An old un

The following was written in January right after classes had begun for the semester. An old, rambling post but I don't have anything new for now.

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The classes are at 7.30 in the mornings (but not every day of the week...I'm too embarrassed to admit to anything else). I couldn't remember the last time that I had to be ready and out of the house by 7 in the morning. I tried recollecting this bit of information during the brief Christmas break that we had (they call it 'winter' break here) but my memory eludes me. I do remember the last time that I was waking up and getting ready and out of my dorm room by 6.45. It was a term when I was doing three or four things, and doing them fairly well - so I thought. Even if I wasn't doing them well - I was delighted about the prospect of waking up early in the mornings even on the days that I wasn't so sure where I was going.

I told myself to get into a strict routine over Christmas. That didn't happen. And as it sometimes happens when certain things simply have to get done, after a couple of nights of dreaming strange dreams - the day I had to make an appearance - I shot out of bed as soon as the alarm went off. I fed my two little pets, got ready like an army sergeant, and was out of the house at a reasonably early time. The snow had been falling gently and steadily through the night and through the dense, black liquid light there were the silver white sparkles that I love. And there was the silence. The snow hadn't been plowed as yet. I brushed off the car (there's no trolley that early, and I'd much rather go and sleep in the classroom the previous night than try and walk all the way in the morning), hopped in, worked the windshield wipers, and one of them (the one on the driver's side, no less) fell off. Rumpelstiltskin, blue blistering barnacles and all that! I hopped out again, warmed my hands on my jacket, looked at the wiper, looked at the one that was fixed, and then set the loose one in. Out it fell. Okay, nice. Really nice. I could still make it if I walked and I looked out into the darkness wondering whether I should boot it up the hill or simply run at a steady enough pace all the way.

I stuffed the wiper in my pocket, dusted the snow off the windshield, hopped back into the car, peered through one clear spot, drove along and halted in front of Jerry's coffee shop and requested my neighbour to come out and have a look. He did what I did with the wiper, and it stayed on, and Kim said, "Don't use it too often." I nodded and off it was.

None of the roads seemed to have been plowed quite that early and as I inched along I couldn't stop staring at the snow and gingerly pressing on the wiper button. I would turn the knob once and the wiper, with a mind of its own, would provide me with two or even three furious, speedy flicks and come to a rest. At one point I even barked at it, "Give it a rest would you? I clicked just once." To prove a point, the rakish wiper gave another half-flick, and I said, "I didn't even touch the knob!"

It's just about 2 miles to the campus from where I live and I knew I simply needed to cross the bridge over the river without going off course or banging into a car or something else. And so I cruised along with the maniacal wiper half-fixed on, and at a somewhat jaunty angle, giving rapid and smart flicks when I wanted only one. I just prayed that it stayed on because it was doing its job perfectly well when it was doing it.

A friend had very kindly offered her empty parking spot behind her apartment complex. Given the strange winter we've been having here - I'd gone over to check the spot the earlier evening. It seemed a regular spot and there seemed to be a narrow, unpaved lane which sort of meandered its way between two apartment complexes and came to meet the large parking space. I'd checked all that the evening before. Now as I finally crossed the bridge without incident I slowed down as I approached the narrow lane, and I didn't know what it was actually. I was quite sure that it was the same lane I'd seen the evening before but it looked completely different. Snow was piled high. There was no lane that I could see. It looked like a lovely snowy mound. A hill of snow...a desolate space leading to other-lands - maybe. But not a lane. I wasn't going to risk trying to get through that and have the car getting stuck with one of the maniacal wipers flying off and hitting someone on the face...I had though inched off the road to take the turn and I could see a steady progression of traffic right behind me coming off from the bridge. I stayed put. Let all the cars and morning trucks pass me by and I got back to the main road while sipping some coffee hastily. Now to find a parking spot. I refused to touch the wiper button, and the wiper sensing the urgency of the situation ("the nut, who's been talking with me, has to reach her class on time") behaved itself for a bit. It wiped when it was so bidden and held its peace otherwise. I hunted around for barely two minutes and then the wonderful sight of an empty parking spot met my eyes. No parallel parking required. No crossing of mounds. No parking metre. I could technically park for an hour but if the little van with the roving eyes belonging to the sharp human didn't come by right away - I'd probably miss the ticket as well. At least I was hoping I would because the class itself was over an hour....

I stopped at the parking spot and the wiper gave me two of its brightest and sharpest flicks. "Go ahead. We're not on the bridge now," I cheerily yelled. I leapt out and there was the walk from there to the department. Quiet, silent, sparkling bits of snow through that still liquid black met me, and the air wasn't even cold enough for gloves. I gulped and raised my eyebrows and gave a half-smile.

The class was...fun but this is not about the class.

I raced back to the car after the class and the office hours were done for the day, and there was no parking ticket on the car. I emitted my silent thank-you. I needed to move the car though and needed to go and get some paperwork done. So it was back in. I jabbed at the wiper a couple of times and it seemed to be doing not too badly. But it was hairy driving around campus. I never did quite realise before today how many students simply jump out onto the road without looking or keep walking across the roads as if they are in a trance (even though I know I've done it myself sometimes* missed the bus twice and a lorry once: but it wasn't my fault with the lorry; the truck climbed onto the curb - hardly my fault....). But today it seemed as though it were happening more often. At some point I wondered whether the car was invisible. I know it doesn't help with the snow sometimes blowing towards one and when one is trying to keep one's eyes shut while still walking around but I wish the pedestrians would look up sometimes when they're crossing the middle of the road. While I was having these righteous thoughts, one red truck nearly banged into me while taking a speedy turn and I forgot to yell or honk the horn. I just gave the driver a glare which he couldn't see anyway. The rakish wiper was working well though till I got to yet another car park when suddenly it went flying off and landed somewhere in the snow. No students around, thankfully enough. I stopped the car, ran over to it where it was lying in the snow laughing. Anyway, I managed to fix it on again, and then it was back home while telling the wiper to go slow. I reached my street and let out a sigh of relief. I would not have wanted to be driving out on the highway today - that's for sure.

And I've been talking to a wiper...I think the nutty wiper is also missing a nut of its own.

Weird weather and winds

The weather here changed at some point when I wasn't paying attention. I was helping a friend for three days to move houses...not out of overflowing kindness of the heart but simply because there was nobody else. And sometime over the weekend the weather changed, and I noticed it yesterday noon or so for real. There's an undefinable breeze and sometimes a gust of wind, and it has a curious fragrance. It's not a fragrance of flowers or leaves. It's hard to say what it contains but it seems to be blowing in from other worlds and places and times. I can't even quite sense whether it's a warm or a cold wind. I mean that. I can't figure out whether even the air is warm or cool to the skin. My senses don't seem to know. There's sun. That much I can sense. And there's a sky shot through with a lazy blue. That much I can see. I know at other times a dancing, smiling if somewhat restless joy captivates me when similar weather saunters in. Now I just feel restive with nowhere to go, and those flickering, vague images make me want to run away somewhere for a bit. Yesterday after feeling the same urge to run off, to get out, to go do something - I finally left my computer and word documents alone, and got out of the house in the early evening, and wondered where I could go. I looked at the road. I simply went for a walk like every evening - just a more long-winded walk. That's all I did. A walk which lasted for two hours, and which took me to the river after a month. The river is in retreat and the sandy banks have green shoots and clumps of greenery. I walked around there. Sat for a bit. Smoked, of course. Went through a little pool of water with my feet sinking into the bottom making muddy whorls. The weather is distracting. Even now I can sense it while sitting indoors. It makes me go out but there's something missing so I come back in. I remember similar weather with strange winds even in Calcutta and in Durgapur. I don't even quite know whether there really was a wind or what those similar fragrances were. There used to be a missing, and I was quite sure that I was missing not being here, and that someday I'd be traveling a lot and that would take care of the feeling...maybe it's a feeling of wanderlust or of missing pasts long past or of seeing dead dreams playing out for real somewhere or of sensing imagined futures or maybe the weather is an accident: it comes in from parallel universes or something. Whatever it is it is entering my senses no matter how hard I try to avoid it. I can't think of a thing that I can do that would dispel the strangeness of the weather cutting into my senses. There's an emptiness, which shouldn't be empty. I feel like a dislocated self for every possibility, which sounds like a fine possibility is considered until I shake my head: go and sit in the library and work; work in the coffee-shop; take some print-outs and sit at a coffee-shop and read; walk around; go to a park maybe; watch a funny movie; go for a swim; go and sing on the hills (just kidding with this one)...so I stay indoors and do what I'm doing. Even fimh seems quiet, vague, and distracted, and lets me be. So there's nowhere within to crack jokes or smile or just be and let the strangeness linger while carrying on with things. Quite odd. I wonder whether this is like some other things, where one simply has to wait for the fever to pass.

I hate using my completely forgotten bits of french but there were a couple of phrases that I remember hearing, and which have since stuck. The weather now brings to mind one of them: that sense of je ne sais quoi...that's what seems to be skipping around within. Maybe I've just been here for too long a time and that's all there is to it. I don't know.