To Believe Or Not To Believe

It was a regular Saturday evening. I was curled up on the couch with a Wodehouse, cackling away like a hyena at the antics of Uncle Fred. I need my dose of Wodehouse on Saturdays to lure me out of the blues of having to work on a Saturday. And, then out of nowhere came that wonderful scent. The wonderful, wonderful scent of the first rain soaking the parched earth. I rushed to the window and it was indeed raining. Mumbai monsoons had officially arrived. My heart leapt up seeing this. I could finally clean my kitchen balcony now. Now you might be thinking, “What has rains got to do with the cleaning of her balcony?” Let me give you a small flashback. The last time I cleaned my balcony, the lady from the flat downstairs had rushed up to our flat and informed me in a lot of anguish, “I have an eighteen month old at home. You can’t clean the balcony and pour the water down the drain.” I wanted to tell her, “Gee. I’m so sorry, lady. I didn’t know that your eighteen month old kid hangs out under the balcony drain.” I tamped down on that retort and gave her a tight-lipped smile and told her that I would take care next time.

So, I put down my Wodehouse reluctantly and decide to make good use of the rain. Armed with a brush and bucket of soapy water, I venture out into the balcony. The sun had already gone down and it was getting dark outside. I start cleaning the balcony, all the while cursing those damned pigeons who have made a Sulabh Shauchalay out of my only balcony. You might be thinking, “What’s with this female and the balcony?” You see, we Mumbaikars set great store by the balcony. A balcony is like an unattainable luxury here. That is, if you can call that sorry excuse of tiny space outside my kitchen, a balcony!!! All of a sudden, I hear a cooing sound out of no where. They must have heard my mumbled curses. I look around to find the source of all the cooing. Sitting on a ledge above me, I spot one of those Satan’s spawns, looking down at me menacingly. You see, our enmity goes way back. I may have accidentally knocked over one of their nests, smashing an egg or two while trying to clean up the balcony earlier this year and I may have been stalked by one particularly angry mother pigeon for a week or two. Anyway, this pigeon didn’t look like that one. So I control my urge to throw soapy water at it and continue with my cleaning.

Once I go on a cleaning spree, it is very difficult to rein me in. I go into OCD mode and clean every nook and cranny, otherwise inaccessible to human hands. I thank my lucky stars that Sudhi is away in Indonesia, probably tucking into Nasi Goreng while watching TV. If he was around, he would have come in by now and told me, “Whatever is wrong with you? Please don’t do a Monica now.” I chuckle at that thought and carry on with my cleaning, humming a tune in my head. The next thing I know, I have slid the sliding door shut in my over enthusiasm to make the glass door shine like the bottom of a new-born. And I hear the ominous sound of the door clicking shut, confirming my worst nightmare. I’ve been shut out in the teeny-weeny balcony of my kitchen on a rainy night in Mumbai with nothing but a bucket and a brush and Sudhi would be home only after two days. I have this uncontrollable urge to scream. But surprisingly, I don’t. I tell myself, “Anyway, you are out in the balcony cleaning and it’s only half done. So get on with the work and we will find a way out of this fix.” And I get back to work. My legs are trembling like twigs caught up in a storm. But I continue to clean the balcony. (Now when I look back at that situation, I’m pretty sure that I need serious help with my OCD. Who else in their right minds would go on cleaning after being locked out?) Once I’m done with the cleaning, I look around at the other apartments to see if anyone is looking in my direction. I have been outside for the past one hour and not even a single person has even noticed this strange female scrubbing away like a woman possessed. I sigh inwardly thinking that this is one trait that I love in my Mumbai neighbours. They are less nosey compared to my Trivandrum ones. But today I wish I had my Trivandrum neighbours around. They would have made sure that even my relatives in “Gelf” got to know of my little situation.

I tell myself that I have to keep my cool and think logically. I think of shouting out to the neighbours and the security guards. But it’s raining so heavily that I doubt they would even hear my voice. Then I contemplate climbing over the balcony rail and walking on the ledge to reach the living room window. I dismiss that as well, taking into consideration the fact that I’ve always been a klutz. Finally, I decide to try my hand at prying the door open with the cleaning brush. The atheist in me sends a silent prayer up to the heavens, hoping that tonight I would find a reason to turn into a believer. I put all my might into forcing the door open. But try as I might, the door wouldn’t even budge an inch. I try again and this time, the upper part of the door cracks open. But I still can’t force it open fully. I try again a few more times to no avail. After 20 minutes of wrestling with the door, I realise that I would have to yell out to my neighbours and the security guards for help. I hear that irritating cooing sound again. I look up and see that the infernal creature is sitting there with a smug look on its face. If I understood pigeon language, I’m pretty sure that cooing would have meant, “What goes around comes around, you mean lady.” As I am about to turn around to shout to the neighbours, I notice something. At first, I feel that all the stress has gone directly to my head and I have started seeing things. The right side of the door looks like it’s open. I can see the light inside the kitchen through the small crack. I gingerly reach out to touch the right side of the door and slide it open. And it slides wide open to my utter surprise.

I quickly climb inside the kitchen and close the door. I’m baffled. I have absolutely no clue how this came about. I had almost given up. I had resigned myself to the fact that I may have to spend the night in the balcony with that vicious pigeon for company. I sit down and try to make sense of what just happened. I’m very sure that both sides of the door were shut. I had opened the left side of the door to go out into the balcony and I am pretty sure the right side of the door was closed then. All this while, I had been trying to open the left side of the door. So, who opened the right side of the door for me when I was trying to wedge open the left side of the door? Did God open it for me? I had prayed after all. Is God giving a sign to the atheist in me? Or is there a plain, simple, logical explanation to what has happened? Maybe, while I was trying to push the left side of the door open, the right side must have cracked open and I saw it only later. I don’t know which explanation to take. The logical and rational part of me is urging to go for the latter. But somehow, I want to go with the former for that night. The atheist in me wants to believe that God indeed opened the door for her that rainy night in Mumbai.