Issi Miyake and the nostalgic nose

It was the scent that got him first; the feel of her hands came after. The bottle of Issi Miyake fell to the floor spewing out its fragrant contents at his feet.

The memories flooded.

He could see her before him, as if conjured genie-like from the multi-coloured bottle. His hand reached out for something to support him as his knees buckled under the weight of regret and reflection.

Her image turned her back to him and walked to the bed, where it sat looking up at him.

She smiled.

He looked away and glanced at the bare light bulb that dangled from the broken lamp fitting. Her smell was strong.

He looked at her; she smiled again, this time slightly unsure.

“Don’t you remember me,” she said.

“Only too well,” he murmured staring at the rapidly-evaporating puddle of perfume that began to cool his toes.

“Once that’s gone I will be too,” she looked at the bottle, stood up and placed a hand on his cheek: it felt like an anvil had been dropped on his chest.

“I know.”

“Do you miss me?”

“Too much to feel it anymore.”

She held his head in her hands and he inhaled deeply. The smell reminded him of his youth, of long drives and New Radicals; of midnight stealth and unbridled passion.

It reminded him of what he had lost.

He cried, she sighed.

The scent dimmed, and she looked towards the window. “This too shall pass. You should know, that’s what you always said,” she giggled slightly, and then seeing his pained expression looked away.

The smell was ebbing and he breathed in ever-deepening gasps. He wanted it in his lungs, in his marrow. He would never see her again; this was his last chance to be part of his past.

“Why did you go?” she asked, toying with the end of the bed sheet.

“Why didn’t you stay?”

“What for? So that we could both be single at 70?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Oh D— you know so little about life. You reduced your life to emotional carnage; you created the monsters that trouble you today. All I ever wanted was normalcy.”

“We can still have normalcy.”

“I have normalcy.”

The image before him shimmered, faded slightly and then refocused. She was leaving.

He breathed deep again, and sat on the bed by her side.

“It could have been great.”

“My darling, it was great. We, however, weren’t great enough to make it last,” she smiled and ruffled his hair.

“Maybe next time?” he said as he watched her rise and head for the window.

“Maybe.” She turned and looked at him. She was crying now. Her tears didn’t come in sobs, they trickled. She had emancipated herself from his cruelty, but her tears still genuflected.

“I’m afraid one day I will awaken and be unable to remember,” he said, his voice now had a pleading timbre to it.

“Don’t worry there’s always Issi Miyake,” she said and disappeared.

He watched her fade away and the air left his body in a great sigh. It soared and he with it. He looked down on his form from on high: a frail man bent under the weight of misspent years.

He watched the man pick up the bottle and lay its disappearing contents on his pillow. He watched as he lay on the bed and placed the pillow in his arms.

That’s how they found him the next morning. The coroner said he died of a heart attack.

At his wake one of his friends joked that he died due to a perfume overdose.

“That room stank of Issi Miyake,” he laughed, and the room did too.

At the back of the room, a woman wept. She reached into her handbag for a tissue, and found it next to her bottle of perfume. She clutched the bottle tight. It was now her link to him. The fragrance would always remind her of the last thing he ever smelled. Even in death, he had linked himself to her.

She would never escape…now she would stop trying.

That front page story wasn't mine

Anyone who read that puerile story on page 1 (with my byline on it) should know that it was not originally written in that shoddy manner. Here's the original text, please forgive the morons, for they literally know not what they do.

Head: Before I die, I want to…

Strap: From swimming with sharks, to drinking and paragliding, Mumbaikars have some strange things on their Bucket List

Byline: Dean Williams & Munira Chendvankar

If you thought Mumbaikars who spent a quite evening at home as the clock counted down to 2008 twiddled their thumbs, you’d be so far off the mark, William Tell will be spinning in his grave. They were pondering something profound.

“I want to travel to space,” says 24-year-old Jacob Rebeiro. “I want to see if the earth looks the way it does in all the Hollywood films.”

“I want to take a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway,” says NGO-worker Kiran Shekhar. “Doctor Zhivago is my favourite film and I love the setting.”

Are these the simple aspirations of city-dwellers hemmed in by the urban sprawl? Not quite, these are just a couple of entries from Mumbaikars’ Bucket Lists (a list of things to do before you kick the bucket).

The Internet has so many of these lists, it’s hard to know where to start, and the suggestions are often ridiculous, you’d rather just stay in bed and…well…die.

Wanderlist for instance, cites ‘falling in love’ as one of the top 10 things to do. The fact that love is wholly subjective and inevitably leads to depression seems to have slipped their minds completely. The website AskMen lists ‘become a millionaire’, as though all you have to do is pass a written exam, and so far you’ve just been too lazy to do it.

Of course, it’s not all ramblings of vapid list-writers; there are some genuinely helpful suggestions too. The BBC’s list includes ‘Walk the Inca trail’, and ‘See the Northern Lights’, both genuinely good ideas, that involve two essential human needs: the need to travel, and the need to be awed by nature’s (and, at times, man’s) ability to conjure sublime beauty.

Mumbaikars, however, are not looking as far afield as Finland or Peru, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a sense of adventure coursing through their veins.

“The one thing I would love to do before I die is go skydiving in Barbados,” says model, Shayan Munshi, who goes on to state that he couldn’t imagine dying before he accomplished this. Skydiving seems to be one of the dominant entries on Mumbai’s Bucket Lists.

In keeping with the adventurous trend housewife Anita Almeida says she wants to “swim with Great White sharks.” Almeida has never seen Jaws and as such may be a tad too eager to doggie-paddle with nature’s most efficient hunter.

Shreyasi Bhattacharya, a student, wants to take drinking and driving to the next level: Drinking and paragliding. “I would like to sip the world’s most expensive wine while paragliding over an uncharted island,” she says. That feat in itself might get her into the record books, but she seems unfazed by any references to the fate of Amelia Earhart.

War zones and all their catastrophic environs also seem to lure the intrepid Mumbaikar: journalists Yashshri Soman and Arun Das want to cover a war.

“I would love to cover a live war as a reporter for a leading TV channel. Also, I hope I can achieve some kind of record in this field, as a woman,” says Soman.

Das, however, just wants to wear a flak jacket like his idol John Simpson: “It looks and sounds cool, and I would really like to try it before I die.”

Shalini Puri, a BPO executive, when told that Orlando Bloom’s Bucket List lists ‘Learn to play the Bongos’, is beside herself with joy. “That’s on my list too, along with ‘learn to play the piano’. Maybe Orlando and I could form a band,” she says.

But for many Mumbaikars, the Bucket List is more than just a database of selfish pursuits. It’s a chance to realise a philanthropic spirit often bushwhacked by globalisation.

Singer Kailash Kher says that he wants to see India a developed and economically independent country before he dies. “A true, shining India. That’s what I want to see.”

Rohan Jhungare, a student, is refreshingly pragmatic when he says that, for him, it’s about leading a life sans regret: “Before I die, I want to look back and say I’ve led a full life, without regrets. That’s the only thing on my Bucket List.”

The continuing rise of ‘Things-to-do-before-you-die’ lists and books is a global phenomenon: Patricia Schulz’s phenomenally popular bestseller 1,000 Places To See Before You Die, has been reincarnated as calendar, and Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are starring in a new film titled…you guessed it…The Bucket List.

But eventually it all comes down to death and our morbid preoccupation with it. Maybe we should all take the advice of Somerset Maugham: “Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.”

Mr Maugham’s advice goes straight to the top of my Bucket List.

The old man

He was the oldest man in the world, and he sat in my cupboard. In his milky eyes shone the glimmering oriflammes of a million years of life.

He smiled at me yesterday, as I reached over him to get a shirt.

“Is it time?” he asked, his crows’ feet taking flight as he smiled a grizzled beam.

“Not yet,” I said and opted for a black T-Shirt.

He has been sitting there for a while, occasionally he will leave to go and sit on the park bench and watch her play with her grandchildren, but otherwise he prefers to sit in the dark and shine a light on the past.

He was young once, and travelled the world in search of her. He found her and they danced, oh how they danced ‘neath the bemused stares of cosmic witnesses on the beaches, and under the grim urban gaze as they tripped the light fantastic down on mainstreet.

Yesterday I saw him crying. Maybe crying isn’t the right word, it was only one lazy tear — none too concerned if his brethren followed him down the age-scarred skin of the old man’s face. It trickled and then stopped half-way down. It was almost as if, knowing its inevitable demise on the cupboard’s wooden floor, stopped to take stock of its short life. I hope it made its peace before it splattered into a briny oblivion.

The old man says less and less as the years pass. She has died, and the park bench holds no visions for him anymore.

He will sometimes mutter something, but I fail to catch the words as they escape his cracked lips and fly away into the space between our worlds.

Yesterday I opened the cupboard to get a pair of jeans, and he asked me: “Is it time?”

“Yes,” I replied. “It is.”

The old man got up and left. As he walked out the door he turned to me and said: “It’s all in the memories. The answers to all the secrets are already known. You just have to find them.”

I am dying now. It has been 30 years since the old man left. Yesterday I sifted through my memories and found a face I had buried. The face still smiles and I smile back, but not very often.

I now spend most of the time in the cupboard. Yesterday when my son came to get a pair of short I asked him if it was time.

“Not yet,” was all he said.