‘Memories of a Geisha’

Foreword

All these days that I have known her, a short span of time in terms of time, but a long one in terms of events, I cannot help but draw a parallel between an artist and her. She’s so good at her ordinary art that whenever I think of her, the artistic image of an accomplished Geisha flashes across my mind. The fact that her face is oriental has some role to inspire this image. Apart from the fact that I have seen the movie and have had my share of disappointment after having done that, that the movie was forgettable, that the picture on the cover of the book was haunting as opposed to the movie, and because I have been perceptually influenced by these, I have come to cherish her image as a supreme artist who has an insight in the ways of the world just like a Geisha, an artist who has the ability to penetrate the heart of the matter simply by borrowing the confidence of her ability from her primary art which is nothing but one of ‘constant discovery’. And I am willing to contest that her art lies in loving the people around her, and making a difference by not only loving them but also expressing that love frequently and more importantly abruptly.


‘One night at an internet café on Grant Road’

Technically, she is gone but she is here more than ever. I can feel her presence stronger than even when she was present here physically. That is the kind of everlasting quality she possesses, a simplistic charm that binds her acquaintances in a continuous rapture of time and space. And its not strange that I find myself saying this about her after knowing her for what…12 days?, because for me time has coagulated in the past few day.

‘I don’t even know if we will meet again.’ I found myself saying when she preparing to leave for Thailand, her family having decided to migrate.

‘Just stay in touch. And leave it to destiny if we will meet again because chances are that if we keep in touch we will definitely meet.’ I don’t know what’s wrong with me, that even after hearing this from her, doubts about us meeting again crop up in my mind considering she’s leaving for a place so far. I try to overcome these doubts but since it is well established that I am a slave of habit and considering habits take time to change, more so when you have nurtured that belief for years, these doubts will be entertained for some more time to come.

How can I forget how we met! And not surprisingly, our meeting was facilitated by the World Wide Web, which has consistently been a dynamic mode for countless people to unite online...all that and blah-blah. The only difference in our case was perhaps that the World Wide Web had an indirect role to play as, as opposed to the usual online route, we met in an internet café, one of many on that well known thoroughfare called Grant Road. I happened to be surfing the net on that ‘Grant Road evening’ and reaching out to friends, news, issues and all other things MICAn. Engrossed in my surfing function as I was, I unconsciously heard a melodious voice sing Kajrare and instantly I thought of Potnis who is what can be termed as ‘The Gift of Kajrare’ much like how Egypt is the gift of Nile. At that point in time, when the feminine voice pervaded the café air, had anyone shaken me up and diverted me away form surfing and asked me with my eyes closed about who might be singing, I would have easily passed the voice as of a girl with the description of being in her late teens, living in the neighborhood, possibly Muslim for the sake of that refined Urdu accent in the voice, and addicted to Bollywood. As it turned out I couldn’t be more wrong. As soon as I lay my eyes on her, my imagination was proved to be an inferior product of all the images that are fed to it in the environment. Not only was my imagination a slave of the external stimuli but also it completely lacked the quality of absurdity which after a point separates all things genius from ordinary. I was very disappointed with my imagination but fortunately I was adequately appeased by the discovery of the face behind the voice. The idea of ‘impossible’ that had initially struck my mind at seeing the face of the girl that claimed the voice soon transformed to one of ‘marvelous’. And the flurry of moments that saw me become a cork pulsating on sea waves, ended on an elevating note.

Michelle is a Thai of Chinese descent. She has been living in India as long as she can remember. I think, there are two things about her that must be told. Her body cannot be more Thai of Chinese descent. Her mind cannot be more Indian. And I am yet to find out the nationality of her heart though I have made a tentative prediction that it will come out to be a world citizen.

Going back to the cafe scene again, one could have easily predicted that the only thing that could possibly bring her to break that fantastic musical encore could only be someone interrupting her by calling her on her cell. And it goes without saying that that is exactly what happened. It was her mom talking.

After listening to her mom, the unknown girl that I now know as Michelle barked into the cell, ‘I am on my way, I am in the bus, will be there in ten, sure.’

There was a pause which was due to her mom barking in on the other end of the line. By now everyone in the café, mostly guys happily addicted to online gaming, and I, were listening intently to the conversation and I can’t say the same for them but I was surely thinking, ‘Will she sing again? Huh? Will she sing again? Huh? Huh? Or will her evil mom succeed in stealing her away from our invisible clutches, clutches that surround all things that are perceived to bring joy?’

‘I had some work to do, that’s why I got late. I’ll be there soon. I am on my way.’ She assured her mom.

I tingled with excitement on hearing her lie to her mom with such mind-numbing ease. I reckon that had she been in the company of thieves, she could have earned some real respect. But for now she would have to make do with the silent respect that my eyes were dealing out.

It was then that Kadir, the owner of the café asked me if I would like to play counter strike at 15 bucks per hour. I don’t know why but I said yes.

And then began a structured, repeated assasination of my virtual player by one player that called himself ‘Toma’. After the game ended, I found out that Toma was none other than Michelle. And we instantly struck a conversation which began at Strike Force, went on to MICA, and ended at the agreement of a meeting on the Marine Drive the following day as my office was terribly close to that place and so was her music class, the kind of classes you join in the short break after having taken your class XII exams.

The following day, Marine Drive, evening

I dragged my sagging spirits through swinging doors of media agencies that I was supposed to cover for the day for the sake of keeping my project alive and barely in the range of possible completion. I merely did this because the rendezvous with Michelle was like some sort of a break at the day’s time tunnel, at a point somewhere close to the sunset. She wasn’t the one to disappoint. She was already there at the agreed point even before I reached. She smiled, I smiled, and we smiled on seeing each other. The sea bathed in her company felt a much improved version of itself.

‘How was your day?’ That’s how I have generally come to begin the conversation with her. It’s almost a tradition now.

‘I just lazed around like a cat throughout the day. It was burning hot outside. Oh yeah, I did catch a movie though, I watched ‘The Mask of Zorro.’

‘How did you find it?’ we had started moving along the drive.

‘Everything was fine except for the action sequence in the end, there just seemed too many, what’s that word…um…weird explosions.’

‘What do you mean by “weird explosions”?’

‘I mean…well…have you seen the Titanic?’

‘Yeah’

‘You noticed how James Cameron takes you all about the ship showing you places which are most vulnerable, acquainting you with the ships construction, the crew in detail all along?.’

‘Yeah’

‘You know why he does that right? He does it so that the spectator knows exactly how the ship is giving away under the brutal forces of nature, when the action is being shown in the end. I mean when something breaks or blows up, the viewer knows exactly why that happens. And he does it so well you never even come to know when he has given you so much information about the nature of the ship because you are too busy concentrating on the love-story between Kate and Leo all through the movie.’

‘Okay so what about ‘The Mask of Zorro'?

‘In the mask of Zorro, when the last sequence is being filmed when the director wants to show the gold mine exploding all over the place, he does not explain anything about the nature of the mine, he just shows close-ups of explosions. Let alone the nature of the mine, he doesn’t even show an easily recognizable landmark near the mine so that the spectator can associate with the place that is being blown up. I think Indians have done it better at times than the director of The Mask of Zorro.’

‘Which director are you talking about?’

‘I don’t know about who the director is but I remember the movie. I remember a lot of scenes being filmed in this little courtyard on which you would always notice this big bullock cart wheel kept against one of the walls. You kind of keep on wondering why that wheel is kept there. But during the climax you realize that the wheel suddenly becomes a creative weapon in hands of the actors and it was crucial to the fight sequence in the end when the hero give the villain a good wheel bashing. I think the director overdid it, though. The presence of the wheel was not as subtle as the way Cameron informs us about the Titanic. We know it like our own home by the end without making it look like a documentary.’

‘Are you sure you were watching the movie for time-pass?’

‘I couldn’t help it. I was actually thinking about you while I was watching the pathetic explosions which meant next to nothing because you know how frequently you use the word communication when you talk about your college. I think, if you look into it this explains a huge part or what communication actually means.’

I smiled at what she had said and gestured to her to sit on the concrete barricade along the sea.

This is one of the many conversations we had as we walked along different parts of the Bombay coastline. I hope, I can recall more of such conversations and pen them down. Till then I can do nothing but promise myself to remember everything that happened.

‘The Summer of Satisfaction’

The first page of his summer-diary read something like this:

I will kick your butt ...
I will kick your butt …
I will kick your butt …
I will kick your butt …

And each blank that I have left was filled with a name of some arrogant fucker or the other he knew. I have chosen to leave it blank for the sake of sweet sham. On the next page a single line in big fat letters said,

I will kick your butt …(followed by his own name)

On the bottom in minute lettering it said, ‘Judge not yourself or them. And judge not judgment itself.’

The blanks in no way mean that he will restrain him from trash talking. He might just bump into one of these unmentioned people and tell them right on their face, ‘I will kick your butt …(followed by their name)’

He had no ordinary way of trash talking though. It was mostly something that he called ‘Internal Trash Talking’. He never did it aloud. The intentions closest to his hearts could never swim closer to his mouth; if they happened to he would chew them and swallow them again. It was his belief that if he let the intent grow in himself enough, one day it would have no choice but to materialize. Hence, his self imposed ‘shut up and listen’, mode.

‘Project: I will kick your butt…’ was nothing but a projection of his enhanced competitive spirit which dictated to him that he should not only beat his competitor but brutally bury him in the crushing cascade a humiliating defeat. Nothing less will do. Nothing less will motivate him because ‘No Mercy Till Victory Secured’ had become his motto.

Afterall he has known failure so well that he knows exactly what not to do, which city not to head for, and which thoughts to never turn to for empathy. His mind mostly ran on nothing else but the ‘Failure-fuel’ that he had earned in his past years, but it was one of the few things that brought him warmth, as it buzzed along.

All the confidence that he seemed to exude, all the faith that seemed to emit from his eyes was nothing more than the gift of a passing moment that had touched him that summer. It was no ordinary passing moment though, that had passed him that summer; it was almost something that he had forgotten where he had once buried his soul. Now his soul showed and with it showed the faith with which his eyes glowed.

He seems to be getting closer to something that he calls ‘The Universal Nature of Intelligence’ and another something that he calls ‘The Unified Nature of Intelligence’ and the closer he gets, the more fiercely the waves of satisfaction run through his supple body. Theses two concepts on which he pins his life’s hopes, according to him, are not to be divulged but to be interpreted, even if that means inferring their meaning from the meager face value of the words used to coin them into convenient terms.

He rejoiced in the golden sunshine of that summer while he walked the path of his personal growth. That summer he discovered his true self, a self which he believes will never completely unravel. That’s how ‘The Summer of Satisfaction’ unfolded for him that year while people passed him by on the paths he treaded, mostly traveling in the opposite direction and talking in a language that he understood but never spoke.

And after a long-long sleep, he woke up to the sleep that he had almost forgotten the taste of.

That summer, he surrendered everything that he could claim as his own as ‘The Summer of Satisfaction’ grew on him unhurriedly.