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| The Red Bus by Clarice Beckett |
I
Where have all my friends gone?
Robi, I don't care about, anymore. We used to be thick as thieves. We thought of ourselves as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Like Kerouac, Robi was a sportsman, played competitive sports – cricket at the state level; bowled left arm fast: he could get it to move away from the right-hander quite swiftly. I think I could play him well, since cricket was my obsession as a teenager. As a young boy, I wrote poems. It was one of the few things I was good at in school – even my teachers sometimes confessed envy at my poetic abilities. My principal would often put my poems up on the school noticeboard for all to see. Like Ginsberg’s father, my father was also a poet, but he chose to become a bureaucrat instead. I remember reading his poems in an old notebook of his.
Robi always said I didn't roll good joints – I am smoking one as I write this. He was right – I lack patience which is essential for rolling good joints but I always disagreed when he said so.
Robi was a year senior to me in the University. All of us studied foreign languages at the School of Foreign Languages, including Manik. I met Manik first, then Robi; they were roommates. Manik and I were batch mates – I was in the French centre; he was in the German centre, like Robi. I took up French because I liked the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud which I had read in English before joining the University. Manik was from West Bengal, just like Robi: both from nondescript small towns. It was not surprising that we hit it off together as soon as we met. My childhood was spent in a boarding school in Bhagwanpur: a small town in Bihar with a substantial Bengali population. It was a temple town, with a big Shiva temple, famous all over India for being one of the twelve temples in the country where according to the myth, a part of Sati’s body fell. The town’s economy and social life revolved around the temple.
The boarding school I went to was run by Bengali monks, although there were others too: from other states; even Western countries. It was run under the aegis of a monastic order established by Swami Vivekanand more than a century ago. The food was Bengali; everyone spoke in Bengali; we sang Bengali songs and recited Bengali poems. I could speak Bengali fluently, as a result. Later in High School, I had a Bengali friend who played cricket as obsessively as me and listened to 80’s rock bands: The Scorpions; Mr Big; Deep Purple; U2; Metallica... Ranchi, where I lived with my parents, had something of a Western music culture, due to many English-medium boarding schools; and the influence of Christianity over the large indigenous population, many of whom had converted. There were a couple of music shops where you could get mixed-tapes recorded for a small sum of money. I used to buy cassettes too – this was before CDs and MP3s.
Manik could play the guitar and sing well. Back home in his small town, he had an Anglo-Indian teacher called Bruce who had taught him the chords to a lot of Beatles, Harry Belafonte, and Peter, Paul and Mary songs. He carried a black acoustic guitar from home to the University; it had a fine look and sound. When we would go to score grass in our early days in Delhi, from Minto Road, the last stop on the 615, which was the only bus that went through the campus regularly, he would sing all the way in a low, gentle voice, sitting next to me and I liked it very much listening to him all along. I had never smoked grass before I met him. The first time I smoked, I slept it off. But I liked the sensation it gave me. Everything became more intense: feelings; taste; thoughts. He had been smoking since he was a teenager: cigarettes as well as dope. His father left home when he was a kid; his mother brought him up, together with his elder sister. She worked as an English teacher at a school; became the principal later. Manik was quite close to his mother. She was liberal as a parent: Manik told me he drank beers with her; she allowed him to eat beef.
The 615 would first go to Munirka, which is a universe in itself: Jats, Manipuris, Biharis, Bengalis, Pahadis, South Indians, Blacks, even a few Whites, peddlers, pimps, whores, drug-addicts, call centre employees, many ex-JNU students, either working or preparing for the IAS entrance exams: everyone who could not afford a place in fancy south Delhi gated colonies lived here. You could buy everything you needed as a student: mattresses, notebooks, clothes, shoes, medicines, at the market in Munirka; there were many cheap eateries too, serving all kinds of cuisines; as varied as its residents. From there, it would move through R.K.Puram where the famous Delhi Public School was, near Sangam cinema, an old single-screen theatre. Some of my friends from the boarding school studied in the DPS school: close to sector 6, opposite Malai Mandir, a temple popular with South Indians. Many Tamilians lived in the government quarters there; it also had a slum. The slum had more people from the southern states, who picked garbage, or sold marijuana – it became another place to score later. Close to it was Chanakya Puri, the diplomatic enclave with embassies and the posh Lalit Hotel. It also had a market, where you could eat momos for cheap and buy leather jackets at discount rates. After that the bus would turn towards Safdarjung, where the big hospital was, and the ever-crowded AIIMS. It stopped at Mohammadpur, a Muslim colony, close to the 700-years-old Nizamuddin Dargah where we would go to listen to the qawwali on Thursdays. Sarojini Nagar and Lajpat Nagar markets were close by: a favourite with students for buying fashionable clothes, at low prices.
Nearby, crisscrossing Aurobindo Road, was Lodhi Road: flanked on one side by Safdarjung’s tomb, a dream-like mausoleum of the second Nawab of Awadh, with its finely decorated arches, and columns, all in white marble. On another side, was the Dargah, and the Basti – another, working-class, Muslim colony.
Lodhi Road is long, with six traffic lights dividing it into smaller islands, and many side-lanes: starting with the poetically named Amrita Shergil Marg, which leads to Khan Market; and Jor Bagh Lane which takes you inside Jor Bagh, with its whitewashed bungalows, and well-maintained parks. Nearby is Lodhi Gardens, built during the reign of the Slave Dynasty which ruled India before the Mughals: they built grand mausoleums, huge in size and scale, mostly in stone and several of them dotted Lodhi Gardens, which was also huge and landscaped with many old trees and flowering plants: a hit with lovers, joggers, morning-walkers, retired government employees, bureaucrats, politicians, picnic-ers, children bunking school, models getting their portfolios done… Opposite it, was the India Habitat Centre, where we came sometimes to watch a world classic, or a theatre performance at its Open Air Theatre; further ahead, was Max Mueller Bhavan, the German cultural centre; and the India International Centre, which was posher than the Habitat Centre: a favourite haunt of Delhi’s literati and senior bureaucrats for drinking gin and savouring fish fry at its subsidised canteen. Adjacent to it was the India Islamic Cultural Centre, with its large banquet hall and conference centre; next to it was the Chinmaya Mission building which belonged to the Hindu religious order of the same name; opposite it were the Tibetan High Commission and the Meteorological Department – the fifth avenue side lane here took you to the Sai Baba temple and Lodhi colony. Defence Colony was further down; next up was the Delhi Police Special Cell office, tucked inside a narrow alley; and Meherchand Market – Meherchand was a Hindu Mahasabha leader, active during the Partition; along with sundry government buildings where offices of several ministries were located. The Lodhi hotel was an imposing presence in the area, where ministers, industrialists, and members of Delhi’s old elite hung out; the old Methodist church was near the flyover under which Bangladeshi refugees sold pot; beggars and homeless people slept at nights here on the sidewalks.
The Basti started from the flyover: flanked by a park with a Shiva temple and another, exclusive, park for women through which an alley led to a homeless shelter; and many eateries in narrow alleys where nan was made on tandoor, and curries thick with oil floated in steel containers. Lodhi road ended at the Sabj Burj, a blue domed structure from Mughal-era which seemed straight out of central Asia, which is where Babur was from. Opposite it was Humayun’s tomb, the grandest of all, surrounded by a large landscaped garden, standing majestic with its tall and large cupola, rising above everything else in sight. Sometimes, in the autumns, I would see yellow leaves fall down like ageing ballerinas, on both sides of the road. It seemed as if golden carpets had been laid out; the soft, autumn light fell gently on them, adding more golden hues.
From here, the bus turned and climbed a flyover, crossing the Delhi Public School, Mathura Road; Sunder Nagar on its right and Golf Links apartments on its left, where the city’s well-heeled residents lived. It would cross Zakir Hussain Marg and enter New Delhi: India Gate, full of people strolling, and sitting in the large gardens and parks around it; the stern-looking Rashtrapati Bhawan, in red sandstone; North Block and South Block up the hill, from which the Raj Path came down; fountains and lakes in which children swam during summer months.
After crossing K.G.Marg with the big Hindustan Times building, and British Council building, it would enter Jan Path, with Shangri La hotel on one side, and the state emporiums, coffeehouses, and the Hanuman mandir, surrounded by beggars on another: this is where we would get down for protests organised by the University’s Student Union and walk up to Jantar Mantar and sometimes, Mandi House. Nearby was the shopping complex where all kinds of clothes and trinkets were sold – pornographic CDs were sold in the Palika Bazar underground market – after which it entered the inner circle of CP, full of colonial-era buildings, with Grecian columns, whitewashed art-deco facades, and long, winding corridors in which stood old restaurants with quaint names: Volga, Caventers, Madras Coffee House… CP is another universe, with its odd characters and regulars: retired government employees; hawkers; journalists; office-workers; slackers; day-trippers; junkies; lovers; charlatans. It would go up to Tolstoy Marg, where the Statesman Building stood taller than the rest of the edifices, a relic of a by-gone era; from there, another flyover brought you into the heart of Old Delhi: Ram Lila Maidan, the sprawling and ever-bustling New Delhi railway station and Minto Road, named after an Indian Viceroy, from the early 20th century.
Come to think of it, the Party brought us all together. We worked for the Party; attended meetings in mess halls; put up posters, campaigned during elections. It was a Left-dominated university. I had no clue before joining that people cared so much about the Left; quite ignorant of me since the Party ruled three states back then: West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. I only knew about the Soviet Union, which disintegrated when I was nine-years-old and I thought that must be it: the end of Communism. I quit the party later. We all did.
Junk: it arrived unannounced. With it came Roy. And the Fall. It doesn't really sound fair. It seems like Roy was responsible. He wasn’t. It just happened that way.
Like all good things, our friendships also didn't last long.
Eventually, I got a job and moved out of Delhi. We didn't really keep in touch, especially Robi and I. In fact, he has simply disappeared from our lives. Now, I don't even want to see him. Of course, there are lots of other things but I can't tell you all right away.
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