Dark

I am a creature of darkness. I prefer to sleep during the day. The sun hurts my eyes. At home, I have invested in some heavy-duty dark fabric for the window curtains that keeps my room semi-dark even at noon. I feel drowsy and wander like a zombie till the sun sets. I don't have a real appetite at daytime and can carry on without a bite till evening. Maybe some juice or a glass or two of water. When the sun sets and darkness descends, I wake up. I come into my own. My senses sharpen as evening melts into the night. A strange restlessness engulfs me. I feel keener, taut, energetic. My heaviest, multi-course meal is the dinner which I usually have around 1am.
Ever since my college days, when I was no longer bullied into retiring early to attend the morning classes, I have never gone to bed before 2. But it is only after taking up journalism as a profession that I got a valid excuse to spend my nights the way I was born to.
In the early Statesman days, the poor souls couldn't afford an hourly drop at night and we had to wait till the earlier car came back. We usually let the married and the impatient leave early and after the day's work, sat and chatted over a blue sofa. "What do you do till so late?" my mother would sometimes ask as I tiptoed into the room. "There wasn't any car, ma... And you know we have to drop the girls first..." Partial truth. But isn't life a blend of such like?
We would ask the driver to halt at roadside dhabas near the airport. Angona used to stay near the airport -- bless her -- and have a rowdy, hearty meal. Kebabs and naans and creamy daals and drinks so cold that hurts your teeth and some good grass before and after... Hash makes you hungry.
Then mom passed away and my nights became a little more lonely. I would return really late and play Max Payne till the sun peeps out. When the city sleeps, my hero would kill thugs by the thousands and pump a trillion bullets. I would clinch my fist in excitement and roar in frustration at times. Max Payne was good. He didn't allow me to think.
Mumbai is so different from Kolkata. The smell, the colour, the drapes, the works, the glitz, the shapes, the curves. But as midnight approaches and she sheds her frills, I find her. She spreads out like a woman whose every contour I am familiar with. She whispers in the dark. I listen. I walk back home every night from the station. The main street, the sub-street, the lanes, the branches, the slight risings, puckered tips, the forked alleys. I walk like a man possessed. The stray dogs look at me with suspicion. The kulfiwallahs and rickshawwallahs look at me with interest. The leaves swish, stray voices pour out from multi-storied windows. Bored ATM securitymen, trapped in ill-fitting uniforms, doze off. I blend. Me, the darkness and the city.