The High-Rope Walker

“How long have you been doing this sister? “

With a show of fingers, she illustrates the number 10, twice.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask the unit of measure, so I deviated,

“Do you like tea?”

After a longer pause, she whispered,

“I like ganja better.”

A self-proclaimed lummox – she stood bathed in the afternoon light by her balcony’s threshold in a tiny Mumbai apartment. I shan’t tell you her name yet because really what’s in a name… but I will tell you that she moved like fire and that you could see the dragon within her.

First, let me tell you how we met.

My brother lives in Mumbai, and sometimes I visit him as all amazing sisters do. On one such trip, I met this woman sitting on one of the water pipelines that cut across the Sanjay Gandhi national park as I was out for a nature walk.  But this story isn’t just about her. Now before I go on I must confess that every time I bring myself to describe her physical attributes something stops me, as much as I would like to tell you how she looked-  all I’ll say is she wasn’t beautiful, not in the normal sense of the word and I only say that because she was pure energy.

And like all energy particles, it was hard to narrow down on her face, it felt like looking at the sun.

She must have been in her mid-twenties, and of course, I never confirmed this, cause age doesn’t matter when someone tickles your soul, right?

She sat there on the pipe draped in a hiked up saree puffing on crisply rolled joint. Being a fellow green practitioner, and all those who are will know that it is a part of our sacred oath to recognise a fellow traveller on the hazy path of bliss. Sometimes to partake and sometimes to just revel in the happiness of the common factor. And so I did. I stopped and smiled.

She looked at me and mumbled in Marathi “come take a hit”. Now I don’t speak the tongue, but I do understand the universal language of Mary Jane. She is as kind as she is green. So I acceptingly approached her, and she came to me. And there we were, Mary Jane, this lady and I sitting on a pipeline watching the sunset.

Taking a big breath in, over the sound of some crackling herb I asked in Hindi, “what do you do?”

She said something and then out of nowhere flipped her self- like a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist onto that pipeline. She stood up straight and without any garnered momentum just back-flipped herself on to that PVC tube. I was gobsmacked and went into a coughing fit from the shock of the action or maybe because I inhaled a rather large amount of smoke as I had just witnessed some ninja shit.

The flipper patted me on the back, almost fell off the pipe as she reached down for something below and raised a Bisleri bottle to my face. As I sipped it, she picked up a stick and began drawing on the loose soil ahead of our step. First, she etched the letter X and then left about one foot of space on it’s right and made another. She then connected the intersections of the letters with a straight line and finished by making a tiny stick figure human on top of it. Though I should have known better especially post that black flip, I looked at her like she was joking. She smiled and nodded and pointed to two trees not too far from us. I saw a rope tied from one to the other. I returned the joint to this human wonder and began walking towards those trees. Before I knew it, she was taking a hit as she calmly walked on that one inch wide- jute gravity defy-er, showing me how it was done.

She was a tightrope walker, her name was Mala, and the soles of her feet were a menacing sight.

I couldn’t contain my excitement- any skill set that takes me to a stage is something to respect and be in awe of. She jumped off and asked me if I wanted to try. I laughed, politely thanked her and blamed my incapacity for trying such a feat on, of course, Mary Jane.

We parted ways soon after; she took a left at some point as I strolled back to my brother’s place.

I would meet Mala one more time, this time in her apartment overlooking the forest of array colony. We smoked some amazing KG she had scored, and she told me all about her life.

Mala didn’t know her parents; she grew up on the streets she said. She spoke Hindi as fast as she did Marathi and fanned herself with her sari ka pallu every few seconds. She told me how she had lost them in a car accident when she was all of three. With no family in the state and no one to claim her, she spent her days with the children of the night and their masters in the twisted underbelly of the dream city. By age five she had begun performing for the inattentive pedestrian audience that is your bread provider when you’re a street child. By age ten she had been performing for five years, raped a few times, taught to pickpocket and even spent nights in jail after being detained by cops.

It’s a lot to take in when you compare what you’d been doing at that age.

Her place was clean, and all its belongings were enveloped with rope. She had ropes hanging of her ceiling, draping her walls, ropes insulating pots and pans, ropes crocheted into a bed and even into hammock looking shelves and basically on any surface, one could wrap a rope on. It was like a rope showroom on weed.

There were four tyre sized cubes of rope her bed frame rested on, covered by a thin layer of cushioning and a small square pillow with a fab India cushion cover. To the extreme right of this one-room apartment was a door which I assumed led into a bathroom. On the wall next to it were the hammock shelves, perched on one was a bright orange box with a Ganesh painted on it – the only thing that seemed rope free. She picked it and up and brought it over to the bed. In it was her stash and an ID card, printed on it was her name and the name of a mall nearby. She flashed it to me proudly followed by an aggressive jerk-off gesture. We both laughed, and there we were again, Mary Jane and Mala and I watching the sunset from her apartment.

She told me that day – that if she hadn’t found Mary Jane, she would not have been around for her 10th birthday. She told me how she had saved her. She told me how she had made her stronger and how that was all she had. For her, it was the one thing that always had her back. Something that knew just how to cheer her up and silence the demons that had had years to brainwash her thoughts. Something that made her look up and hope that there was more to it than that which she had been dealt. For many people, It’s hard to understand all this. So I get it if you don’t. But I understand. I understand what she can be in all her glory.

I never met Mala again. She had moved out of that room when I dropped by a few months later. Some young couple had conformed it into a normal studio apartment, and Mary Jane was not welcome there.

I hope Mala still has Mary to watch her six and is fine wherever she is. For in a country where marital rape is not a crime, legalisation of cannabis is merely a dream. So I wouldn’t be foolish and say let’s talk about legalising it when there are far more important issues to be dealt with. Over the years I’ve struggled with the inability to make the change I wish to see in the world, maybe it the lack of resources, maybe it’s the mind numbing hurdles that meet your path, maybe I’m just not cut out to be an avenger and rid this planet of all it’s evil and maybe, (actually, most probably,) some of you will say stop smoking that shit so you can do more (let’s not do that), but just like Mala I too do believe that there has to be more to us than this, more than this manic, self-obsessed, greedy, destructive lot that we’ve become that we can’t even see ourselves destroying the very earth we stand on. And excuse me if she gives me the hope to do that. So don’t scowl the next time you smell some herb, smile and let yourself try it sometime. I promise you a tiny ray of hope. Even if only momentary. Even if not substantial, even on the risk of you being called a pothead. Because really there is nothing wrong with hoping for a more respectful, cleaner and maybe a greener future. Even if it’s a fleeting daydream caused by cannabinoids.

Chandni Arora Singh is a visual and performance artist with love for all things green