The tyranny of hope

I saw a Mynah bird on Tuesday and I couldn’t remember how the saying went. Does it go one for joy or one for sorrow? I wondered briefly. As it turned out, it is indeed one for sorrow because my day did not end well. With what hope I transferred my thoughts on to a WhatsApp message to my siblings. How wonderful hope is. How devastating when things don’t happen as expected. The absurdity of the whole thing, the up and down, elation closely followed by dejection.

Let me copy here what I wrote to my siblings. If nothing else, you will see what I mean by sweet expectation, almost certainty: what can go wrong? It’s all done – it’s just another procedure to complete. How wrong I was and how great my fall was! Anyway, read the following and I will continue the story in flashback mode. This is like the penultimate scene – not the ending – being screened at the beginning, the story told to explain this scene and finally, together with the audience, finding out how it ends – if it ends.

AM 25 April 2022
Amidst the cacophony of the crows, the distant siren of a train fills me with hope of travel; no: sweet memory of travel, the clack clack of coaches over the rails, the fresh morning air, the open story book. No hurry to get anywhere but to enjoy the trip going back decades, maybe sixty years, to the journey I made on a cool summer morning with my parents to my grandparents’ home to spend the school holidays.

Achha din finally aa hee gaya (The good day has finally come). Let us hope everything goes smoothly today. Say your prayers to your respective gods that s/he may smooth the path ahead, remove obstacles however minor, ensure that no last minute glitches are raised, no creative clerk senses an opportunity to extract some last minute incidental cash, the registrar has not quarrelled with his wife and does not deliver a googly, some hidden spirits of my parents and ancestors are keeping an eye on things, that I reach in time and the taxi doesn’t develop engine trouble or suffer a puncture, no bad omens raise their ugly heads and throw some spanners in my works … I need to pray to someone to anyone to everyone please please please so much rests on the smooth progress of the day. The acha din should not become a bura din. I’ll do anything to get over today.

If I were the praying type I would be ringing bells and showering petals and smearing my forehead with every holly unguent, ash and vermilion and sandalwood paste. I would be standing with folded hands in deep supplication, I would be sending mental petitions to temples in the four corners with vows of circumambulation flat on my back, vows of total tonsure, pledges of offering the equivalent of my weight in bananas and coconuts, trips to Benares and Kailas. I would offer milk and bananas to serpent gods who need neither, I would pledge to feed a hundred and one orphans, do a month’s seva at the gurdwara, go to Mecca, get blessings from the Pope, bang my head on the wailing wall of Jerusalem …

But I being a nothing believer, can only sit here and worry and ruminate rather ruefully that my journey is coming to an end, like the end of train journeys which I had always hoped would last that bit longer. I will miss the clack clack rattle of the journey, the opportunistic obstructors and the bribe seeking clerks and the officials who demand my grandfather’s birth certificate just to make my life a little more difficult. I will miss these because I know these will end today. I will miss them but I won’t look back wistfully and wish for them.

PM 25 April 2022
It didn’t happen! All the computer servers were down and so everyone was told to go home. I have forfeited my return flight to London and will try again. The next appointment is at 1324 on 27 April 2022. Surely, the acha din must come eventually.

PM 27 April 2022
The server was returned after repairs, but is refusing to play. Net effect? I am stuck in Delhi slowly roasting in the 44C heat.

AM 29 April 2022
The server is working. My heart is beating faster, I am ebullient, full of hope. And I did see two Mynahs last evening.