When I think of India I think of padlocks.
Many rooms in which I stayed were locked by padlock – secured by the round clunky iron hearts I associated with bicycles and my childhood, a hard steel arm curling out of and back into the round/square body. One room’s acid-blue door gaped inwards slightly, along the curve of the iron bar the lock secured. “Bring your own padlock,” told me Lonely Planet, “Bring your own padlock” confirmed a sign at the hostel.
A store on Chandni Chowk, Delhi, specialises in different sorts of padlocks. It lies a few doors down from Ghantewala, the ancient sweetmonger.
I think of the women walking around, with long swathes of silk (or cotton, or polyester) curling over and around their bodies, transforming a flat length from Nalli’s into a sari, each tuck and fold like a poem’s stanza, or a word illuminated by being partially obscured.
Sometimes the women wear a burka on top of their saris. Other times, as in Chennai High Court, oversized black suit jackets (blazers) cover the advocates’ saris instead.
I think of the door – not padlocked but just locked – of the male wing of a certain student hostel, blocking off knowledge of the precise events of one important night I’ll never be sure I know the truth of.
I did, as the guide suggested, bring my own padlock. Often, each hostel provided one as well, so, like the women, the rooms ended up double-locked.
I enjoyed having brought my own lock. I could secure – and unsecure – things as I pleased. Much of the time the lock lay in my bag, unlocked, unsecured, unsecuring.
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