Under the yellow street lights, we played until it was dinner time. Doused in the phosphorus yellow light, our clothes hitherto shy, now, the white ones betook the colour of gold, and the grey ones purple. We raised our hands up high and gazed at the light through them to find the pale skin now turn scarlet red. There we hissed and pawed, hid and contorted our bodies, laughed and mooned about. All was dark beneath the glistening yellow of the street lights; one had to walk between the lamp posts and feel the colour of one’s skin and clothes shift peripatetically as if we were swaying on the rainbow that kisses earth with its wide multicoloured lips after the rain. We were about seven years old; jumping up and down, someone crooning, someone coughing hysterically, hastily one would slip into one of the houses to hide there in the dark. Regular power cuts ensured that we had our share of play time. In the dark; we played ‘hide and seek’. Only the street lights stood up in the dark like the flower head surrounded by floral envelope of houses and we hummed around the lamp posts collecting nectar of playfulness. With our shrill voices and chivalrous romp, we ducked and crawled, cantered about the parked two wheelers, behind the ladies who sat on raised platforms by their houses, and in the dark lanes.
Every night we played the same game; someone or the other found a valuable hiding place and the rest followed this someone on the next night. Each night, we would extend our repertoire of hiding places. The grown ups sat and watched restlessly as we disappeared into the dark. We slipped into houses the owners of which we had no acquaintance with. And, there were stories that we all shared; about a lady in white muslin frock that billowed as it was caught up in gushing wind and the boy had seen her feet dangling under the frock; the lady in the house there has a kid who never comes out to play with the others, how dreadful, we all intoned; a pretty lady in the house round the corner of the street under the second street light from ours, she had eloped with someone from the adjoining street. The one with limp and the one with high hip, one with crooked nose and the one with ghastly yellow teeth, one with voracious appetite and the one with curly hair, everyone one of them had a story, on our lips and in our eyes they formed and we bore the burden of them.
One of the girls in our neighbourhood was engaged to get married, we were all invited. In the day light, we were accompanied by our parents and we resorted to slanted gazes and hushed titillating exchange of valuable information about the bride. One of the houses was always closed; it had a strange appeal on us. One of us had seen the bride tip toeing in a transparent negligee and red blouse into the sinister house that was riddled with cobwebs and echoes of dark voices. Her petticoat was caught up in the knee length gate at the entrance, she tugged at it in haste; the torn end of the sable coloured petticoat was still lying there, he beamed at us with valiance as if to vindicate himself- the proof was there for everyone to see.
In the dark where one hid, above him, through the bedroom window, one of us heard grumbling voice of a lady punctured with an occasional thud of a vessel and a man scathingly rebuking her; another heard one of ours, a fat kid, censured by his parents for playing out so late. And there were the girls, they always sang, under the starry night they cooed and shooed. The young ones with twined hair that dropped on their shoulders in twos; teenagers with pleated twined hair so heavy that it flopped on their curved spines long and dark; the old ones with braids that sat up perched above the nape- each in their one way sang and lying in each others arms, they talked about their dresses, hair, rouge on someone’s neck that smelt of jasmine, starched fabric of someone’s hemmed sari, and how flounces on that red dress would have been better and how shiny embroidery work on the arms of this blouse would have been better.
And, there was the wide lipped plump faced feisty woman who stared at the others invidiously as if finding blame in them for her buffalos’ dropping milk productivity. Her skin so dark that gold lit street lamps did not affect her complexion; she would walk heavily as if under duress with a hand holding the sari locks under her waist line with a one eyed monster -navel- teetering atop her bulbous midriff. Grown ups returning from evening classes- girls hugged their books on their bosoms and walked with their heads sloping; boys tucked the books away under their arms and walked, also sadly, as girls did, with exhaustion and hunger, silently through the streets that alternated between dark and gold lit islands filled with rambunctious seven year olds.
Mothers fed their child and pointed at the gold lamp that swathed their babies with crimson swords of delight; fathers sat their kids on their knees and told stories as old as the golden light itself; newly wed couples opened the broken window sashes and shared the evanescent radiance of the apricot shaped yellow street lamps, they chided each other, ah! Their clothes now acquired a new colour. The old eyed their shrivelled skin and the young adored their nubile beauty; under the yellow light, someone squinted their eyes and someone gaped; some waved and some rose up from their seats; some combed their hair, while the others slept in their mothers’ laps.
At times the power cut would extend into the night so much so that the kids would fall asleep and the mothers restless; now the stories would not sink in, the mollycoddling no more receptive, no one shouted anymore, no one played anymore. Everyone waited for their houses to lit up, now the yellow light that grazed upon the hapless people under it seemed an oddity. Pensively, we waited and the candles had burnt their lives out, the wick had descended onto the ground from where it lay initially; kersone lamps dimming inside the glass casing, torch lights whimpering and every mother’s child rolling on its back in the lap for the attainment of normalcy. The playthings twisted their arms, bore their knuckles before the torch light and splashed shadowy dragons on the white walls through their blood red fingers. Grown ups stroked the young ones and the young ones mooned about dreadful in anticipation. Now the milk woman found no supercilious eye glints, we all waited and waited.
And the power was up. With it, we all screwed our eyes at the glazing streets and the innards of the house that soaked wet with overpowering glare as if the light would gouge out ones eyes. Mothers were the first ones that rose, they were sharp and precise; the new light did not affect them so much as it did the others. With slow but audible murmurs, everyone rose up, the young mostly slept and had to be waken up; the grown ups and everyone else caught the seven year olds by their arms, for most of them fell back onto the ground with a muffled thud. Despite the carefulness, once in a while, someone would flop on his face into the ground that ensued culpable claims and syncopated cries.
The golden yellow light stood lonely, with everyone retreating into their homes. It stood there, the flower head that had ones buzzing bees seated around its floral envelope, now the tall stalk attracted no more bees until the night after and the one after that. The calyx of wildflower jetted its head up, swathed the square shaped houses- whorls- with its golden nectar, and waited meekly for the bees to besiege it the next night and the night after that.
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