Routines

ROUTINES

"Agla station, Vishwavidyalaya."

I hate routines. I actively detest going to the same places or working on the same things.  But life places you in weird situations sometimes. Its been seven months now, going to the same place of work, teaching the same kids. It has become a routine, but strangely, I haven’t started hating this one. I actually like it. Although I hate admitting this, my conscience knows I’m right, and I can’t do anything about it.

So, here it goes. I walk the same street to the metro station from college. The street has always been familiar, with a picturesque pavement, lined with trees. I enter the metro station through the same gate, climb down the same flights of stairs. I wait for the terminating train, and get merged into the crowd, pushing, pulling and struggling to get a seat. I always do get the seat, though. I am smart enough (these are my little ways of countering my inferiority complex and my intense self-loathing). I put on my earphones and open a book. The music suddenly stops at Vidhan Sabha and Chawri Bazaar, the reception getting interrupted. I am used to it; I have grown to expecting the music to stop. Anyway, I pass the same seven stations. As I get out and walk towards the exit among the old-Delhi crowd, the habitual out-of-place feeling surrounds me. This might be my elitism speaking, but I can’t help feeling it.

As I climb up to the ground-level after the exhausting 60 steps of stairs, the stench of the public washroom ‘greets’ me. After seven months of the same exercise, I can hold my breath long enough and walk fast enough to pass it in half a minute or so. I have even mastered the art of maneuvering through the crowd of E-rickshaws stretching from the gate to the point where the smell lingers. They scream “Paharganj, Paharganj, madam, ek sawari”, sometimes ridiculously close to my ear, but I mechanically dodge their screams. The stench of the place, the mud and the screaming rickshaw guys don’t bother me anymore.

I cross the street, the street where the cars never stop. There is no traffic light, or a traffic police in that huge ‘chowk’. One has to make way through the random vehicles going in random directions. Sometimes I feel I would meet my death there someday. It would not be an ideal place to die though, will it? I think about my ideal death, the poetic death I have always imagined. I would die only by drinking Hemlock, somewhere in Italy or Greece. Countless times I have reassured myself this. Not here, not this way.

The predictable stares greet me as I enter the infamous street. Lusty, vile eyes scanning me from head to toe, or the curious eyes of the policemen when I pass the check-post. I always make it a point to count how many women I see while walking the length of the road. The number always stays in the single digit. Sometimes, there is not a single one walking on the street, not even the ones who live there. Countless times I have made up my mind to research about this, and countless times I have forgotten about it.

As I walk, navigating through the endless rickshaws, and handcarts and cars, there always stands a woman at a window. It is, of course, the window of a brothel. I know the lady; she is the mother of one of the kids in school. Whenever I take her kid back home, she always complains that we have spoiled the kid, and that she does not do her homework, or study. As I walk past the window, I look up. She looks at me, and smiles. I wave at her, and she waves back. It fills my heart up, and the hardness in my face (which is very useful to counter the stares, trust me) dissolves. Also, I am an insecure person, always looking for validation. Her wave becomes everything for me at that point. With this feeling of self-importance, I cross the street and into another, a darker lane. The light or darkness of the lanes does not matter, the stares come the same. The lane is so narrow that even a car can’t pass through it. Yet the rickshaw pullers ram their vehicles into it and expertly find their way through.

I reach the bottom of the school building and look up. It is a part of this extended routine, to look at the straight flights of stairs ascending into the darkness. The stairway isn’t lighted, so I must turn on the flashlight in my phone. And I climb, and climb, and keep climbing. I remember the first time I faced these stairs. They were so steep, and looked so dreadful. Every step I took, it felt like I was falling. But the stairs don’t seem so steep anymore. After climbing the darkness of almost four floors, I step into the light. I am panting by now, and desperately crave for water. I keep my bag and go to the tap to wash off the sweat dripping from my face, before talking to anyone.

Once I get into this space, I see happy faces. There is laughter, and friendship. Nobody scans me up and down. There is always something new happening, some or the other mischief to tend to. I enter the room, and the familiar voices of the kids engulf me, and I get lost in the cacophony of various “Prapti ma’am” s.