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The Wind Surfer
Jun30, 1987
The mast with an unfurled sail was fixed to the white board and together they were pushed past the waves of green-blue waters bursting each time into foam. The man in the long sleeves and shorts jumped on the board, tugged at a cord and the sail rose from the water. With practiced ease, he soon had the breeze trapped in the sail. And propelled himself forward. A girl half way in the water studied these movements with concentration, even as the saltish water kept hitting her face. After a few brief maneuvers, he turned to her, dropped the sail and smoothly slid off the board. She then got on it and tried to find balance as a wave hit her and tried to dislodge her.
The sail refused to leave the water. She strained her young body and when she finally managed to lift the triangular-shaped sail with the early morning sun bouncing off it, it came up rapidly - too rapidly in fact - and crashed on the girl, sending her reeling. Her yelps were drowned in the roar of the sea.
A few seconds later, she scrambled up on the board. This time she pulled the sail with strength and judgment. Lean body tautly arched in concentration and finding a number of helpful and deft forces. She quickly moved into the iridescent sea.
The next encounter with the water came further down the horizon. There the process of climbing up on the board and drawing the sail was repeated. The stay aloft was longer. Then came a huge break and she crashed into the sea, a hapless bundle of arms and legs and nylon and tubular aluminum. It was a while before she tried again.
On the shore, the day was clear, warm in the shadows of palm trees sloping out to the sea. The leaves rustled in the calm, gentle breeze. An aircraft and then a line of white birds drifted overhead. An American dowager watched the girl on the surf board and with a chuckle, cleaned her glasses for a better view.
The sail was steady on board. A huge incoming wave engulfed her from behind and she tumbled into the water and was washed nearer the shore. The sun was hot now and came up directly upon the girl’s hair, as she spluttered and stubbornly got back on the board. She pulled up the bow string -shaped sail again. The breeze pushed her unsteadily into the sea, only to upset her a little later. Soon the current carried her and she became a small, struggling figure.
Then, when about everyone had left for lunch to the thatched shed of the beach resort and when even the old American lost interest in her and was reading her paperback, the girl came back clearer into view. Riding a difficult wave and yet confident and graceful, she moved around in semi-circles like a cheerful young seal. Finally, she came near the shore, dropped the mast, jumped off the board and walked slowly, triumphantly on the sand to the applause of the sea.
Misty-eyed in Calcutta
Apr24, 1988
It is a wet morning in central Calcutta. Smiling school children in smart uniforms rush along in the drizzle. On Middleton Row, half-clad urchins with runny noses eat a mixture of watery rice and dhal out of old aluminum plates. A hand-drawn rickshaw comes out of the corner. A double-chinned thickly rouged chinky-eyed lady in a sarong sits in it, holding a stylish umbrella. Imperious, like a latter-day Victoria, her gaze is fixed straight ahead. She is not amused by the rain. The thin, hollow cheeked rickshaw puller’s wheeze is lost in the din.
A few meters further, a tall wiry man with dark skin tautly pulled across his bones, is washing the windshield of a battered old taxi. He is singing something from Kazi Nazrul Islam – in a rich, melodious voice evoking scenes of lush green paddy fields. The ubiquitous kahon of the East Bihari appears in the morning buzz. A Maruti fleets past, with Wham blasting out from the darkened interior.
All is quiet on Ho Chi Minh Sarani. The American Consulate has its gate shut. On a wall nearby some vandal has scratched out the ‘not’ and passers-by are now urged to ‘Please do urinate on the wall’. The illiterate kid below the legend has progressed further in his morning routine.
On another street, buxom secretaries move briskly in stylish flowery skirts. Eyeing them is a teenaged Bangla mother. Her head covered with the pallu of a tattered white cotton saree, she is feeding a brat clinging to her bosom. The little one is gurgling in the warmth of mother’s love.
‘Priscilla is marrying that ol’ codger, yeah? How sad, no?’ Snatches of a conversation from two Anglo-Indian girls. The clicking of their high heels echoes off the wet pavement.
Near Loretto House sit lepers and other Les Miserables with assorted sores and wounds on their limbs. Attending to them with cotton-wads and medicine are several French-speaking teenagers – boys with single earrings, blondes in shorts.
Blue-eyed wonders in the drizzle. Watching them with interest are several office-going men in dhotis. They stand and stare at the make-shift pavement medical camp. Conversation of the last Mohan Bagan-East Bengal tie has come to a grinding halt. For the moment. Now, in a month of low-priced hilsas, what’s going on?
Nearby, two giggly young things gawking at the dresses in the shop window let out a yelp when a speeding car splashes ditch water from the road.
At Flury’s, a couple of overweight middle-aged dames are eyeing the pastry and having a devil of a time deciding what to pitch into next. The problem is apparently solved when three of the rich plum cakes are unloaded on their plates. Eat and make merry, for tomorrow we shall diet?
At a nearby table, a young small man is staring blankly at the two girls opposite him. ‘How long you take to attend to us,’ he snaps at the waiter, ‘Can you give us toast?’ he asks.
‘No,’ responds the bored waiter, ‘Load-shedding now.’
The girl, a vivacious teenager in a green and yellow ghagra with elaborate mirror-work, says she’ll have vegetable patti and her companion echoes, ‘Me, too’.
Soon, the boy is dipping buttered bread in tomato sauce. The girl in ghagra in a teasing mood picks up a piece of bread from the boy’s plate and propels it in the direction of his mouth. He frowns and refuses with a shake of head. She playfully insists, waving her mehndi-decorated hand near his pencil-thin moustache. Pushing the big gold watch down on his thin hand, the boy with a wry smile tells her in Hindi, ‘But first let your father come up with a good dowry. Then we’ll see,’ he finishes in English. There is hurt in the girl’s eyes. Before the tears roll, the waiter brings the tab.
Outside on Park Street, also known as the district where Apeejay owns everything, the wayside stall has imported tobacco and other phoren stuff. Sultry heavy-breasted females beckon you from the condom jackets. Matter-of-factly the sales-boy, hardly 10, asks you whether it is the rubber or Three Nuns that you want to buy. He blinks rapidly when you ask for a good nail-clipper instead.
At Little Russell Street, opposite the India Hobby center, a man in black Derby shoes and a starched white kurtha and dhoti is being asked a question by a thin nervous man, with a pad and fountain pen in the ready.
‘Of course, a united Left democratic Front is most important. It is the only solution to this country, really … to this abject poverty, to the exploitation of the masses…Look, I’ve said all this before in my article in Mainstream. Now if you’ll excuse me, young man, I have a plane to catch,’ he says, all in clipped Oxford accent, and smartly avoids a small puddle and a wet poodle, and jumps into a neatly upholstered car, and barks at the unformed driver to move it.
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