The Balmy Breeze

A shot of the Queen's Necklace, Marine Drive at night from Nariman Point, with flood lights in full bloom at Wankhede and Brabourne Stadiums.

As I was walking westwards from the Maharashtra Vidhan Bhavan, towards the NCPA, the sight of the still, rustle-less trees felt unusually odd. From across the street, the cold concrete promenade of Marine Drive looked soothing on this warm evening. I could still see the lamps faintly flickering in the sky—complementing the brightly lit pearls of the Queen's Necklace, not to mention the two irksome chandeliers flaring at Wankhede and Brabourne Stadiums.

Drenched in artificial light, I reached my regular haunt, reeking of brine and spent diesel. Carefully looking down as I climbed the foot-high pavement, I heard a whisper. The familiar voice piqued my interest. A quiet satisfaction spread around me, as if I had been waiting for the arrival of this very specific message. Curious to find its source, I raised my head to see a pitch-black sky, ornamented with strokes of white chalk—like a blackboard! Suddenly, I was transported to my usual spot in the classroom—dressed in a yellow half-shirt, a maroon tie, and navy-blue pants—a 12-year-old me had seen something so remarkable, he couldn't help but yell a whisper into the future!

If my memory serves me right, it was something written in my English textbook. The full phrase might have been "...a balmy breeze blowing...", though I’m only certain of 'balmy breeze'. What does it even mean? Nobody explained, and I never cared enough to ask. After all, how much could it really matter? Not once did I think that it would set me off on a decade-and-a-half-long journey.

Every few years, it resurfaces like a flashback from a past life, leaving me restless. It's a difficult feeling to express in words—like recalling a memory you don't have yet, a déjà vu that's happening in the future. A feeling most comparable to being wide awake in a pitch-dark room, time slipping by, yet nothing to show for it. Nonetheless, life goes on.

Days pass, people change, and so do you. But some things, concealed in mundane thoughts and simple acts, linger far longer than they should. Today, I was working a little late, eagerly waiting for my ritualistic evening stroll by the Marine Drive—a personal reward for surviving the day. After all, watching the Queen’s Necklace adorn the Arabian Sea every other day is a privilege few middle-class Indians have access to.

So, I shut my laptop, filled my bottle, switched to my walking shoes, punched out of the office and rolled up my sleeves as I stepped down the stairs. Noticeably, the usual evening chill was missing. "Summer will be here soon," I thought, like Kousei Arima. You miss out on a lot when you spend the whole day in a temperature-controlled room. And with no zephyr on the footpaths and avenues of Nariman Point, I was already visualising the agony of the hot local train ride back home. For what doth a man yearn? A refreshing windy refuge at the Marine Drive.

I walked past The Oberoi, crossed the street looking left and right, and as I stepped onto the foot-high pavement of the promenade—now, this is the moment—I froze. Just for an instant, time stopped. And me? I just witnessed fiction turn into reality, as a stream of warm, light, cloudy breeze, radiating a sea of coziness and comfort, seeped into my soul like a lukewarm massage on a cold morning.

For a fleeting moment, I was in reverie, wrapped in a thick, warm blanket like a child; hanging by a thread at the twilight of conscious slumber and drowsy awareness. Under that blanket lay the path to my classroom, where I wanted to go back and tell that 12-year-old how it actually feels; that the wait was worth it. But hey! Who am I to hand out spoilers to a child?

In that moment, I became one with the author who once wrote of a "balmy breeze". Now, I understand what he meant. A subdued smile seized me as I walked to the railway station, thinking of an author who let a 12-year-old travel through time.