Since I started to remember,I remember having a fascination for the CLOCK.Not the abstract fascination like fidelity,love,selflessness that I fiddle with; real,tangible fascination that comes from the gut,like a teenager’s craving for sex,like a love-lorn’s craving for a glimpse of Isha/Beauty,like the crude attack to the senses by Sandipan/Ayn Rand-such has been my fascination with the clock. I don’t know which precedes what,but I’m sure our fetish for ‘round figures’ and all that is “5”,must have a correlation with our ancient clock,the clock being the father for me. Its not so much the 5(or the 10),the fascination lies in the omnipotence of the clock. Time for me is an ubiquitous,all-pervading,all-conquering entity walking with HIS nose held high for ages,making ages,breaking ages but being non-chalant,like Camus’ Mearsault,like Dostoyeveskey’s Roshkolnikov.Being the cause and bearing the effect,yet holding mute witness,like the ancient Ganges,like our ancient Rishis. And the clock succeeds in containing Time,in restraining Time.
I cursed with extreme loathing as the clock always,invariably always sped faster from 9:30-10 on my schoolday mornings,conniving with our schoolbus;and felt nothing but disdain when it conspired with Maa and went as slow as it could just before the playful,cricket mornings of Summer vacations. Good heaven’s, the Sun at 38 degrees was just another fielder those days and heat waves-a vague term observed somewhere outside the Sports page that could be left aside for an improbable future recollection! The clock ran so fast then.
And apart from conspiring,it kept time, time that would always advance ruthlessly,never retreating,never looking back on past mistakes,never stealing a moment to make love or make hate. I remember having spent breathless minutes trying not to drop an eyelid,only to witness that divine moment when the elderly minute hand actually moved. I won’t say I did’nt try,but I could never catch the snobby little hour hand moving. Snobby little stick!
Time was omnipotent,but the clock gave me confidence that it could be tappped,that atleast we could actually,though helplessly,witness it DOING things to us and our surroundings. Thus emboldened,I wasted a precious day’s worth of Cricket and stood guard beside the open drain beneath a JABA( Hibiscus sounds ‘tash’ even for the language I dream in!) in our Para, just to watch when the little bud grew to a full bloomed flower. Though I stood a diligent guard,Time and the bud escaped me,and however much I might still blame Maa for calling me for lunch,me and Time both know,it did’nt bloom on lunchtime!
The clock kept time,and when it stopped ticking it bottled that bit of time within itself,locked forever in safety. DEATH for me is an excreta of time,that which time has left long back in its onward march. The open drains of my Para,my Para itself,my childhood all are long dead,but there is a clock that stopped ticking. That clock defied Time’s atrocious march and locked to safety my days of innocence,of newness and of SUBHO. Those were the only days when I lived in each moment,and if PRESENT be defined as the moment one lives in,my present lies in the present of the past,and my past relegated to the forgotten realms of memory. ( MY FUTURE HAS ALWAYS BEEN UNCERTAIN,AND NOW U KNOW THAT ITS NOT WITHOUT REASON :( )
My earliest memory of Subho is an open drain,and the two of us urinating,with the young morning smelling every bit of the fresh summer vacation. We were literally next door neighbours,with our homes being close enough to gossip about the latest goings on in the Para that was the World,even after the housewives were long asleep. Our home (and it was never a mere house) had a ‘ROAK’ (it was so high then,now it appears so low :( ) where we would discuss ‘state secrets’ , the most tantalising of which was the 1Rupee. A rupee was precious then,and would yield, among others,a ‘Shaal patta’ full of ambrosial achaar. The two of us buggers would occassionally ( must confess,the occasion arose quite frequently :) ) steal a coin and savour heaven,hiding in the rubble of an under-construction building. Subho was my first partner –in-crime.
During the gray exam evenings we were not allowed to call out each other and we had worked out an ingenious code to counter that. All one needed to call the other was to squeal like a KOEL!
(I held pride for this code before maa recently told me that she had worked it out since its inception :( )
Those days,there were three major ‘mobs’(as we believed) ,and the riavalry was electric. ‘Match newa’ meant playing for your pride and if by Devil’s curse anyone failed,heated rounds of allegations awaited him. Poaching and plotting for key players was so much in vogue. Our days now make such an issue of ‘TRUST’. I never consulted the dictionary for the word, the word simply means Subho for me,it meant so even before I knew the word,it’ll always mean so. Trust means Maa will never know why the odd coin went missing,trust means there will always be 1 who’ll fight when I went for 5 sixes,trust means Subho…
Friendship these days evoke images of weariness for me. Friendship almost always has cigarettes or expletives as its constant concomitants. There is such an awkward silence when the cigarettes,the gaalis,the porn and the gossip is over. I’m thankful we did’nt know “FRIENDSHIP” when we were friends. On rainy days when there would be no Cricket, on vacation afternoons when there would be no Salman, when there would’nt be so many other things ,there would be the two of us. Even the silence,of fatigue,or of plain nothing-ness would be shared with such glee. Thank God we were not ‘Friends’ ,the way I’ve been friends with everyone else since.
The clock that has long stopped went a little faster for sometime.I mastered the selfishness that was screamed unto me by the text-books,the parents and what not,while Subho plain vanished like Frodo’s uncle,never to return again in its lifetime.(He did visit us though,in that bastard timezone of class 12-a mix of past studies,an absent present and a future dangling alongside a carrot,perhaps the present went to fetch the stick)
We never kept things from each other. A great feeling it is to have a confidant when one does’nt really have anything to confide. So I knew of the ‘chits’ that would be hidden in his socks,knew of his disappointment when not even the chits came ‘common’,forget the questions,and I’ll confess,this cheating business invariably drew a chill down my spine. How I wish I were naïve forever..
He knew of my translucent,blurred and muted feelings for Bhaswati Aunty,knew of Isha my “True Love”(!!..Hindi movies should be cursed…there is nothing as sachcha pyaar Mr. Yash Chopra) ,knew that I had secretly read Arabian Nights,and all that was worth knowing. But then he knew something that he never shared,and I’m so thankful to him for that. He knew of Birds and Bees(and their progenies) and on the day of his enlightment ,came running.But I could never coax him to divulge,the reason my sweet days of naivete was extended,the reason I had a gradual transition to manhood,and the reason I discovered the beauty and magic of the Human body with all my heart and brain(well,whatever little I have of it)
Do I want Subho back?Do I want to meet him?...No. The stopped clock gives time two times a day,and that is the time I venture discreetly to the glorious days of ‘Hide-n-Seek’,the time I rid myself of all cares of my idle mind and feel back the restless happiness of a round of “Pittoo” or “Lock and key”. To bring Subho back would be to reset the clock to motion. To bring him back would be to give in to TIME,and once again stare helplessly as HE moulds my wishes without the ME-tool.
I would never acknowledge,even at the cost of time,that my Para,My Home,and a good part of what I stood for,what I am,and what I wanted to be,is dead-left forever to rot in the excreta of time. Let the defunct clock be my Pyramid,and Subho,my Mummy.
