Dada's Sketchbook
(but online)
June 17, 2021
Every time I would step on to the Force Traveller back in college, I’d heave a sigh of relief. The satisfaction was instantly doubled when I’d manage to set my bum on a vacant seat.
The trip from NID to IJM was as short as the acronyms but somehow, felt shorter on the days I’d be exhausted from drawing straight lines all day or having toiled at the workshop sanding a piece of teak. These trips, the return journeys, would always be more memorable than the morning ones. Maybe dozing off to the shifting amber lights of the Guntur-Vijayawada expressway felt better than struggling to find a footing, clutching onto your belongings while you’re still munching on the last bit of chutney laden idly.
Towards the end of my four years at college, I had completely switched over to my trusty single-speed, a gift from Mustafa who, after finishing his Bachelor’s degree, left for Delhi and then Iraq. However, the occasional Traveller trips still gifted me a basket of memories, some warm, some steamy, some I barely remember. Now, the Bus Service group on WhatsApp stays relatively quiet, beeping once in a while, serving as a reminder that fewer days remain till it buzzes again — “Buss to IJM!”.
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February 17, 2021
Morning Dosa
As a schoolkid, I remember eating the same khichdi everyday before going to school. Summers, monsoons or winters; exam or not, the same watery porridge. Functional, easy to gulp down with just a few roasted cumin seeds that kept it from qualifying for hospital food. My equally simple worldview perhaps kept me from complaining much.
In college though, breakfast was a crazy affair.
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January 27, 2021
Backseat pilgrims
I remember years ago, walking to my first tuition class. I was not failing in English yet the 350 rupees every month were worth all the larking about (competing with the summer cuckoos) we did and less of grammar we practiced. Tuitions easily became something to look forward to. In hindsight it might have substituted the lack of playtime we suffered from otherwise.
In a choppy span of a few final semester exams, this recreational adda where many football games were planned, suddenly morphed into something much grave. In a sense it must have prepared us for the uncertainties awaiting us in the future but I would often find myself clutching at the hems of the heavy words in the textbooks I carried, barely coping but that’d be a topic for another day.
Coming back to the city, it’s thus normal to find five or six instances of such pilgrims regardless of the time of the day, shuttling around like worker bees. I think I’ve said enough. I have stuffed the rest of my words into the picture.
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Gutur gu
January 19, 2021
Way past it’s former glory days, the concrete barracks of the steel-city are no longer at a hundred percent occupancy. Many of the quarters, mostly first floor ones have been long vacated. These empty kitchens with broken windows thus often become perfect nesting spaces for the pigeons.
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