A time to live

Mumbai is a city of fear and darkness these days, the indomitable Mumbaiyya spirit notwithstanding. We all say how proud we are to be part of this city and its ethos, but we still look furtively over our shoulders in crowds, check under the seats and on the overhead rack in trains and jump whenever we hear even the faintest ‘pop’. Can you blame us? We just came through what was perhaps the most horrific route to death and destruction and are expected to bounce back to normality almost instantly, because that is the Mumbaikar’s way. So with the knowledge that we need to be strong and resilient, and the comfort that these horrors are not ours to live through except vicariously, through television and publications and stories shared over the phone, we find pockets of sheer joy in the small everyday events of life.

Like today, for instance. A dog in this sprawling office complex has had a litter of four little puppies. A couple of days ago, I found them coiled together fast asleep on the front steps of our building. In a gentle tide of movement, one of them fell off the step and stayed asleep, even when I picked it up and put it back with its siblings. The four babies are small, sleepy-looking, undernourished, hardly the kind you would easily take home to foster, but with the charm and endearingly languishing eyes of any babies that completely crack your heart open and urge you to adopt them. The same day, an entire team from the paper I work with was downstairs cooing over the puppies. Yesterday, my driver and his peers played with them and tried to feed them. Today, I was down in the garden with a couple of friends, playing with the young ones, giggling at their antics, burbling (much to my recollective embarrassment) baby talk and behaving like proud and besotted aunts. Who knows what will happen to these puppies once they grow up a little. For now, they own us.

Yesterday, even as the television news stations beamed endless images of carnage, wailing relatives and horrific accounts of the bomb blasts, one entertainment channel showed clips of funny situations and the way people reacted to them. In one, a homeowner selling her property gave permission for the gag team to put up signs on her lawn touting the opening of a strip club and bar. The TV team waited for responses from the neighbourhood populace, knowing that they would be strident and, considering it was a set-up, hilarious. And it was. I watched, giggling, as a silver-haired granny came up and waggled her finger in the face of the main actor, determined to protect her environs. The gag stretched itself out to its inevitable conclusion, when everyone let go with hearty belly laughs.

This morning, driving through the strange but typically Mumbaiyya monsoon weather where sudden and violent rain follows hot on the heels of bright and blinding sunshine, I saw a group of youngsters on their way to school. Solemn in blanketing rainwear and additionally protected by large and colourful umbrellas, they crossed the street at the traffic lights and then walked along the pavement. The littlest of them all, who seemed to be a boy, judging from the shorts and mulish expression he wore, found himself at the edge of a puddle, obviously wide and deep. Without waiting too long, he jumped square into it, splashing his friends and causing them to push him away with an obvious disgust. Then the rain stopped as abruptly as it had started. My car inched forward and I was level with the little boy. He looked at me, I smiled, without even thinking why. He grinned, showing gaps in his teeth, his whole face lighting up with a wonderful radiance only the very young have. As we drove past, his friends had been attacked by the same exuberance, and they jumped in and out of the puddle with no inhibitions.

It is moments like these that tell you how lucky you are to be alive, to be healthy and to be active. It is during moments like these that you forget, at least for a little while, that there are bombs, death and grief. These are the moments you should live for and live through them with the greatest sense of joy you can ever feel. These, after all, are the moments that really matter.