Time Travel

Overheard in my head. A coffee shop serving tea with people sticking out at angles to themselves. At one table-

Y: "You can't give me time then?"
X: "Don't be silly, how is that possible?"
Y: "Fine. I won't share memories then."
X: "You're mad. I already own them."
Y: "How about distance? Tell me I can have distance."
X: "NO. NO. NO. Now stop badgering me."
Y: "Then I have to settle for laughter?"
X: "Do you even want laughter?"
X: "You'd rather have trouble. You perpetually want trouble. You know I'm right."
The scene melts into the hostel terrace on a particularly stormy night. Then the tree opposite my hotel room in Dallas. Leaves of fall. Our humanities presentation. Villas. My blog. The light goes out like in a movie theater.


In a different corner of my head. A field of sunflowers. Now changing into the picture of my beautiful hair lying as lifeless curls on the floor, thick and exceedingly pretty. Which transforms into the night sky as seen from the balcony of my first house in Bangalore. Purple jelly now, like the Mala's candy from Matheran. Or is it Mahabaleshwar? Now, the last seat of the bus back from Khopoli. The longing with which I looked forward to the Monday gone by. The excitement at seeing a board marked either of Saki Naka or Mulund. Like 20 kms was as good as being next to each other in an aside to the real me. Podgy fingers playing with mine during lunch in a plush suburban restaurant. Eyes searching my face. At times it feels like my being, the real me shrugs. My phone. The sheer thrill of it vibrating in the middle of the night. Mornings. Bad mornings. This morning. Blog. Light goes out again.

It shines briefly on a bespectacled person hunched in a corner continuously fretting over Malaysian Airlines and American markets. And Arabesk. The light doesn't bother that person. It waits. The person is still unmoved. KUL-LAX, KUL-EWR, LHR-SYD - all else is unknown.

Lights! An unknown source singing 1973 non-stop. The voice slurs at times into Paul McCartney singing All you need is love, at times into Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong dreaming. Maybe it's Ella but I like to credit Billie. Real me scowls then smiles and tosses her real head. Cheese crackers. 1973 again. Coldplay interlude. Sunflowers. An entire field of them. The best memory I have of the most religious place I have visited. Eyes - alternating between closed and open. Mostly brown ones. Hidden behind square, rimless glasses. The real eyes close. No real tears. The real me has been scolded enough number of times to cry. The light goes out with a glimpse of a sweatshirt.

In another corner, the lights go up on my mom's sewing box with its brightly coloured reels of thread. Rainbows. Stories I have written as an adolescent. The lights of the valley as seen from the window of a bus crawling up the ghats. The lights getting tinier and tinier. The aerial view of Chicago at take-off. The long wait one night for a tiger that never came. The lake at the bottom of the tiger-village. Tiger-village. The real me smiles. Tigers. The animal the real me likes most after herself. That and watching the lights in the valley from a mountain road. The lights go out on real me sitting in a real bus making her way up to somewhere watching endless rows of lights in the valley, a soft, indelible smile on bonny cheeks. Just me, my smile and my curls.

They go up in the window opposite mine. The phone is still dead like the rest of the night. It comes to life as I pick and probe to my favourite radio station. 1973! Talk about luck. My bedroom light goes out on the real me taking in a final view of the Bangalore skyline for the day as I fidget away to sleep, phone still clutched in hand.