A Blue Day

by Preeti Madhusudhan

[box]Sometimes the muse for a life-changing decision could be a stranger and the inspiring impression that he or she leaves in one’s mind. Preeti Madhusudhan writes a story about Prahalad, an architect who in the midst of a fulfilling professional and personal life,  leaves home in search of a more fulfilling life. On the way, he meets the person who changes his life. Read on.[/box]

That was the third time Prahalad stood behind that woman that day. They had queued up at the immigration counter at Shanghai now after the various counters at Chicago and San Francisco. Prahalad never had to gawk at women. His good looks made sure that he was the one who was gawked at. He lived with a ravishing woman and was very satisfied with their living arrangement. He was an architect and she was a painter. They met through a client and to both their surprise, clicked at the first meeting. They swiftly moved through the various stages of courtship and were currently living together.  She was a Greek woman and was all that was Mediterranean and voluptuous. He often said that she made him sense full, ripe olives at the mere thought of her. Neither of them wanted to marry, and so they shocked their friends and acquaintances by having a child together. Olivia (yes, because her mom reminded him of olives) took her mother’s name and took her father’s Indian eyes. She was an easy child and really, there was nothing to complain about. Life was probably too easy for Prahalad’s taste. He got any project he coveted. Clients couldn’t resist him; some hired him and then bought a plot near the lakes for him to create something for them. He was by no means the most talented or successful architect around but he certainly wasn’t struggling to get there. Amidst all this success and happiness though, Prahalad was beginning to grow aware of this tiny, nagging worm of a thought. A thought that wriggled and demanded to break free every waking hour – one that infested his dreams. A thought that he needed a challenge to shake off the ennui that was becoming his life.

He had acquired a fancy for photography from a roommate long past and forgotten. Having learnt the basics from him, he pondered over it whenever time permitted. He had always taken pictures of his work on his own and had made his own portfolio. He had felt then that an architect understood the crevices, folds and sanctity of his creation better than anyone else. He had over the years acquired various cameras and lenses and maintained a rucksack of equipment. While filing his recent design for his portfolio he realised that he had over a dozen photographs of a similar element from a dozen other projects. His hands shook as he turned the pages and the dozen pictures seemed to laugh at him and fill up the entire portfolio and room.

Amidst the multiple deadlines that he had to meet, he abruptly stopped the very next morning and in the firm grip of this restlessness that was eating him, packed the first things that he could lay hands on from his neatly organised wardrobe. He would never be able to tell if he dumped his camera rucksack in by accident or choice.

He texted a short farewell to his companion, contractors and clients from the security check point at the International terminal at Chicago just before switching his phone off. That was when he saw her the first time. Was it the way she had dressed? She wore grey slacks over similar coloured suede flats, a murky olive-green top and a thin dull-brown unbuttoned cardigan that hung till mid-thigh. Through a palette of uniformly dull colours she had achieved a studied effect of elegance. But it was her hair that added an element of shock to this elegance. It was thick, black peppered with grey, and long, coiled into a gigantic bun at the top of her head. Prahalad spent the entire first leg of the journey obsessively trying to replace that dark bun with a lighter coloured crew cut. “It just doesn’t fit,” he muttered to himself and it made him uneasy. “There, that Tibetan monk with his rugged Timberland suede boots underneath his flowing ochre robes and the Indian guy with his leather jacket and black leather shoes and gold from every available appendage make more sense than she does. The monk obviously thinks downtown Chicago and San Francisco are as just as difficult to navigate as the confounded Himalayas and the Indian guy is modelling himself after the out-of-fashion Italian mafia. But what is she?” he mused.

He noticed as they changed at San Francisco that she travelled light and had practically nothing, save what was obviously a huge duffel bag of camera equipment, for, he saw her fish out a lens and dive in again to choose between two cameras, to take pictures at the SFO airport. Suddenly, something snapped inside him and as though a veil was removed, things made sense.  The monk acquiesced with a divine smile as though he reckoned what it was that suddenly enlightened Prahalad. He had been nodding and genially smiling since god knows when but was more genial and nodded more vigorously now. Prahalad knew what it was that he had to do to complicate his simple and confoundedly easy life. He had to abandon everything he had systematically built and roam the seven seas as a pirate! No, that is the ending to a different story. This Prahalad had to abandon his perfect life and become a vagabond-photographer and see how much of it he can take.

Now, as Prahalad stood behind her for the third time, he noticed subtle things about her that completed his mental picture of her. Her smell, the little golden hair on her forearms, the faint wrinkles at the corner of her mouth and the crow’s feet at the edge of her eyes, her clean but unpolished nails, the absence of any kind of jewellery or makeup on her person. Asides all this observation and enlightenment, he couldn’t muster up the courage to address her. “What if she spoke and I don’t like how she sounds? What if she says that she is a regular Vice-President of a large faceless corporation? What if she is just a housewife with very poor taste that is carrying her husband’s equipment for him?” he thought and decided against talking to her.

As Prahalad roamed the seven seas, not as a pirate but a vagabond-photographer, he often thought of her, her coiled hair, her nonchalance as she changed the camera lens, the swift flow of her loose cardigan, her fleshy nose and her obvious dispassion to hide it. As he patiently and sometimes impatiently filed, stored and entered his pictures to contests, magazines, e-portals and the National Geographic, he remained anonymous, never claiming any of his work. He specialised in architectural photography and was fascinated by scale, always composed even the nature shots to bring out the element of scale in the subject with reference to its surrounding. As he struggled with failing or blinding lights, craned his neck to get a sense of perception and scale of the subject, he silently cursed and soothed his nerves with her thoughts.

It has been ten years now. He could safely say that his life wasn’t easy or perfect. Olivia and her mother had long back abandoned any thoughts of ever seeing him; his architectural practice had been sliced and adopted by others, he was never sure of his financial standing and he had no definite place to call home. He stretched his arms with a satisfied grin as he waited for his flight to Osaka at the Shanghai airport.

And then he saw. Was that? Surely it wasn’t? Oh but it was her! He almost jumped up and “whoopee”ed. He would recognise that coil of hair anywhere. Shedding the inhibition he had had ten years back, he instantly went up to her and introduced himself to a surprisingly serene woman. “See! That’s what caught my attention then. No suspicion in her eyes, no artificial anger at being accosted by a stranger. Just a serene countenance,” he found himself thinking, and realised that he was admiring her even more, close in person.  Patiently waiting till the end of his narration, she gave an ever so shy smile that broadened into laughter as she talked. She said, “I am flattered by your story. But you see, I was in the same place that you were. Being a photographer was beginning to get on my nerves. The endless wait for the right light, the perfect scale of reference and the most dramatic or natural perspective was beginning to be too much for me. I was beginning to get sick of the ego boost that an artistic job provides. I was just going back to quit it when you saw me.” Prahalad was shocked and suddenly he wasn’t so sure of her elegance and serenity anymore. He felt she sounded coarse and looked ridiculous. I mean who coiled up their hair like that?

“So what is it that you do now? “he asked.

“Oh I am a cashier at the local grocer’s. I have been for the last ten years. Steady income, no imagination, menial, grey and as unexciting as anything can get. I am more at peace now. I do tai-chi, I live in a rat-hole and feel free like a lark.”

He felt like a composition inside his lens now. The shutter speed was set to the lowest limit to capture in slow motion all the incredibly intense action that was going on around the subject, namely him. The jaundiced yellow filter, under which he had perceived her that day ten years ago, was now over exposed to a harsh white glare. The aperture was wide open. She had composed a glaringly real, unflinching image that exposed all the lines, furrows and blemishes in the plot. The subject felt like a shrivelled banana peel under the unforgiving heat of the sun.

Well, the only heartening fact was that he couldn’t complain of ennui now. And as he picked up his camera-case, after bidding her goodbye, the thought that she did look ridiculous with her hair coiled up like a turban, crossed Prahalad’s mind effortlessly. As effortlessly as he had been inspired by this woman ten years ago.

Preeti Madhusudhan is a freelance architect/ interior designer living in Sydney with her husband and six-year-old son. She is passionate about books and is an ardent admirer of P.G.Wodehouse. She inherited her love for books and storytelling from her father, a Tamil writer. Preeti is trying to publish her maiden novella in English.

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