Apartments in winters come alive. I realised this when I was eight. The place has neither the dampness of rainy season nor the troubling lightness of air and everything around you. I enjoyed the time I spent in the lift in my apartment; it was a room, only it belonged to no one. We all shared the space sometimes alone, sometimes together, yet the room belonged to no one.
It was late in the night; I pulled my hands out of the warm side pockets of my jacket and risked the exposure of cold winter air. I pressed the button and was waiting for the lift to descend, tapping my foot against the brown tiled wall. On its way down, the lift paused briefly at one of the floors, and I heard the sound of a woman (must be in her thirties) in great urgency, she banged the lift’s door shut and left, only to realise a moment later that the door was not properly lodged into the sockets. She tried vainly to force the door into the socket, after a couple of attempts (while I was rubbing my palms and pressing them against my chin), she pulled the door ajar and banged it violently. The door was locked, and the cables before me in the hollow lift chamber were rising to meet the pulley right at the top of the apartment, on the sixth floor.
And with a thud, the lift drooped low like an old tree’s bark that mysteriously collapses to let a rabbit peep out of it; a lady with her eyebrows raised high stepped outside. Her upper jaw overshadowed the lower one, with two teeth prominently displayed in the front. Her lips barely covered her rabbit teeth; forehead slightly wrinkled; eyes brownish in colour, they were sinking deeper into the sockets; evidently she made very little use of her ears, for her had covered them up with white bandage, round went the white cloth over the head and under the chin. She was holding a shiny metallic object in her hands, she folded her hands together over her breast; her feet, she was wearing no slippers. Apparently she must have been in a hurry, for her hair was dishevelled and as she skirted past me near the entrance of the lift, I could not help but notice that her dog was wailing on the first floor balcony. She usually locks him up inside.
While I was nonchalantly staring through the lift’s metallic grills as it ascended smoothly to the fourth floor, I wondered how lifts connect people together. Just for that moment, the occupants of lifts draw around them a shell, a cocoon and in their hesitant moods, they, subconsciously become a part of the lives of other occupants. Someone holding a helmet in his hand buckles and unbuckles the cord in his hand; someone with a bag in his hand shifts it to the other hand, back and forth; someone mutely stares at the wall through the grilled doors, now a wall, now the floor with people in it, now a wall, now a floor with completely different people, and so it goes on until the lift with a slight jerk stops in a floor and some one steps out, quite relieved, but now this someone courteously draws the grilled door behind him, and the occupant inside with her head sunk inside her body reaches out for the door inside. And so their lives separate once again, until by sheer coincidence they meet once again, and he closes the door on his side, she locks the door on her side and the lift ascends leaving behind its trail, cables hanging limp.
I watched the men and women intently, they would all be fussing about something very animatedly, but once inside the lift with others from the apartment, they grow very conscious of each other. The relaxed mood now shrinks into something of observant and conscious demeanour; the animated lengthy discussions are all held back for the moment, and once outside the lift, everyone creeps back into their normal self. I wondered, if it was the closeness that bothered people, or the sheer unwillingness
“And indeed there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces you would like to meet”
Those lines by T. S. Eliot perhaps explain the behaviour of people inside the lift. The suddenness with which people are locked inside the lift leaves them vulnerable, for they haven’t had the time to prepare.
‘Could you please get the door for me?’ the lady with rabbit teeth pleaded, and I pulled open the lift doors for her. She was holding two bags full of vegetables in her hands, one she rested up her pelvis, and the other she dragged by her hand. The cords on the bag were pulled so taut by the weight of the vegetables that it gave away as soon as she stepped outside and she dislodged the other bag from her pelvis and ran after tomatoes that were rolling on to the stairway towards the floor beneath. Before I could react, the lift began its course and since I was told distinctly that I should not pull the doors open while the lift was on its course, I had no choice but to wait until the lift paused, then push the button to the first floor where the lady was squatting on the floor collecting tomatoes.
By the time I got there, she went inside. There were still two tomatoes left on the stairway, she may have missed them. There were four families living in each floor, and I had no idea which one was hers. So I let go.
A week or so passed by, I was returning from school, and saw a giant truck parked outside the apartment. Workers were loading TV, sofa, washing machine and a beautiful royal cot on to the truck. Behind the truck I saw the lady with her dog involved in a heated discussion with one of the workers. The dressing table was broken, the floor was covered with broken glass and as I stepped over them to reach for the lift doors, I saw the reflection of the lady in the broken glass. That was my last memory of hers. I never saw her again. To this day I remember that brief period in my life. Lifts are strange places in the apartments.
It was late in the night; I pulled my hands out of the warm side pockets of my jacket and risked the exposure of cold winter air. I pressed the button and was waiting for the lift to descend, tapping my foot against the brown tiled wall. On its way down, the lift paused briefly at one of the floors, and I heard the sound of a woman (must be in her thirties) in great urgency, she banged the lift’s door shut and left, only to realise a moment later that the door was not properly lodged into the sockets. She tried vainly to force the door into the socket, after a couple of attempts (while I was rubbing my palms and pressing them against my chin), she pulled the door ajar and banged it violently. The door was locked, and the cables before me in the hollow lift chamber were rising to meet the pulley right at the top of the apartment, on the sixth floor.
And with a thud, the lift drooped low like an old tree’s bark that mysteriously collapses to let a rabbit peep out of it; a lady with her eyebrows raised high stepped outside. Her upper jaw overshadowed the lower one, with two teeth prominently displayed in the front. Her lips barely covered her rabbit teeth; forehead slightly wrinkled; eyes brownish in colour, they were sinking deeper into the sockets; evidently she made very little use of her ears, for her had covered them up with white bandage, round went the white cloth over the head and under the chin. She was holding a shiny metallic object in her hands, she folded her hands together over her breast; her feet, she was wearing no slippers. Apparently she must have been in a hurry, for her hair was dishevelled and as she skirted past me near the entrance of the lift, I could not help but notice that her dog was wailing on the first floor balcony. She usually locks him up inside.
While I was nonchalantly staring through the lift’s metallic grills as it ascended smoothly to the fourth floor, I wondered how lifts connect people together. Just for that moment, the occupants of lifts draw around them a shell, a cocoon and in their hesitant moods, they, subconsciously become a part of the lives of other occupants. Someone holding a helmet in his hand buckles and unbuckles the cord in his hand; someone with a bag in his hand shifts it to the other hand, back and forth; someone mutely stares at the wall through the grilled doors, now a wall, now the floor with people in it, now a wall, now a floor with completely different people, and so it goes on until the lift with a slight jerk stops in a floor and some one steps out, quite relieved, but now this someone courteously draws the grilled door behind him, and the occupant inside with her head sunk inside her body reaches out for the door inside. And so their lives separate once again, until by sheer coincidence they meet once again, and he closes the door on his side, she locks the door on her side and the lift ascends leaving behind its trail, cables hanging limp.
I watched the men and women intently, they would all be fussing about something very animatedly, but once inside the lift with others from the apartment, they grow very conscious of each other. The relaxed mood now shrinks into something of observant and conscious demeanour; the animated lengthy discussions are all held back for the moment, and once outside the lift, everyone creeps back into their normal self. I wondered, if it was the closeness that bothered people, or the sheer unwillingness
“And indeed there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces you would like to meet”
Those lines by T. S. Eliot perhaps explain the behaviour of people inside the lift. The suddenness with which people are locked inside the lift leaves them vulnerable, for they haven’t had the time to prepare.
‘Could you please get the door for me?’ the lady with rabbit teeth pleaded, and I pulled open the lift doors for her. She was holding two bags full of vegetables in her hands, one she rested up her pelvis, and the other she dragged by her hand. The cords on the bag were pulled so taut by the weight of the vegetables that it gave away as soon as she stepped outside and she dislodged the other bag from her pelvis and ran after tomatoes that were rolling on to the stairway towards the floor beneath. Before I could react, the lift began its course and since I was told distinctly that I should not pull the doors open while the lift was on its course, I had no choice but to wait until the lift paused, then push the button to the first floor where the lady was squatting on the floor collecting tomatoes.
By the time I got there, she went inside. There were still two tomatoes left on the stairway, she may have missed them. There were four families living in each floor, and I had no idea which one was hers. So I let go.
A week or so passed by, I was returning from school, and saw a giant truck parked outside the apartment. Workers were loading TV, sofa, washing machine and a beautiful royal cot on to the truck. Behind the truck I saw the lady with her dog involved in a heated discussion with one of the workers. The dressing table was broken, the floor was covered with broken glass and as I stepped over them to reach for the lift doors, I saw the reflection of the lady in the broken glass. That was my last memory of hers. I never saw her again. To this day I remember that brief period in my life. Lifts are strange places in the apartments.
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