Bokeh

Let me begin with a question which keeps revisiting me every time I sit down to write - How big should a collection of words be to be called a story? Do words matter at all? Will a well-crafted, emotion-filled and deeply philosophical sentence classify as a story?

***

Walking underneath sodium lamps in a city that turns yellow come nightfall, I saw them smoking cigarette and laughing over jokes in a language I could not understand. They were dressed in luminescent green to reflect any incoming motor headlight. For most of their life they were dots on top of sky-scraping construction sites or blurred with dust and cement on roadsides. Near me, with every smoke they let out piercing deep into my nostrils and further into my lungs, I felt them, strangely as it may seem, to be real.

***

There are stories pouring out of homes and into streets every night – some you hear and forget, some you write down while some you step on and kill softly. In between these stories, I heard a mother’s lullaby round a corner where the street bends unceremoniously into drainage. The song she sang reminded me of my Amma. Out of nowhere I found myself wondering when had Amma suddenly stopped singing to me. Was it when I first went to school or was it when I turned ten? Sometimes these little things fall apart so delicately that you won't realize it till the day it is completely lost.

***

A sudden burst of rain found me sheltering beside a closed shop. There were two middle aged men, drunk and happy, hearing songs on a radio. One of them asked me if I had eaten and that he had food to spare. He introduced himself as Senthil. He told he was a painter and his friend as a former military person. Senthil said that for the past eight years, this shop-side was their home. The military guy, he said, was kicked out from his own home by his children. I looked at him half enquiring, he smiled silently. Senthil sang along with the radio for a while and said Tamil songs and MGR were his lifeblood. The rain was fading, making the music grow louder while I sat and thought about the food he offered to spare. When I was leaving, Senthil asked me to live my life by a song. "Kannai Nambaathey" he sang "Unnai Yemaatrum.. Kanneeril Maatum". With the little Tamil I knew, I could understand that he asked me not to trust my own eyes.

***

My grandmother was waiting for me to come home so that she can go to sleep. My grandfather was asleep in his chair. This disease which was eating into his brain changed his physicality and mannerisms so much so that sleeping became his only real habit. He had become forgetful, he became restless, he suffered from hallucinations and sleep disorders. Perhaps for him the world wasn't as harsh as it was for us. For me, the most troubling aspect about this disease was that it made me forget how he used to be without it. It not only affects him, I thought, but the memories of him too.

***

The city was sleeping and I was surrounded by the blue light of my laptop screen. How many words are necessary to make a story, I thought. I didn't have much, I didn't have words with structure or emotions. I didn't have novels or legends waiting within. I didn't have satire or political observations. All I had were the things I saw and the moments I lived, and I knew I had to write it down anyhow.