompu chorus or to frogs making mating calls. I catch an owl looking ferociously at me from a tree, seemingly blaming me for his sleepless nights.

Suddenly, lik a crazy animation, the whole world around me starts to shrink. The owl attaches to a fruit and the trees kiss the sky. Moon dips into water and birds sleeping in their nests fall to the ground. It keeps shrinking until it disappears into my eyelids.

And I wake up into another morning. Into the sound of concrete mixers...