Invisible diamonds.

🌿

Her brows have tattoos between them. The eyes dark with kohl, observe me over steaming cups of coffee on aluminum tables at Saji’s Coffee House. Outside, an almond tree is ripe with cables that run into asbestos roofing. Everything glistens with rain;

the woman searches in her faded rexin bag. Long thin fingers of one hand reach in as mascara seeps down high cheek hollows. She pulls out a 4×2 plastic box with 2 rows of rings, then wears them on four fingers. Ruby, topaz, emerald, fake pearl, set in steel, the fingers curl in untamed nails. Clean white teeth grin at me without warning. Then she calls out in clear English,

“Buy you a coffee?“ the voice is honey.

Did I nod?

Moves bone-thin hips through the two rows of aluminum-topped tables, then sits facing me. My face can’t say a thing.

“TV,” she says. “My accent.” The ringed hand glitters over her coffee rim. I must stop staring.

“You’re worried or what.”

I am worrying that she just shoplifted those rings.

“You stay here, close by?” I start.

“Not that far, my room.”

We nod.

I wait for NJ, he’s gone to the Med store a minute away. Home is a 15 min drive (from this place), near Sasham Army Garrison. Bangalore is where we grew up, before 20 years in Mumbai. I miss Mumbai: that sleepless Beauty of a maddening city. Bangalore is still home – just ignore its concrete jungle.

Saji the Coffee house owner has wrinkle free ghee skin, with silver hair knotted in a mustard oil bun. Today, he dozes in his Reception corner among incense coils. Where’s NJ.

The woman bores her eyes in me. “I live near the Garrison.” 

Oh my. We are neighbors?

“Nice face, yours. Must be very nice when still quite young. Not saying you’re old, don’t mistake. So nice. No trouble on your face.” Her eyes are flat. Slate black.

I have my share of trouble, but say nothing. We have our coffee.

“And you are here …why.”  Its a statement? Where’s NJ. All we needed was one strip of new meds for our son.

I shrug. The woman sits back, leans the coffee into her face. If you’ve seen granite up close, her face is that.

“I walk. Everywhere I walk.”

“Like to eat?” my head is scattering.

She clicks her tongue.

I feel like an Alice in Wonderland. Strangely relaxed. The rain is now a hammer in the asbestos shade over window to our left. It leaves rain diamonds in the rusty overhang. Ms. Tattoos and I lapse in a lull, her hair a low loose coil, is steel grey.

“You’re hair is like what they say, a calculated mess.” she says.

I choke. The woman can say things in a culture you don’t expect from her.

“This rainy time I …I have so many stores in my mind.”

“Stories …you mean?”

“You’re a writer.” Her smile is kind.

Hooh. I wish. It was my sacred desire, but we needed to pay off EMIs. I joined a friend’s real estate office, painted part time.

Tattoo gets up for an eat. This is self service, 12.15 noon milling with hunger. No tissues, just brass taps to the back. Nj calls to say he’s gone over to the SBI next door. There’s a queue, he needs to verify a mutual fund. Okay, I say, I’m having fun. “Not bad,” he goes. After 300 years together he knows I love a place with people more than a movie. Tattoos returns with a bowl and saucer.

“I was working for doctors you know.” Her mouth works a piece of bun.

“Its mixed with jaggery and some chillie. Saji has his own recipes. Want some? Ok. I was working for doctors, they’ve no time, so I’m running their errands, bank work, email. Running. No time for watching my father, he went early. Bad kidneys. First we went for medical help , for Appa. The Head of Dept suggested I work …like, helping. Small pay. They were very kind. But I got arthritis, in my hands. I was 34, imagine. Don’t ask about my Tattoos, too long my yatra is. You alone?”

I tell her about the meds..

What’s your son having?”

I don’t want to say it all and mumble a lie, “Bronchitis.”

“Achcha.” Flat eyes switch on like neon bulbs. She knows I did not mean bronchitis at all. The long fingers with 4 rings go in her bag and pull out a 3 inched yellow box.

“See this?!” Tiny black pills sit hunched in rows. “Herbs seared in coconut oil. From my garden. Heals every disease.”

I sigh inside. Ofcourse. Both Nj’s and my entire family trees know about these little black uglies, just that we haven’t heard of them in a while.

And if only all healing were that easy. Or miracles.

“You don’t believe. Take my location, number. Nearby the Garrison. Your son will be well. I’ve seen cure. Even diabetes, sleeplessness.”

Nj on the phone says his queue isn’t moving. Maybe they’re opening another window. I can just see his brown eyes shut with irritation. I tell him about the pills.“Who knows.” He says. Its been a long day.He’ll say anything. Maybe it will help our son’s ADHD at least.

” Is she asking a big price?”

I ask. She shakes her head. “Not for friends.”

Oh no.

Nj doesn’t think like me though. He asks details. I return to the woman.

“I’m Tabu. You are?” Tabu suddenly seems reassuring.

I shouldn’t be replying to anything.

“Ray.”

Her face burns with questions. “You must eat. I’ll get Saji’s puliogarey maybe. The best rice in Bangalore.“

Saji at the Reception follows the Tabu woman with hooded eyes before getting off his pillowed chair and coming over. Today he smells like fried onions.

“Where’s the boss. Your NJ. Maybe at Suraiya Medical, na.”

NJ. Like a Gang lord 🙂 Friendly, sweet rough man- Saji. “That Tabu gave pill for my wife, the fever total stop. Not took a paisa for that. I don’t charge her anything also. Poor lady, never complains.Where Boss.” It was not a question. Saji’s off white long shirt trailed to the back of ankles.

“He be here soon, Saji.”

“Then try my upma now. Eat hot. For him we pack I think. Today all no charges.”

A young girl with copper pony tail pushes past Saji, towards the food counter as his dark eyes crinkle. “These young people, no. Uff.” He’s not grumbling.

Clock in a central pillar reads 12.35am. Tabu returns with upma (seminola, steamed in with fried onions, ginger, mustard and parsley)…

“Santhoor pills we call them, from my great aunt, who made them in a place called San -thoor.”

I know, I know. The upma melts in my mouth.

Girl with copper pony tail rushes back out, pulls on a cigarette, under almond tree. She and boyfriend there do not look a day over 16.

How come we’ve never met Tabu?

“You never saw me so many times I’m here? Some times people are invisible, no.” Her face is soft but pulls at the corners of her eyes.

Cringe. I’ve not looked past my own life.

NJ walks in, my knight in shining armor with grin and hug. (Why can’t we tell-bank?)

“My husband.”

She nods in her saucer.

“You going home, or.” Nj settles some sentences with an “Or”.

“..manager had to leave. I’m to meet an assistant. Hi,” he says to Tabu.

She smiles; the guarded expression disappears. Nj does that to people. He doesn’t judge anyone. He’s a train going from point A to point B. No accidents, no failures. The Good people see that. They get on board. They chat.

I watch the two go like old school buddies about santhoor. He squeezes in another stool. From his corner at Reception Saji sends a thumb up in a mist of incense.

Copper tail girl is still with her cigarette. Boy friend takes off his blue jacket to hold over her. She pushes it away and lets the rain fall in her face with a squeal.

NJ scrapes the stool back. He’s saying with his eyes, get the pills. As he walks past, boyfriend under tree moves away from Copper girl. The guilt is perfect. They hiding their cigarette? What was in it? Saji sees all and grins back at me.

Nj can look like the military in his khaki Tee, tan pants, peppered mustache and high brows like he’s asking careful questions. Copper rolls her eyes.

All that was hilarious.

Tabu & I get an auto rickshaw home. I know her block with mango tree and gooseberry opposite Sunshine skin clinic. She offers to pay the fare, but I say next time. Next time?

Her garden has Tulsi leaf, spinach, ginger, garlic, tiny tamarind, sugar leaf hedge, kidney plant, hibiscus, a gang of peace lilies,

“…but the Santhoor isn’t this.. Also I get from a shop there. In Santhoor village, my native place.”

She won’t hear of a fee. Standing there in the center of her L shaped room, with kitchen in a corner, I stare at pictures on the wall. She had a husband who left with her baby son, 15 years ago.

“There’s a Gift shop behind Him&Hers dry cleaners? The Owner’s son there, maybe teenager, he gifted me these rings, my birthday today. Always rains. I love the rain. Anyway the rings. He’s a child, like my son was. Is.”

She disappears behind a yellow curtain; I hear glasses,

two glasses on white saucers.

Sits like a lady in the cane stool facing me. She’s given me the good chair, high backed with cushions, they look hand sewn.

The water tastes of a deep well.

“We have a spring under our building, so.”

The silence is gentle, you can breathe. Her wall with the Tv has a low window facing the army garrison.

“Those boys come out some evenings and I think how my son will soon be their age.”

She puts her glass carefully down on a pile of books that serve as a low table. Hymn books, Sankey’s. Old Daily Bread. Proverbs, Psalms.

“My husband told me I was ugly, after he left, I got my face…”

“Tattooed?”

She smiles slow. “Crosses. It felt strong.”

She’s tattooed crosses to feel strong.

“If you have no income, you become poor. You speak well because Appa, my father, gave a nice education. Then people think maybe I’m a bad type.“

I take a long gulp of water.

“Like to have buttermilk? I make it with green chillies and coriander leaf.”

The hour goes to dusk. I get calls from the girls and NJ. “..where are you Ray, can I pick you up… Yona asking for you.”

I get the pills and tell her about our son Yona’s blindness. Tabu says nothing, just looks in my face like she knew.

“There was something about you….like, restless?”

Yeh. No. An uncalculated restlessness. Just that now I’m beginning to feel all rested. By Grace.

🌿

we shifted three houses in Mumbai, each time we got a kid, we moved. Nj worked for the music industry just booming back then, there were CDs, Bollywood going gaga. I had longed to be a home mommy after slogging cheerfully at a local broadcast station in Bangalore. Mumbai with its stopless hours was new. You stared at it, you became a part of its machinery. You romanticised it. Rats in the gutter became a story : Mr Pestonji, featured in my first published short story. A neighbouring cyclone, got published in a poem for Local dailies. Nj and I got exposed to life in the raw. Weekends at Manori beach a two hour drive fromthe city, were bliss. During weekdays, I took a solo train ride to Flora fountain, searched the pavements and found : Maya Angelou, Arundati Roy, Picasso, and Van Gogh in Artbooks. People seemed fearless with a freedom that came from having to survive thru the week. There were the higher society misses, the dudes, everyone a part of that Brotherhood. We become two people : the ones we are now, and the ones that brought us here. After the children, I began to really paint, between kindergarten. then later…in the stilling knowledge of a blind baby.

Tabu gets her Santhoor.

Nj & I knew about these pills – my great aunt had them. They worked like small deadly looking miracles. When we were toddlers, then teenagers, and later young adults – ‘Aunty Santhoor’ would bring in these Santhoor pepper sized monsters and they scared the hell out of you. Aunt would pray a quick prayer like a knife stab first. Ma said it was the prayer that worked, my Father joked about it exorcising imps away, but it cured him of toothache. Malaria, and a family bout of flu. Many bouts.

Tabu’s left wall too is full of small framed photographs I can’t look at now, maybe another day.

I tell her about our son.

“Real blindness is not seeing beautiful things na? “

Her smile is a beam. She pauses, then goes on.

“I live on a small sum my parents deposited for me. The building people here let me do their paper work. See their garden. I walk,it helps me feel better. Maybe you walk with your son.”

“So you come home, walk with us? Tabu?”

“No. No.”

The rain starts again as we go out her front door. She lives ground level, with a potted bitter gourd creeper outside her front door.

“… umbrella.” T. gets me a purple and white one but I want the rain.

“Take care, God bless. Jesus loves you.” Her eyes are stars.

I get the feeling if I look back, she will have disappeared.

If I’ve ever met an angel in disguise, this one is. The biggest miracle is meeting something bigger than your ‘_trouble.’ Everything pales. You’re in the Presence of Beauty that surpasses our conditional niceness..

Just grateful for everything. I mean everything. Even our youngest one at home, with the Angel Eyes as our two girls call him. What can ever heal absolute blindness, bar God? But if the heart heals…! If the heart heals….it will see a Light that doesn’t need the sun.

😊

God bless Tabu, and everyone out there that’s looking past their own hurt and being nice to someone they needn’t be nice to. I’ve come closest to the Face of God when I’ve seen meditated goodness in a wounded human. Goodness is too human a word.

Did I even wish her a Happy Birthday?

🌿

creative non fiction

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Sermon on the mount. Bible)