am now in a crowd with my mother and the crowd is moving. When it moves, I must to, and if my tiny feet fail to keep up, I risk being trampled underfoot. Each person moves as if unseen hands drag them this way and that, pulling their eyes to one thing and then another. The shared breaths, the pressed bodies, the conglomerate of body odour and cologne and the warm bodies are closing in. They never stop and so we won’t either. My hand is laced into my mother’s we begin to move.
Catching on to the stumbling rhythm, my eyes adjust to focus. It is as if the monochrome of the day had been exterminated, for in the crowd everything is colour. The colour of regal turbans, saffron, scarlet and amber bouncing above the canopy of the crowd. The colour of the paradigm of sarees, fuchsia, violet and turquoise swirling the streets, skilfully avoiding stamping feet. And the colour of the footwear, chestnut scandals, glossy black oxfords and rainbow coloured juttis scurrying against the grey of the road. The rays of sunlight play a game of shadows against the tarmac as bodies shift relentlessly and endlessly. The light loves to play. It reflects of the sequins of a purse onto an over polished briefcase onto a phone and then disappears. Every time I think I’ve caught them, the cheeky rays bounce out into the oblivion of the crowd. I feel a sharp tug on my right arm, it is my mother reminding me that I am slowing down, I must never slow down.
My feet are pushing to move faster and my nose is overcome by smells, a horrible mishap in the recipe of air. My nose can taste everything. The excess amount of sweat, the extra cup of cheap perfume and the un sieved melange of foods. There is however the tiny sweet aroma of flowers, almost lost but still there. The measurements are all wrong. I move faster to outrun it.
I am running but I forget to look, I bump into something…no, someone. It is my mother. She stopped. She stopped? I am scared. Everything else is moving. I wonder why risk it, and then I peep behind her. Amidst this storm, unbothered and unfazed by anything around him is a Chailwala manning his makeshift kiosk. His rich broiling tea cascades from a large steel jug into a legion of greedy plastic cups. He moves swiftly and carefully, the wrinkles in his hands a testament to his accuracy and grace. A Van Gogh at is art he sits still on a wooden cart. The calm, the eye of the storm. Everyone around him is still too. The man has this effect on us. The effect to make us stop in storm to savour a cup of tea. He serves an eager customer with a smile plastered on his face, grabbing at the brass and copper coins and thrusting them into the deep pockets of his kurta. He does this again, then again and again. My mother gets her tea and drinks it, it doesn’t seem like much afar but seems to have rejuvenated her and all the others in a way I will never understand. The empty cup is tossed into a street bin and we start to move again.
I am familiar this time. I will not make the same mistakes. With my elbows out I move with the crowd. It is much clearer now. I can see a woman, bag of groceries in one hand, child in the other. The child’s wails are drowned in the crowd, audible only the poor mother. There is also a porter, carrying luggage for a pompous lady trailing him as he shoves people left and right to clear a path for her highness. And then there is boy, about the same height as me, lost as much as I was, being dragged the other way by his mother. I wish him luck for the crowd can be deadly.
Funnily enough I did not realise that I was out. I was out of the crowd. Out of the smells and the bodies and the lack of personal space. I was out. Looking at it now the crowd seems different. The crowd has a life of its own like enchanting shoals of fish. There is chatter between buyers and sellers. Old friends catching up, new friends made. Inside it is busy but the hustle and bustle is what shapes these markets. It is harmonious chaos. It is the crowd.