Life was simple and dreams limited in that small city! Barring the workers of the textile mills, almost everyone outside knew that their city was called the ‘Manchester of India’. So difficult it was for them, to meet both the ends amidst the never ending, injudicious strikes intermittently declared by the workers’ union. Also, there was the impending danger of dismissals announced at the end of each month by the mill supervisor. Existence was as if captured between the fractioned ridges of the blue thumb prints stamped on the first day of the month on the crisp, greenish pages of the red-clothed muster roll. Human wants in that ghetto of textile mill workers were hardly based on the notion of daily necessities; they were dependent more on the postulates of a wagering economy - determined most of the times by the catalysts of power.
Rikhav was weird. So were his dreams.
Highlighted eyebrows! Anklets? A figure in silhouette dancing with nine copper pots artistically arranged in a descending order overhead, perches herself on the edge of a sword! Here she comes swaying and pirouetting, close to the light of a burning torch stalled inside the hollow of a the wooden pillar! Sshhhh! The atrocious winds blowing hard across her well carved face, gently push the curls on her temples to her cheeks faired with the light sandalwood paste! Her long artistic fingers coloured with henna, folded in the peacock mudra rest comfortably below the well chiselled chin…… The first vesha begins…..Mmmm… Is she actually a female….?
Between the two powers- the mill authorities and the labour union – the former unadventurously won. The year of 1973 was calamitous. A lock-out was declared following the failed negotiations over the issue of releasing the festival bonus. Paradox spun itself around when the power of politics and the politics of power together secretly walked away, hand in glove, leaving the powerless lurking in the fear of uncertainty; a state in which a man would want to evade his own self.
Clueless certainly Rikhav was, but not perturbed. Not that he was in his early twenties where he had the zeal of a rapacious go-getter or that he had that juvenescent grit of pulling down a shaft of the sky in an eyewink. Three decades and a half had been enough for him to spin the warp and weft of survival. However, the common folks around him sensed something atypical in him. His bony structure, quaint features, bizarre movements, strange body language and long locks of curly hair were not the ones commonly found among that street largely inhabited by the saraniyas traditionally known for their occupation of knife-sharpening. His mother used to tell him that they belonged to a small village named Wadia, a town in one of the remote districts of Gujarat. He was only twelve when his mother died. Eventually, he came to know that the hamlet was known to be a prostitution-hub and that he had been spawned by a targala.
For others, the nights were turning to be sleepless, for him, he was always looking forward to a deep slumber.
The anklets pirouetting… the cold wintry night slowly rises, making the waiting crowd pull their blankets close to their body. They stare, entrenched and engrossed, at the high raised platform. The same figure, the face painted. The torso melting, disappearing in the form of a smoky tail. The tower of pots over the head. Music played on the pakhwaj, sarangi and raavan hathi. The dance of anklets on the song of a betrayer- Queen Pingala imploring her husband King Bhartruhari to renounce asceticism and return to worldly life. The blowing of the bhungal to announce the exit of the character……
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