Small Days and Nights

by Tishani Doshi

of a fresh lime soda. People stare. Wherever we go someone is looking at us – gazing unabatedly, not with malice or curiosity, but some kind of stupidity. Families travelling with other families, honeymooning couples, busloads of day trippers from Kerala, mostly men. In them all I find something to despise. I see only smallness in their lives. Who am I to say? It could simply be that they don’t know how to look. That, like the waiters at the club, they only need time to familiarise themselves. But I see only the imprint of failure. Those newly-wed women leaning into their husbands’ chests – hennaed arms, bangles up to their elbows, incongruous in their jeans and T-shirts. Being steered around by men, who look like children really, overgrown children who have never been denied anything. They lead with their stomachs and hairy forearms, and the women follow to what surely must be a drowning. I want to believe otherwise, that in all the hordes there is beauty and potential, but mostly what I see is a beating down. The men and the women, and even the poor children, dragged around in their silly monkey caps and fluorescent sunglasses. What chance do any of them have?

Nihilism. Constant depression and cyncism and hopelessness