So exquisitely beautiful. Does he even know what the sunshine looks like? I wasn’t sure. What if that makes him think am frivolous a timewaster?

The Prophet arrived on time but would he appreciate this kind of verse? Would these words mean anything to this person that never even leaves his seat for a loo-break. I have never ever seen a twenty something spend ten straight hours at a desk reading constantly. 

I wanted to share a bit of my world with him and attempted to make his birthday the occasion. Had ordered four books. Could give him none. Ovid’s book came with a Benini nude on the cover with the print inside mismatched with the page size. Romila Thapar’s book arrived in teenyweeny print bad quality paper. I should have guessed from the price itself but with Penguin you begin with trust. I had forgotten to look at the dimensions before I had ordered the book. Jonathan Livingstone was not what I had expected. It was smaller in size than I remembered but it was less of a disappointment than the rest –  but he had already had it. Read it? Do not know.

He introduced me to a world of ideas that I would never have otherwise experienced. He gave me books to read that I have never seen before or had even heard of. I did not get a chance to read the whole of all of these books. There was only time enough to skim through relevant parts and yet and that felt like a million dollar trip through eternity and back. I am far more conscious of my Indianness now than I have ever been before and proudly so.

He opened one door after another and in the space that opened up I flexed my wings and took flight –

I did fall down and get wounded but that is another matter.

I was overwhelmed. I was happy. I have never ever been happier. I knew I was happy because all the cares and worldly trouble slid off the wings like drops of water on hard wax. I worked twelve hours a day, never felt tired, woke up at six every morning raring to go to work and never missed a day or the appointed hour.

This kid was the brightest of them all and I loved this one the best.

My godson is five years old and this one is in his late twenties and yet they look out at the world with the exact same eyes. Filled with wonder, good cheer, sans malice, greed, pure and clear and when he smiled, (he never failed to remind me that I was a paid employee and even said “Please don’t mind but you are a resource” , no I did not mind, I like being resource... rather than be nothing I prefer to be resource – at least that way my life wasn’t a total waste) anyways, sometimes he did smile, and when he did, his eyes smiled too and made you feel “so what if I say monstrous things in rage at times, the world is still a pretty good place to be in and all its people nice and trustworthy”.

 But - sharing, reaching out to people is such a hard thing to do when you grow old and weary of life.

This person had laughed when I described what had happened when I had asked for a glass of water at a streetside restaurant in Lucknow city. Had laughed so suddenly and loudly that it had caught me off guard and I think I had stared, not sure what to think. I remember thinking “am only citing an example of dissonance in language, what did I say? What is so funny?” I hadn’t felt funny at that time, I did not feel anything was funny about the incident now. But he is the Director so I guess he knows best. I let him be done and then moved on with my interview. I think it was at this point he had shot up from his chair. For a few minutes I could not see where he was. He was hidden behind these huge ungainly (but rather useful) wooden things they keep books on to read from. They call it “table-tops”. Then he had emerged from behind that and he is handing me something “Look”. What are those? “An old series of Riddouts I dug out for you. Your Boss read these when he was in school, you know? You must have too, surely”. Well, no. I started to shake my head, he said “O come on” So I stopped and thought “Ok maybe I have, who knows? One forgets so much” I decided to think about what I know and do not know later, once I was out of the lair of this lion.

The books were miteridden – I had gingerly and carefully laid them aside. “Can I get them sprayed or something because they might hurt the new books on the rack”.

“By all means do what you would – just keep them safe”.

Downstairs, a few days later, I had decided to take a look. Tiny scrawly fine handwriting: “Class IX”

I studied the verso page. Printed in 1949? Must be a mistake. I looked again. The Second reprint a few years later. I picked the book up carefully and held it close to my nose, sure enough it smelled of lazy summers, dark noisy  rainy nights, the past, the unseen, the unheard, times beyond, and halcyon days of an adolescent I had never seen never met would never see never meet. Time arched. I put out my finger and gently touched one end of the arch. I could hear the children’s laughter, muffled sound of bells ringing somewhere, in another world, walked the convent corridors in my mind, I could even hear the shoes of my own English teacher going tap tap tap on the polished floors...

I don’t know if this boy went to a convent or to a public school and no I had never ever seen these books or remember Riddout but as I started to read I was aboard a time machine as it were, transported, and the world around vanished and I was someplace else.

I had laughed.

Later.

What had he said?

“Am sure you would love it”

As I folded them all neatly in a bundle inside a cellophane cover on the shelves where I keep my reading those words rang inside my head once more and I tried to think of the face that went with the hands that gave me those books.

The mindscreen was blank.

Fear clouds one’s judgment. Fear probably also wipes out one’s RAM – for I simply could not see that face again. I realized I had not looked. I had been lost in my own thoughts. I had been worried and I had missed registering a whole human being and had never even realized it. What am I become? A zombie? If a thirty something male can be so excited about a set of 1948 Riddouts surely there must be a core of tenderness somewhere in that – what? I don’t know. A core of tenderness in that mesh of metallic clicks, sharp staccato speech, words snipped clipped, cut short, spitted out, impatient flicks of the hand you can barely see they move so fast waving people away – and yet there is a face to go with it that my memory failed to retrieve.

Did this child know what was handed to him when it was handed to him though?