Vanishing

I turned seventeen last month. My temples greyed; a black halo formed around the lower half of my face and started to grow. The smudge of black below my nose darkened—I got my present without celebrating my day.

That day or perhaps some other day saw me taking an empty tempo—one of many such wonders that circumnavigated a small portion of the expansive and labyrinthine city. The body of the tempo was enamel white, with parallel streaks of blue slathered over like suntan. Overcast as it was, the day waded slowly through the square-shaped hole it had for a window, through with also came in dust, remnants of arid roads that beckoned for spring to arrive.

The rear-view mirror reflected a chin sporting a stubble that was only a few days old, a pair of eyes that seemed to have drunk the red from the lids, an aquiline nose, and lips that were an equal number of shades away from the pink of a blush—or of two daubs of rouge—and the black of anthracite. Silence hung like an enormous beast, breathing heavily and rarefying the atmosphere. Only after a long while—punctuated by jarring glances exchanged through the mirror and the clanking shut of the stained glass that framed the windows—did another passenger, a young kid, come in. He took the seat across from me, and it bothered me that the game of noticing somebody noticing you had resumed. The silence felt more tangible all of a sudden.

Out of the larger gap that was the door people got on and off from, the landscape continually changed: The buildings nearest got small, and the further ones got smaller; the road reflected the sky and took on the over-clouded pewter hue. It seemed endless; it provided more of itself to compensate for every small part of it the vehicle overcame.

The boy sitting opposite me thrust his hand into his breast-pocket and fished out a thin roll of money, the outer layer of which was a five-rupee note—an outcome of similarly silent and fidgety rides, I thought. He moved a seat closer to the driver, and asked that he stop the vehicle. Ten rupees, the driver said, and the boy handed his neat roll of money before getting off and heading to the left of the road where, upon seeing a lorry reversing in his direction, he stopped and waited for it to pass.

A sullen sun appeared somewhere, and the dust still rose.

Mist Fading

He will agree to let you read some of the stories he wrote after all the coaxing and pledging you will do. There will be a story that will read like nothing you have read in a long, long time.

He was a writer; wrote mostly short stories, shorter than those that appear in magazines and newspapers, barely more than a few hundred words; thought he couldn't carry a story for long.

If you ask who he likes, the first name he will utter will be Kafka. He'll say that there never existed a better coalesce of everything. He'll argue that Metamorphosis is still the best story. He'll underline for you how Metamorphosis has been “plagiarised” by writers like Steinbeck, and point to Of Mice and Men. You will consider that and you will be dumbfounded for a while, and then you will start to see some connections; but you will not be convinced. You will say that nothing from a story completely belongs to the writer. Then he, feeling the need to defend his hero, will get started and you will have to back down.

Any and all intimations that hint at your unwillingness to talk about Kafka with him will be ignored. He will make a point to talk all the same; even if it is Kafka on the Shore that you inadvertently allude to. You will talk about Shore's surreal edge and the magic it carries with it, and then you will see how the conversation meanders to Kafka, in due course. Sometimes, he is too garish, you will say. And he will do the hatchet job; not for you, on you.

You like Kafka too, but it's rather for stories like Judgement, you will argue. Also for In the Penal Colony. You will praise and say better things about him (things that you will not completely mean) and he will be contended, that grin plastered to his fat lips.