elbow room

Suchitra Sukumar

THE TREES DOTTING THE TINY WINDING LANE to my apartment carry Bombay’s weariness on every leaf. The trick is to look at them from a distance, so they seem green, like the trees of home. If I defocus, I can see the Gulmohars and rain trees that line every street, I can smell the rich sappy scents of the old, old trees of Lalbagh. I miss them.

And yet, all is not bad about Bombay. In the wise words of my friend Padma, “this is what independence looks like for a twenty-four-year-old woman in India” – a tiny shoebox of a room in a big metropolis. Every day as I walk up the old, winding terrazzo stairs of my building, the steps polished to slippery softness by the thousands of feet that have climbed them, my hand on the red-oxide cement railing, I feel like I’ve gone back in time. Or stepped sideways into an alternate reality – perhaps one of those chambre de bonne that young Parisians still live in.

I enter my flat and for a short moment, there is respite from the noisome air and rumbling roads of the city. But the air indoors is as humid as it is outside, neither cleaner nor cooler. I could have had a larger home if I had chosen to share it with roommates, but I didn’t want that, so all I could afford was a little elbow of a room without air-conditioning.

I call my quarters a flat but in truth it is nothing more than an L-shaped shoebox. The long arm of the L is eight feet by four. Perpendicular to it is the short arm, an additional four-by-four. That is where the kitchen sits. I’ve arranged my belongings along the length of the long arm – a tiny wardrobe and bed along one wall and the couch on the opposite, facing each other like a trio of awkward conversationalists. My boyfriend enjoys lying on the couch and looking up at the laundry as if they are clouds. On the far end of the corridor, where one’s arm might turn into a palm, is the wash area – a cramped three-by-three bath and toilet.

It’s been ten months since I moved here, and I am still waiting for the moment when it will stop feeling like I’m scraping fingernails against the city.

At work it feels like everyone is in on a secret that I’m being kept out of. My boss is a man anywhere between forty and fifty with whisky-brown eyes and wispy hair that stands up whenever the air conditioner is on, and it is always on, probably because he likes the feeling of freezing in slow motion. We are expected to knock on the door of his room though he can see us waiting outside his glass door. Once he waves us in, he rubs his hands and claps them a couple of times like a patriarch in front of the family meal and we’ve volunteered to be served up.

Two other people work here, both senior to me, both women. In age they’re maybe five or six years older than I am, but experience-wise they have several years over me, so it is no surprise that I feel like I’ve trespassed into their world. One of them has an uneven haircut and a penchant for hippy clothes and Kohlapuri chappals. The other traipses in on heels that end on a severe point, quite like the way she talks to me, has gelled curls that always look like she’s just gotten out of the shower. I never see her in anything but crisp linens. I am promptly afraid of both of them from day one and lack the skills to mask my fear.

These two women jostle me between each other, taking turns to give me work until they give up and I have to deal with the boss himself. His first task for me was to put together a thought-piece on the mobile revolution in India. When I asked him what I should focus on, hoping I would be given a clue of some sort, he told me to figure it out.

Then, he flung an afterthought at me, “Don’t research anything. You read a lot, write from that. And I don’t want a tome. I want you to tell me what you think the mobile has changed for the average Indian man. Or woman, if that helps. Do it by the end of the day.”

About fifteen minutes later I heard feet shuffling, bags being packed. I walked out of my cabin just in time to see the office door shutting. I caught the words “that should keep her busy”, followed by giggles.

Looking for the brighter side of things is a skill I never quite learnt, but there is this one thing my sister taught me. It helps, even in this tiny house. I stand in the middle, in the one place where I can open my arms wide and not hit anything. I spread out, twist my waist left and right, shimmy my ass. Then, I mimic our dog back home and do a full body shake, until I begin feeling silly. If I giggle I know it’s working.

Today, as I wait for the old fan to creak into existence and push the same stinking air around, I do my little happiness jig. As I perform the twist, my eyes snag on each white patch peeling off the hospital-blue wall paint, my landlady’s tasteful choice. I vow to paint it a sandstone pink once the next salary kicks in. It shall be my parting gift before I leave.

When I go to wash my face I notice it – something that should not be there growing on the foot mat under the sink. I shriek before I think to take a closer look. It is a mushroom and it is growing on what I had thought was a very prudent purchase, a mat upcycled from discarded t-shirts.

It’s a thin, leggy thing. I go to kick it but something stops me. It looks sorry, fragile, almost as surprised as me at having sprouted in such an unusual spot. An image from a Pelevin novel pops up in my head and I wonder if it is poisonous or has hallucinogenic properties. Just like that, I have a strange new roommate.

I look it up and learn that it is quite a common species of fungus that grows in any damp area. Another specialty of Bombay, the city where all surfaces grow. Perhaps, this is the real meaning of the city’s other name: Mayanagri. Beyond magical, a fantastical place. The mushroom reminds me of the fungus that grew on the top layer of my pickle bottles, the ones I had carried here from home. I learn that it is a species called psathyrella. The wiki note adds a flourishing description: these fungi are often drab-coloured, difficult to identify, and all members are considered inedible or worthless (for eating) and so they are often overlooked. I smile. It’s hard not to relate. I decide I like my new roommate.

Life outside work isn’t too bad. Bombay does have pockets of the magic it promises to the outsider. The girls and I plan night outs, shop, try out new cuisines. Themed parties are a thing, I learn. At the moment, we’re on a mission to find green curly-hair wigs for retro night at Polyesther’s.

Poly’s has the largest disco ball I’ve ever seen in my life. People float around drinking from green plastic glasses that match our wigs and have vines running all over them. They also have a base that makes them resemble the vases in Renaissance paintings. Straws that curl in on themselves stick out of them. I sip on the straws, waiting for the magic to enter me. At one point we’re all lined up in front of the bartender who is standing on the counter and spraying shots straight into people’s mouths. I miss my turn, but I’m ok. The music is banging and for the duration of the evening, I have slipped a hand into the fabric of Bombay.

A group of guys we don’t know begin dancing around us. I look to my friends’ faces to learn how to react – is this ok or is this not ok? Some of them giggle and encourage me, so I dance with an eager, pimpled boy. I shake my hips and hold my hair, but what I really want to do is be goofy, which of course I must not be. Soon, pimpleface whispers into my ear, something about getting out of there, and suddenly it is too reminiscent of scenes on Star Movies I watched as a child. I shove him off, walk away, then change my mind and stomp back towards him.

“I have a boyfriend, you know?” I yell over the music in my best haughty voice.

“Then why the fuck did you dance with me?”, he yells back.

I look at my friends. Many of them are simpering and I am back to not understanding the code again. Mayanagri offers treats, but nicks you a little when you reach for it. As we totter out of there, me in my six-inch heels that don’t perform well on the potholes of Colaba causeway, the lone moon is shining in her sky.

The first time I met the guy who would be my boyfriend, I was at a friend’s house party. I don’t remember if it was the lights or the host’s obsession with soft rock music, but I noticed a bespectacled man roughly my age, with the haircut of a Disney prince. It was parted in the middle, but fell limp on his forehead because Bombay is always humid. He looked awkward. Our eyes met and it felt like a silent contract.

When the dancing began, I sneaked out of the house and went down the winding path that spills out onto Carter road. I sat on one of the mosaic benches that line the promenade. The moon was full that day, hanging low as if pregnant. I walked out onto the rocky beach, along the one tiny strip of stones that went a little deeper into the water. It was neap tide and the waters shimmered silvery blue as they skirted the edges of the stone path that led into the sea. When I turned to walk back, I saw that the bespectacled man had followed me.

“Well,” he said, spreading his arms as if he’d not intended on being caught. “I’m Arjun.”

As we walked back together, we skipped over the polished stones to step on the rough, craggy ones instead, knowing we won’t slip, each emboldened by the other’s presence.

Once we began dating, I told myself I’ve got one of my own now. Just like I have the trees of home. I’m not an outsider anymore. I introduced him to my friends and he seemed comfortable enough. We went to the movies, kissed under restaurant shop awnings. I even began cooking at home.

But the thing about Bombay is, just like the perpetual sweat that clings to your skin, the feeling of being in borrowed space never leaves you. You notice that people are always checking themselves in front of others, with eyes that dart around a little too quickly, like a city full of deer in headlights.

I do not want to become like them, so I build rituals for myself. Silly things like cold showers to wash the city’s grimy hands off my skin, calling my mom up to discover recipes from home, and sketching. I begin sketching every day, claiming space for myself, one pencil stroke at a time.

Today, the moment I close the front door, I peel the damp clothes off me. My skin in the soft of my elbow is sticky, so are the folds of my stomach and the backs of my knees. I shower in cold water and fall on the bed naked – one of the things I’d always wanted to do.

The fan creaks in an unsteady rhythm like a geriatric. I make a mental note to clean it over the weekend. I can see deposits of black grime on the tips of its wings, like black and hairy feathers.

That is when I notice the wet patch on the ceiling. It’s growing. Like that story, the Face on the Wall. I remember my strange new roommate.

Two days after I first discovered it, it looks the same. I think of pulling it out to see better, but it probably won’t survive being moved. I lie on my back and use my feet to push myself towards it, my bare skin squeaking on the tiled floor. From this perspective it looks too fragile, a spindly hand reaching for the light. It has a gilly underside, woody brown in colour with delicate lines. Soft and crushable. I stay in that position and begin sketching. I name it Brownie.

I’m still in the middle of recreating one of its many gills when Arjun comes home. I show him the mushroom on the foot mat. He reacts with the appropriate response. I tell them to crouch and look upside down. He does it and says, “What am I looking at?”

“Don’t you see its underside? It’s like folds upon folds of skin?”

“Of course! Thought there was something else you wanted me to see,” he says, lying even when he doesn’t need to.

He sits up, pulls his mobile out and starts taking pictures. At one point he tells me to shine my phone’s torch so he has more light. And so, we’re both crouched under the wash basin, like a pair of giants peering into a world made of t-shirt waste in which life has accidentally been invented.

“Move out of the frame,” he says, impatience making him grit his teeth.

I crawl back on my arms and watch in silence as he clicks a hundred pictures. He spends the rest of the evening editing the images for colour and crafting captions that express both wit and whimsy.

I leave him with his phone to cook something.

Food is the other language that eludes me. Over lunch, my colleagues are perpetually discussing rediscovered rustic recipes or the latest episode in a food show. They might be a bunch of mean girls, but they make food sound sexy.

Ma never taught me cooking. I think she expected me to just know by osmosis. Whenever I call her to ask for a recipe, she rattles off process terms that I do not understand. What does vadigattu mean, really? Some sort of binding and tying? To sieve? To lay to rest? Also, her quantities are too large. Is cooking for one a simple quartering of cooking for four? I do not know why I keep trying with her, but it always goes the same way. I listen, thank her before I hang up and put the ingredients away. I tell Arjun that we should take ourselves out for a meal.

I’ve heard about the Bandra jinx – even excellent restaurants don’t last more than three months – making it a smart idea to explore a few before they die. Roadside chowmein, Punjabi dhabas, French patisseries, bagel shops, chaat stalls – I try each of them out and try to memorise the names so I can mention them the next time I’m stuck at the lunch table with my colleagues.

The next day, I wake to the incessant sounds of my phone pinging. Arjun has tagged me on social.

“Hey, hey!” I send him a cheery yet casual text. “So I’m your ‘friend’, huh?”

He replies after four hours. Something about it being safer that way since he isn’t sure how many of my friends I’ve told about us.

“All of my friends know who you are to me. You’ve met them!”

That night when I go to check on my mushroom, I see wrinkles running crisscross on its tiny cap, and along the length of its stem I don’t need to touch it to know that it’s not okay, but still I use the back of a spoon to nudge it. It bends without resistance. Perhaps it doesn’t have the right conditions for proper growth. Or perhaps, the strange blue flashes we subjected it to startled it into wilting. I murmur an apology to it and pour some water on the mat, hoping that will help.

After a few weeks of trying to recreate my mother’s recipes, I give up. I much prefer eating to cooking, but I do enjoy looking at food and ingredients. On my walks back from work, I wind through the vegetable market, trying to commit images to memory. Once I’m home, I sketch them.

At work, I use the vacant alone times to look up artists, thinking that if I found my kind of art, I would have a hook on life. Or some part of it. I discover Dali, VK Patel, Laxma Gaud, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington. I find myself rushing back home to sketch, creating likenesses of the people I see, their arched eyebrows, wrist bones, thumb toes. The vegetables I sketch morph into strange beings, they develop knuckles, thumbs, limbs. I colour them in unreal tones.

One day when I think my colleagues are away, I make a fresh cup of tea and begin my internet hunt. I jump when I hear my boss behind me.

“Hmm. So this is what you do when we’re away,” he says.

“Sorry, but I don’t have any work today.”

“Don’t worry about that. It’s good you’re always reading something. Come for lunch tomorrow. Gallops. I hope you eat meat. Will be boring if you don’t.”

Ironic that I am added into the fold just as I get comfortable with never fitting in.

Around this time, Arjun asks me to join him on a trek. The popularity of his mushroom pic has given him a new passion. I debate going on it, trekking is not my thing. I try to visualise what it would feel like. I check online to know how to prepare. Essays on how Solnit and Beauvoir love hiking pop up, making the idea less unappealing. I pack the strongest sunscreen I know, a water bottle, and a sketchbook.

At the meeting point, I realise that it won’t be just him and me. He’s missed telling me this detail. His friends are a garrulous lot. I feel my enthusiasm shrivel up. The climb up is a struggle and there are several occasions when they have to wait for me to catch up.

“Hey slowpokes! Come on!”, Arjun urges, treating me like one of the others.

I resent being recruited into his gang this way and by the time we reach the ground at the top of the hill, I’ve shed all pretense of enthusiasm. I find a shady spot to settle down and wave them away when plans of climbing the pointy boulder at the center of the hill are made. I am not happy until they set off.

There are no mushrooms on this hill. Maybe he wanted to do something nature-ey and a trek seemed like the best option. I caught him posturing on several occasions, examining leaf shapes and trying to identify birds on branches. I had had to hide my chuckles. Perhaps everyone is trying to not be the outsider. It isn’t just me.

Once the sun is overhead and there is still no sign of them returning, I start doodling. I begin with a poor likeness of the tree I am leaning on, and soon, I am sketching every kind of flora and fauna I know to draw – giant tropical palms, cacti, the philodendrons I learnt back in school, frogs, a pond. It resembles a scrapbook collage, each plant displaced from its home, transplanted onto this little page in the palm of my hand. I think of poor little Brownie back in my house. He’s probably collapsed by now, so I sketch him in. I give him space in this fantastical place.

On the way down, Arjun clicks pictures of everything he sees with renewed ferocity, including the waste previous hikers have left behind – crushed cola cans and plastic wrappers, as if he is composing a grand dadaist caption in his head. This time it is easier for me to keep pace with the others. One of his friends asks me what I did during the time I was all by myself, didn’t I get bored? I told him about my sketch, and he wants to see it.

“Wow!”, he exclaims.

Now everyone turns around to see. One of them points at the mushroom and goes, “Hey! I know that one. Is that how you know each other?”

I watch Arjun as he struggles to come up with an answer.

“This one looks way better than the photo, though. It’s surreal. Mind if I take a pic of this? Or, no, no… it should be you. You drew it. What’s your handle? I’ll follow you.”

It’s evening rush hour by the time our vehicles pull into Bombay. We’re stuck in traffic when Arjun asks me if I want him to come over to my place. I realise that he has always done this – turned the question to make it seem like my request. I say no.

When I reach home, I go straight to my mushroom. He has wilted. I pick him up and a silvery film rubs off on my palm. I wonder if it means anything. When I throw him into the trash it feels like the end of something, something that shouldn’t have ended. Brownie had just turned up one day, but for the time he was there, that space was his.

Over the next few days, I paint the scene from my sketchbook onto the one uninterrupted wall spanning the length of my flat’s long arm. I paint over the hospital blue with lush tropical and desert greens. I give my frog a glistening brown body, but it is Brownie who is the piece de resistance. I draw him as tall as a floor lamp and make him large enough to loom over the rest of the landscape. His stem is not thin, but chubby, like the mushrooms dubbed ‘woman on motorcycle’. I give him a wide, smooth parasol, and dot it in greens and pinks and blues; I give him the most intricate gills, fleshy and carmine.