Moth

I watched the damp grey cloud slowly fade into another much lighter one and waited for them to elapse. It rained all day and night, not very unusual for the season. It rained the same, on other days as well. Communes longed to drop themselves under a warm light, sleeping over random spots of the fleeting sun or layered under the blankets, talking to themselves, “talking to me?” and some slowly rolled and lit the brains to ‘High Hopes’, “In a world of magnets and miracles” to Penaz Masani.

Coldness trapped in blocks of rooms. I watched out to the road, raising myself from the bed and straining to hold the view, a shivering warmth around the neck. I stayed long as I can, long as the old man muffled up in a torn blue coat carefully walked against the dark slippery atmosphere, breathing the cold tar, crossing a window safely and the other as well.

Head down with eyes closed, the pillow was cold again. A furtive old man, I thought to myself. Who was he? If I can dart across to the other rooms I might get to know more than what the two windows of my room can offer. Instead, rested and stared at the roof. An unusual Moth, a lustrous turquoise one.

They were three, I knew, two of which had died in the last two days. The last rain of the season and probably the last moth, I stared for a long.

We had a nice square room with two windows facing the road. The other block of rooms had a view to the sculpture department with its concrete humans placed around – visibly waiting for someone, something, a few similar standing men and a few sitting women next to which was a stone moth.

A soft breeze came through the window and said you can leave now, People started to slowly drift out of rooms.

Walk here

Walk there

Bottle bottle – no water
Filter leaks

Blue-lit rooms

Smokes

Warm laughter

Hide

Sleep

I slowly walked out with a second wind unfurling into the room, careful not to wake anyone, at least the ones sleeping on the floor warm against each other. I slid through the hallway, rubbing hands, passing the snoring rooms – refrigerated square rooms with bodies breathing and souls trapped in blankets. Down the hallway, right before I was to exit the gateway, I had a flash of someone staring out the window, near the leaking filter. There was a silence occupying him, a
familiar one.

I heard the shadow walking behind me, I knew it was him, we had chances of meeting unexpectedly throughout the year. ‘No alarms and no surprises’. We shouldn’t be here at this hour, we had departed two days back, the day when I found the dead moth near the window occasionally flicking to the wind. We were to walk our own ways, no twin business and greet if met. Rumours were in the atmosphere like it was with everyone, a random word that wafts through the air. We crossed the starring concrete people, like two concrete bodies moving.

“Beedi indo?”

I knew I hadn’t had one. Crossed the concrete men-women-moth, this time a familiar walk. We managed to get one from a room that was not locked. We sincerely apologise for that. Concrete people watched us walk again with our shadows merged, crossed side to side, and strolled to the front gate. By now we were familiar with gesticulating.

He lit the mini-cigar filled with tobacco flakes wrapped in tendu leaves with strings. Whispering to the stick end and face brightened with the initial pump, he silently laughed as smoke found a way out of his nose like a burned aircraft,
two machines propelling through time. Broken, mended and beautiful.

The street was deserted, dogs strolled, barked and were busy marking territories. Yellow stains here-there.

There was someone staring at us, it was the same old man in a blue coat, and he wanted to talk. So he told us about his lost violin. He had kept it in a restaurant while he eagerly waited for the kebab to be ready. His eyes welled when he spoke of how he went home only with the kebab.

The shop had closed now, all these years I made a living playing it, and now it was left in a shady place. We assured him that he’ll find it as soon as the shop opens, and the chances of losing it were less. He continued to walk opposite us.

Smoke passed hands and wind the trees. He spoke of leaving home in the coming days. I knew he was a land that was transposed to this city, a silent landscape which I hold within me as well, reminiscent of the past, we share parts of it. Somewhere I long to hear about the stories of his small town, of the people and their folklore, hills and ancestral home. If I can feel a landscape in him. There’s something different about it.

We took the turn from the church to the museum road. I lit the half-burned cold cigar again and puffed a ring. “When are you leaving?” he asked. I was not sure. I met this woman a few days back, someone who writes, and writes poems. I met
her last day as well and I’m not sure if I will ever see her again. A cloud that slowly faded into another much lighter one, disappearing over fragments of time.

The long road was lit with pouring lights and tinsels on either side, something that remains purposeless from a purposeful day. But the question of purposelessness ends with a glimpse of a few trans women dancing under them, sending loud quivering laughter, dancing to their pride, clapping hands in circles, as if greeting us. We slowed at first, then walked keeping to the other side of the road, crossed and glanced at each other. We walked further, and now the claps quietened. There was silence in both of us. The clouds made all the noise, and it started to drizzle. We turned back, this time keeping to the other side, and came closer. They kept dancing and calling out names of whom to perform next – an in-
finite tenderness. We walked through a fragrance that was unfathomable, not of a man or woman. What was it? They danced in circles, like a moth winding under a pouring light.

We distanced from the picturesque, turning down the road into the dark alleys, where night gulped and silence flooded the homeless, sleeping in shadows with their guards near, a promise it keeps for the last share of the meal.

Crossing the men-women-moth we ran into the hostel and moved to our respective rooms. Shadows apart, he went to the other side. A coldness swept the hallway, I was all drenched and had to wait until it dries.

I walked into my room, pulled the sheet to the corner and lay down. I could still hear them sleep, it rained heavily outside. The moth wasn’t there. I peered through the corners to the road outside, the furtive old man muffled up in a torn
blue coat with a hand above his head hurriedly moving.

And I slowly fall asleep with a tear departing down my cheek, a bedtime ritual of prolonged stagnation of not being able to cry for long, tired of the day’s events and not knowing of what all be there to come in future, that which can potentially make me cry.

End Note

Writing “Moth” happened during a transition – of a phase when I was not very concerned about the structure of the language, to a conscious state of observing what I wrote delayed the process of writing to some extent. I don’t remember when I began to keep a note, of the things that were until then mundane, of the evanescent matters through which I vented out the heat that slowly consumed me.

There is a lot happening now, which is potent enough to tear me apart. Writing about those will have to wait till they become a memory that I can possess; when I feel parts of it are fading, and want to revisit and keep hold of them.

24 November 2021