I remember her vividly, from a life long past. She was all over the media, whatever little there was then. The National Geographic photograph of the riveting gaze. And the intrusion of the photographer's gaze not unknown to me, as a Mumbai girl. I knew only too well.
You cannot live in Mumbai and notknow the Colonial Gaze. We, young folk then, scoffed at the camera toting tourists clicking away at the faces, the urchins, the pigeons, the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Gateway and streedside squalor as I nimbly side-stepped the puddle to get to the bus and go home. Even as I write this, I am transported to Kala Ghoda and the dusk rush to the train or the buses that belched out smoke and people in my beloved city. I wanted to stay back in the City, walk along Marine Drive a while, but home beckoned with its dutied lined up neatly row after row. Mothering work for me started earlier than expected, long before I was a mother.
I forgot about her for a long time, went on to live my life and do my mothering work. Then suddenly she came into my life again, this time with a weather beaten face, a middle aged woman, with the gaze still strong yet the lines telling stories I could not imagine. This was perhaps the time of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns and I admired the resolve and the lives, much like the ones I had left behind. One has to eat, I chose to eat here, in my adopted home. She continued to live where she was placed, perhaps until someone does a 25th anniversary special.
Then yesterday, I met her again, in both her avatars: on the pages of my soul-brother's assignment. I read the first few lines of his paper and admired the fact that at such a young age, he had the resolve and untainted courage to know the heartfelt good of his own people fromoft- repeated "truths". We went on to work together and finish the seminar presentation. And at the end of that 14 hour day, due to the mad pace from the work day to the school day, I was hungry, very. Although I have a Bamiyan Kabob right beside my home, I had never been there. And here it was on my path. So in I went and I just sat there. And looked around me.
The laughter and conversation of the family members working together in the kitchen and at the counter were welcoming. The recommendations impeccable, the smiles genuine, the lines, the eyes honest.
As I sat watching the purple twilight descend on the university campus in front of me, I looked lovingly at those beautiful photographs: enlarged and framed in heavy wooden frames they told a story of a people from their own eyes. The intricate carvings inlaid with azure and ochre, the curved dome of the mosque, the resolve of the devout as they walked towards their faith.
One thing is certain: media tales and one sided stories do not do justice to these ancient cultures and the true stories: they are inadequate, and unidimensional, bland and biased.
I sat there, surrounded by people yet quite solitary. I remembered the wonderfully ancient statues of the Buddha carved into the hillside, the historical twists that shaped the unreality of so many lives. And I stayed with that thought awhile. How our lives are indeed interconnected, how late we realise it.
All I could think of, pray for: please let those beautiful marble walls never be destroyed, or become pock marked.
May the Azaan never fail to call.
May the roses still bloom in carpets and gardens.
May hearts remain open to understand that all ways are possible.
May there be peace.
