What I love about photography is that it is essentially a solitary art. It is entirely about how you look at your surroundings, how you perceive it and how you interact with it. Photography for me is a meditative experience; once I have the instrument in my hand, be it a camera or a mobile phone, it becomes an extension of my consciousness; its technicality becomes immaterial, but its impact immortal. As I look for the image, I feel my senses getting heightened; my eyes act differently as I see the light dancing, how it casts shadows and highlights faces, how it changes moods and creates a world of its own. It is almost an out of body experience where you detach yourself from the real world and immerse yourself in this labyrinth made of images, made of decisive moments, moments where all the elements are in perfect sync and they come together to tell a story. When I take the metro, I feel like a predator looking for my subject, looking for a moment. I observe not only with my eyes but with my ears listening and anticipating a moment worth capturing. I never sit; I always walk from one compartment to the other, sometimes like an epiphany it happens; I can see the elements coming together, and I know this is the moment I press the button. And at that moment, I take a slice out of reality; from a mere observer, I become a creator. With time, I have realized that this act of creation liberates us in this world of consumerism. We are often consuming things in our daily lives, whether having lunch or watching movies or travelling somewhere. We are essentially consuming things through our senses which already exist in nature. But the act of creation empowers us; it gives us this individuality that we have created is entirely our own, and this feeling is most profound for me in photography. The act of creation is what liberates us and also frustrates us. When we create something unique, something true to our vision there; it makes us giddy in our head. The happiness is visceral often transmuting into positive energy affecting everyone around us. It is not very difficult to understand why a mother clenches on to her newborn or why a child holds on dearly to his or her paintings; those unabated ramblings on paper often become a child’s most prized possessions. This profound sense of individual impact, this god-like feeling of creation, matters more than the public validation of the piece of art. Public validation does help but it is not what artists are often running after. Photography has instilled in me a subtle sense of self-confidence. As I walk out of my house to take the metro, I tell myself that I will find a moment that defines my day; a moment that reminds of this same mundane metro ride that I have taken a thousand times but also a moment that is so unique that it can’t be created again. With every passing moment, the situation changes and even if the scene remains the same, you cannot photograph the past.

I was always interested in exploring teaching as a profession and when I got an opportunity to work as a program facilitator with American India Foundation, I joined without hesitation. I was assigned to an ambitious project of training students from low-income households in relevant IT skills and making them job-ready. It seemed a rather difficult task given the baseline education, target numbers and time constraints.

The project had been operational for two months. Our project lead brought our attention to the high dropout rate in a weekly meeting. If this trend continued, we would be considerably trailing behind our funders’ expectations. Our first task was to identify its root cause and take immediate steps to curtail the dropout rate.

This article will discuss how we used design thinking to solve the issue at hand. We are not claiming that we could solve our problems entirely, but the essence of design thinking lies in learning from failures, constant experimentation, and incremental progress.

A quick recap of the human-centred design thinking approach

In a nutshell, design thinking is a solution-based approach to solve complex and varied problems. It is an iterative nonlinear approach to problem-solving which focuses heavily on prototyping, testing and inculcating user feedback. At the core of this concept lies empathy-based design. As the diagram above shows, whenever in doubt, go back to your users, imagine yourself in their shoes and reflect what they want to shape your actions.

In this article, we will specifically talk about our project at American India Foundation. We will limit our discussion to one aspect of the problem to avoid confusion. Let us look at the step by step process we followed.

Empathize

Our end goal is to train students in IT skills and make them job-ready. Before we jump to delivering results, we need to understand our student group. What is their perspective? Are they even interested in learning IT Skills? Do their goals align with our teaching curriculum?

To be a good interviewer, we need to adapt the beginner’s mindset; this helps shed off any bias or preconceptions. And we need to be truly curious to get the best results. We extensively interviewed the students enrolled in our course. We asked them questions from career expectations to mental health and economic constraints. Video interviews are preferred because you can later analyze the expressions and reactions of the candidates. An anonymous feedback form was circulated to grade the curriculum and learner satisfaction. We conducted a baseline test to gauge their English and reasoning aptitude. We even called the students who had dropped out to understand their issues. An Empathy Map is a good guide to what kind of questions we should be asking.

In addition, we got in touch with potential companies who could hire our students. We gave them an overview of our student profile and interviewed the recruiting officers to understand their expectations of prospective employees and how we can better prepare them.

After analyzing the interviews and feedback forms, we identified many pain points. For the brevity of this article, we will choose the ones with high mode value.

1. The primary reason for dropping out was that the students believed that the course would not add significant value to their skill set. Delhi NCR has certain pocket areas where low-income families live, and American India Foundation is not the first NGO to visit them. The students our team mobilized had done similar certification courses from other NGOs and did not want to invest time in our class. A few students pointed out that they had already completed the NSDC (National Skill Development Corporation) courses used in our curriculum.
2. Many students were suspicious of the free of cost aspect of the course. Even though they belonged to low-income families, they were willing to pay for classes. There was an inherent bias among students that a paid course is better than a free one. Anything free automatically gets labelled substandard material.
3. Some students dropped out thinking they were not smart enough to learn IT skills like programming. These numbers were significantly skewed towards women. Additionally, some students felt underconfident because of their Hindi medium education. They thought they would not be able to cope up with a course that demanded good English skills.
4. No job guarantee was a reason sighted by almost all candidates who had completed graduation. These candidates needed a job on priority. If we could not guarantee a job in the end, they better spend their time in a place where they could earn a salary.

Define

We need to define a concise problem statement that will act as a reference point on which all our solutions will be hinged. In this step, we need to articulate the point of view using the three elements- user, need and insight. Assimilating the data from the interviews, we identified two questions.

What is a common goal of both educators and students?

To learn new IT skills and become employable.

What are the major hindrances in achieving the goal?

Low confidence, poor spoken and written English skills, and lack of email writing skills and basic communication skills needed in a professional environment.

Ideate

Design thinking is designing with people and not for people. The method of collaboration plays a significant role in this process. And it is a cardinal sin not to include the customer/user when designing solutions. In USA, when teachers use design thinking to make better classrooms for kindergartners, the little children are involved in the ideation process even if our intuitive logic might say a kindergartner does not have the intellectual capability to contribute to the process.

To involve the students, we asked students to send in possible solutions. We compiled our solutions and views, plus we forwarded the problem statement to potential recruiters and included their answers as well. We made a comprehensive list and shared it among the students. We conducted a group discussion to get a more unfiltered opinion of the students on the possible solutions.

Prototype

After many discussions, we took the final call on what solutions to implement.

Interactions with recruiters revealed that our candidates could not clear the first round of mock interviews. The main reason was a lack of communication skills; the recruiters felt they would not fit in a professional environment. Even if the candidate had the necessary technical skills, he could not get the job. So we changed the structure of the curriculum. In our earlier training program, soft skills training was scheduled for two weeks; in the new format, soft skills training would continue parallelly with technical skills training for the entire training period of two months.

We introduced three activities. The efficacy of these methods will be evaluated in the testing phase.

1. Reading session: We introduced English novel reading sessions. Students would be asked to read out a minimum of three pages in class. This exercise focused on word pronunciation and learning new words. Our goal was to instill self-confidence in students and improve their vocabulary and public speaking skills.
2. Script writing: We introduced a class on script writing. We showed English short films (15- 18 min in length) and later asked them to write a script by understanding the plot and transcribing the dialogues. This exercise was meant to improve the listening and writing skills of students.
3. Email Writing: In classroom sessions, we used breakout rooms to divide the class into smaller groups. We assigned certain characters to the students and asked them to resolve a conflict by writing formal emails. It helped develop empathy among students along with improving their email writing skills.

Testing and Refining

As mentioned earlier, design thinking relies heavily on testing and refining prototypes. We took constant feedback from the students and reiterated the whole process to design better solutions.

For example, when we started the reading session, we distributed pdfs of the book. Students found reading a novel in a pdf format very tedious; navigation was difficult, and you had to open a different app to find word meanings. We later switched to the Aldiko app, which is a free e-book reader app. It uses the epub format, which gives the user an interface similar to an actual book, and you can find the meaning of any word within the app. You can later play a quiz to check if you remember the words.

In the initial two batches, we had experimented with two classic English novels in the reading class. Both Animal Farm and To Kill A Mocking Bird didn’t interest the students much. We got a very meh response in book discussions; according to the feedback, the language was complex, and the story failed to resonate with them. Later we switched to books with fairly straightforward English, such as Tuesdays with Morrie and Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone.

In the script writing exercise, we assigned students English short movies from YouTube channels like Alter and Omeleto. Some students found those films slow and uninspiring. Some clever students would straight away copy from the subtitles track. We later switched to Hindi short films, which had no inbuilt subtitles.

There were other insights from the project on which we are currently working. We continue to fine-tune our curriculum as the course progresses with continuous experimentation and feedback. The purpose of sharing this experience is to collaborate with other educators(or anybody with constructive opinions and criticism) and learn what we can do better. Design thinking comes with the responsibility of sharing and learning with the community.

Sometime in the month of April, my father received a Whatsapp text. A person who cannot be named had tested positive for the novel Coronavirus. He used to exercise in the park next to our society. The management committee of the society had galvanized into action sealing the entrance to the park and plastering the notice board with messages cautioning everyone to avoid Corona Park. Nobody knew the name of the park, I am not sure if it even had a name before, but almost by unanimous consent everybody started to refer to it as Corona Park. The park had literally gone to the dogs, the 4 feet boundary walls of the park served best to cats and dogs; the cows, however stood outside on the roads to see the show, for them the grass was literally greener on the other side. Just like the Coronavirus warning we get every time we make a call, the incident of Corona Park was forgotten in the constant influx of bad news that has marred the year 2020.

My parents gave me a sharp look disapproval when I dusted my slippers to leave for Corona Park. The citations about the high recovery rate or the reducing number of cases in Noida did not help my cause; they gave me an indignant look of bearing a disobedient son, I couldn’t blame them either. Corona Park is a decently sized park, almost as big as a football field with ample green space and an open gym. There is a path of sand and gravel that runs along the rectangular park, it is for those who enjoy the friction and the occasional speck of dust in their mouths while running, with the gyms closed the path is cramped like a busy road. The park looks visibly different from what it was a few months back. There are no marketing executives selling retirement plans or life insurance, no banners about discounts on Milkbasket or Airtel Broadband. Now all you see are masked crusaders running around, a few small groups perched here and there on the grass and some people dabbling with the equipment at the open gym. I see two women standing near the double stand twister at the open gym. I have seen them before in my society building, they are probably housemaids. Visibly confused about how to use the equipment, they give up after a few awkward tries. There are ten children or maybe more running around them. Three of them climb the pull-up poles and hang themselves upside down, another child brings his mother down from the leg swinger and then puts his little bum on the pedestal to use it as a swing. I find all this comical, even inspirational as if I just saw a feel-good movie but not everybody shares the same feeling. The so-called sophisticated middle-class distance themselves, from their little islands of colorful yoga mats they give contemptuous glances, tugging their children back whenever one breaks free and runs towards the open gym. The working-class has taken over the gym, their happiness conspicuous and their attitudes carefree, it is like a proverbial Marxist win.

Naturally, as time passes, patterns settle in. I start noticing the regulars and their habits, it’s an interesting study. There are two old uncles, probably in their 80s; I would love to believe they are old college buddies. One of them never wears a mask because he is the one mostly doing the talking while the other sits next to him with a square face only nodding once in a while to keep himself from falling asleep. Then there is this mother-son duo who come to play every day, mostly they play badminton or football but this one time she brought a chessboard to the park. The mother is fiercely competitive, when playing badminton the son who can’t be older than 10 clumsily holds the racquet and barely makes a pass, the mother comes in jumping and smashes the shuttle on her son’s makeshift court of tiny yellow slippers. She looks around with imploring eyes as if begging for a competitor, the sons shrugs at having to collect the shuttle from the ground; there is a sense of disappointment on both sides, both of them have been let down by the other. There is also this dog with an extremely short tail, I am not sure if it was cut off or if it was born with a short tail. Whatever the case it is extremely friendly, not only with people but with other dogs and their owners too as if it is overcompensating for its short tail with an excessive friendly demeanor; I wonder if dogs have self-esteem issues, a need to prove their worth. The dog has another peculiar habit: it eats grass, although it doesn’t refuse a packet of biscuits I have seen it meticulously searching for the grass of his choice. On some evenings you can hear a flute; it would start at dusk and continue till dark. The flute player always stirs a bit of action in the park; children point at buildings and the parents follow their children’s little fingers to find the flute player but the closely packed high-rise residential societies create an echoing effect confusing everyone. Some people playfully try to guess the song. Once it had started to rain cats and dogs, people scrambled in the frenzied rain and ran to the nearest tree for shelter. Groups of 10–15 huddled under the trees; within a few minutes, all the carefully laid out social distancing rules were thrown out of the park. The old uncle who never wears a mask pointed out that he could hear the flute player. Soon the song of the flute started to get louder and the sound of the rain almost became a background hum till it ultimately stopped. The uncle claimed that he is the human embodiment of Krishna, only Krishna could stop the rain. I obviously didn’t believe him but secretly wanted his words to be true. The groups at Corona Park mostly stay at bay from each other, getting awry if anyone comes too close. But sometimes by chance or sometimes by intention they come into each other’s space. Like the girl in the yellow T-shirt who takes off her dog’s leash only when the guy with the Beats headphones starts running. She asks her dog to stop bothering him but with such a coy tone that even the dog could decipher her romantic advances.

Corona Park has no guards and no official timings; absolutely anybody can walk in and do anything if they are a little discreet about their mischief. On every walk, I would expect broken beer bottles or a stubbed cigarette buds in the park or at least a punk making a scene. One day my prediction came true but they were not the rogue and crass half-drunk hooligans I was expecting, rather they were 4 feet tall, wore clean shorts and looked pretty innocuous. Those kids found a puppy outside the park. Initially, I thought the little kids were testing their curiosity when they pushed and teased the puppy but suddenly the fat kid in the group took the puppy and threw it in the air, the first time he did it the puppy landed on its feet and didn’t make any fuss, but the fatso didn’t stop there. He picked up the puppy again and threw it higher, this time it landed on its back and squealed its little heart out. The cry was so loud that it echoed all around, people ran towards the noise. Seeing a group approaching the fat kid tried to run but I blocked his way, soon another group of fairly young people arrived and started to school the boy. One of them was rather vocal; he wasn’t shy of hurling abuses at the kid. He further proposed that we should throw the fat kid from the first floor just to check how hard he screams. I could feel the blood rush to my face and for a moment I even considered his idea. Yet I didn’t say a word, the others took turns to hurl abuses and added innovative ways to torture him. The vocal guy threw some final abuses while the kids made their way out of the park. He had spoken at such a stretch that his mouth was parched; he drank from his bottle while I saw his Adam’s apple bob and make loud gulping sounds. Like a gentleman he offered me some water, even though I was thirsty I refused because I didn’t want to drink from a stranger’s bottle during this pandemic. My refusal was not taken well, with a forceful smile he said: “Don’t worry, I am a Brahmin”. I was caught off guard; he looked educated, educated enough to understand that this was not the right thing to say. But maybe he is just a kid; maybe he learned this from his parents. I drank some water; putting an end to both his and my assumptions and judgments. Suddenly one of them got a call and the group left in a hurry.

The next evening I was sitting at my usual spot when somebody tapped my shoulder. I turned back to find the guy from the other day smiling at me. After exchanging pleasantries, I finally asked his name. His name was Krishna, he wore a striped blue t-shirt which spelled Nike as Nuke and plain brown shorts, and to complete the colour palate he wore bright red shoes. He was intrigued by the heavy book I was carrying, perhaps because of my baby face he thought I might be of his age, preparing for entrance exams just like him. After digesting the initial shock that I am almost 10 years older than him he started to ask about my engineering days and how I prepared for the entrance exams, the plea for advice soon turned into a long rant about his dissatisfaction with the society and the education system. I couldn’t give him any specific advice, he wanted to become an engineer but thought he was not cut for it, then he talked about joining the military because there can be no better feeling than serving the nation, then he also talked about becoming an artist and went on to show some paintings he had made of Lord Krishna on Instagram. I obviously told him that he had the talent to become whatever he wanted.

Although we didn’t become good friends, Krishna would always wave to me whenever he saw me at the park. One day I saw him and his friends visibly excited, he saw me and called me out, they had finally located the flute player. I decided not to go there; the flute player was an enigma to me, a faceless spirit capable of influencing god, I had no intention to change that. As soon I would see the flute player, I would form an opinion about the kind of job he has, about the kind of family he has, and how ultimately he was just another human with many imperfections. But even when I was walking away I couldn’t stop myself from hearing Krishna, he kept saying third floor, green shirt. I vowed to never look towards the building again.

Around a week later, I saw Krishna at the gate of the park, he was standing with his friends and I could hear their laughter from a distance. The 12th board results were out, everybody was celebrating; thanks to the pandemic the institutions were a bit lenient this time and every one of Krishna and his friends had passed. I congratulated him and he put a hand to his heart and looked up in gratitude to God. More importantly, Krishna told me about how he knew he would pass even before the results were out. He had seen a miracle this morning. It was such a great omen that he was sure it was a gift from God, this day he claimed has to be special. He was convinced that he was invincible today, that even if a truck hit him he would walk away unscathed. I asked him about this miracle, my question was soon followed by an annoying chortle from his friends. All of his friends except one left saying that they had seen enough miracles for thee day. Krishna asked me to pay no heed to their comments and suggested I should see it for myself. So I, Krishna, and the unnamed guy started walking towards Krishna’s home.

Krishna lived in the labor colony next to my society; it is where all the maids and daily wage laborers live. I had never been to the labor colony, I never needed to. I had correctly assumed it would be very dirty and rather unsafe to venture there alone. The main entrance to the labor colony is at the end of the road parallel to the park. The road parallel to the park is pitch black and flawlessly smooth; symmetrical street lights on both sides make it look a military formation standing in attention. But as soon as the road ends, the scenery changes; the soil is yellow, there are no high-rise buildings, only shanty shacks here and there with random movement of people. You can see pigs running around, some lying or rolling in the mud near dirty water holes. I was half expecting the other guy to introduce himself or Krishna to do the same but nobody spoke. The three of us walked in silence with the sound of our slippers dragging along and the other guy playing with his car keys. At the end of the road, I could clearly see the sunset, the drama taking up the entire sky and the sun going down in full glory. You could never see the sun going down from the park, the view has always been perturbed by the buildings, as if all this while I was watching a censored version of the sunset. It started to get dark but the moon was in full glow and we had no problems following Krishna. As we twisted and turned through the confusing alleys I could see the ground drains clogged with black sewage, it was for the good that we were all wearing masks but still, somehow, the stink seeped in. I was hoping we could see Krishna’s so-called miracle quickly, and run back home to take a shower. We reached his house, it had a fence made of stray twigs and branches. The house looked shabby with its tin roof and badly finished exteriors. We entered the house to find Krishna’s mother sitting near the small Puja Ghar, upon seeing us she covered her head with her veil. After exchanging pleasantries, she dutifully asked if anyone of us wanted water. This time my refusal didn’t bring out any surprising or unpleasant reaction. The other guy was somewhat of a jerk, he kept playing with his car keys, now he was throwing his keys in the air and catching it with no respect to the presence of Krishna’s mother or her courteous attempt to make us feel comfortable. Krishna asked us to come near the Puja Ghar, he picked up something which looked like a stone wrapped in a red cloth. He carefully opened the cloth with utmost respect and care; it was a black shiny object, the bulb above making it gleam. I sharply squinted my eyes at first but then I noticed the little flippers, it was a sea turtle. Krishna had found it near the water hole in the morning. The same water hole where we saw the pigs, the water holes were dirty and completely green with algae, at best it was a cesspool of diseases, not the breeding ground of sea turtles. I had no idea how a sea turtle ended up at a drain hole; now even I was convinced, this had to be an act of God. The other guy became curious but was apprehensive about touching it; he started jabbing its shell with his car keys. Suddenly the turtle came out of his shell and bit the key, in reflex he jolted Krishna’s hand while pulling his hand back, and the turtle almost fell to the ground. Krishna regained his balance and reminded us how nothing could go wrong today. I asked Krishna if I could hold the turtle. Carefully I brought it up to my face for a closer investigation; it peeked again to stick its head out. It had disproportionately large eyes on its small black head. Sitting next to the window, I could see the reflection of the moon in its one eye and a yellow reflection of the bulb in the other. I couldn’t look away, its eyes with the colourful pupils were surreal, and its gaze froze my motion. One moment I saw God, and the next moment a Devil. Turtles are prehistoric animals, one of the first animals to inhabit earth; they have seen the face of the earth changing, they have seen the dinosaurs die and the oceans turn grey. But still as a stoic, as a Buddha it walked at his own pace, gathering the wisdom and knowledge worth keeping in its shell. The wisdom to understand the virtue of compassion and the need for violence. I had read somewhere that sea turtles travel thousands of kilometers to lay eggs in the same place where they were born, what if even this turtle was also on a journey, what if it had finally come home. While I was lost in my world, the third guy announced that he had to leave. Although I had no obligation to accompany him, I thought it would be best if I leave now; I handed the turtle back to Krishna and said a customary goodbye to his mother. She obviously said we should come again sometime to see her and the turtle. Krishna walked half the way back with us; just when I and the other guy reached near the park he said he couldn’t find his car keys. I reminded him that he was playing with them a while back; he ignored my answer and started running back towards Krishna’s home without saying a word. I stood there alone thinking if I should go back and help him. I wasn’t sure if he could even find Krishna’s home but then again he was not my friend, heck I didn’t even know his name.

I continued walking, after a while I was so tired from all the walking that I thought I would rest for a while in the park. The park looked completely empty except for a silhouette of a man and a few dogs around him at the far end of the park. I took off my slippers to lie down on the bench. I closed my eyes but the moon shone so brightly that day I could feel the weight of the moonlight on my eyes. Just when I was about to doze off, I heard the familiar flute again.

Et Tu Auratus

The television is on. The characters are recognizable, I see them often while having dinner. My mother has dozed off; the story doesn’t matter, it never did. It is like a pill, lulling her to sleep with its rather loud and dramatic music. She would watch the re-run of the same serial next morning. I question the futility of this entire exercise, but as soon I converge to form a judgment I look at my own life choices and give it a pass. Idiosyncrasies and peculiarities are what gives an individual it’s individuality. And you need to harness a lot of courage and empathy to observe individuality with equanimity. Both of them I seemingly lack but I sincerely try to acquire. I read somewhere that it takes time; I believe it was a reliable source.

There is an aquarium just below the TV. Metaphorically it is a TV, telling a story of its own, only the movie is silent and you can only try to switch the channels here. Just like my mother’s serial I feebly recognize the characters, the sets and props, and the same old story. The aquarium has pebbles and rocks at the bottom to imitate the marine environment but it is failing at it very grandly. The gaudy neon light which makes it look like a disco from the 80s, the fake trees which look more dead and rotten than real rotten trees. If fishes could speak, even they would want out of this fest of mockery, this prison which looks like a shady pub where fishes solicit everything illegal. This little circus of lights, food dropping in everyday at the same time; it’s a prison albeit a brightly and badly decorated one.

One morning my eyes sheepishly open from the 6 o’ clock alarm. I thought this would be an uneventful day just like the past week or the past month and what I saw next, didn’t change it much either. As I walked up to the main hall, bolting at the doors and hidden corners to get some water, I heard a splash. Following my basic instincts, my eyes went to the aquarium. A fish leaped out of the water, my sleepy brain took a few seconds to register what happened. What was it doing? Checking out his mammalian gills? But unlike the perfect pole vault, it didn’t land on its head and swim up to hear the accolades of the crowd. This is not SeaWorld Florida, rather it is Aquarium Noida. It landed rather awkwardly and started sinking slowly to the bottom of the tank; its acceleration decreasing with depth. It’s existence vanishing with the passing second like a tablet dropped in water.I took a bottle of water from the table and grabbed a front row seat for the show. The room was dark, a faint morning light from the window gave a little definition to the room, the main attraction still adorned with gaudy lights. I looked for the geometrical centre of the aquarium and positioned myself so as to get unperturbed and unbiased view of the show. Only a background score by Mozart was missing to make me feel like a complete psychopath. A few other fishes which were earlier nonchalantly cruising at the bottom of the tank, started moving with increasing speed. You can guess from the way they move that they were on a mission, there was something sinister in their movement, this was no jog in the park. One of them came near the dead fish and gave it a nudge. For a second I thought it was an allegorical moment of empathy, a friend grieving or reviving a lost friend. But the moment of compassion was rather a moment of calculation. The nudge to the dead fish was only a setup for the next move by this other fish. It came charging towards the dead fish and catapulted it out of the water. The fish then fell straight on its belly, resembling the sound of a tight slap. Out of sheer luck or planning, the dead fish fell near the air filter; the bubbles coming out of the filter hit it like bullets out of a machine gun. One after the other, the small air pellets hit it so hard that it crashed on to the other glass wall of the aquarium. Confused and startled I didn’t how to react to this amazingly engineered post-mortem torture carried out by these puny little fishes. As the dead fish went to the bottom of the tank, a few other went near it, sniffed it a little and then swam away from it again. I realized, from now on there will probably a re-run of the last episode. I left with a question, was this a some sinister ploy or aquatic life testing the limits of their cognitive skills?

I went back to my daily routine of prepping for the day ahead. The usual of bath, breakfast and run. As I ran towards the closing doors of the metro and made it in time, I thought I had averted the usual hiccup for being late. As my heart slowed down after the run, the lights started getting brighter. The little fluorescent light burned my eyes, after a few seconds I could only see a white screen, soon I lost the strength in my legs and came crashing down. There was a hush in the compartment; some people gathered near me, their faces streaked with white and their voices seemed all muffled. They sniffed around a bit, and once again when the doors beeped that the next station has arrived. They dispersed quickly as they had gathered.

I moved to Bombay on a rainy day, whenever I try to give my life a fresh start, all my vigor is often damped and drained, this time the expression turned quite literal. I remember getting irritated by the splashes of mud on my jeans, by the end of my walk to the auto I had painted a Pollock on my rear, what a great start my friend I said to myself. Although I reached in the morning, the weather outside was dark and gloomy; the air was heavy and the dust stuck to my face like cheap glue; I kept sweating profusely, my only relief was those little gushes of wind when the auto sped up. The petrichor mixed with the stench of open sewers and the constant commotion on the road numbed me down. Overwhelmed by my senses and silenced by the noise of a new city I felt like a pariah. But humans are the most adept of all animals; on the inside, we might be dying of emotional trauma and existential dread but on the surface, we blend like sugar in water. In my first few days, I understood the clichés of Bombay, the dizzying crowds, the acrid smell of sweat in the trains, the wind of the night sea, and the glowing nightscape of Marine drive. They say Bombay is the city of dreams yet it never sleeps; and here I was without any dreams, without any plans, here just by pure chance. The interviewer had asked me if I was comfortable moving to Bombay, I answered with a nonchalant ‘No issues, sir’, not that I wanted to say no, I was indifferent to the outcome of the interview, indifferent to the idea of moving to Bombay. Saying yes is the path of least resistance, and is often favorable to both parties. I did not know anybody in Bombay; I had made peace with the idea of living a lonely life. My distant colleagues and the dizzying speed of life made way for the perfect start.

The company gave me a cheap hotel on the outskirts of Bombay; it was pretty far out from the office, I am sure they had their reasons; I did not bother to find out. I used to take the local train to work; soon I was part of the constant flux that flowed through the city but just like sugar, after a few swirls of the spoon I couldn’t tell myself from the crowd. But every day before taking the train back to the hotel, I would stop at the cross over bridge at the station, find myself a position from where I could get a panoramic view, and watch the evening crowd rush to the platforms. They would jostle each other; a few fits of abuse will be thrown here and there along with physical shoves. Like sheep that run but fall in line when they hear the crack of the whip from the shepherd, people scramble at the sound of the railway announcer who dispassionately reads from the same template again and again, I wonder if she had a window view to this show. The most interesting show was put on at 5 pm, with some Vivaldi or Schubert in my headphones; I would detach myself from the sheep. I would tell myself how they are like the proverbial hamster always running on the treadmill. These little moments made me feel like a rebel; I gave a silent laugh to the sheep, this feeling of rebellion was my salvation and also my vanity

The hotel arrangement was temporary and I had to find to a new place and I needed to do it quickly as I had languished around since my arrival, and to add to that I took an early leave from work every day on the pretext of finding a flat; only to find myself staring at the ceiling fan in the hotel listening to harmonica concertos. The hotel receptionist one morning amidst all his small talk gave a broker’s number, all his sweetness was after all not without reason after all. The broker showed up on a Sunday morning at 7 am, he had bathed and had smoothly matted hair for which he might have used copious amounts of coconut oil. He smelled like a temple, and when I got on his bike to go the supposed flat he put on a list of bhajans on his phone and then kept it in his pocket before we drove off. I wonder about the futility of this deed, the song was lost in the buzz of the engine but in matters of religion and clandestine rituals, logic has little space. Or maybe it was one of those little games he plays inside his head like how I step only on the white stripes when walking on a zebra crossing; illogical, senseless yet life-affirming. The way to Aarey colony was rather relaxing, the bike zoomed through green canopies, the smell of the air and the chirps of the birds reminded me of the mornings in my village, I even saw a few deer crossing the road and a baby monkey drinking from a discarded PET bottle. For a moment I forgot that this was Bombay, I found a real jungle amidst this bustling concrete jungle. The broker spoke with a typical South Indian accent; he was curt and spoke in short sentences. He told me about the rent and the brokerage he would charge for his services, his demeanor indicated he was not a man of bargaining but I am Indian after all and had to try out of courtesy, dutifully he refused my plain argument. A man of little words and a man who revered god every morning seemed less likely to con me. My mother says always trust two men; one a man of religion and other a man of medicine, well, my mother is naïve but so am I. The deed was done I had already imagined my life in this little flat. I would stare out at the balcony, look and breathe the greenery outside, stay in my small room where the walls pressed each other. Some might call it a prison, but it was my prison, a solitary confinement of choice. Although I rejoice freedom but boundaries when set at your convenience is freedom itself.

Soon even this change of space settled in; humans are mutable, either by choice or by situation, we can change into anything from Machiavellian to benevolent, from my killers to saints. I am not an organized person; I wouldn’t care to change things until there is absolute chaos, I wouldn’t move a finger until it becomes absolutely necessary to move it. One morning I woke up to find all my spoons and forks on the table, arranged in ascending order of size, the forks taking precedent to the spoons. I was drinking the other night, maybe in some utterly weird hallucination, I decided to arrange my cutlery. I let the incident go, if anything I should be proud of my hallucinatory behavior, I was a better organizer when inebriated. A week later it happened again, but this time something even stranger happened, a plate was neatly placed on my table, next to it a set of spoons and forks; this time I was sure it wasn’t me and had an ominous feeling about this entire incident. The people in my office talked about horror stories of Aarey colony, any place close to wilderness always makes a good setup for a horror story. A Google search will display articles by travel bloggers and news channels alike writing about paranormal activities at Aarey, witches asking of lifts in the middle of the night, gory details about a child eating a leopard, tribals practicing the occult. With some real-life evidence and few affirming testimonies about Aarey, I was genuinely scared. I started sleeping with my lights on, playing music on my speakers, hoping the ghost or whatever it is would leave me alone seeing my busy schedule. One morning I woke up to find my spoons and forks methodically arranged, with a plate neatly placed in the middle. Enough of this, it didn’t make any sense, I was not having horrifying experiences, no night sweats, no one pulling the covers in my sleep, it seemed more like a non-sense prank. I came up with an ingenious idea courtesy the countless movies I have watched, I took out my old tripod and set up my camera, I stealthily placed it behind the table. Every night I slept late and woke up as early as possible to check the footage, to find nothing, I would delete it and set it up for the night again. Two weeks passed and nothing happened, just when I was about to reach my threshold, a breakthrough. To my incredulous astonishment and strange relief; I found a monkey arranging my cutlery in the footage. It was not one of those monkeys you see in India, the primate version of golden retrievers, it did not have the typical pale yellowish fur and sunken eyes, it was rather completely black and had flaring nostrils. With its disproportionately long limbs and a tail that looked as strong as an elephant’s trunk, I was taken aback by its appearance, not by its unusual habit of arranging cutlery. The monkey looked familiar, something I might have seen on a BBC documentary but I couldn’t place it; after some online research, I found it was a spider monkey mostly found in the jungles of Mexico and South America. Aarey was definitely full of monkeys jumping off trees, snatching food from locals, and in general creating ruckus but a spider monkey was an alien here, I personally had never seen one. Now that the scope of paranormal activity was ruled out, I didn’t know how to react to this unusual incident. I did think it was a good story and could probably make it to one of those viral video pages, but even that was a tedious task, so I left it at that.

The next Sunday I opened a beer bottle at breakfast, what are Sundays for if not to be squandered away aimlessly. The soothing Beethoven’s silence concerto for background effect put me in deep slumber; I was woken up by a thud. The monkey was in the kitchen, he stood there with a spoon in its hand. Serving my basic instinct I ran behind the door, I thought he would just leave but he stood there transfixed. I shouted “Shoo, shoo”, increasing my volume with every shriek, a classic animalistic technique to show you are in control but he did not budge. A few minutes later, he broke out of his trance, placed the spoon on the table and left through the sliding door, and on his way out, slid the door back in. My kitchen had a sliding door that opened to a small balcony; all this while I had never thought of closing it from the inside, from then on I locked the door from inside. One morning I saw the monkey outside in the balcony, his eyes imploring me to open the door as if asking for permission. Unlike other monkeys he did not move swiftly nor did he have the typical aggression of displaying his canines, he looked too old and frail to make hasty jumps from trees but had the wisdom to know that if you wait patiently the universe has a way to reward you. Before leaving for office I opened the inside lock on the kitchen door; it was a gamble but it paid off, I came back to a symmetrically arranged set of spoons and dishes on the table; we had come to an unsaid agreement. The following Sunday I kept the door deliberately open; I scattered a few biscuits in the balcony, hoping he would take them as an invitation, I felt a strange kinship with him, something which can’t be penned down. I relished my solitude, but too much of it causes loneliness, and what had the time come to, I sat alone waiting for a monkey to come visit me. The entire afternoon passed, then it quickly became dark; he didn’t come, I was angry at him, a feeling of betrayal lingered on as if a promise was broken. With nothing much to do, I opened a beer can, I had a full crate in my fridge. I put Vivaldi’s Storm on the speakers; I liked how the concerto opened with rage and then slowed down like a lullaby that put you to sleep, but just like a storm just when you think it is over, the concerto comes to life again with the last spurt. I must have dozed off, I am not quite sure but I remember seeing him, sitting parallel to me but at a distance. With its eyes closed, it swayed his head with the movements of the concerto, his lanky arms moving like that of an amateur conductor. Sitting next to him I could see how old he was, his face was wrinkled and the veins on his temple looked like frail blue embroidery. My movement must have alerted him, he was taken aback like a thief caught red-handed, he took a step back and then he spoke. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you”, instead of shouting in paranoia or biting myself out of this dream I said, “No! I am sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you”. I don’t know how I accepted this improbable situation, it only seemed fair that I respond to his gentleness and chivalry with equal respect and etiquette. The monkey paused for a moment, then like a parent explaining his intrepid child, he said “I am sure, you would want an explanation to this”. I did not say anything; it was obviously a rhetorical question. He said, “I have lived here for long, longer than most people you see here today. You can guess from my appearance that I am not indigenous to this jungle. I don’t know where I belong but I was born here, the zoo to be more precise. I had a comfortable life there, I was close to my mother, food was abundant; the space was small but I didn’t care as I didn’t like to move much, I think it is a thing about our species. At the zoo, humans would throw empty bottles at us, make faces to incite us but would leave agitated because we didn’t jump or shriek like other monkeys, they wanted a witness our anger, our wild savage acts but we never gave in. My mother was particularly a rebel, she would often turn her back to the humans, she said that humans were cowards; they try to incite us while standing behind the safety of iron bars; if they had any guts, they should try this in the wild. Things were manageable until one day; there was a huge storm, the rain just wouldn’t stop, soon the zoo, the city, everything was flooded. The deluge killed many humans, many animals in the zoo died too, they drowned in the water as there were no zookeepers to help. Even my mother died in a fatal accident, she slipped a step and fell into the flooded water, we cried for help, I could see my mother’s voice getting muffled, it made me scream even harder, I kept screaming even after she was gone. I spent the night alone; the next morning I saw some monkeys leaving the zoo, some animals at the zoo survived this ordeal, especially the ones who could climb trees. I followed the monkeys of the other species, for them this was liberation, freedom at last; I wasn’t sure what it meant for me but I knew I could not stay there anymore. I tried to mingle with the other monkeys after we reached Aarey, although there was always an undercurrent of hatred, one day their leader bluntly said I was an outsider, I did not belong with them, and it was better if I leave and go back to my native land. There was no point in arguing; acceptance comes from the heart, not from the land; I accepted my fate as it came. Survival is not exactly difficult here, food was never a problem, there was enough in the dumpster near human colonies or if you were one of those types who hated privilege you could forage your own food, the jungle had ample opportunities. I lurked around the human colonies as it was the easier way out. Humans are strange creatures I must say; I have had my share of bittersweet experiences with them. There is a temple nearby, the other monkeys used to go there because you could get fresh bananas unlike the smelly and rotten ones you get in the dumpster, so one day I went there but my presence provoked violence, one human tried to hit me with a stick, I convinced myself that he did it out of fear, not out of hatred. I don’t understand where this fear stems from, where this prejudice comes from, was it because of the way I looked or was it because I was just different from what they expected; I never went to the temple again. I must tell you, I have a really special connection with this house, before you, a child used to live here who you could say was my friend. Even though I had picked up a few words at the zoo, it is here that I learned the language properly. The child’s parents used to stay out a lot, he told me his parents had important jobs; the child longed for their attention but his parents were either too tired or too busy. This lack of attention forged our relationship, he taught me how to speak and talk in English, I didn’t teach him anything in return, I only practiced what he taught; even with the power language I didn’t have much to say, maybe it is true that you speak through experiences, not through words. I guess his intention was pure yet self-serving; he just wanted a person or an animal who would listen to him, understand him, he treated me as an equal, not as an animal. It is he who taught me to arrange cutlery, he used to say table manners are very important, his parents had told him that; he was convinced that if I could learn table manners I would be half-human, not that I had any interest in becoming human but I played along anyway. Every night before his parents came back he would arrange the cutlery, arranging the spoons and forks according to their size, he would set up the plates and place the spoons and forks next to them taking extra care that all spoons and forks were equidistant from the plates. He would go around the table to eye his arrangement from different vantage points and coming back to make feather handed changes. His parents would come back to see this immaculate display, praise him for his attention to detail, hug him and encourage him to keep getting better at it; this gesture was enough for the child to keep going, it became a ritual, every day before his parents came we would set up the table, we had finally figured out the mechanism of love; that is why I kept setting your table, I wanted you to know I care, and see, here I am, finally talking to you. The child was right; this mechanism never fails if you follow it with sincerity. He used to say it was all about mathematics, about precision but I mostly followed my intuition, I could never perfect it like him. I generally don’t talk to humans, but you reminded me of that child; even he liked to listen to this kind of music, the kind which doesn’t have words, he used to say it helps him study. I came here because you reminded me of him, you know we three could have been friends, I can see that happening. The three of us have a lot in common, we are quiet observers, we like to take a seat and watch how the universe unfolds. I think I have said enough. I hope it made sense, I will bid goodbye now”. I did not say a word in the conversation, mostly because I didn’t have anything that you could add value; after all, you don’t speak with words but with experience. I hurried so that I could open the door for him but he walked himself out. I could only conjure a feeble Goodbye to which he said “Goodbye, my friend”.

The next day I tried to make sense of this bizarre experience; this extraordinary story demanded to be told but I thought maybe I should keep it to myself, maybe speak of it only in an extraordinary situation. But I did want to play detective, I thought of calling the house owner and asking if any of the previous tenants had any episodes with monkeys, I had to be very discreet about it to not sound ludicrous. I called the owner late in the evening asking if the previous tenants complained about monkeys entering the house or anything as such; he thought about it for a while and said “I don’t remember any such incident. But make sure you don’t put food outside in the balcony, it is bad manners.”

I am not a diehard fan of Sushant Singh Rajput, I haven’t even watched all his movies; yet he has this invisible influence on me, his sudden demise brings about bittersweet memories, some of him and some of my past.

It was 2016, around the festive time of Navratri, but due to bad luck and some complicated situations, I was stuck in this rather obscure town with an annoying girl. Me and the girl didn’t really get along, we had nothing in common but we had no one but each other. There was only one place to hang out in that town was the mall, which was pretty much just a Big Bazaar and a movie theater. We decided to go watch the only movie they were playing M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, although I don’t watch Bollywood movies regularly but I was kind of excited after watching the trailer as it showed glimpses of Kharagpur, the place where I studied engineering for four years. I had never even heard of Sushant Singh Rajput until that point, but I was genuinely impressed by his performance and left the theater with a smile on my face. The girl with me also liked the movie; finally, we had something in common.

A few months later, that girl didn’t seem annoying anymore, I kind of looked forward to seeing her every day; we had started dating. Because me and the girl had such different personalities, we would often joke that there is no way that we would ever end up together, although we both secretly hoped that we did. She would often jokingly say “ Humare pass time hai na, Maahi”, it’s the same dialogue the female lead says to Dhoni in the movie who is unsure of the future of their relationship.

Although I had toyed with the idea of being involved in the creative field, I never took it seriously. I was getting by with my corporate job, I had a girlfriend, the beach was nearby; I really had nothing much to complain about. I would often go to the Prithvi theatre to watch plays alone; later my girlfriend started to accompany me either out of interest or out of compulsion, or maybe both. Once we went to see a play by Makrand Deshpande at Prithvi theatre, although we had seen TV serial actors there, we didn’t expect to see Sushant Singh Rajput. He came in just before the start of the play and sat a few seats away from us. My girlfriend was visibly excited to see him, she wanted an autograph but was afraid that he would refuse and she would be embarrassed in public. Even I was afraid of embarrassment, but a sudden impetus gave me the courage to walk up to him. I asked for his autograph but he politely refused; he said: “Listen if I give you an autograph right now, everybody else will come up and ask for an autograph, it would disturb the performance”. There was no way I could reason with that logic but before leaving I tried once more. This time I lied and said “I am here with a girl if I can get your autograph, it would really impress her”, to this he smiled coyly and said, “I am sure you will find better ways to impress her”. He said let’s try after the show, and I quietly said to myself “Humare pass time hai na Maahi”. He left as swiftly as he showed up, we couldn’t get his autograph that night.

Sometime later, it happened. Me and my girlfriend finally broke up, we were both surprised that we had made it this far. But it reached a point where we made each other’s life difficult, I guess we both started to find each other annoying again. As my girlfriend left, the world I had built came crashing down. Nothing made sense anymore; within a week I decided to quit my job and moved back to Delhi without any plan. It was during these months, remembering my conversations with my ex that I read about Sushant Singh Rajput. It was only then that I actually started to truly admire him. Although I knew that he was a self-made man, that he had no godfather; I didn’t know he was one of the toppers of AIEEE and a National Physics Olympiad winner. My respect for him increased multiple folds. I had an opinion that Bollywood actors are just a bunch of brutes and fools, who know nothing except their protein shakes and pompous parties. My views were rather cemented due to some unpleasant experiences in Bombay. Although I had bought a camera and developed an interest in photography, I never took it seriously until that point, making a career out of my hobby was not even a dream then. But reading about Sushant, set me off in a direction that day. I have had a few bumps, deviated a little again when I joined another corporate job which I started hating in exactly 6 hours but got back on track again. I haven’t reached my destination, it’s a long way but I hope I am on the right path.

I followed Sushant on social media. He used to post pictures and trivia about physics, about fractals, about meditation, about wildlife documentaries, about art. I was never bowled over by his acting; what truly inspired me about him was that even though he had become a part of the Bollywood industry, he never let his inner child die, always curious about science and how our world works. When I was switching to the arts field, I was afraid that I would lose the person who used to love science so dearly. Sushant showed me that it was possible to be true to yourself, that if you try you can pull a balanced act. He had recently posted on Instagram about how he started learning to code on Khan Academy; the glamour of Bollywood didn’t bog down his intellect and curiosity. On some level, I feel Bollywood didn’t deserve Sushant Singh Rajput.

There was a negligible probability that I would have ever known Sushant Singh Rajput personally, but with his death, even that fractional probability has become absolute zero. I don’t know what pained him so much that he had to take this step, but I hope wherever he is, his pain has subsided and he now rests in peace. May his family find the strength to bear this loss and constant hounding the media.