Smriti Ravindra

Passengers, Mumbai’s taxi drivers tell me, come in blocks of time. The ones in the morning are perpetually late for work and impatiently command drivers to break signals and bombard the streets with relentless honking. A fair number of morning passengers finish embellishing themselves within the confines of the taxi: men comb their hair, women dab their chins. They talk on the phone. Afternoon passengers are more sluggish, drunk with heat and tired of the world. They stare out the window and don’t mind if drivers softly play old Hindi numbers on the radio. The sadder the song, the better matched the music to the mood of these passengers. “But the most colourful ones come at night,” this one driver tells me.    I sense a story coming and lean slightly forward.   I am the atypical morning customer - punctual and all set for a slow conversation. “One evening this person asked to be driven to Bandra,” the driver begins. “I was thrilled because Bandra meant over ...

I step out the waiting room and out the building housing the Intensive Care Unit.   It is dark already and there is a chill to the air.   I have been at the hospital for nearly eleven hours and should be tired but I am not.   What I feel instead is gratefulness for the cool Pune night, the trees the hospital has planted in its compound, and the readily accessible tea at the canteen.   I get myself a cup and settle down on a broad platform built alongside the building.   Before me there is a man – so tall, at least a couple inches above six feet – walking up and down, speaking into his phone, murmuring.   I cannot make out his words but I can see he is distressed.   I half drink my tea, half watch him. In the ICU my aunt, who is the centre of my cousin’s existence, is fighting to survive. I worry for my cousin.   Away from home I miss my son.   Only eleven.   The centre of my life.   How fragile everything is. The man ...