Life's Ponderables

Oops… he saw from the distance the outer door to the Wohnheim starting to close. One of those blondes had just opened the door and was stepping out at this time of night on a Wednesday night when nothing conclusive really happened among the hostelled youth section of students in the Uni campus. Quickly weighing the options between completing the cigarette over the next 50 meters and not having to dig into the trouser pocket for the key to open the locked front door, he decided in favour of the latter and consequently flicked the three-quarters of his Luckies. Caught between the urge to leave it die a natural death in a couple of minutes and his natural sense of logic to reach for it and stub it down, he unconsciously stretched his right leg an extra foot, landed clumsily and squashed the cigarette, deftly adjusted his body reach to cover the last 50 metres before the door fully closed. He lunged in the dim-light night and covered two steps at a time – 8 of them in all, just about caught hold of the door-jamb, held it towards himself. After having ensured the door was open 2 centimeters, he slowly ever slowly let it go to the extent that it was closed but not locked. Most students who came out to dump their garbage bags into the variety of huge containers outside did this. The mechanics of laziness of the youth these days is a fascinating subject in itself for a full research paper. Canon was no pioneer in this department. After all, when in Rome be a Roman. And he did… now. Also, his confidence in himself to handle all these foreign lock systems and flash systems and swipe systems was pretty germane at the moment, having been around in this part of the world just for a month and half now. It still drizzled at times as it did tonight. Mostly the sky was grey and occasional snow did show up. Chill factor sure was getting to the bones, necessitating layers of clothes for a creature of tropics. And strangely enough for this part of the country the sun paid visits in little bouts of peek through the grey skies to vanish before you could concentrate enough on the pools of rays through a tad open windows. But the Sun still did make guest appearances, to indicate this was his season of cameos before he permanently went to hibernate at Kringledom until post-Easter wake-up call. However, what was comforting at this hour of ungodly darkness in this part of the world are the rattle of streetcars once every 15 minutes; comforting… to say the least, in an environment where silence was the son of the soil and raised decibels belonged only to the squeals that emerged from the throats of kidding couples of boys and girls who were eternally chasing each other’s hormonic surge.

Canon caught up his laboured breath to normal rate, fished a fresh cigarette, lit it… smoked it deep and nice. Meanwhile the girl who just left - dressed unnecessarily too much, given the eventuality that beckoned when someone left the comfort of their room to go elsewhere during midweek, when no one haunted pubs so late in the evening or visited the on-campus discotheque where anyway nothing happened except on weekends - had almost turned the bend and he heard only the click of her heels on the cobbled stone roads cleft by three pairs of streetcar tracks criss-crossing each other at various coordinates of the road within 30 meters of each criss-crossing. Two figures were crossing the road from one side, carefully stepping across the lines. As they passed him by, negotiating the turnstile that existed God knows why (when there were huge metal gates that were as wide open as the goal post without a goalie), they looked up. One of them turned a few steps after passing him, raised his left and waved, flashing brilliant pearl white row between black as this murky night’s dark lips. The Ethiopian he had met on his way up to the Movie Club. “Night!”

Canon stared at his cigarette, looked back, waved a reciprocal “Night” and turned in time to hear footsteps coming down from inside. Someone walking down the carpeted floor towards the inside door of the hostel. There usually were two doors. Both requiring turn of keys normally. About 5 foot distance between both, probably craftily created to accommodate a little space to the left or right where normally slot machines for canned Coke, Sprite, Fanta or Sparkling Wasser was installed. It usually contained also a slot for beer… at the hostels. And the beer usually would be some not so popular Dutch stuff. But in the middle of the night when you’re stuck to the hostel and don’t feel like going out, it just came handy, although a better alternative would be to drink vinegar or anything your food cupboard had to offer, like Tom Hanks did in an episode of Family Ties way before he became a star. Yes, vinegar tasted better sometimes than these nondescript Dutch beer. Or sometimes instead of a machine, piles of local free mailers and papers were dumped.

Finally throwing his cigarette away, Canon turned, opened the out door, and stepped in to the comforting confines between the two doors. On the right were mailboxes. Sometimes full, sometimes not. All the same, there were always a few envelopes that had fallen down, being hurriedly thrown by students who had rummaged through the mass to see if they had any for them. They usually did not bother to put them back in the respective post-box holes.

He had no need to browse through those piles of unattended envelopes. He had just spoken home using one of those Phone cards. It was indeed a technological marvel how a little plastic, slightly a size bigger than a visiting card, could connect some University pay phone booth to Thiruvezhundur, a town stuck between mountains of haystacks on the roadsides and made popular only by its propensity for Tourist cars that plied pilgrims who travelled to cover a multitude of Vaishnavite temples in and around for about 30 kilometers. Amused at this thought, he just anyway spent a cursory 10 seconds to skim through the names on those envelopes practically anonymous inspite of the plethora of names each one carried. “Entschuldigung,” he moved aside to let the person belonging to the voice without so much as looking up. Had he looked up, he would have noticed the two eyes trying to fathom his presence hereabouts. They belonged to the spacious blonde of the Gauloises fame he had encountered a while back, back at the Uni lecture complex. There was an expression that mixed something of a bit of apprehension, a bit of curiosity towards the unknown, a bit of fascination towards the unacquainted, a bit of superiority of the skin and a sense of nativity. Without paying attention so much as to who replaced him at the mail pile, he pushed the inside door, nonchalantly turned left, crossed the floor, laboured the flight of stairs, mind occupied by the recent call back home. He did not pause to think until he slid his rucksack to the floor and dumped himself on to his bunk bed. Sitting with both hands sinking into the soft bed, he slid further to lay down with legs lolling out. Looked up at the bunk above his bed below and stared at it thoughtlessly for a few minutes. Where was life headed? Why am I here? Alone… wouldn’t say lonely… instead of chasing easier dreams in the land across the Atlantic where back home was Edison, onsite was San Jose and offshore was Bangalore or Hyderabad. He thought of his cousin at Nottingham and another at Alberta, Canada. Although physically much farther away from their respective hometowns, they were psychologically much nearer and connected and communicated comparatively inexpensively. Is this diaspora or mental diahrrea? Bleeding thoughts that choked his resolve with sentimentality that took a great resolve to shoe away. And the constant to-ing and fro-ing to the Ausländerbehörde to convince them that he was not here to emigrate like those tons of Arabs and Africans who sneaked in to the country and sought refuge or asylum and lived in cantonments of ghettos that were no different from a Jo’burg Shanty Town but for the multi-storeyed buildings with barbed wires, broken window panes, communal baths whose ceilings oozed stalactites courtesy the baths from the floors above; that he was here on purpose of education and for God’s fricking sake intended to get the hell out of here even if he were to be presented with the prospect of marrying the richest Teutonic separated female with schlange Beine, blaue Augen and who was zartlich und sanft inside and outside. He was not in accordance with the lay of the land from day one. Or perhaps the land was not appropriate for his liking.

In this frame of mind, he heaved himself towards the refrigerator that was purring in a corner. He had left it switched on without even realising, as he left that evening to watch The Holy Grail out of sheer boredom. Opening it, he pulled a .5 litre tall can of beer, indexed the little metal knob, felt than noticed the little spurt of froth that tinged his thumb, put it to his lips and felt the gentle bitter ecstasy that spread through his tongue towards the food passage as the liquid eased itself inside. Now he felt a bit better.