[Reader-list] Re: The Singer and The Acrobat

[shveta]

Dear Zainab, 

Thanks for the beautiful diary entry from your daily travels and the special 
human contact and warmth, rhythms and eccentricities they hold. I am sending 
here a text written by a friend and colleague who lives in Delhi.

best
shveta

***

Dilli Gate
Yashoda
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Dilli Gate, which is a well known landmark in Delhi. Where there is always too 
much traffic. A pigeon cote which separates two roads stands here. It has 
become well known because of people who, despite leading busy lives, try to 
do some good work and earn some goodwill. Today when I passed by here, I 
witnessed a strange relationship between these people who are related with 
the place, and which I had not noticed before.

I had stepped out just after a bath, so I was feeling slightly cold. And the 
sun here seemed very warm. I sat down on a low, broad coping. Inspite of all 
the noise, an unknown calm was making its way inside me. Silently, I was 
turning my eyes about, examining the place. I could see the Emergency Ward in 
front of me. Outside it were a number of fruit vendors with their carts. 
Amidst the coming and going of the patients were also the groups of healthy 
people, passing by in either direction. 

Behind me were buildings of big companies. Sunlight was falling directly on 
them, so their names could be read clearly. The rally of people passing by 
this road is never-ending. Looking at the crowds passing by, I remembered a 
friend who had asked a question, "If we were to stand in a crowd and look at 
one another, what would the eyes of the crowd say to us? Move! Get out of the 
way!" The question hammered in my brain. I began to look at the people on the 
road in front of me under the pressure of the question. 

I saw a woman. Her face was dark complexioned and experienced. She was trying 
to cross the road, and was coming in my direction. Four to five men were 
passing from in front of her. I wasn't looking at them, I could see only the 
woman. My eyes were fixed on the woman's eyes, to see how she reacts while 
passing through these people.

But it wasn't just her eyes that were reacting. The expressions on her whole 
face were changing. A face that had looked normal till then, now had an 
expression of distress. Her hands, fixing the dupatta, were playing on her 
body. Her eyes were raised towards those people, and mine towards her. In her 
eyes I could see the need to hurry past. She passed by those people in one 
second. But in that second, how many expressions had adorned her. She walked 
on, past me.

But what the eyes of those people said to her was not revealed to me. I still 
didn't have an answer to that question. My mind felt tired. And I started 
looking at the pigeons, pecking on their feed in front of me. I had decided I 
was not going to turn to look at this question again. I was looking 
affectionately at the pigeons. And also at an elderly man who was short and 
wearing a kurta-pyjama, with plastic shoes on his feet which were quite worn 
out. His hair were white with age, and his skin looked like it had burnt in 
the sun. His features were alright. He was filling water in earthen bowls. 
The bowls were half-filled with water, and so their top half was dry. When 
the man would pour water into them, the smell of wet earth would pass through 
me. It was a beautiful sight. And around it was spread a web of soft 
emotions. There was no room for anyone in these feelings - not friends, not 
dear ones, not strangers, and not for the past, which I had left behind for 
some moments after so many years. I didn't know what unknown calm this was 
that flowed out from my body like soft light, and spread out.

My eyes wouldn't leave the pigeons and the man. The man would go among the 
pigeons again and again, and fill water in the bowls, and collect the seeds 
with a broom. He was very close to the pigeons, but they were not frightened 
of him. Because between him and the pigeons flowed the understanding of the 
seeds, and it secured their relationship.

The man finished his work and went and sat with the millet seller. I was also 
getting up to leave, when my eyes fell on a pigeon which was pecking at 
another pigeon for seeds. There were many seeds scattered around him, but he 
was still trying to snatch away seeds from the other pigoen. Seeing this, my 
look on the pigeons became more intense, and many words started circling in 
my head. 

In the middle of all of this, the loud pi-pi sound of a two-wheeler from 
behind me broke my concentration. I turned my neck, and saw a young man who 
was wearing black pants and a parrot coloured shirt. He was light-skinned, 
his eyes were brown. He was looking at me. Casting a wary glance at him, I 
turned my neck and looked at my watch. It was 11:30. Then the pi-pi sound 
came again. Brushing my hands through my hair, I turned again to see the boy 
was still standing there, looking at me. I looked at him carefully. There was 
anger in my eyes, but there was mischief in his. He looked at me for two 
minutes, and then moved on, smiling. I turned my neck, and started looking at 
my nails.

And I started thinking I have so many encounters, which I remember for a long 
time. Then instead of peeping inside the mould of my own mind, why am I 
pecking here and there, trying to look for feed. When I pass through the 
crowds of a market, of a bus, of a street, so many eyes meet, clash with 
mine. And in that crowd, in those eyes, somewhere I see lust, somewhere a 
compelling need to quickly pass, somewhere shyness, somewhere the lines of 
distress, and somewhere an emptiness - where there is no interest in either 
the self, or in those around them. A crowd's eyes don't just tell us to get 
out of the way. Because they are not comprised of just one person with a 
single thought. There are kinds and kinds of people in a crowd. In a crowd 
one doesn't necessarily always see only goons, brothers or friends. It 
depends on our mood - our eyes change with our mood.

This could be said about the eyes of a crowd. Eyes that are unfamiliar, which 
depend on their mood. But what can be said of the looks that are not from 
strangers, but well-wishers? They seem unfamiliar sometimes. What are these 
looks? They leave a trace of  suffocation in my life which otherwise seems to 
be going on just right. Even if I want to tell others about these looks, I 
can't. Because I don't understand them myself. Because in the court house of 
glances, there are no eyewitnesses.

Yashoda Singh
http://www.sarai.net/community/cybermohalla/book02/pages/pdfs/beforecoming.pdf