Songs of the not-so innocent

It is 6.45 am as I type these words. At this time last year, my father was taking his last, ragged, ventilator-aided breaths in an ICU hospital bed. Outside, a few well-wishers held vigil, lost in their own thoughts, murmuring to each other, or stealing occasional, anxious glances at me as I paced the corridors, taking phone calls, making arrangements, my demeanour waxing and waning between stupefaction and frenzy. Life goes on. Maybe it’s the first, hardest fact to accept; that nothing dramatic actually happens to commemorate the moment. The sun rises, vendors slowly set out their early-morning stalls, vehicles crawl out of narrow by-lanes or wide society gates and everywhere, strangers go about their day. But my father’s days were done. Never again would he taste the bittersweet first filter coffee, crack a fresh fold of the newspaper, check his messages or plan for the day ahead. His passing left an astonishing number of plans incomplete. Truth be told, I should not have been surpri

I typed this with the frenzied drums of Ganesha’s goodbye thumping in the distance. They have become steadily louder, not only tonight but over several years. The chorus in a song by Bob Dylan goes: People are crazy and times are strange I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range I used to care, but things have changed The din is as good a harbinger of change as any.  My neighbourhood’s identity is altering quickly. Where once the housing complex I live in was something of a quiet, last outpost before the Bombay highway, it is now a residential society under siege, assaulted by dazzling lights and rapacious appetites, served up at and by a shopping mall that’s too close for comfort and so close it’s convenient. Our city’s vehicular attitude has metamorphosed and taken on an edge of ugly aggression. In part it is because of the skyline snaking its way upward, in part thanks to the metro tracks slithering steadily sideways. Where once we’d look up to trees and open sky, the canvas is now most