Voices in the Water

What does it mean, to have a voice? If only one lived in slower times: with lambs on meadows, buffaloes to race on, temple-bells to ring. There is no song now. Only a tree outside the window, a world in a single view. The lines that are living are from times that are dead.

Some lines turn you to a morning of birds, happy-teary calls that draw you out:

'Hey mister tambourine-man, play a song for me,
In a jingle-jangle morning I come following you'

Where is my tambourine-man?

I might employ the Chembur Naka dhobi. Silver-maned, teeth all deep vermillion. He greets me with the heartland's call, bringing the dust of the Indo-Gangetic plain, the blend of betel and word, the true masticating dexterity.

'Arre bohini nahin doge ka?' Arre O Koseeeek!'

But I am south Indian. What would I know of a heartland-dhobi except his name and his bicycle? There is the streetside bully right in my place, the street where I grew, in bonda-coffee Bangalore, who once said:

'Eating cake? Fellow, I'll tell your grandfather'.

What panic he caused is a whole story. Actually, he said, 'Son, I'll tell your grandfather' but it doesn't translate. I'm too lazy to explain that he doesn't have to be my father to start a sentence with 'son', it's a different kind of son, it's a multi-purpose word. And 'son' doesn't have the lungi-wrapping trisyllabalic timbre of the original 'magane'. I should write it in Kannada. But I can't since I don't know the script and can write no sentences other than those of conversation. What comes before and after what people say? Who else then, if not that vile street-bully?

'Take me dissapearing through the smoke-rings of my mind'

Time for a midnight bath. Hot water. It rings an ever-ready bell like a schoolboy jumping with a finger raised:

'The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four'.

Sigh. different time again. Maybe one could write authentically about pornography. But where is the song?

Hot water. Rising in the bath. Turn a knob, make a lever list. Rising, rising, hot water turning to prehistoric lake. What if an ocean started heating? What would the great sea-creatures do? I see them slowing down, duller and duller, in an uneasy, collective silence, shark and seal, whale and krill. Krill. Krill. That's a word with a little tune. A plank of wood, a forward thrust of heavy, solid saw. Krill, krill, a mob with biscuits in its throat, full of downward thumbs.

The head is submerged. Water all around, parting on my forehead, light-headed, urgent, populous, full of street-activity. This is the real soundtrack of our lives. Not Vivaldi. Sounds like these. A flush. A rubbing of bone in the blind woods of the backbone. These are our real soundtrack. Play them when men and women part, play the gulping of coffee in the gullet. A swirling of soap. This cologne-scented body will decay and be nibbled at, and the music shall be something like this. Gumble gumble. Giddying rumbling poo. Sashay; sputtering grumble. Ping.