I'd come to Marine Drive. And just like everyone else there, I just wanted a few moments of peace, a chance to get away from it all. I was sitting exactly at a spot across the iconic watering hole, Not Just Jazz By The Bay. The place where the Mumbai's Bombay hobnobs with each other. A place where the even the most neatly formed chignons give way to the moment. I looked back at the pub across the shoulder and then let my eyes wander to sights and sounds of that legendary promenade. The familiar sights of overweight ladies, anorexic PYTs, bare legs and hairy chests, young families and grey moustaches greeted my eyes. Women who looked oh so lovely as their make up mingled up with the sweat flowing across their face. Young girls with legs so marvellously skinny that you'd be amazed as to how gravity had forgotten to do its job. Men who seemed to be spending more time changing the settings on their iPods than actually jogging. Kids wailing over the need for the biggest balloon available and parents arguing fervently for the one that's the most colourful and guys like me who had nothing to do but blankly stare at the art film being unveiled in front of our eyes. Oh well, the Marine Drive usual.
I turned towards the sea and the wonderful succour that it offered. The city spread across my eyes. A vista so beautiful that it takes my breath away, no matter how used I am to it. Night was gently snowing onto the city; dusk saying its last goodbyes. As the illuminated skyline rose into view, the tendril of serenity softly sprouted in my mind and the weight of calm rested on my shoulders. I continued to stare out at the sea, the gentle waves, the light foam that burst into view as it brushed against the rocks near the shore, the black sea ahead and the twinkle of the city beyond.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the couple sitting beside me buy bhel and roasted groundnuts from a hawker. He looked towards me, raised his eyelids expectantly but I declined. Suddenly, a burst of horns erupted into the air. A car had stalled just as the signal turned green and the ones lined up behind it had begun to believe that noise could actually cause motion. The yowling crescendoed and I was soon brought back to the din that had crowded the place. The cars bawling, the steady pattering of footsteps, the wailing of newborn kids, the clamour of a hundred discordant voices. The dam of repose in my ear suddenly broke and the river of cacophony flooded my senses, washing away every of nibble of tranquility in my mind. I looked around the promenade. The streets lights had been switched on and the entire place was drenched in an uncomfortable, mournful yellow glow. I noticed that the couple beside me had gotten up and were walking away towards the road. I looked across my shoulder towards the road, glancing at the marble plank that announced Kilachand Chowk and turned my head towards the silhouette of the hawker walking away in the distance. In between the curve of those glances, something caught my eye. Sitting there, on the tiles of the promenade, just a few feet away from the riot on the road, in the midst of a hundred swaggering legs, were three little kids. I looked closely. They were street urchins: a boy, his sister and an infant, hardly a year old. They were sitting there, a bunch of misshapen legs and tattered clothes, unmindful of chaos around them and engaging in silly games like making faces and gently tugging at each other's shabby hair in an attempt to amuse the baby. The boy seemed to be hardly seven years of age and his sister, even younger, barely four. She sprawled herself on the floor and with her cheek to the ground, slowly lifted her eyes towards the sitting infant and suddenly blew her cheeks up, made her eyes pop up. Then, she slowly began to crawl her fingers towards the infant, one step at a time, inching towards the baby and about to tickle its soles. The boy standing over them, looked at her and smiled. Then he sat down and took the infant in his arms and began to call out to his sister. She came closer and he handed her something which she clasped tightly in her fist. Then the two them inched closer towards each other and the three of them were just about to huddle close to each other when a car that had stopped near the traffic signal belched out a whale of a shriek. Worried that the baby might begin to cry, the boy quickly stood up and handed the baby to the girl who wound her arm around it, her palm still clasped and they began to walk. The girl took tiny steps, stumbling across the tiles, barely able to hold the baby up. They staggered towards me and reached the spot beside me. The girl heaved the infant over the ledge and placed it on the seat exactly where the couple had been sitting a few minutes ago. Then, she placed her hand on the seat, beside the baby, her palm facing down and unclenched her fist. A sliver of glitter hit my eyes. They were a row of coins, about ten of them, and they had fallen onto one side, like a stack of dominoes. The infant sprawled across the seat and tried to reach for the coins, unable to resist the shiny pieces of metal. The girl who was tying the knot of her pyjamas until then, quickly moved her hand towards the coins but in the process tossed one of them over. She looked up towards her brother who was sitting beside the infant and and stared at him pleadingly. He got up, bent over and picked the coin up from a heap of rubbish. Just as he got up, he caught my eye. I smiled at him and he smiled back, a fleeting, uneasy smile. Then he began to walk away. The girl quickly collected the coins, swung the infant over her shoulder precariously and began to walk away, behind the boy.
As I watched them walk away, I suddenly realized that throughout the entire episode they had never once asked me for any money and I, lost in their world, hadn't even offered to give them some. I looked around to find them but couldn't spot them anywhere in the dispersing crowd. I realized that they were probably off to find a place to sleep for the night. They had probably been begging throughout the day, on the promenade, at the traffic signal, the little girl darting between the speeding cars with the infant hanging by her hip. This walkway is crowded throughout the day and now that night had set in, the place was slowly melting away to emptiness, a town bereft of its inhabitants. Evening had placed upon them, the end of another miserable day and beginning of another desolate night. The dusk had marked the kids' doom.
I cast my eyes down and slowly shifted them back to the sea; it was time to leave. Just as I swung one of my legs across the ledge, my eyes fell onto the seat. There, right at the very spot where the infant had been sitting some moments ago, were some words that somebody had scribbled on the slab. As I read them, a stab of irony pierced through my heart. A stab so cruel that only something as haunting as Bombay could have wielded it.
There, scrawled at that very spot on Marine Drive, in a haphazard mess of letters, were the words :
" The World's Best Sunset "
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