darjeeling

I will be going home soon. I shall have to settle for "happiness" to describe what I feel, failing to find a word for the cool vapors that tickle my insides and make me cry with the relief I feel when I get something I want. I don't miss Darjeeling. Darjeeling is too large for me to miss. It embraces hamlets and pockets of human habitation I have never visited or even known to exist. What I miss then are my own experiences and darjeeling. The darjeeling I drew; the map of darjeeling with short cuts marked out by me, the people's houses I traversed impishly and the stubborn resistance of the flights of stairs to being quantified. Every time I have thought about darjeeling these two years I have never failed to conjure first the image of the "70 Steps." How many places, I wonder, have as many "stairs" as darjeeling does. When coming back from school we would decide if we wanted to climb all four stairs. Sometimes we would count the number of steps as we climbed up. The number always varied. I had a favourite, the stair leading up to Tara Hotel and leading down to Rink Cinema Hall. Rink Cinema Hall no longer stands, they tell me. A multiplex has been erected in its place. Does it sadden me? No, it doesn't. The Hall was ugly and smelt of piss. I just feel a little betrayed by the tiny cottage that served as a homeopathic store. For years they had held out against the builders. They sold out the year before last. I am angered too. I had never been inside the store and only knew of it as the purveyor of tiny white pills that my friend took for her moles to disappear. I feel deprived of the long-warranted visit. I just hope the tiny eateries are not bought by contractors who come back from the "plains" with dreams of making Darjeeling into a gaudy little outpost of mindless consumerism. Be that as it may I shall now talk about the flight of stairs I mentioned earlier. It is untidily set between rows of buildings. Climbing the stairs on our way home made us all happy. The exhaust fan of Washington (?) warmed our cold stockinged legs. We would linger on that step and hope the warmth would fortify us for the 15 more minutes of walking up the hill. The stairs are privy to countless stories. Stories I told them, stories I was told. It was also the stairs I climbed with a sharp and a then new awareness of occupying an other's map. When we reached the top my friend and I had to part ways. I would have to turn right and she left. I would walk past chai dokaans that sold chai, jalebis, rasogollas, shingaras, ladoos and other forbidden delights. We were forbidden to buy anything from shops like that in uniform. Sometimes I took a chance anyway. All of this reminds me of my school uniform; grey and shapeless; it made me feel secure in its lack of colour. Ah, but I fear I prattle too freely. Let us leave my reminiscences at that. I shall come back to it again soon. I still have Chowrasta to talk about and Daara, Oxford, the only book store in town, Bholaa's aloo, Kev's...