It is late night. I am returning from Leuven. I have just entered the city and the strains of "Kabhi Kabhi Aditi" has just started. There are not many cars on the street - the winter night has already set in - it is dark outside and the lights come from the street lamps, the windows of the apartments lining the main street and casting their yellow glow onto the pavement, the red car tail-lights and the alternating red, yellow, green lights from the traffic signals. There is a cool bounce in the air outside the car - the air inside has a steady warmth in it.
I see a stray bluish silver glow in the cigarette holder below my music system. Oh no! I just got the inside of the car cleaned a couple of weeks back.
....
I had pulled into the car wash one afternoon when my laptop was being configured at work. A face with familiar characteristics walked up to me.
"Aap Urdu bolte hain?" (Do you speak Urdu?) - the young face asked me.
"Nahin, mein Hindi thodi bahuth bolti hoon" - I said conscious, in front of the typical north Indian accent, of the fact that I can make many gender related mistakes in a full sentence. A smile spread on his face on knowing that we had a different "own" language to converse in than French. We continued to arrange the time to pick up the car and the activities to be performed on the car in Hindi - both happy to revert to pseudo native tongues. As we spoke, another person came and took the key from my hand.
"Aap CD mein gaana sun sakthey hain" - I said. He looked at me blankly and I repeated in Hindi.
"He is from Morocco and he does not understand Hindi". I blanched with embarrassment at thinking that everyone with same colour and featuers must be from the subcontinent.
"You can listen to the songs from the CD if you want" - I repeated in English and he nodded.
About 45 minutes later I left with a gleaming car, and the mobile numbers of 4 people working in the car wash and their families.
"We stay in Molenbeek and we have a large family - all our families live there and we get Hindi film DVDs. You must visit us and eat with us". It is Ramadan now - a good time to take them up on their offer. I should call them one day.
....
She is an older Greek lady. My refrigerator and washing machine had just arrived. I had gone downstairs to give instructions on how they could bring it up. She was at the doorbell waiting for someone. She said Hello first.
"I am buying an apartment here" - she said. "Do you live here?".
"I just moved in. I am getting my refrigerator now".
She looked outside at the truck and at the refrigerator. She helped me give instructions to the delivery people.
"I have to show my future studio apartment to some possible tenants. Which place do you stay? - I can come up and see you before I leave".
I indicated to her the floor where I stayed and gave her my name. She came up later, looked through my apartment completely and complimented me on my new refrigerator. She took my mobile number and left. I wrote hers down in my red diary which I had carried from Walldorf to Lausanne and back to Brussels. In the months that followed I got embroiled in my troubled life, lost the rest diary and forgot the old Greek lady.
About a month back, I was really down with no friend in Brussels and feeling completely lonely after a very difficult day. I was off on a business trip to US the next day, not at all motivated about going to another place, living in hotel for a week (very unusually for me) and so on. I opened the front door to the building and there she stood.
"I am buying one more apartment" - she said - "I lost your mobile number and so I could not reach you and never found you at home".
She said she would accompany me while I went to a nearby internet center for me to take printout of my ticket. Later, after I packed, we went out for a drink together and promised to meet up after I was back.
.....
So there I was in the car this winter night, feeling positive about the new people I was meeting from outside work. I picked up a leaf next to the bluish silver paper of Mentos cover and rolled down the window to throw the leaf out. A wave of natural street air filled me. As a small child, we did not have A/C in the car. My father and grandfather had cars where we had to drive with windows rolled down - as was normal in India. The air was not pollution free - it had the fumes of the vehicles. The music was punctuated by sounds of stalling engines, accentuated by a couple of horns here and there. The sounds of the street combined with the air lifted my already positive spirits - this was reality. A reality of connecting with life outside the car, of being one with the people outside who were leading different lives - one that I had felt shut off from when the windows were rolled up and I was encoused in my own cocoon.
I now leave my window down when I drive within the city - it is a completely different world altogether that I drive though....