The muse

I promised myself I will never be not reading a book. I do not mean continuously reading, of course. But that once a book was over I would have another book ready to take its place. I would read while I commute to work, I would read in the train, I would read in the loo, I would read before I go to sleep. Whenever I could steal time from my life I would and pick up my book. I would fight the urge to watch TV and read instead. I would always have a book with me lest time materialized out of nowhere and left me stranded. Whatever space I could find in my daily schedule, I filled it with my book.

This was after five years of working when the drive had waned and real world had got too real for my liking. I knew then, I needed an escape, needed fiction to counter fact (although I also read non-fiction), needed an alternate world which let me lead multiple vicarious lives. It was important, this promise, to save myself from the emptiness that had started seeping inside of me after it had finished enveloping my surroundings.

I took up a membership at one of the big libraries. Good thing it was near work, I could easily go there on Saturdays after lunch since they were a half-day. I would spend rest of the afternoon browsing through books. Sometimes I would take notes to keep track of interesting titles. After a while when I could not take in more I would ask the librarian for some music and listen on one of the numerous headphones. The music would never fail to relax me and I would be just ripe to begin a new book. Which I would, as soon as I stepped in the metro on the way back.

I did not limit my self to authors or genre. I read everything I could lay my hands on. I would scout for the books I could not find at the library at second-hand book markets, spending most of my Sunday mornings rummaging through dusty, withering books and their loud and boisterous, quiet and incisive, talkative and helpful sellers.

Often I would fall asleep as I read, in bed, the table-lamp left on for the rest of the night. I would find myself in an awkward position with a horrible cramp in my neck the next morning. I would just spay some medicine on it and smell of it the whole day.

I had developed a relationship with reading which is hard to comprehend. Sometimes it felt that the time which I spent outside of the books was fiction and the book itself was real.

I had just finished reading an Agatha Christie, a quickie - the kind of book I would read to clear my head after reading a tad too many heavy-duty ones. As expected, I had the next one ready. An unusual book which, by the looks of it, it had been eternally waiting to be picked up in a nondescript corner of a roadside bookshop. I definitely had not heard of it. Perhaps that is what drew me to it. If a voracious reader like me wouldn't read it then who would? I had picked it up as my charity.

It was good that I had this spare with me as I was at the airport and my plane had just got delayed. I opened it and began to read.

It was written in first person, narrated by a man called Kundan. He began with putting a name to himself and started describing a woman.

(Note that the sentences in italics are my thoughts.)

"I noticed her eyes first. (How predictable.) They were darker than a moonless night and deeper than the void in space. Their gaze not just fell on you, but penetrated your soul, reading all your thoughts, your deepest emotions, it so felt. The were placed in the middle of the most perfect nose that I have seen on a human being. Noses have the ability to make or mar a face. A divinely beautiful face juxtaposed against a rotten nose- too big, too broad, too long- would appear commonplace, even ugly. (True.) Not hers'. She had a tiny diamond nose pin on the right side. Very clever, it put a lot of emphasis on the nose and made her beautiful face look even more beautiful. Everything else in her face gelled perfectly with the two things- her eyes and her nose. (Incomplete description, but I had started forming a face in my head.)

"She wore a yellow cotton saree with a red border, very old-fashioned, but she looked like a woman of today. From the moment I saw her I knew she had a fight in her that could overcome all odds. (Why do these women central characters have to always be feisty?) She wore it very elegantly, carefully covering her midriff, protecting it from stray gaze. I wouldn't say she was conservative, but careful. She was tall and very slim, but her breasts and hips were well formed, like an Indian woman's should be. Her hair was tied neatly in a bun, parted in the middle. Her Kohlapuri clad feet peeped from underneath the saree exposing her red painted nails, matching the color of the large round bindi on her forehead. Somehow, the nails stuck out like sore thumbs. I thought, this woman should not be wearing red paint on her toenails. She isn't the type. (Can one actually ascertain the type of women, put them into categories- ones with red painted toenails and the ones without)"

I paused. The figure was forming quite clearly in my head. Although, as I mentioned, the narrator had left out many things to fall into place (like her complexion, lips, mouth and expression), I knew what he had wanted to convey. I closed my eyes to view her in her entirely, as if the real world that I could see with my open eyes was not the medium I could properly see her in. She had to be rendered in my mind-scape.

"Can I have a look at your book?"

I opened my eyes to see a young man, laptop bag on his side looking at me expectantly. He sat next to me in the waiting area.

"Sure, here you go." I handed him the book.

He flipped the pages, read the back and front few pages, going back and forth, curling his lips, as if in deep thought.

"Never heard of this one or the writer." He handed it back to me.

Silence.

He kept looking at me, expectantly. This guy expected way to much.

"Oh! Me neither." I said, smiling awkwardly, hoping to give him the hint that I wanted to get back to my book and not engage in a conversation with him about lesser known writers and their unknown books.

He seemed to have got the hint, managed a 'thank you' smile and looked away. After a brief moment he got up and moved towards the nearest eating joint.

I opened the book to the page where I had stopped. I began to read. Rather, I tried to begin to read, but I couldn't. That man had been like a pebble, shattering my placid mind-space that had been imagining the woman. Now her reflection had blurred and I would have to wait for the waters to settle and return to stillness.

I closed the book and looked up. I saw people rushing by. Looked like everyone was walking with some purpose. Travellers to board their planes, security personnel to report to duty, airline officials to their desks. It looked like a whirlpool with me in the centre.

She appeared out of nowhere and smiled at me. The same yellow saree with a red border. The same Kohlapuris and red paint on her toe nails matching her bindi. The same dark doe-eyes and the perfect nose. The same hairstyle.

"Hello," she said. "I couldn't help but notice the book you were reading. My husband wrote that."

She smiled, a satisfied smile. Clearly, to her, it was her achievement that her husband wrote this book.

What had transpired in the past five minutes was positively extraordinary. How often a character from a book walks out and tells you that her husband wrote this book? But I was anything but shocked. To me it seemed the most natural thing to have taken place.

I smiled back. "Good to know. Although, I must admit I do not know much about your husband."

"Oh. That's okay. Not many people do. I was so happy that I saw someone reading his book that I had to come up and speak to you. Can I take this seat?" She said pointing to the one the young man had just vacated.

"Yeah, sure."

I had not once taken my eyes of her face. Now I knew why the narrator said that he noticed her eyes first. They lit like a thousand stars. All the light in the world paled in front of them. The book definitely did say enough about the amount of life in them.

"So how do you like it?"

"I have not read enough to know if I like it or not. I have just reached the part where the lady appears. She is wearing the same saree as yours."

"Because that is my sareee."

"I don't understand."

"That is my saree. That woman is me. I am my husband's muse. That is why he married me. He could only write books on me and so could not let me part with him. This was his first book. It is about how we met and fell in love. This scene is when we first met."

"But the narrater's name is Kundan, and the writer's name is Amrit Singh."

"My husband is intensely private. He doesn't want people to know about his personal life."

"And yet he insists on writing about it?"

"Yes. Life is full of contradictions, don't you agree?"

"Completely."

"Anyway, it is such a coincidence that I am wearing the same saree as I was that day."

"Sure it is."

She smiled at me. Her eyes lit up again, like the sun does at seven in the morning. Bright, but not such that you cannot look at it.

"So I you could actually tell me the story instead of me reading the book."

"Yes I could. But would you really want it? I am not as good a storyteller as my husband is. And I wouldn't want to rob you off the pleasure of a book."

"But you have already told me the ending. That you get married."

She burst out laughing. "No, that's not the ending. But you're right I have revealed more than I should have."

"And you have violated your husband's privacy, which he treasures so much."

She blushed. "You are right again. I have been fair neither to the writer nor to the reader."

Fair neither to the writer nor to the reader. A character appearing in front of your eyes could not be fair to anybody. Characters were supposed to be in the meta-worlds that were books, not in the real world. They were supposed to stay within the pages and not jump out in flesh and blood and start talking to you. Especially if they were incredibly beautiful women.

"I can't carry on with the book for some reason. I am stuck and I don't know why. You might as well tell me the story. I am sure you cannot be that bad a storyteller."

"Oh, no I'm not. I tell stories to my son all the time."

"You have a son?"

"Yes. Three years old. He loves to hear stories and can't go to sleep without listening to one. But often goes to sleep in the middle of it. Then I have to pick it up from where we left the next night."

Often I would fall asleep as I read, in bed, the table-lamp left on for the rest of the night. "It is an affliction all readers suffer from", I said, and after a pause, "and all 'hear'-ers. So tell me, how did you meet?"

"At the airport," she said. "He was reading a book."

"Sounds familiar." I chuckled.

Smiling, she continued, "I noticed him first and walked towards him. He closed his book and looked up. I knew his gaze was transfixed at me. No matter what he did he would not be able to move it."

"Go on," I said.

" I told him", she said, "'I couldn't help but notice the book you were reading. My husband wrote that.'"

The outlines of reality and fiction had blurred into each other. I could not longer decipher which was which. And I could not decipher which had led to which. I couldn't know for sure if fiction had become reality's muse instead of the way it has always been. All I knew was that my name was also Amrit Singh.


(Couldn't think of a better name for the story, if someone can think of a better one, you are free to comment.)