9 highlights
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The line outside the lunch hall was far too long- out of the weather worn tarpaulin it went, curving at oblique points of chatter and conversation, scattering into a thicket of small and smaller children, and finally into a throng of ladies all clad in starched shades of gold, green or red; men were scant, the few around the marriage hall could be seen walking about nestling half empty bottles of aquafina or nippled bottles of pale warm milk.
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Here they sat, the horde, their heads tilted forward, their hands bent like preying insects, slurping the vibrant concoction of fluids from their banana leaves.
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I looked at him and saw him smiling at his wife, then at his in-laws who were muttering something in apparent mirth. The fat, round words of Malayalam scripture came out lazy and yellow, ugly and un-poetic.
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The whole street seemed cluttered with white tempos and similar, swaying, celebratory men. I saw a few dressed in grey coats and silver ties- men who would introduce themselves as recent ‘galf returns’.
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I hadn’t smoked since college, and I didn’t smoke much then, especially not vulgar, rugged, ‘hards’. Now the smoke felt voluminous and perfect- its dense respiration synchronous to mine. I didn’t stop walking for quite some time; the afternoon sun burned through the smoke and covered my forehead in beads of thick sweat.
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Yellow pamphlets advertising the holistic cure for piles were swishing along the dusty road getting caught in the slugging traffic or being trapped under shop shutters. Horns rang out in an isolated fashion bouncing back and forth along the thick fat air of the sleeping city. Even the temples were closed and the deities jailed to a midsummer treat of jaggery and sour milk.
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The left side had few open shops; the Bata store was open but barely stirring- the withering stalk of a thin blue guard kept watch upon his plastic chair; the bigger jewellery store advertised a season sale on all bridal collections; the women in advertisements jumped from poster to poster- the shoe store to the jewellery store to the one for churidars to the little board for call center operatives- they all seemed content in their plastic world. Did I deserve the same plastic treatment?
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There was white light across its magnanimous aisles- of glowing cereal boxes and packaged dosa mixture, of school bags wrapped in fresh plastic and bubble bath solutions that advertised no tears- the best of all promises.
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Behind the erupting scene was a poster for Kerala Tourism- all those places that they said were so near at hand and yet I had never seen- the gushing streams, the calm backwaters, the spiced fish, the jolly fishermen and their happy nets, the kathakali dancers at the peak of their celebrated high, the majestic houseboats sticking out of a pale blue, the soft sickle sun pressed across a pink sky. Where had all this been? And where had I been?