Masala Maza
Yasser Ali Nasser
The moonlight melded into the thin mist, coalescing into a silvery stream that only just about pierced the dark. The streetlights were out. It wasn’t uncommon for the grid to suddenly shift like that; the government had long ago decided that it was simply not efficient to have the entire country lit up at any given time.
I shrugged and turned the corner. This street was the quickest way to the station, and it was the place I was most familiar with, mist or no mist. The lights would turn on again in twenty minutes. And it’s not like I was afraid of the dark; if anything, I was looking forward to it. I mean, it wasn’t the first time I had been forced to walk without the convenience of dull orange lights above.
It would be the last.
The bustle of the neighborhood slowed for a moment. “Arey, kya hoga? Cut hey?”1 Others cried out in Kannada and Tamil, and though I had heard those languages again and again they still sounded entirely foreign to my ears. I could get the gist of it though. People—mostly night-owls running their little tiffin shops, catering to the tired night laborers and just-arriving fishermen—scattered around, lighting candles and lamps to try and ward off the darkness. There was rarely any panic when the lights went out like this. It was just the way of things. Irritation was far more common; laborers and fishermen alike couldn’t get in their evening meals if the eateries couldn’t cook up some good old fashioned khana2. And they sure as hell couldn’t cook in the dark.
In the distance, I could see a parade of vehicles drive on through the dark of the main road. I remember coming to the city as a kid, after a long flight across multiple oceans, and the first sight—well, sounds, really—that awaited me was Indian traffic. Scooters and motorbikes weaving through Tatas and Mercedes alike, enmeshed in a cacophony of mechanical orgy of sound and road rage. Auto-rickshaws and their horns though—I remember staying awake well into the nights, that blaring in the distance keeping me up with its repetitive dings.
My walking was slow. A few roaming headlights managed to light up the path every now and then, but it hardly helped. The sidewalk was uneven, lying broken in some places, sometimes deliberately and sometimes because of sheer disrepair. Hardly anyone would walk here anyway—people drove through, picked up their food and moved on. The sun could rise or set but the tiffin shops would still be open, serving up hot meals to hungry laborers. There were only a few little apartment buildings left, their watchmen dutifully lighting up the kerosene lamps on cue. Nani lived in one just behind me, right on the corner, up until recently.
It was a tiny piece of the city, but it wasn’t without its charm. From the ivy and moss that stretched out on some of the old gates of British bungalows turned makeshift apartments, to the peeling paint of the elderly temple on the corner. The soft undertow of old Hindi music meshed with Kannadiga laborers chatting to each other in between shifts; the smell of coriander, cinnamon and chilies. A couple of stray dogs sleeping under the shade of a sickly looking tree, basking in the moonlight and the cool comfort of the oncoming mists.
In a sense, this part of the city—my part of it—lay forgotten. To many, it was little more than a motorized alleyway, connecting two important roads, each blaring with endless traffic All that noise. Irritably soothing.
On the other side of the street was one of my favorite joints—Masala Maza. Sounded like an old Bollywood film: this one starred Cigarette-Smoking Krishnamurthy and Venkatesh the Cook. I don’t know why I never took the time to learn their real names. I guess I never figured I needed to. I’d come back again and again and they’d always be there, serving up their tiffins and giving us discounts on their ‘special’ ice cream sodas. Summer meant Nani’s home-cooked dinners before watching her nightly soaps with their dramatic sound effects and ‘stylish’ camera zooms. Summer meant visiting all the relatives with stranger names than mine but who welcomed me as one of their own with just a little friendly teasing. Summer meant auto-rickshaws—listening to them at night and riding in them during the day.
And summer meant power-cuts, sometimes every week, sometimes every day. Summer would no longer mean any of that.
The suitcase behind me wheeled along the uneven sidewalk, getting caught in broken tiles every now and then. I couldn’t help but chuckle. The universe had conspired against me, as they say, complicating what should have been a simple walk. Mists outside of monsoon season. Power cuts in the darkest twilight hours. And now, a sidewalk so uneven that I would have an easier time walking on the asphalt. In the distance, a giant concrete overpass was being constructed to accommodate a planned high-speed metro system. I looked at the broken concrete under me and smiled. The country had odd priorities.
The bus station was just five minutes away, give or take. I lumbered onwards as the whining engines of scooters on the nearby road grew louder and louder, a stream of headlights like a lighthouse beacon in the distance.
The chatting Kannadiga laborers ignored my presence entirely, if they noticed it at all. I was just another person in transit to them—my formal Western clothing was a dead giveaway.
I just had that look of a foreigner. I could wear the humblest of kurtas and throw out a bunch of Urdu and still have that look. That aura. People would just know. I was one of those—the people that flocked back to the country every now and then to visit relatives. They would cross distant oceans and they would cross back. They were outsiders and kinsmen and neither.
Throughout my life, I’d shift from home to home, like it was nothing; friends were made and friends were forgotten. I drifted wherever the currents would take me and I’d adapt accordingly. This place was the familiar harbor where I could cast my anchor for a little while. It had been, anyway.
The smell of tamarind and cumin grew a little fainter as I moved farther away from Masala Maza and its fellow tiffin shop compatriots. My pockets seemed a little heavier than I remembered. Keys, wallet, and my phone; business as usual. My bus ticket was there too, crumpled up in a corner. But there was something else. I took it out and held it up close to my eyes.
It was a little wooden owl.
It had been carved from sandalwood, and its smell blended in nicely with the masalas in the distance. I traced its every outline with my thumbs, dropping my suitcase. This owl was oddly familiar—Nani’s desk in the dining room. There were all sorts of trinkets that she had locked away in those shelves after my grandfather died. I had never met him. But I knew for a fact that the owl was his. Maybe it was just the smell; his room always smelled of sandalwood.
I just stood there, in the middle of the sidewalk, looking entirely out of place. My bus would be arriving anytime now, then I’d be gone and that would be that. Nani’s belongings had all been accounted for and distributed, all the paperwork had been taken care of. The place had gone to my parents, but they were never going to use it. They had their own home, their own lives—the apartment was a relic, a menagerie of forgotten memories. It would be rented out. Eventually, it would pass on to me and I’d do the same.
I could never live here. I didn’t have the stomach for it—literally, the vegetables and fruits still did a number on my system, let alone the water. My language skills were subpar at best. I was familiar with the culture but only superficially. I had family here but the Internet had made keeping in touch a message away. There was no reason to return.
But staring into that little owl’s hollowed-out eyes, slumbering memories trickled back. The sounds of traffic that had kept me awake were now a melody to my ears, ringing horns and flaring engines giving me a background track as I read on the balcony. Banyan trees, invaded urban areas as if to remind the city that it had sprung from the depths of a rich and proud landscape, and to that same landscape it would eventually return. Temples, mosques and churches stood next to each other with pride.
This summer had been the last of many; I had come with them to see Nani off. That same placid smile of hers had greeted me even when she no longer had the words to do so herself. I had cried at the funeral, but I was afraid to say that it wasn’t just because she was gone.
I picked up my suitcase and starting walking again, but the bus station suddenly seemed miles away.
I used to hate this place. My parents would complain every summer about having to bribe bureaucrats to get anything done and the lack of civic duty amongst the general populace, spitting out their paan on the streets and throwing out their trash in parks. Pollution, corruption, destruction—it was like a mantra of the new India.
But there was more to the country than just that. It was a place of constant contradictions moving around in cyclicality, like the ancient ouroboros of Shiva. Unimaginable poverty and wealth coexisting with modern, futuristic towers of steel. Horrific pollution and dazzling natural beauty, and cities with high-tech metros and cracked sidewalks
I loved it. I hated it. The owl stared at me still, and though my eyes were playing tricks on me, I could’ve sworn it even winked. It wasn’t the end, so much as it was an end. The memories would remain. I would leave this place, true enough. But my heritage—that smell of cinnamon and coriander; the warmth of family that I would never really know; the sounds of auto-rickshaws in the night—would live on.
Darkness melted away as the lights came back on. This old alleyway of a street was alight again, basking under a dull orange embrace. I looked around a little in confusion, shrugged, and moved on. Around the corner, my bus was still waiting, parked at the edge of the station. I looked at the little wooden owl again before shoving it back in my pocket. It didn’t matter how it got there. It was a reminder of all that was.
It was a reminder of all that could be, too.
~
Yasser Ali Nasser was born in California but has been living in the Middle East for the last few years. He just graduated and is doing a Masters course, where he is learning Mandarin. He enjoys reading and writing fantasy and horror the most—but any good book will do! He has had experience writing and editing for his university’s online journal The Bubble, and writing for En Ville Publishing.
Paul Choy is a documentary photographer based in Mauritius; he travels the world telling the stories of the places he visits, and the people he meets, through the photographs he captures.
