Rummy things

                                                         Excuse me, please.      

Akin to my 'High Holy Days', Sundays are usually rummy. Days when I laze around and watch a fly, a squirrel and cobwebs go about rummaging the sacred corners of my house while I loaf in the couch. A day when even an asinine "Hi Handsome" commercial rendered in that hey-Tom-look-I'm-a-bomb voice of a desperado, which on other days could twitch the inner linings of my stomach in revulsion, seems to echo with no immediate chain reaction. And precisely, the day when even an open faced Satyamev Khan serving pork tenderloins as moral laxative and pushing it down my stoned oesophagus doesn't succeed in turning my stomach. (Now you see why they picked a Sunday for moral purgatory? Hell, yeah. It's a rummy day!) Dash it! Where's my conscience?

My conscience, eh? So I've been scouring the pages of "River of Smoke" and like Opium is what Opium does, I am halfway through Deeti's sacred shrine in 1838 Mareech. Fisch! I could see my conscience etched there: rings of smoke in a wraith-like grin. Years later, the grin would seemingly convey my last words to this world: "Oh, you were such a waste of time." This reminds me of my younger days when I could barter my soul to be Eliot's Macavity - the scheming mystery cat. I'd twaddle around my hostel corridor several nights, join the clan in their late night tuck-hunts, delineate the moves, objectives and space: sway my head from side to side, focus my third eye on the Matron's room, walk stealthily across the corridor to some prospective cupboard ( occasional giggles, pardon me) and turn the master key. Later, they had me pegged as a fiend who'd "broken every human law and breaks the law of gravity". Once, summoned to the Principal's office, I owned up the crime (although when they reached the scene of crime, Macavity wasn't there.) and had to kneel down post assembly to the sunshine of many a foe. Mr X, quite a hit among the women folk for his full mouth Australian looks, breezily smirked: "So girl, you stole a pack of Uncle Chips? Next time, consider me." I smiled flippantly while my head spun with ideas of shipping him to Castle Black. “Say what again! Say what again! I double dare you. Steal? I’ll hunt you down and feed you your testicles,” my conscience let out a Gin Rummy. Sixteen years later, on this idle Sunday afternoon, I could see that rebel conscience in Deeti's shrine on a graying tower alone on the sea.

My spirit, which had hitherto been wilting, suddenly perks up. My ailing phone reminds me of a friend who'd be visiting late in the evening. I dash out in a jiffy with my little boy to fetch some meat. My mind trips a corner and the indicator goes right for left. And then buoy, I do rummy things (more like a good film which starts badly and never recovers) and I get to Shad's. Out of evil cometh good or something like that and I do reach this meaty little 'Middle East' I discovered a month ago. I must tell you - they make better Haleem and anything mutton than other Islamic quarters of the world. Well, let's not stretch - it is, indeed, delectable. The best pull - they let you taste (in fact, they aver you try) a spoonful or two of every palatable sin right there in the menu. So I take away a goblin's share and rush back. Rummy does things.

Our buddy powwow is a topping and ends with an edited version of “The Rain Song”. As if to draw an adequately dreamy parallel, drops of rain thump the window sill in rhapsody. I swear rummy things while my boy sings with the lark. Brim-full of gladness and love, we dribble-dribble-dribble. As we say 'Night, night!’ Plant splits me up and completely pours me out: “This is the mystery of the quotient – upon us all a little rain must fall.” Absolutely! I declare rummy with this run of an ace, conscientiously. Ace it!

   

                                         
                     The world I had known, Things I was sworn; I shudder at the thought of being reborn.