Elise - from my Netherland's Diary

Today, I happened to revisit this hospital here, Amphia Molengracht, to collect my blood retesting reports and further advice prescription. As I took them from the lady at the diagnostic counter, curtly thanked her and was about to leave, a little surprisingly, she offered to drop me off to the nearest Pharmacy since I had mentioned earlier that I did not quite know my way around the town. Despite my initial reservations, I accepted her offer for help and as she drove on, conversation took its own natural course to our names and countries and homes and differences. By now, I had become used to the formal tête-à-têtes with strangers in course of my travel. They grossly did not quantify to any worthwhile conversation.

By this time, we had reached this pharmacy she had referred me to but it was found to be closed for the day. I was just about to thank her for the favour extended and take my leave when she dismissed my proposition completely and started inquiring for other nearby pharmacies. Some brisk Dutch and she hurried back with me to the parked car to try another few shops to which she had just taken the directions – it was important for me to start the medication as soon as possible, she insisted. Well…

For some time after this, it was as if I had forgotten that I was in an unknown country, away from home for the first time, with a complete stranger, without a clue where I was running around. And we talked all the while through – of things other than the obvious. She lives with her dog, Dilan. She has a son and a daughter, latter my age, and both settled in London. Her husband, who used to be very dear to her, had passed away one August two years back.

Meanwhile, under her maternal determination, we finally did find an open pharmacy that didn’t however have that medicine in stock. Malaria has long been eradicated from Holland! On her insistence, an arrangement was finally made for the medicines to be delivered to my office the following morning so I did not have to run around yet again. Thankfully!

We came out and started walking towards the car park. She had mentioned earlier that she had to go to the central station to pick up tickets for a Bach concert and I accompanied her. We talked all the time – Dilan was waiting at home for her; On a Friday, she reaches home early, lights the fire, cooks a nice meal and then they take a walk around the small village where she lives. She is not scared when it falls dark because there are friends and neighbours around. Her children love the bustle of London Christmas but she likes to be at her own home; where she has spent the best years of her life with her husband. Dilan was a Christmas gift from her when he retired from work. With an armchair that was still kept beside the fire. After him, she likes to spend her every Christmas and her life with his memories and their old friends in the little village. And, of course, she was quite happy that way.

She dropped me off that day in front of my apartment. We exchanged address and promised to write to each other sometime. As I thanked and said goodbye to her, and she drove along hurriedly to her home where Dilan waited for her, I realised she gave me so much more than just a drop.
Elise, that’s what her name was, left in my mind a breathing portrait of a life towards the end of every travelled road. A picture of a warm, beautiful and serene solitude, that will remain with me. Forever.

A little luggage for my cargo :o)

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The Barren Corridor

Years back, in course of my tiny ten minutes walk from home to school past the railway tracks, there stood this rather queer building that always took my fancy. Standing three-storeys tall and in a forsaken, hirsute state, the eye-catcher of this structure, at least as far as I was concerned, was the 2nd floor balcony - with no parapet at all. A strangely empty open body of a long veranda I had not seen anywhere else before or again. I cannot put my pen on the exact reason why this balcony intrigued me, but it sure did for a very long time – through almost seven years of my high schooling.

There were stories I imagined walking down that barren corridor; not of ghosts and scare, but of a different kind. Of freedom and sky and lazy childhood afternoons, then of romances and poetry and adolescent dreams, then of independence, capabilities, success, ambitions and distant aspirations, and quite frequently, of a certain kind of desirable loneliness.

And this house also reminded me of the home I never had along the 18 years of my growing up. I used to think, what if someone, just out of the blue, gave that to us for a steal deal; anyway it did not seem inhabited save a couple of men I sometimes noticed going in and out of the rooms adjacent to the balcony – some unused, unnecessary office of a dumped business perhaps.

Whatever it was, this strange house a block away from the railway lines with its unguarded balcony arrested my attention every time I passed either by the flyover or the tracks. And stayed back like a fallen floating leaf under some layer of my mind, even years later.

~~~

About a month back, I first happened to notice this new construction on the plot where this house used to be. My broken balcony was missing, its place effortlessly taken by the tall structure of a G+4 apartment frame; this, in tune and on time with the new shopping mall coming up in the plot right opposite. No wonder the dilapidated house not touched for a period of at least 10-15 years got promoted overnight to this stately building. Money moves things like nothing can, and faster than one can predict.

Nothing much for me, really.
I don’t look at that direction anymore as I pass by on my way to office; there is nothing to look at; nothing that intrigues, or interests or has any nook within its framework for trains of irrelevant, lazy thoughts and dreams. What is – shows these days, clearly and loudly. So, what is there to look at, what thoughts to carry anyway?

Well, one wee luggage off my cargo :o)

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