Sepia Tales

It was late afternoon, probably around 4 pm, on Ram Navami day. I was lazing around at home, doing the usual things that seven-year-old distracted boys do on lazy holiday afternoons. Suddenly I heard a huge commotion. I saw my mom and the other neighbours on our floor rush to Chetana's apartment. Chetana's mom, it turned out, had doused herself with kerosene and set herself afire after a particularly bitter scrap with Chetana's elder sister, Hansa. The door to the apartment was clogged by anxious neighbours. Chetana must then have been 12 years old and her sister around 17. Though it was a bank holiday, her dad was at work. When Laxmiben had set herself afire, Hansa had panicked and poured buckets of water on her to douse the flames. I tried squeezing in between the legs of the elders to get a dekko but was firmly prevented from doing so: the scene was truly horrendous, the lady was screaming, the neighbours were shouting contradictory instructions and Chetana was somewher

Around the time we children grew up in King's Circle in Mumbai all the lanes had gaslights. During monsoon I would stand in my balcony and watch the rain at twilight. I was a short five-year-old boy then and barely came up to the verandah railing so I would have to stand on my toes to watch the street. As the lane would get darker, the 'gaslight-man' would come cycling into the lane wearing a black Duckback raincoat with a large hood - somewhat like the murderer in I Know What You Did Last Summer . At each streetlight the lightman would alight from his bicycle and then slosh through the rain with a tall bamboo pole in his hand. The pole had a metal hook at the top and once he reached below the lamp post, the lightman would peer through the rain at the gaslight and then pull a lever with the hook. The rain would be falling hard and the light would come on slowly, ever so slowly, becoming brighter till it became a blazing glow. But by that time the lightman would have already