In Limbo 2

the cashew carrier It is difficult to respond to a long spell of tropical summer with anticipation or with memorable fondness. Clammy, humid, clinging and breathlessly hot, it ushers in an oppressive lusciousness and fructification. Neem, mango, cashew, rose apple, kumquat, all flowering and fruiting trees conspire to blossom, bear, and mature at once. A life of ontogeny and everything it encompasses such as fruit-flies, caterpillars, termite over-rush, and scorpion ants is not something we romanticize; we deal with it. As we do with the incessant two-note song of the koïl, sweet yet monotonous in its execution. Through the endless summers  dappled with our prayers for rains, for respite from heat and dust, peacocks strut down the winding path trumpeting, sounding and beckoning the clouds...I sense their yearnings.  Every few hours I haul myself to the yard to pick up the fallen cashew fruits, soft and swollen with juice. Sometimes only a spatter of overripe fleshiness is found, its fi

          Safdar Hashmi during a street performance  Safdar Hashmi. Why has his name remained imprinted in my memory, I cannot say. Yet, like a pearl in an oyster, I hold it fondly. It was in the year 1990 that I first met Hashmi. A handsome youthful face over a lithe body, eyes smiling yet serious, expressions relaxed yet intense. The lieu of our inadvertent rendezvous too was quite unique: The People Tree gallery in Connaught Place, New Delhi, a creative hub for young artists. It also doubled as a bookshop for alternative literature and pamphlets. So, while I was browsing through its unique ensemble of hand-painted t-shirts and quaint artefacts, he happened to be staring out at me from a book cover. Little did I know that just over a year ago, this magnetic individual, the fervency of whose gaze I could not resist, had been killed by political goons while performing in a street play which underscored the rampant  corruption in the government.  2 January 2024 marked his 35th death ann