daydreaming

about vintage desks, blond hair and shibani dandekar

When I moved to Bombay for my first job, a spanking new law degree in tow, there was a gorgeous little boutique on Peddar Road – Jade – that caught my eye. It caught my eye every morning on my way to work and every evening on my way back. The slender mannequins who themselves looked more expensive than me or anything or anyone I had known, wore exquisite looking lehengas in pretty pastels. Amidst the rest of the brownish grey characteristic to the streets of Bombay, this shop window gleamed like an illuminated pearl placed delicately on a murky seabed. This was during the time Sriram and I were planning our wedding years ago and I remember telling him and myself that I would save enough to buy one of their outfits, the one in mauve that I saw on the shop window one balmy Bombay morning, just in time for our wedding. That was the plan. A seemingly practicable dream from where I stood almost a decade ago. So, I devotedly strained my neck from the rundown back seats of Bombay taxis to catch a glimpse of the lone pearl that called out to me from amidst the pandemonium of rush hour traffic on Peddar Road.

Well, this is not a story of grit and victory or one where a full orchestra plays the fifth symphony as the protagonist clambers across the finish line. In fact it is quite the opposite. It took the protagonist in my story, me, only a couple of months in the city, paying sinful amounts in rent and buying rice and vegetables and fish, and the weekend pitchers of cold beer, to fully comprehend that the mauve coloured dream was not going to materialise. I didn’t even need to see their exquisite price tags to come to such a conclusion. Bombay teaches you the basics of life at the speed of light, I like that about her. I allowed the dream float to away like an orphaned red heart-shaped balloon into Bombay’s smoggy sky. But I continued to strain my neck from the backseats of run down taxis every time I went up and down Peddar road. Beauty must be appreciated even when you know you cannot covet it.

It took merely a few months of ‘independent living’ for that sparkly dream to shrink into something small enough for my neighbourhood tailor in Trivandrum to fashion. That she did a fairly atrocious job at it, the front of the outfit complete with cups my chest wasn’t enough to fill, is a whole other story. I shall reserve that one for another day. But none of that mattered to me on my wedding day. The mauve dream was forgotten, shoved into the pockets of oblivion just like the torn remains of the red balloon stuck on an unfortunate treetop. In fact I hadn’t thought about that mauve dream that I dreamt many summers ago until I saw the red dress the gorgeous Shibani Dandekar wore for her wedding to the suave Farhan Akhtar. The tabloids of social media were abuzz with intelligence that it was in fact an outfit from the same boutique on Peddar Road that I lusted after many moons ago. It made me laugh. A laugh perhaps pointed at the early tremor of realism bequeathed to me by the city of Bombay that I was no Shibani Dandekar. Not then, not now. Or perhaps the laugh was aimed at a bygone dream I am relieved to not have chased beyond the threadbare back seats of kaali-peelis. So, I simply stared at the glamourous newlyweds for a few minutes, a curious happy feeling spreading across my insides at how easy and happy and unpretentious and in love they looked, before going about the rest of my business.

Speaking of dreams, for as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to desks and work spaces. I have been curious to see where people work, where people write, where people read. I discovered my love for work spaces much before I discovered my love for writing. It was like I knew all along that I wanted to do something, anything, that involved sitting at cosy, creative-juice-inducing desks. It was in fact the spaces where other people worked that made me dream.

As a child, I rummaged through my peers’ study desks whenever I got a chance. I adored searching through desks and drawers and ink stains and mugs that held pencils and crayons. Torn stickers stuck to time worn surfaces telling tales of regret. Stacks and stacks of paper, illegible scrawl making its way through each of the lines, fascinated me. Left me wanting more. Birthed butterflies in my stomach. When I was younger, I shared a desk with my father and a giant white computer. A makeshift arrangement. The desk was shoved into an unlit corner where it faced a concrete wall. Consequently, I wove dreams of the perfect desk. My perfect desk. A vintage desk by a window that opened into peace and tranquillity. It was a space for me and only for me. A window that opened into a countryside where the sun rose over the green hills and spotted cows grazed on the meadows. A cool breeze caressed my face, cottony clouds waltzed across the blue skies, and birds chirped from the tree branches, and bees buzzed around rose hedges. And cornflower fields. There were always cornflower fields. Thank you, Enid Blyton. I dreamt of all the hours I would spend in front of the window gazing into the idyllic landscape. The dream did not extend to any clarity as to what I would actually do at such a desk. I didn’t know I would write. I didn’t know I could write. But yet I told myself that I would live in the countryside and have a lavish study room, its walls lined by bookshelves sagging from the weight of many hundreds of hardback books. A space straight out of the catalogue of an interior design magazine by the time I was 25. That relocated to 30.

I am now 32, I live in Paris and I own a Kindle.

Many years have gone by since those rosy dreams set in the English countryside. I have made a life far away from sceneries meticulously painted by the pen in Blyton’s hand on many counts. But I have managed to find a vocation to pursue at the perfect desk from my dreams. I have grown older and the strands of hair behind my ears whiter, but those dreams, they seem to have grown a lot smaller. Today, my desk isn’t vintage or handcrafted. I have a small, cheap desk that I bought off the internet for less than 60 euros. But today, I have a window. No matter the fact that I share this space with a dozen plants, a motley assortment of household things, drying laundry and overstuffed cupboards, this desk by this window, this is all I need to get through the hours of my day.

Views out of city windows are small. Unless, of course, if you live in one of the tiny yellow squares that speckle the top half of a big city skyscraper. But skyscraper views scare me, they are too impersonal just the way the streets of New York feel to a first timer. Faceless and anonymous. For the rest of us who live closer to the ground, city views are limited. But they are precious. It doesn’t take you very long to learn the ordinary, mundane scenes bounded by the four lines of our window panes. It doesn’t take long before the scene ends up feeling as familiar as the oldest, most worn t-shirt in your cupboard.

Every day, I spend a significant amount of time seated in front of this window, day dreaming, writing and trying to write, while I watch the barely dynamic scenes metamorphose. This is where I drink my tea. This is where I cry, this is where I break into a thousand insignificant pieces and wonder if the neighbours can see me weeping. This is where I blow my nose into a tissue and this where I glue myself back up. The small sliver of sky allotted to me reciprocates in the multitude of shades of Paris grey or sometimes, with hope and sunshine, in a beautiful blue at least once a day. On the lucky days, after dark, a handful of stars twinkle in its velvetiness. Everything else somehow seems to remain constant on the other side of the window. Even the things that move, move to the metronome of monotony. The colour of the leaves, the birds, the memories…

The apartment complex across the street is like the doll house I dreamed of (but never asked for) in my childhood. Just bigger. A lot bigger. Some dreams have funny ways of coming true. The figurines inside the doll house live their miniature lives in what appears to look like peace from this distance. Homes that flood with warm yellow lights after the sun goes down. Smokers and the glowing embers at their fingertips. Ordinary people and their ordinary routines, the children whose laughter I cannot hear, old women with bobbed silver hair and faded bathrobes. I have come to learn so much about these people whose lives I know from afar, individuals whose faces I will not recognise if I was to see them on the street we share. I know these people, these scenes, only in the arresting context offered by this window. We are acquaintances only from the two sides of this sheet of glass. This boring view may be all I have but I know this is mine to keep. There is reassurance in the knowledge that no one else gets to see this slice of the world the same way as I see it. This serving of the world is for my eyes only. There is comfort in that understanding.

A few weeks ago, one of the families in the doll house vacated their apartment. A family of four – a youngish couple and their two light-haired boys. Did I know them? I don’t know how to answer that. I haven’t spoken to them, I haven’t even seen them on the street I suppose. I haven’t waved at them, I don’t know any of their names or the sound of their voices. I don’t even know their faces very well and I am not sure whether to attribute that to the distance between the two buildings or to my eyesight. But I knew the four miniature models who lived their little lives inside one of the squares on the doll house. They were the first people I truly saw in this massive city that was entirely alien, a total stranger, when Sriram and I made a home here two years ago. I learnt that the parents woke up around the same time I did. When their lights came on in the pitch dark of winter mornings, I felt the warmth all the way into my home. Perhaps it made me feel a little less alone. Winters in new places can be dreadfully lonely. Over the course of the next many months, I watched the four plants on their small balcony bloom and wither. The twinkling lights on their Christmas tree. The woman sat down to work at her desk in the sitting room around the same time as I got to my study after my morning chores. We sometimes made eye contact. Eye contact is undeniable. The force, the jolt you feel when you lock gazes with another human being, even if it is for a fraction of a second, is anything but dubious. When we made eye contact we exchanged non-smiles. Smiles that left our lips but didn’t quite reach our eyes. Non-smiles. Smiles we offer when we aren’t sure we deserve one back. Wary smiles. Scared smiles. Smiles that hold within, a prediction of being let down, of being disregarded. History may have taught us to guard our smiles like precious gemstones. Hence we give away smiles that are not smiles but smiles that could also be read as smiles. Every time I made eye contact with the woman across the street, we non smiled at each other and hurriedly looked away. Pulled out our phones or pretended to look busy. Writing is a painfully solitary affair and on evenings when I worked into the dusk, I would sometimes look over to see if she was working too. I have seen her do the same thing. If I saw her blonde head at her desk, her hands typing into her laptop fervently, it made me want to sit a little longer. To write a little longer. During days of dreadful solitude, it felt nice to have a little company.

On many an occasion, I considered whether I should upgrade from the non-smile and flash her one of my finest real smiles the next time we made eye contact. Maybe even wave. I imagined her waving back, acknowledging my existence in real time. Maybe we’d have exchanged a few words, French words, yelling at each other from across the street much to the amusement of passers by. Maybe we’d have told each other our names or the places where we came from. But we did none of those things. My étrangere  fears and worries and sensibilities  stood in our way, an unmoving boulder. I didn’t have the courage, and neither did she.

One sunny winter morning many weeks ago, there was a giant truck parked below their building making passage through our slender street rather difficult. And then they left. Without a wave or a goodbye. Not even a non-smile waited for me on the empty balcony in the evening. Even the withered plants had been cleared away. I was a little blue when they went away, I won’t lie, and I grieved the end of a relationship that did not exist. Stupid.

It has been many weeks since they went away and now the cold, dark and empty flat stares at me from across the street. I am alone once again. But this time I am not lonely, there’s a difference, for I have found my feet in this juggernaut of a city. Sriram laughs saying it is probable that they left the place for the sheer want of privacy; to get far away from writer neighbours with small dreams and smaller realities who hunt for creative inspiration in other people’s kitchens and cupboards. I wonder if he has a point… I still catch myself thinking of the four of them often, the little boys and their bobbing blond heads. I wonder if they are happy. Maybe our paths will cross again, who knows, who can tell. And maybe next time, I will find the courage to flash them a real smile and say out loud that I wish them well.

Hi my people,

I know it has been a long time since my last post. I spent the past many months working on something that I hope will reach your hands someday. It is still a long time away but I walk, one foot in front of the other, each day.  I have been well, I mean, as well as possible given the fear, the grief, the anxiety and the heaviness that surrounds us all. I realised I was shying away from writing this newsletter for the past year not for the want of things to write, I always have things to write, but for the want of the ‘perfect’ things to say and the ‘perfect’ ways to say it. I am giving up on that idea now. It consumes me. So, this newsletter may be erratic but I am going to keep sending you pieces, good pieces, bad pieces, average pieces, and forgive myself for the things I write even when they feel unexceptional. Anyway, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here, for reading my words and for making me feel like I matter. Drop me a comment or just reply to this email if you have something to say. All ears, always.

Much love, xx.