“Oh!” Mani cried, wiping his school uniform of dirt. He could hear his mother’s voice now, in his head, “How many times,” the voice echoed in his head like a banshee, “have I told you not to jump out of the bus like that!” And it was true; here, Mani stood almost at the dead center of the Hyderguda overpass, after having taken an impressive dive from his rampaging school bus, a barreling collection of useless paint chips which might have been made when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, waiting for the meteorite to fall and end them. Not wanting to share the fate of the dinosaurs, he ran from his spot on the road, and quite luckily he had just avoided being thrown into the Tankbund by a renegade rickshaw by going to the side of the highway. A slow unsettling feeling from being at this height made him turn away. He could see the blue bus at the end of the flyover, and from here Mani could watched the arms and knees that spilled out of the bus flail uselessly as they were nudged by rickshaws and the merciless pedestrians. Clutching his sun-catching lunchbox away from his face, he hauled his backpack and made the laborious journey to the end of the overpass.
Hyderabad opened on the other side of the flyover in all of its labyrinths, crowds, and chaotic beauty. When Mani looked at across the street, he could not help but laugh as he looked at the stores which fought desperately for space in the coveted street. Shyam’s bakery and Krishnaswamy and Sons Law Office fought for dear life for the same space with the same venom of the Pandavas and Kauravas’ battle on the Kurukshetra field in the Mahabharata. Each day, one sign would replace the other in their desperate battle for recognition. Wiping his forehead of sweat with his exhaust soaked handkerchief, he walked across the street and through the bursts of space between the sandwiched cars. Today, he ascertained with relish as he pushed past the last Maruthi car, is my lucky day. Above him, flashed a broken neon sign which confirmed that today, the store was, in fact, “Shyam’s Bakery”.
The air became almost unbearably hot and humid as Mani entered the store; the man behind the counter looked as if he were being slowly roasted and almost simmered in his own sweat. “Hello, there!” he said when Mani entered the store, as if coming to life, “What do you want today?” The glass counter was almost overloaded with sweets; biscuits of every brand ever manufactured and colorful candies that melted in the mouth (and also in this impossible weather).
“Shyam Uncle,” Mani began, tiptoeing to reach the counter and smeared his palms on the surface. “I’ve only got five rupees, and a paisa, I think. Yes. Do you have anything I could buy for that?” The sound of arguing from a small back room of the store began to get louder, as Mani felt for the change in his pocket. His hand rested for a moment on the ceramic figurine of the Lord Ganapati, which his mother insisted that he carry. He liked the feel of Ganapati’s smooth, round head, and for some reason he felt that the God was his pocket talisman
“You could buy anything you want here, little fellow,” Shyam assured him, smiling as his small customer fiddled for the change, “Five rupees could even buy you some stock on the SENSEX exchange.”
“On the what?”
“Never mind, beta,” Shyam said, impatiently, “Choose something to eat.”
Mani thought for a bit, but Shyam had to pause the conversation gently in order to join the ensuing argument in the back room.
“Krishnamsawmy!” Shyam thundered, but the door shut behind him with the ferocity of his entry, and Mani was left alone; although he tried, Mani could not make out anymore of the conversation than series of screams and heated protests. He resigned himself to feast his eyes on the sweets in front of him. For a moment, it was almost impossible to choose something, but a brilliant box of yellow biscuits caught his eye. Not wanting to interrupt Shyam’s property battles with the disgruntled lawyer, Mani lay the money on the counter and grabbed the biscuit packet and ran as fast as he could into the chaos of traffic.
“Timepass?” Mani asked himself, reading the label of the biscuit wrapper as he left the store. He wondered why his favorite excuse lay neatly printed in front of him. It was as if the biscuits anticipated what he was going to say, minutes later, at the nearest ISD telephone booth which was three blocks from Shyam’s bakery/Krishnaswamy’s Law offices. Although he loved his mother, usually, he never ceased get a thrill out of eliciting her anger. Timepass explained everything; every event occurred with the passage of time. Everybody used the word – the laundry dhobi, in an attempt to look knowledgeable had used the world while yelling at his son. (“I expect you to iron the clothes until they have no wrinkles, no WRINKLES at ALL! You and your Timepass!” and the dhobi’s son was startled into ironing his clothes flawlessly, or so Mani liked to think.) Mani used the word in his own grammar school innocence and cheek and always looked forward to the Timepass moment when he could make his official declaration of killing time. His mother, young in years and old in wisdom found this to be excruciating; however, she could not expect a more detailed or precise answer from her son.
So the box of biscuits fazed him, but Mani was on his way, and his feet were on autopilot past the luxurious apartments of Khairtabad and the congregation of sagely bulls ruminating on the day’s worth of collected garbage. The ISD phone booth was sandwiched between the pharmacy and the junk-lot; he held his breath as he pulled open the door of the booth and reached into his shoe for the money he expressly saved for this call. Dialing the number slowly, he heard the ring tone, and then the sharp disconnection of his line. Only slightly perturbed, Mani yelled into the empty phone line: “Timepass!”
Unfortunately, he had said it loudly enough to gain the attention of the bulls nearby, who grew aroused from sagely, and Mani’s eyes widened with fear as thye moved slowly toward him. When he opened the door, Mani realized that it was time to start running, but it was too late. The animals were already provoked and they chased him down the garbage lined streets of the neighborhood until, in a move of breathtaking skill, he caught the ankle of a man holding on, for dear life, to a bus headed for Jubliee Hills. He was a light character, and the man to whom he was attached probably thought him to be a heavy shopping back. At some point in time, however, Mani felt his leg going through the open windows of neighboring cars, and finally, the man to whom Mani clung began to squirm violently, probably weary of the human burden which had just attached itself to his leg. Slightly perturbed, Mani flung himself off of the speeding bus and onto the roof of a car, and yelped in pain. Not wanting to face the owner of the car which had lessened his impact, Mani ran around the corner. The moment he had, he stopped dead.
“The Hyderabad Train Station,” the large building declared in three sets of rusty letters: the loopy ebullient ones belonging to Telugu, the linear letters to Hindi, and who knows where the English letters went. The long station was a stately, white Victorian building whose windows were dulled with the constant useless surrounding construction. Had I really come this far? he wondered, realizing how stupid the question sounded, even in his head. If he had come this far, he had come this far. Or had he? Clutching his tiffin container and biscuits, as he had not thought to put them in his bag, he charged through the station, racing across the platforms. He ran with such authority that one actually might have thought that he had the means and reason to catch a train and ride away from Hyderabad. The platforms grew increasingly empty of the women in saris with their arsenals of screaming children and their husbands whose faces were travel worn with Braille like stubble. Soon, even the red porters did not frequent the later platforms, and by platform eleven, there was no one to be found.
Mani counted the platforms here, but he could have possibly made an error. All that he was truly certain of was that the platforms had exhausted themselves and that none existed after this one. Slowing down, he descended the bridge which allowed him to scale the platforms and found an empty bench which lined the train tracks. What astonished the boy the most was that the bench was neither dusty nor did it seem to be a nest for cockroaches. Standing on the bench, he was hit with a spark of brilliance. Kishore Kumar was not the only one with the license to do what Mani always wanted to do; like a seasoned shepherd from the Alps, he yodeled. Had a shepherd heard him, he would have scoffed, but the echoes responded resoundingly, and Mani was obliged to encore until his voice was sore and he could not anymore. Sitting down, he stared blankly at the Timepass biscuits, until he opened it with a burst of energy, and tore open the wrapper hungrily.
He held the first biscuit in his hand, and watched the platform, and a sort of curious mist seemed to develop from the rail. Mani was not perturbed at all; he found that the mist mingled well with the biscuits and it gave him a renewed appetite. It was when he was on his second cookie when he realized that someone had sat next to him, facing the opposite direction. He was a rather hefty fellow, and the bench creaked badly. Mani’s curiosity was whetted; he was taught not to look back when people he encountered strangers, but he was not averse to talking.
“Would you have a biscuit?” Mani asked, politely.
“I was just going to ask you that.” The stranger had an oddly high pitched voice; Mani, who had grown accustomed to the maxim which stated that the fatter one got, the deeper his voice got, was slightly confused.. “May I?”
Without looking at the man, Mani passed back a biscuit, and for a moment they sat, eating in silence.
“What are you doing here?” the boy asked, finally, unable to temper his curiosity, “I mean, what train are you going to take? I don’t think that I’ve seen any here at all.”
“Oh, I’m going somewhere far away.” He responded. “I don’t think anybody else is going where I’m going.” He paused for a while. “In fact, I’m pretty sure no one else is going where I’m going. Are you? Where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” said Mani, sighing, “I’m actually here because I couldn’t call my mother, and I tried to hop on a bus to get home but I got thrown off at the station instead. Why do you ask me? Do you think that the railway has a train just for you, ‘eh?” Mani asked, without a trace of insolence. “Fancy that.”
“Oh, yes,” the man responded, smacking his lips. “I’m planning on going someplace very far away. Kid, have you got any more of those crackers? What on earth are they called?”
“Timepass,” Mani informed him, “These crackers really kill time.”
“Why on earth do you want to kill time?” the man responded, “It’s not as if time has done anything to you! What has time ever done to make you want to kill it? That makes you a murderer! Do you know what they do to murderers?”
“Will I get thrown in jail for it?” Mani asked, “I’m only seven!”
“Oh … but you will pay for it in your next life. And the next. Maybe you’ll become a frog next. How do you think that little kids who kill time get punished?”
“I’d like to think that they’re given second chances,” said Mani, magnanimously, “And that people just don’t randomly curse others. And do little children really think that they’re killing time? I mean, when people are born, they don’t have to go straight to school, and then work, and after that retire? All in one day! Or in a month! Babies have to kill time! That’s the only way that they grow!”
“Really?” said the man, “Think about it this way. In the eyes of the Lord Brahma, your entire life is like a second to him. He can see billions of people at once, and his life is millions, trillions, many, many, times over longer than yours is, or anyone else’s is. According to Brahma, babies are not killing time.”
“Oh, I see. But I’m not taking up much of his time, either.”
“No, you’re not,” the man agreed.
“So why should I be punished? I mean, Brahma wouldn’t know! He’s busy creating people and universes and whatever else he does up there.”
The man held his hand out from behind; Mani handed him another biscuit, and he chuckled. “I really like these biscuits. Where are they from?”
“Shyam’s bakery?”
“You mean the Law Office?”
“Whatever,” Mani replied, until he realized something. “Hey! How on Earth do you know about Shyam’s?”
“How do you think Brahma knows about Shyam?”
“Who cares about what Lord Brahma knows? I want to know what YOU know!”
“I know everything.” the man said, vaguely. “I know everything about everybody.”
“Do you really?” Mani challenged. “What’s my name?”
“Subhramaniam Iyer. You were born in Podukottai and then you moved to Hyderabad when you were four years old. Your best friend is a wind up turtle –”
“Shut up!” Mani cried, “Do you want the whole WORLD to know?”
Mani took out the small figurine of Lord Ganapati that he had in his pocket that his mother insisted that he keep. Ganapati’s trunk felt warm and assuring, and for once he felt somewhat glad that he listened to his mother. What could go wrong when Ganapati, smartest of the Gods, and the most wise --- and he even had the memory of an elephant! (courtesy of his elephant head) He wondered whether she could see that it was not his fault that the ISD broke, that he could not explain to her that he was just passing time, and that there was really no need to worry that he had just been expunged from two buses, been chased by bulls, and nearly deafened by the arguments between a lawyer and a baker. He wondered whether Ganapati would let her know that.
“Do you,” Mani began, “Remember that year where all of the Ganapati figurines drank milk?”
“That’s a random question.” The man answered.
“You’re a random person. You say that you know everything.”
“Yes. I remember.” The man said, sighing. “Ganapati drank milk.”
“What happened?”
“It was at the Maheshwara temple in Mylapore, when Ganapati realized that they were feeding him milk!”
“Come on, now! People have been feeding milk to Ganapati since the beginning of time, almost.”
“This fellow,” the man responded, “Knew exactly what place he likes to drink the milk. He put it in the side of his mouth. It’s much easier for the gods to drink that way.”
“You would know.” Mani said. “Side of the mouth, you say?”
“Side of the mouth. He’ll definitely get the milk that way.” There was a small pause as the two of them devoured biscuits, waiting for a train Mani was not sure was going to come.
“So … will the train come soon?”
“Relax,” the man said, “I’m the only one who’s going to take the train. One more biscuit, please.”
Mani was down to his last one, and he looked at the biscuit for awhile, fondly. Timepass. The time was slowly ticking away, and soon the sun would think about going down on the horizon which it had come from the previous day, and the sun filtered in through the mud roof and illuminated the man behind him. Surprised, Mani lunged backward and caught something in his hand to steady himself. It was long, very long, and it felt rough. It felt like a rough banana, or smooth sandpaper. The long skin pulsated and with a loud noise, Mani’s grip was shaken off.
“You do know everything,” Mani said, “Lord Ganapati.”
This was the strangest thing that Mani ever had to deal with. He imagined himself at the dinner table, helping himself to rice and his rasam sadham, and watching the steam shoot up to the ceiling. As usual, his father would ask him what he had done today, and “timepass” would never satisfy him.
“What have you done today?” he’d bark, “You lazy creature, telling your mother that you’re … what are you doing?”
“Timepass,” his mother would say, because his father would forget, everytime.
“Right, buspass. What do you want to do with a bus pass?”
Could he sit at this table and say that a few hours ago he had sat with God? Talked to God? Chatted with God as he would a baker, a lawyer or his mother? The worst thing for Mani would not be disbelief. The worst thing would be that immediately after, Mani’s father would ask for someone to pass the vonkai kura. Or the Ghee. Or something else, so that they could disregard that there was someone, something out there.
He could never tell his parents over the dinner table, unless Ganapati came to dinner. Judging from the fact that he ate up an entire kingdom worth of food, and devoured all of Kubera’s riches, Ganapati would eat their house. Kubera’s palace was full of the delicious food, gold and riches of Ancient India. What did Mani’s parents have? They had rice, and rasam sadam, and the cook might make cabbage sometimes. Hardly fit for Ganapati.
“I like cabbage,” Ganapati turned himself toward Mani, and smiled, as it was possible for a tuskless elephant to smile. Broad shouldered and wearing his silk sarong which stretched neatly to his ankles, he looked down at Mani and smiled. His gold jewelry must have weighed even more than he did, and Mani realized now exactly why Ganapati did not face him. He held out his hand and Mani thrust the biscuit into his hand. “Quickly!” Mani whispered, “Before you miss the train!”
“What train?” Ganapati asked, as he left the bench and walked through the train tracks, disappearing into the wall of the station. Mani wished he could have asked him to come to dinner, and he sat for awhile, fingering the smooth ceramic of his Ganapati figurine, given to him by his mother. The light from the ceiling filtered in and it was never really dark although the sun was beginning to go back to its place on the horizon. Surya, the sun god, would rest his chariot for the day, and start afresh the next, not bungling once in the whole cosmic journey of light. However, immediately after he left, Mani heard some rumbling behind him, and a set of passengers came out, travel-weary, and eager to exit the station. Porters sprang up from nowhere and shifted luggage like they belonged, and soon he felt himself being buoyed by the other passengers who crammed out through the doors, cleansing the platform of its emptiness.
It was not a long walk back to the apartment, but the night was already upon Hyderabad, and the streetlights were cranking themselves on, lazily. He walked home, penitent, unwilling to catch a ride from a temperamental bus, and although he kept his distance from the bulls, he wondered whether he should call them over, just to leap over them. Sure, he would get hurt, but he would be jumping over them. Over all of them. But the last crowd of bulls dissipated and he was allowed entrance up to his apartment building where he hobbled, weary of walking and of hitchhiking, back to his house. Four sets of stairs, eleven steps each. All moments, parts of time. Mani felt that he was not killing them, but rather appreciating them.
Mani expected his mother to yell at him, and as he opened the door, his mother was there, her arms on her large hips and her chin straight. “I suppose you have an explanation for this!” she said, “Do you know how worried I was about you? What on earth could you have been doing?”
I was talking to God on an abandoned platform bench while eating Timepass biscuits, he thought, but how can I tell her that? If everyone who had interesting stories cannot tell them, what else could they do?
Mani found the couch and sat on it, picking up the remote. His mother, insistent, stood over him, clutching the remote and removing it from his grasp.
“What were you doing?”
“Timepass,” Mani said, grabbing the remote from his mother, and switching it to the Cartoon Network. Squealing in Hindi, Speedy Gonzales sped across the screen, into the desert landscape. He watched as Speedy ran away from the bad guys, trying desperately to save the world. Mani waited until Speedy ran as far as he could go, away from everything, before the circles closed around him in the end. What was Speedy doing? Mani knew the answer. Timepass.
