White

Has a stranger ever kept the elevator door open for you? Has a stranger ever smiled at your joke you were sharing to a friend? Has a stranger ever offered their seat to you on a crowded bus?

It has happened more than once to all of us. But then why do we not mention these strangers, when we list down the people who love us? Why do they slip off our mind?

It’s because, unlike a sibling’s nurturing-as-nature green love, a father’s bright-as-sunshine yellow love or couple’s comforting-as-home brown love, a stranger’s subtle-as-white love isn’t bright enough like the other colours for you to notice, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. White is all around us.

How long? How long? How long?! I tap my right feet impatiently. My already worn out right shoe is soon going to have a hole in it. No, no, please don’t wear out for another 6 days. I need the shoes at least until then. The pessimistic part of my mind is jeering at me for believing I’ll be needing the shoes for six more days. Your six-month period is ending in six days, it reminds me.

“What’s the time?” The man, sitting on my right, asks me for the second time.

I check my watch, squinting my eye to read the dial that is marred with scratches, I answer, “It’s 5:15.”

“Thank you, brother,” he leans back in his seat and starts biting his fingernails nervously.

I look around. Each of the 38 interviewees is anxious. Sitting in the lounge room of the headquarter  building of India’s No. 1 newspaper, we are all waiting for the result of our interviews. We are bound to be anxious. Oh, why can’t they let us know the results after a day or two? This end-of-the-day declaration is giving 38 people a high blood pressure!

“What’s the time now?” The man, sitting next to me, asks again.

‘It’s time for you to get yourself a watch!’ I want to snap at him. Instead, I use every ounce of my will power to politely smile at him and tell him the time. “It’s 5:18.”

“Oh okay. Thanks, brother.”

Brother? The word seems funny to me. In the last 6 months, I’ve been called brother a million times, but never felt the bond.

“Can I have Mr. Chetan Kishore?” The woman at the help-desk calls out.

A man sitting in the row behind me gets up and meets the woman. The woman guides him inside another door. The entire room sighs in disappointment. We know what it meant. Chetan Kishore will now be the reporter for page 5 articles, and we’ll all be going home dejected.

Nothing new for me though, this would be my 17th failed interview.

Five minutes later, a well-suited man walks in. In a brisk, but empathetic voice, he announces, “Gentlemen, thank you for your patience. We understand this has been a long day for you. We are so sorry to let you know that you haven’t been selected for this position.” The frustrated interviewees rise up to leave. “However,” the man interrupts, “there is still a vacancy in Lifestyle Section. Please leave your name at the help-desk if you would like to be interviewed again for that position tomorrow.”

A kind of disgruntled roar follows. Lifestyle section? Yeah, like that’s real journalism.

“We know you may be disappointed,” the man continues, “but we want to encourage you to move past the disappointment and pursue your professional goals. We wish you the best in all of your endeavours.”

Yeah, the customary ‘hey, the grass is soon going to be greener on your side’ rejection speech. I have heard it sixteen times before. I gather my belongings, my bag and my file, and get up from my seat. I walk towards the exit, along with the crowd.

“Sir, would you like to be considered for the Lifestyle section?” The woman, who is taking down the names, asks me.

I look down at my worn out shoes. I look at my worn-out watch a size too big which is dangling from my left wrist. Lifestyle and me? “Sure, why not?” I reply.

She completely misses my sarcasm and notes down my name reading from the ID card hanging around my neck. Ramesh Kumar.

Before I could explain it to her that I was joking, she has already written my name and has moved on to the person behind me, to whom she repeats, “Sir, would you like to be considered for the Lifestyle section?”

Huh. Maybe I’ll just not turn up tomorrow. Why should I take the trouble to explain it to her now? I keep walking towards the exit.

Maybe coming to the city was a horrible decision. What was I thinking? That if I could stay in the city for 6 months, I’ll be able to find myself a job in the journalism business? That I’ll be able to build my career. I remember the fiery, passionate speech I gave my father six months ago, right before moving to the city. How do I tell him I just wasted my savings in six months and achieved nothing?

I reach the building’s entrance. I surrender my temporary ID card to the security there and walk out. What do I do now? Do I go back to the shitty, dingy room that I now call home? I see a park hundred metres from here and I find myself walking towards it.

It’s a small park. In the open, grassless space, few boys are playing cricket. Few elderly men and women are having their evening walks. Among the people wearing tracks and shorts, I with my tucked in shirt and formal shoes stand apart oddly. I find a bench on the far end of the park, secluded from people’s watchful gaze. An old man, who might be in his late sixties, is sitting on one end of it. I sit beside him on the other end, leaving plenty of space between us.

Just as I settle down on the bench, the old man asks me, “Excuse me, can you please tell me the time?”

Is wearing a watch this troublesome? Nevertheless, I look at my watch and tell him, “5:30.”

“Thank you, brother,” he responds.

Brother again? People here are really quick to call one another ‘brother’. Does that word even mean anything in the city? In my town, the word ‘brother’ is considered sacred; if you call someone that, you make them your brother.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I take it out. It’s my roommate.

“How did the interview go?” He asks, the moment I answer the call.

“This interview went horrible too, Ashok. Another rejection. Maybe I’m not fit for this. Fit for journalism, fit for life in the city. I’m thinking of leaving tonight.”

“Hey, don’t lose hope, Ramesh. You have six more days,” he reminds me. “Be positive.”

“Positive?” I scream frustrated, “What do you think can happen in 6 days that hasn’t happened in 5 months and 24 days? I don’t know. I think they reject me because I’m from a small town. They think I do not know the ways of reporting city news; and maybe they are right. Coming from a small town does hold me back.”

He tries to interrupt, I don’t let him. “I’m almost thirty years old! If I can’t break into journalism career now, then I can do it never. My life is ruined.”

Damn it! I’m pouring out my frustration on him. What can he even do?

“Ramesh, don’t be so dejected,” Ashok interjects. “Things will cha-”

“Hey, I’m having another call coming in. Will talk to you later,” I say and hang up. I had no call coming in, I just didn’t want to trouble him. I didn’t want to talk to anyone actually, I just want to sit here in silence.

I throw a sideway glance at the old man. How much could he have overheard our conversation? Even if he did, he showed no reaction. Okay, good. I put the phone back in my pocket. I begin watching the game of cricket the kids are playing.

Twenty minutes later, the game comes to an end and the boys disperse. Great, now what do I focus my attention on? On my 17 failed interviews or on getting a bus ticket for tonight?

“Grandpa, Grandpa!” Two boys, aged twelve and fifteen who were earlier playing cricket, come running to the old man. “Can we have ice cream?”

“No, no,” he tells them. “Your mother will not allow it.”

“Please Grandpa! Please.”

“Okay fine,” he relents. “But on one condition. You should answer the questions I’ll be asking.”

The boys’ eyebrows raise up in suspicion, but they agree.

The old man begins, “Do you know who Rabindranath Tagore is?”

“Yes,” the eldest boy answers. “He’s the poet who wrote our national anthem.”

“Yes. Correct!” The old man pats his shoulder.

“So can we have the ice cream now?”

He laughs at their impatience. “Not so soon.”

“Rabindranath Tagore was an artist too. Did you know that?”

“No,” the kids shake their head meekly. Even I didn’t know that.

“He learnt to paint when he was in his sixties. He learnt it, mastered it, and sold them at art exhibitions around the world. So kids, here’s your first question. What do you learn from this?”

“That we need to stop laughing at your stick-figure drawings? Because, who knows, you could be a famous artist too?” the youngest boy quips. And the two kids start laughing.

Grandpa laughs along with them. “You naughty boy,” he pretends to scold and twists his ear playfully. “What you need to learn is that, you are never too old to learn new things. No matter how old you become, be it thirty or sixty.”

Thirty? Did he say thirty? I sit up, now attentively listening to the old man, though my eyes are fixed on a tree twenty metres ahead.

He continues, “Do you know why his paintings were popular?”

The children shake their head. I find myself shaking my head feebly too.

“Because he was colour-blind,” the old man answers.

“What?” the kids exclaim. The eldest boy says, “How can you be a colour-blind artist? It’s like being… hmm… deaf musician.”

Well, Beethoven was a deaf musician.

“Because of his colour-blindness, the colours he chosen were often unusual and off-beat. They had a strange colour scheme which was nothing like what the art world had seen before. This made his paintings stand above the rest, and his artwork is popular till date.”

“Wow,” says the eldest boy, surprised. “Who knew colour-blindness can help an artist in his success. That even a disorder can be of advantage!”

“Exactly! That’s the second lesson. What you think is a disadvantage can some day be an advantage. So never let yourself to be held back by what you deem is a disadvantage.”

“Hmm,” the kids agree, thoughtfully. They didn’t realise that these lessons were not solely intended for them.

“Hey, so now that we got at least one lesson right,” the youngest boy is quick to ask, “can we have ice cream?”

“Always on point,” he smiles. “Of course. Come on, let’s go and have some ice cream.” He gets up from his seat, looks at me distinctly and gives me a warm smile.

I acknowledge his lessons for me with a nod and smile back a ‘thank you’.

***

Five years later…

An article in the front page of India’s No.1 Newspaper reads:

A Chat With Our Friendly Neighbour

If you’ve ever lived in the city in the past five years, you would have definitely read, laughed and forwarded your friends the articles on the weekly column called Neighbourside.

In this surprisingly fresh column, Mr. Ramesh Kumar writes about the struggles of living in the city. No, he’s not talking about the traffic or the rising land prices, he’s talking about the neighbours – you, me and the person next door. In this special edition, we have a chat with our friendly neighbour, Mr. Kumar.

An excerpt from the interview is below.

CK: How did you think of writing about the simple nuances in life? In a day when Lifestyle section is filled with fashion and wellness, how did the concept of Neighbourside come to you?

RK: Well, I was born in a small town, and lived all my life there until I moved here five years ago. It’s funny how in the million people crowd, you still feel lonely. We call one another brother hoping to establish a bond, we talk about city as our own so that we’ll have common things with the people around us – all in attempt to make connection. That’s when I realised what we really miss in big cities is the human connection. And evidently, the first connection you make when you step out of the house is with your neighbours. So I took it my mission to help city dwellers bond with their neighbours, because I believe that’s our starting point.

CK: Well said, Mr. Kumar. So tell us this, what was your starting point that lead to finding these starting points?

RK: Mine? (RK looks far away pensively and smiles) I think mine started from a stranger’s kindness.

Read the full interview by Chetan Kishore on page 5.

 

Why the title ‘white’?

I wanted to choose a colour that’s all around us, but that doesn’t stand out. Much like a stranger’s kindness. Strangers’ kindness are all around us, but until someone lends you their pen, or offers their seat, you don’t notice that it’s there. Hence white.

I also wanted to symbolise the old man’s white hair and ageless wisdom, and discreetly the colour of newspaper.