Bombay and The Queen's Necklace

CHAPTER 1

Janani, in her mid-twenties, was 'the new girl in the city'. She was attaining her much needed peace amidst the busy crowded life of Mumbai, or Bombay as Janani liked to call it. That was the name she knew from her favourite Bollywood movies. The city wasn't loud enough to disrupt the calmness she had. She was in Bombay Marine Drive, her current peace spot. Sketching the beautiful sea infront of her onto sketchbook she was trying to forget the memories of two weeks of imprisonment for a crime she never intended to commit and the dark days she had suffered post bail.

Though an introvert, this Keralite girl was brilliant in her academics right from childhood and was a rank holder in B.Arch. She had minimum friends and no romantic relationships. An outsider might see her as a boring person, but Janani quite loved the sweet, simple and lonely world she lived in. Those days were no more.

She was now in Bombay, drawn by the escape it gave her. A new atmosphere with no one staring at her, be it with sympathy, empathy or pettiness. The sea breeze was brushing her chubby cheeks, her long hair swaying along with it. That was all she wanted then.

"Didi, that uncle gave this". A small boy selling hydrogen balloons gave Janani a dozen of her photographs of sitting in the shore and sketching the sea, which included pictures of that day and previous days.

**********

There stood Dhruv on the same Marine Drive with a camera hung to his neck and waving towards Janani.

Four years of engineering taught Dhruv everything except engineering, and he was now a busy freelance photographer for major magazines in Mumbai. Oops sorry, Dhruv too liked to call it Bombay. He used to say that Mumbai is for professionals and intellectuals. Those who could feel the silent beauty the city offered in this busy surroundings still called it Bombay. And Bombay was something emotional, he believed.

A good looking, free spirited, six feet tall man in his late twenties sucking in the sunset and environment of the Bombay marine drive with his Nikon D7500 (which he himself called Nick) almost every evening was nothing new a sight for people out there. The marine drive always looked much prettier when seen through Dhruv's lens. He too completely agreed, 'it is the heart of Bombay'.

'It's not about the frame, it's about the moment', that was what Dhruv followed both professionally and personally. He would add 'I have no regrets about the past, I'm not anxious about the future, I'm just living in the present'. These quotes by Dhruv were a major highlight of the Artico cafe near the marine drive walkway. The cafe owned by a pleasantly plump middle aged Jeevan Bhai was also Dhruv's office where he used to meet the clients and edit the photographs he captured. And an Artico special cappuccino was a must.

**********

Janani didn't like the man with camera hung onto his neck waving at her. And he was coming towards her. She was irritated at the loss of silence she had created. The last thing she wanted was a conversation with a stranger, that too who photographed her without her permission.

"Ma'am, you look stellar in these pictures", Dhruv initiated a talk.

"Excuse me," replied a frustrated Janani.

"I mean.... Just have a look at these photographs."

"You can't just shoot anyone you see."

"I don't shoot anyone I see. I shoot something I feel." Dhruv smiled. "I'm Dhruv and this is Nick", he pointed towards the camera.

Janani was getting more and more frustrated. She wasn't even in a state to argue.

Dhruv continued, "I accidentally saw your sketching. I feel they have some real life in them. For me, Nick is my sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. And--"

Dhruv couldn't complete his dialogue as Janani decided to get out of there as she thought it was not good to mingle more with this stranger in front of her. Walking away, she heard a louder voice, "Please have a look at the photographs. And.... I'm not sorry for what I did." Janani never looked back and continued moving forward.