Glimpses from Bombay

I breathe in deeply as I step out of the airport. The air is tinged with the mingled scents of dust and dirt and heat and crowd. There's a general noise and bustle which smacks of utter disorder, to me having just stepped of the plane, but having been a part of the crowd before, I know there is an order to the madness. I can't describe the initial scene in terms which might be pleasant to the random visitor, but to me, this is a sensation of homecoming, of comfort in familiarity, of return to childhood.

I feel a tickly sensation and look down at my arm. A tiny black ant, of the adventurous Christopher Columbus sort, is feeling its way up my arm. Assiduously. Diligently. Tentatively. Feelers extended forthwith like ardent sabers. I watch it persevere upwards till it reaches my wrist, and then I extend my elbow downwards, so that it suddenly finds itself at the bottom rather than the top of my arm. Without complaint, the ant turns around and starts its uphill climb all over again. I let it climb up for a while, and then start to feel guilty about the futility I am creating in its efforts; there is enough futility in life without me actively perpetuating more. I extend my arm to a plant and nudge it gently back onto a leaf.

I wake up, bleary eyed, from an afternoon nap. The fan is whirring lazily aloft, creating a languid breeze in which the entire room seems to recede into a drowsy stupor. Still struggling through a thick somnambulistic haze, I stumble to my parents' room, where my mum is sprawled on the bed watching telly. I'm seeing her now after one and a half years, and she doesn't seem like she's aged a day. Neither of my parents, come to think of it. I hope that rate of aging is a hereditary characteristic. I snuggle up next to my mum on the bed, basking in a warm sense of homecoming. "So tell me everything about your past year," she says smilingly, and we start our hearty mother-daughter catch-up sesh.

What with Rox and Tosh finally deciding, after nigh on ten years together, to join the ranks of the betrothed, a large part of the crew is down in Bombay this month. So it's dinners and drinks and weddings and dances. Rox and Tosh have been together more than ten years now. I remember when they first got together in highschool, when Tosh was so nervous to ask Rox to the tenth grade Formal. "She'll never agree to go with me!" he'd agonised. And that was just to a dance. And now here they are, more than ten years later, on the eve of their wedding night. Telling me anecdotes about their problematic kitchen furniture. I'm thrilled by the intimacy of it all.