Real and unphony and scary…

I do not take anything lying down, but at my hostel in Bombay I am this meek kid without a tongue, who does what I am asked to do. I am not being this way, willingly, but I guess, the hostel and its inmates are just too real and scary for me. Not scary in the you-can-hurt-me type sense, but scary in the what-if-I-end up-like-them sense. The reality of the lives in the hostel scares me.

Some 5 of us are watching TV, some scary Aahat type serial, and are nearing the end. Most of us are on the edge of our seats, when this really fat, middle aged woman comes, switches channel, puts some saas bahu thing and starts watching it. I hear some meek protests, but she sits in the centre of the TV room like a don, and says how she is been living in this hostel for the past 4 years, and nobody had dared to change her routine of watching the serial, and that she will see to it that nobody is able to. She was so loud, and I doubt I would’ve ever taken such shit, but I didn’t want to react. I didn’t feel any anger towards her, for I pitied her, as she was so powerless in her world, that she reassured herself by elucidating her power this way. She is a known yeller, yes, that’s the word for her, for she never speaks, she yells.

Yesterday, I wanted to watch friends that comes at 7 on star world. So I went to the TV room at 6, so that, I am able to ‘catch the TV’ for another hour. Just when I was about to beam with pride, when the clock struck 7 and I found myself alone in the TV room, I find this woman with short cropped hair walk in, pencil thin, without any trace of any curves, in any part of her body, and with the most dead pan face, that I have ever seen, and switch channels. I am aghast, and she looks at me, with the same dead look and says, I always watch ‘Mamta’ at 7. Mamta, it is associated with some emotions I guess, and looking at her, I could not stop wondering, where was that last spec of emotion left in her.

This hostel is their life. They can’t live anywhere else, for nowhere else can they boost their non-existent self worth, the way it is possible in this microcosm of loserness. It scares me, coz someday the bubble might burst for them, or may be it bursts everyday for them, and then they yell or bully people around, to sew it and inflate it again!! And I guess life goes on…

This hostel sometimes brings me face to face with the most unphony faces of life.
I was supposed to expect a roommate yesterday. At around 8, while I was having dinner, a middle aged woman, with half burnt face, walks in, with a bag. A chill went down my spine, I couldn’t chew the morsel that was in my mouth and I had to force myself from staring at her. I picked up my plate and went to put it away and when I turned back after filling my bottle of water, I could not see her. I was scared that she must’ve gone to the room upstairs. I cant explain how I felt, I had to force myself to go to my room, and when I reached my room , and I found the room locked, I don’t think I had sighed such a relief in my entire life. I had absolutely freaked out by the very idea of sharing a room with a woman who looked like that.

I am so ashamed of myself. I mean the only thing I should be scared of staying in a hostel, is well, the safety of my belongings. If I keep everything under lock n key, I needn’t worry about that too, and I definitely had no right or intentions of drawing a judgment that the woman would steal my stuff.

Then why did I freak out, just because she looked that way? I gave it a thought and realized that I haven’t seen the real world, the unphony world, the world without cover ups. It will be ugly, it will be freakish, but it is real and all of us have to accept it and deal with it, coz its our world, however much we deny it, anything can happen to anybody.