The Afternoon Visitors

Rhythms of Day and Night

The scenes beyond our balcony had a certain rhythm and a predictability in spite of the randomness of the confluences of disparate events and individual propensities. Kohinoor Road was like a wide stage where life was displayed, objectified, and the hundreds of people who strolled across it were like a large cast of characters, ever changing, and providing endless possibilities for imagining.

Early mornings were exciting with the promise of the new day ahead, with regular office-goers walking briskly in both directions, towards the train station or the bus stops. Cars with people on their way to work. Teenaged boys delivering newspapers and magazines tossing ours adroitly onto our balcony.. The Aarey Milk Colony milk-truck arriving to deliver ice-cold bottles containing pasteurised milk to the  booth behind our house that our cook brought back and poured into a large utensil to bring to a boil. When the bell rang at a certain time, it meant that someone was delivering fresh-baked bread and large round crusty rolls that we had ordered. Every now and then, bullock carts creakily came up the road and turned the corner.

     As the mornings progressed, vegetable and fruit sellers carrying huge baskets resting on coiled up cloth on their heads moved from house to house loudly proclaiming their wares, Some would ring our doorbell and I would run to watch as my mother and grandmother pointed out choice items in their baskets which the sellers would weigh while everybody haggled. The postman would come by mid-morning and again late in the afternoon. My grandfather received and sent inland letters and postcards constantly from and to his three out-of-town children and acquaintances and would await the arrival of the post. Most mornings and afternoons, we would get visitors, some of whom would have come to pay their respects to my grandparents.
Towards lunchtime, everything quietened down. There was a trickle of passers-by and while the sun was at its highest point, most people would take a siesta for about two to three hours. Then, slowly, as late afternoon breezes played with our curtains, it was as though the gears shifted again. Fruit-sellers, ragpickers who bought old newspapers and bottles, gypsy women who traded steel utensils for old clothes, they would take turns to ring our doorbells and spread out their wares unless we said no, not today.
Some afternoons, our road was very quiet. Even the cobbler in his little shop at the corner would close down for a siesta, the cane-juice stall built against our compound wall would be have its shutters drawn and most of the shops at and beyond the corner would lower their steel doors for the customary couple of hours in the afternoon. One afternoon, following my mother on an errand, I noticed that even the man sitting on the mat with the parrot that picked up cards and told people’s fortunes was dozing and his parrot was in its cage, doing the same.
From about four o’clock, the pace would pick up some more. Standing on our balcony or playing downstairs, we would see families with children strolling  towards the shops. They were a diverse lot, and one could hear many languages being spoken, see different styles of dress and deportment. Watching them go by from the balcony, I formed my first impressions about the world being a fairly large and roomy place where many different kinds of people co-existed.
Some days were quiet and peaceful; others were tumultuous and full of noise and upheaval. Processions were a routine affair; people organized and took out processions for a variety of reasons - cultural, political or religious. Sometimes, they marched and yelled slogans and held up placards, sometimes, they had marching bands and drums we could hear long before we could see the parade pass on Ambedkar Road. When it was time for Gokulashtami in the latter part of the monsoons, an advance group of volunteers would come and string up the coconuts high between the buildings. Later, when the procession arrived, the players would form a human pyramid to try to knock the coconuts down amid cheers and drumbeats. Sometimes, some of the marchers would be dressed up in costumes to suit the occasion. A few weeks later, the energies of the marchers would be directed towards the immersion of Ganesh idols into the sea, In early spring, the processions around Holi were more chaotic as people broke away to play with brightly colored powder and water balloons with other revellers.
No matter what had taken place that day, the streets and sidewalks near the stores around Khodadad circle always filled up late in the evenings. Buses disgorged a steady stream of passers-by and shoppers and everyone seemed to not be in a hurry. They stood and chatted in groups, bargained with pedlars, browsed in the shops and sidewalk stalls and found an occasional treasure, snacked on bhelpuri and samosas while children ran around and played noisily. By about 7:30, the sidewalks began to empty out as people made their way home before it got too dark.
For years, before fluorescent lighting arrived, the gas lamps on our road were lit at dusk every day by a lamplighter who would come running down the road with a long stick with which to nudge the flame just so, when it would flare and a warm golden light stream from it, forming large light auras around each lamppost. Around the time when I turned eight or nine, the gas lamps were dismantled and modern new fluorescent tube-lights lit up the sidewalks from then on. But the warmth of the golden light of the gas lamps was lost and the clean bright light was too white, too cold. It changed how everything looked somehow.
Late at night, after the rest of the shops had closed their shutters, the famous Pritam Restaurant next door still served up dinner. Film stars, starlets and other hopefuls, some in cars with roofs folded down, some still wearing stage make-up, would stop by late for a bite after or before shooting stints. If we happened to be standing on our balcony or near the window for some fresh cool late night air, we would occasionally see them arrive and leave, and hear snatches of their raised voices and the sounds of their cars starting.
Finally, by about midnight or so, most things would quieten down. It grew so quiet and peaceful that you could hear the crickets. And most nights, as I drifted towards sleep, I would hear the steady dull knocking of the watchman’s baton in the distance, getting closer and closer. It was a very comforting sound for some reason, unlike anything else.
As the memories flowed back, that day in the taxi, I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that my memories were still there, intact, for me to draw upon, ‘Shelter’ or no ‘Shelter’. Time had moved on, yes, Kohinoor Road was different now and it would never be the same again. The kaleidoscopic world I had glimpsed out there as a child was larger and more dynamic than I could have ever imagined. But in some odd way, those experiences associated with Kohinoor Road had somehow prepared me to meet the world, as I grew up.  As the taxi I was in nudged its way towards the main road, I sat back, content to let the curtain drop for now on my memories, knowing that I could go back when I wanted to, and it would all still be there, waiting for me.