Enjoy it while you can
By Adil Jussawalla

HE said "My life’s at a standstill."

I said "You seem to enjoy that."

He said "That’s the way I want it. It’s perfect."

She said "l like my solitude. I don’t miss South Bombay at all."

I said "So your move to the suburbs has turned out to be good for you."

"Perfect," she said.

He is an aspiring novelist, she a recently divorced housewife.

Enter a third person, an ex-student from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai.

He says, looking exasperated, "I’m exasperated. Just when I want to write, there are guests in the house."

"You want your solitude," I say.

"Yes," he says, "that would be perfect."

What’s going on? Are our nerves shot? Don’t we need people anymore? Do people get on our nerves?

As the questions come to mind, I’m distracted by an article which compares Mumbai’s Colaba with New York’s Soho. Because of the magic mushrooming of Colaba’s art galleries. No magic mushrooms for a street-friend who died recently, quite close to one of the galleries. I never found out what he was on. I thought it was brown sugar but more likely it was bad booze taken straight. Country liquor is as freely available in Colaba as works of art.

You need a car not be able to see things like that. And if you don’t see things like that, you can’t say things like that. I’m not making a case for street people as against works of art. I have come to loathe both equally. The former because they bother my thoughts and sometimes my person, the latter because of the nonsense that’s written about them.

Yes, my intolerance is on the rise, even as I expect people committed to different religions to be more tolerant of one another, to accept one another, even, as though through a divine agency, to love one another. What can I, what can anyone make of that —this contradiction which is at the very root of one’s being?

A painter, I know is going to come my way soon. He’s going to live in Colaba. His joy at the prospect irritates me greatly. I should be saying a prayer for him — the serenity prayer for instance:

Lord, grant him the serenity to accept
the things he cannot change, the courage to change the things
he can, and the wisdon to know the difference.

Instead, I find myself wishing that his life were at a standstill, like the aspiring novelist’s; that he wouldn’t shift from where he lives now; that, if he is determined to come my ways he should be mugged. And that I should be one of the muggers.

Associated News Features