Smoking is injurious to health.

She holds the cigarette between her tentative fingers. The pungent smell of burning tobacco overpowers her nostrils and she holds her breath. She must get used to this. Damn it, she must like it. Crave for it, even. Her lips close in on the cigarettes as she tries to balance it in her mouth. With a flick of the lighter, she sucks in all the air her lungs will hold. The flame sets her cigarette alight and now, just now, the cigarette feels comforting. Slightly wet, it illuminates the dark room with sporadic bursts of dotted amber lights when she releases her breath. She can hear sharp protests emanating from the uneven brown flakes as they crackle and pop, stuffed inside the thin white paper. With each noise, a thin wisp of smoke reaches upwards like tendrils. Combining with the other strands of smoke, they dance seductively around her. For a moment she is lost in identifying the shapes of the smoke as the breeze twists it, contorts it and plays with it- moulding it in its bizarre wily impulses.

The others, they look at her with an expression that is curious and yet disinterested. They ask for her to grow up. They ask for too much.

The rancid tobacco haze progresses with impunity in her mouth. It inspects every nook and corner, leaving behind a sticky smell that clings to her pores, forcing them to open and absorb every detail of its peculiar aftertaste- it’s hoarse somehow, a little bitter. Its complex, she can tell. There are layers in it, hidden and conspiring, which reveal themselves only after successive drags. She tastes a virgin nymph- blue eyed innocence with a streak of cruelty. She tastes sarcasm- wry words laced with desperation. She tastes nostalgia- sepia memories fast fading into oblivion. Her tongue, shocked at the onslaught, keeps very still, taking it all in.

Slowly the tobacco haze seeps into her veins, running through her limbs, paralyzing her senses, incapacitating her thoughts, dousing her being. She is suddenly limitless, suddenly weightless and suddenly transparent. All that which existed before, the struggle, the pain, the sheer humiliation- it ceases and the future evaporates. Nothing matters, anymore.

Posted By

Swati.

Saving the world one copy at a time.

A tale of the crippling disability to cross the friggin' road.

As I stand at the edge of the asphalt roads, ready to spring forth and devour the distance in a few leaps, with the raw kinetic agility of an Olympic athlete, I have to pause and remind myself. I can’t even walk straight without bumping into a lamppost. I am as sure-footed as a nervous goat on a tightrope. I have always regarded gravity with a sense of disbelief. And gravity, in turn, has frequently scoffed at my impolite dismissals, unleashing the full force of its wrath on me, especially in my school days when I was forced to participate in the very physical games of Kho-Kho, Kabbadi, Volleyball, Badminton, Hockey, etc. Ugh.[Shudders at the thought of wilful persecution by certain very vindictive teachers.]

Still, I persist in my rejection of it. I know, I know. Some really bored guy, who rather fancied himself as a genius, saw a falling apple and said, “whoop-tee-doo”. The whole world believed him. But why should I? At least in my mind, gravity is just another word for bad luck. It kind of accelerates the klutziness, giving it more momentum and sort of makes me more self-destructive than a mujahidin suicide-bomber. Anyway, coming back to the point, before I made the fatal mistake of overestimating my road-crossing capabilities, I curbed myself. And I stared helplessly at the nondescript crowd situated around me. Perhaps, somebody would rise to be my reluctant hero, eyes smouldering with disapproval and faint amusement, his strong arms stretching out authoritatively, causing the traffic whizzing past us to stop dead in its tracks. And then we would cross over to the other side, taking our own sweet time as he would give my hands a reassuring squeeze and say to me in his brooding baritone, “Close your eyes and think of me whenever you are at a crossroad. I’ll be there to carry you through it.” Yuck. [Must get the ‘Stephanie Meyer’ out of my system immediately.]

Well, it doesn’t happen. And I am jolted out of my reverie by a shrill horn that rebukes me sharply for harbouring such sickening thoughts. I take a step back and realize I am all alone. It’s been five long minutes and the humans that were previously consuming the air around me, causing my oxygen-deprived brain to spasm and hallucinate thus, have all crossed. How do they manage it? How do they spot the fleeting gap between the blur of the fast approaching vehicles? How do they manoeuvre their mortal bodies to pass so comfortably through the seemingly endless lanes of impending doom? Why is it that whenever I have to cross a particular road, the entire wheeled population of the city converges towards that point? And why o why do they never stop coming at me, trying to run me over for a vendetta that I have no knowledge of? Grrr…[Bristles with fear which rivals that of Marion Crane’s when she was discovered bathroom singing by her knife-wielding, cross-dressing motelwallah with mommy issues.]

It must involve mathematics. That’s why I am so bad at it.

Posted By

Swati.

Chief Copy Bouncer or something to that effect.

Bombay. A midnight rediscovery of the city.

In the dead of the still night, I walk into darkness. The city lies stretched out before me in obscure circles. I spiral downward with the elevator as cold fingers rub the sleep off my eyes. I stare and find myself seated in a cocoon that reeks of leather and old spice. This beast that encloses me, it wraps me in the safety if its arms. The glass window rolls down and I finally smell Bombay. Yes, this is my Bombay. The Bombay I have waited for all my life. A Bombay that is soft and decadent, full of secrets like a demure bride. This is in contradiction to the Bombay of the day- wanton, crude and unrelenting. Tonight, I feel a part of her, my soul seeps into her veins and I think to myself. I think even if I die one of these days and the world moves on like I never existed, this city will mourn for me, always remember me and maybe a part of me will live on through its memories. Time feels like dewdrop upon a blade of glass- unmoving and contemplative. The rain has slobbered the entire city with its eager, wet tongue. The streets glisten with a satisfaction that could almost be post-coital. As we gather speed, the engine hums a melancholic lullaby and I feel the wind stroking my hair. I stretch my arms out to soothe its wild desires. This is a city of shadows- silhouettes that grow, suddenly acquiring rigid, rectangular shapes and then rapidly dissolving into a haze of neon. Strange yet familiar faces pass by in a distinct blur. If the city were a song, it would be ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. It’s devastating, overwhelming and deeply operatic. As we accelerate forward, the sea-link begins to make an unlikely appearance. It has somehow negotiated the wide vacuum between two islands, floating lightly above the untamed swirling waters. Even from far, I can see its absolute miracle. It’s poetic in its precise engineering. I marvel at the humans who saw it in their minds and were able to transform that obscure dream into architectural plans and blueprints, using nothing but science and some cranes to turn it into this. I see clearly the thin strands of white- elusive and slippery. They seem to magically hold the giant slabs of concrete. It reminds of a spider’s web as the cars from afar look like tiny insects caught in its invisible fold, unable to even stir. These white threads, they start at the same point, from the same elevation, stretched in a perfect symmetry from both sides of the giant pillar. However, they end up angled at regular distances from each other, its proportions strangely equidistant. Upon close inspection, it is revealed to me that these threads are reinforced by other threads placed at parallel degrees. As you move between them, they give the illusion of intersecting at various points. These points are somewhat transitory, as you tilt your head from one side to another. And again, the threads do their wild dance. They run towards and then run away from one another, tracing straight lines against the black sky. As the music rises to a crescendo, I think of a guitar somewhere, its strings being plucked by impatient hands. We don’t stop. We just keep going till we reach queen’s necklace. I remember my first tryst with Bombay and that one evening when I fell in love. I just sat at Marine Drive and I gawked, at everything- the people, the dogs, the cars, the buildings. The sun turned from white hot to golden yellow to burnt amber to crimson red till finally embarrassed at my overtures, it resigned and drowned itself in the Arabian Sea. Suddenly, I am shaken out of my stupor. The beast screeches to a halt, the traffic light says red. Red- it is definitely the colour of Bombay. Defiant. Passionate. Seductive. I now know the reason why I am so greedy for Bombay. Because she is mine, all mine.

Posted By

Swati.

Your friendly neighbourhood copywriter.