Issue August 1 – 14, 2003

Beyond unexplored doors, lives very different from our own are lived

Waiting in hotel lobbies can be fun... sitting unseen, watching a slice of life in action, watching the world go by.

Last week saw me doing just that. Only this time I ended up watching not people, but exploring a painting.

There were two paintings, and they were tucked away into the curve of a wall. Chances were that someone passing by would catch a glimpse, and forget about them, the very next moment. But I had nothing to do, no book to read, and it was too early in the morning for the usual crowds to float by. So I looked at the paintings.

Alike, yet different, the paintings were of deserted living spaces, occupied by shadow and soft sunlight.

One showed what could be an entrance to an old house on a street in the old quarter of a town; the other was modern and grand and showed a wrought iron gate, beyond which were fluted arches in stone that led to a grassy courtyard.

The old doorway held a certain mystery. Wooden, with paint peeled off in patches, it had two steps leading up to it, on which for now, the sunlight lay like a warm doormat. Beyond the opening, more steps stretched upwards into the darkness of the interior, and most probably led up to the house upstairs.

THE road in front of the door was cobbled in patches, as unkempt as the door itself, but here too, patches of sunlight lit up spaces that seemed to hold a lightness in them.

I stepped into a patch of sunlight and walked up the steps to the door. Holding my breath, I pulled it open. It swung open with surprising ease, without crumbling into my hands, as I had thought it would. Looking around quickly, I started up the stone steps that lay cold and quiet underfoot.

The walls on either side of the narrow, almost dark staircase were cold and the paint that had once coloured them green was almost a memory. A spider, startled, scuttled up to the ceiling which held a tapestry of cobwebs.

And then, I reached another door that stood open. I crossed the threshold and stepped into a room with no windows, except one at the far end. A cold cement floor not yet cleaned, for pieces of paper and an orange peel’s remains lay scattered, held the room together.

I picked up one of the pieces of paper, it was a torn medical bill. An iron cot, with a thin mattress, stood on one side, against a blank wall. A quaint brass spittoon was placed at the foot of the bed. A wooden table and a few clothes at the back of a folding iron chair was all that the rest of the room held. The person, to whom the room in turn belonged, was nowhere in sight.

I stood wondering till, with a clearing of the throat and a hawking that must have made the spittoon wince, the unseen owner alerted me to the fact that he was behind the only other door in the room, which must lead to the bathroom.

Afraid of being caught out in my intrusion, I turned quickly and went down the dark steps, into the light.

I stepped into the street and found myself back on the chair, in the cool, air conditioned quiet of the hotel lobby.

My little journey and what I had seen held me in thrall. I wondered about the man whom I had heard but not seen. Was he old, or just sick and poor? He obviously lived alone, had he no wife, or children, or grandchildren, who dropped in on him to listen to his tales and sit on his lap and make him smile?

Who was he? The artist’s father? A casual subject, whose door had caught the artist’s fancy? The artist himself... reduced to penury by neglect and old age?

There were of course, no answers. But I had a vision of how many lives lived their different courses behind the many doors that dot our cities and towns and villages.

The Editor