[Reader-list] Turbulence is a cliche, isnt it?

[Bakwaas Das]

Turbulence is a cliche, isn't it? Consider the following:
 
A Story 

Aakash Kumar, looking into the mirror. It is evening. A mellow light streams through the window, angling across the room, the rays not touching him or the mirror, falling instead upon the bed.

Aakash winces. He runs his right palm down his right cheek The palm, sliding down, swivels 180 degrees as it encounters the chin. The fingers run on, below the face. They bump over the vessels, on both sides of the neck, taking blood into and outside the brain. The fingers converge at the Adam’s Apple. “O paenrdi,” Aakash says. “Its darker downwards.”

 

It has been a fortnight now that Aakash, terribly aware of his dark brown visage, has been applying a face cream that promises to make him look fairer. It was a fortnight ago that Aakash bought a tube of “Fair and Handsome”. A men’s fairness cream, to be applied to the face: only. He was tired of being called a “darkie”. Then he saw the ad, on television. It showed a young person climbing up the ladder into a women’s hostel dormitory, to steal/apply a fairness cream abundantly available on that floor.

 

This young, dark person steals into the dormitory. As if he’s been there before, he makes directly for a dressing-table-and-mirror-console (usually not available in a dormitory of a hostel, men or women). He creams himself. The women in the dormitory wake up. There is a chase. While night-gowned women run across, our hero is discovered hiding behind a plant beside a boy of his age. The women, night-gowned, miss him in the chase. Relieved, the boy removes the plant off his face, as does the boy beside him (The Saviour). Says the Saviour figure to this small-town boy, after the farce of discovery is over — the ad makes it clear that the discovery can be nothing but a farce — “Why don’t you try a cream made for men?”

 

The ad promised he would be fairer in two weeks. It was a face cream. Dedicatedly, Aakash applied it on to his face, after the bath in the morning and before going to sleep at night, as the instructions on the slip of paper inserted into the tube-box instructed. A fortnight later Aakash, looking at himself in the mirror in his room in the evening, realised: “O paenrdi, its darker downwards. My face is whiter than my neck.” Then it struck him: “Is my face fairer than the rest of my body?”

 

October 29, 2004. 5:40 pm. Two hours after the police had defused a bomb at Khari Baoli, in Connaught Place, a powerful bomb ripped through the busy Paharganj market near the railway station. “The market,” as the newspaper Indian Express narrates, “frequented by backpack foreign tourists, was thronged with Diwali and Id shoppers. Eleven were feared killed here”.

 

October 29, 2004. 5: 40:56 pm. Aakash, fervently unbuttoning his shirt. Throwing it away. He looks down. It is clear. His face is whiter than the rest of his torso. Aakash walks away from the rectangular mirror set atop the basin in the bathroom, back-gearing, till he manages a perspective that includes face and torso. The change in the colour is visibly visible. The cream has done what it promised. It has made his face fair. “O paerndi,” Aakash reels. “Ye baaki badan! Something has to be done!”

            He puts on his shirt. Now he looks fair. From out the collar covering his neck rises a face that is actually fairer than it was a fortnight ago. Aakash, checking himself out in the mirror again, up close, is captivated. “Look at that! Nation on alert!” he says, captivated.

            Immediately he begins to undress himself, visible in the mirror. He takes off the shirt, again; he takes off his pants; his underwear, with a desperate flourish. Eyes glittering, full of purpose, he reaches with his left hand for the tube of “Fair and Handsome” on the shelf just below the mirror. He unscrews the round cap, puts it on the shelf. He exhales. On his right palm, he begins to squirt a milky fluid.

He squirts. The narrow mouth of the tube begins to squirt out, in little spirals, “Fair and Handsome” cream. In a jiffy, on his right palm, a spiral grows of gelatinous cream. Standing in the bathroom naked, placing the tube on the shelf below the mirror, Aakash begins to rub the cream all over his torso, his right palm carrying the cream running over his torso to and fro. So. The left hand joins in. So, he breathes out. Aakash, rubbing the cream into his body, urgently.

 

“The maximum deaths occurred with the next explosion in the overcrowded Sarojini Nagar market in South Delhi,” narrates the Indian Express of October 30, 2005 (late edition), “where a bomb placed in a bag in a chat and juice shop went off at around 5:45 pm killing more than 39 people”.

 

Aakash, furiously rubbing “Fair and Handsome” cream into his body, challenging the skin, delighting, because the skin seems to stretch and take in the cream applied on it. He grabs the tube, squirts more cream on his right palm. White tubemouth-poured spirals disappear into his body. Aakash, furiously rubbing himself. He looks at himself in the mirror. It is a glance. It is just a glance. He’s rubbing himself, furiously.

 

“Seven minutes later,” says the Indian Express — 5: 52 pm; October 30, 2005 —“Another explosion rocked Govindpuri injuring 9 persons including the driver and conductor of a Delhi Transport Corporation bus on the Outer Ring Road route. The bus was packed when the blast happened”.

 
Squirt and rub. Rub. Rubba rubba. Brown is out. White is in. Rubba rubba. Squirt. The cream will do on the body the same magic it did on the face, Aakash believes. The mood in the bathroom is: rubba rubba. There he stands, rubbing himself. Desperately, because he’s realised he’s a fortnight late. His body is creamed; it has come upon him that his body will get fair, too. “My face did, didn’t it?” is a thought that runs through his head, inspirationally. His torso is shining, in the diffused light of the bulb, the creamed surface reflecting it. “Two weeks,” he tells himself, arms furiously rushing about, facing the mirror, creaming himself. “Juhi will love my body.

		
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