Roadways

I believe to arrive is better than to travel. I guess that makes me a pathetic traveler, and I am one. To me, the journey always seems as an inescapable endurance I must succumb to in order to accomplish the seemingly banal task of reaching from Point A to Point B. That’s of course not to mean that I wouldn’t like going places. But it’s just that the widely appreciated charm of travel, adventure and excursion has forever eluded me, making me a ‘party killer’, ‘uninteresting companion’, ‘uninitiated’ and ‘lazy’ among several other things I can’t recall right now.

Initially I thought that’s got to do with the fact that I’ve spent the greater part of my life at a hill station. Not being the person with the strongest gut meant that motion sickness seemed a serious physiological problem that took some years to subside. That means when all my classmates were busy hiking on school picnics, I was the one realizing what anti-peristaltic movements of the alimentary canal feel like. It took some serious physical and mental reinforcements to get past this stage. 

But when I did get to move out and around in the last few years, I realized it was just one of the problems, perhaps the easiest. 

If you really want to feel what a menace over population in India is, take a Roadways bus anywhere in the UP-Uttarakhand-Delhi belt. Private buses would have consolidated my point even more but I don’t want you to risk getting a migraine. 

It’s like everyone wants to go everywhere all the time. And the irony is that everyone’s in a hurry but no one is ever on time! They say in India if you truly want to know a person, you make him sit through a sloppy internet connection on Internet Explorer with a video buffering on YouTube. I say if you really want to know him, travel with him in a Roadways bus on a busy July afternoon. A typical bus journey on these routes is a fuming dungeon- a spiteful cauldron of grappling limbs, yelling women, wailing infants, cussing men and the weak and elderly struggling for un-annexed foot space. Shoulders, elbows and knees become potential weapons as people start swarming into the bus as if it were the last ride out of 1945 Nagasaki. Count your blessings if you’re alone without much luggage else you may not survive the carnage. 

Consider half the job done once you’re inside the thing which, let me remind you, is no better a technological marvel than what the Flintstones drove. The tricky part now is surviving the amusement ride that is a long journey on Indian roads. God bless you if a pissed off elder woman is your nearest neighbor in the close packing- you might have to endure anything from belittling stares to the most mortifying way of asking ‘whether you have mother or sister at home’ when the driver (who thinks he’s on some high speed chase sequence) rams the brakes. You must love the feel of sweat dripping down from all parts of your body for there’s no way you’ll be able to take that hanky out of your pocket. Then someone’s bound to lose their temper on someone over something like 3 rupees (aka change), who gets the vacated seat, a torn currency note blah blah and suddenly fresh unbalanced forces start wrecking the unstable equilibrium. 

The music is the ultimate hallmark of a Roadways bus for it seems as if the industry just stopped producing songs after Kumar Sanu and Alka Yagnik redefined romantic melancholy in the 90s. And the super heavy base speakers hoisting the decibel level to concerning proportions will render your own earphones obsolete. Then there are the hawkers tempting you with the weirdest products in the most ridiculous tones and ways, ranging from multipurpose combs to instant constipation remedies. 

The site outside the window is no different with all sorts of advertisements of ‘hakims’ and ‘dawakhanas’ making you wonder whether you just travelled into an STD ridden African village-whorehouse. Traffic jams and vehicle damage are like complimentary greetings from Transport Corporation. The worst of my experiences involve a flat tyre several kilometers from Moradabad close to midnight and a blown engine 2 hours from Tanakpur- in the middle of nowhere on both occasions.

When the ordeal is finally over, you’ve become a believer- in heaven and in hell. But above all you truly realize, first-hand, what the country and its people are going through each day. All those news channels with their controversy centric or TRP oriented coverage fail to capture the all important and often heart rending reality of what we believe is a developing India. You are relieved to have survived the onslaught but your heart goes out to the millions who must make it a part of their repertoire. 

Actually, this is just a miniscule part of a massive machinery that is ridden with so many design flaws and working defects that it’s a wonder it continues to tag along billions with itself. We (have) become so easily accustomed to (even comfortable with) the scheme of things that its utter inefficiency and pathetic sufficiency is no more a concern to any of us. We have no qualms in littering every mode of public transport, stripping it off seat cushions or lights or fans or other such things which are installed to make the journey easy, even scribbling our feelings for our “soul mate” on the backs of seats, hoping that the girl will totally fall in love when she takes the same bus and seat tomorrow.

All this is what makes me a pathetic traveler. I never really got used to all this, therefore every bit of this and much more bothers me as much as it did the first time. And then there’s the inescapable lull- the mental stagnation of being in a confined space that disturbs my claustrophobic alter ego. But what do I do about it? The same that most of us do about the things we cry about each day- sleep out the entire journey.

I am only getting better at it over time.

Encounter

“…aur kya hona tha? Bahut gussa ho gai madam. Fir bula liya HR walon ne…” The story is abruptly interrupted by the characteristic tune that signals each of the 50-odd workers on Main Line 1 to resume work at their respective stations. It’s a usual day of work for operators in Weld Shop 1B at TATA Motors, as the automatic conveyor- lifeline of all modern industries- moves to the polyphonic tune, advancing each vehicle body to subsequent stations. Our hearty story teller, and his mob of fellow workers, rush back to their respective spots and resume the same 105 second sequence of operations on the chassis that they have to repeat scores of times a day, in keeping with the tight cycle time. 

It’s a baking 47 degrees outside and at least that hot inside the thick safety vest and other protective gear that they put on for 8 hours a day, assembling up to 175 frames of TATA Ace and Magic in that time. If you’ve ferried on any of the latter that have lately replaced the classical Metadoors (so reminiscent of kidnapping scenes of Bollywood movies from the 70s and 80s!) running in the Haldwani-Pantnagar-Kiccha route, chances are it might have been put together inside this very shop by the same men.

“Agle din gaye hum wahan…”, he resumes his interesting tale of an encounter with a hottie from HR after finishing his set of operations, as others from neighboring stations come flocking around.

“Wo boli batao kya bole the mujhe”, the confidence in his stance is palpable. “Humne kaha ‘Madam bahut hot hai’. Wo sab hasne lage. Madam aur gussa ho gai. HR waale sab jaante the ke ye ladka kaisa hai. Ulta madam ko suna diye, ke theek hi to keh raha hai…” and the little group of men share a rare round of laughter at shop floor and return to their spots expecting the next work-piece.

Kishan Rao, barely 5-feet-5, is in no hurry. He is calm, confident, vocal, extremely social and above all, unlike almost all the workers and operators in the huge shop, is so full of happy-go-lucky spirit that he’ll make you forget the pains of an 8 hour a day, 6 days a week load of Industrial Training.

“Yahan pe sab bahut negative hai. Koi apna knowledge baatna nahi chahta. Mujhe bas yahi accha nahi lagta…”  Welcome to the real world, I thought. First few days of industrial experience were enough to elucidate how every one here marks and guards his own little territory very firmly. Forget about guiding, one of us trainees in our formal attire, typically with a pen and a diary in hand, is received with suspicious and contemptuous eyes at almost every workstation.

“Unko lagta hai aap auditing ya time study wale ho. Tabhi sab aise gabhra jate hain, kuch nahi batate…” Kishan explained when I asked him why. Apparently, the thought that one of us with a fancy degree in B. Tech. from a fancy college will boss around them in a few years time, frustrates and infuriates the hell out of them- understandable. 

Life is tough here and wages are low. Kishan is a temporary ITI qualified worker who was employed about an year ago and the lowest in the chain of command. People like him (read ‘cheap labor’) are recruited and trained to perform a very specific task- say handling a pneumatic screw fastener or tagging each vehicle body or operating an overhead conveyor or (like Kishan) performing 22 CO₂ welds in 105 seconds! They must pass a series of tests before they find a permanent job with the company. And what are the odds of one getting recruited; say if 100 were to give these tests, I asked Kishan-

“One…” he promptly replied. “Kaam dhudne walon ki kami thodi hai yahan, 100 jayenge to 1000 aur aa jayenge. Wo dekh rahe ho unhe…” he points to an elderly gentleman on the far end of the conveyor, “22 saal ho gaye unhe company me. Ab line incharge ke sath hume supervise karte hain”, the in-charge being a barely 30 year old with a Bachelor in Technology. The establishment of State Industrial Development Corporation of Uttarakhand Limited way back close to the separation of the state from UP attracted hundreds of companies but also made sure that there was always a renewable supply of unskilled labor.

What these workers (must) do for their daily bread is what all graduating engineers like me (pretend to) read about in our lectures and (barely try to) perform in labs/workshops- machining, riveting, grinding, welding, inspection etc. And they are perfect at it, seemingly irreplaceable i.e. if it had not been for the Training Division of the firm which is ever ready to pump the next stock of ‘cheap labor’, production would come to a halt. 

“To aage ka kya plan hai?” I ask our enthused story teller, as he returns after finishing another cycle of operation. “Are kuch nahi pata” he says as he takes off his nose mask, goggles, gloves and apron, as everybody surrender their equipments and protective gear and rush towards the exit while the line comes to a halt with a reverberating hissing noise. “Aj yahan hain, kal koi aur company le legi. Kaam ki kami thodi hai.” And I catch a glimpse of the guy without all his paraphernalia as he runs across to join his fellowmen. He would barely have been an year or two older to me, max 24, with the hint of a sprouting moustache which seemed more like an underline to his nose. It was 11:15 am, their lunch time- a 20 minute respite from this exercise- no less, no more. Two other 10 minute tea breaks punctuate their 8-9 hour shifts (depending upon demand/production). 

I take off my safety helmet, wipe my brow dry and sit by a side rail close to the assembly as a weird quiet descends over the shop floor. Dozens of unfinished vehicle chassis surround me- the lifeline of the nation. It isn’t surprising, that in a country of a billion like India, these vehicles mean barely anything other than means of reaching from point A to point B. That may be a commute to and from work, journey to a picnic spot, travel back home or anything else. People like Kishan- slogging for hours between sleep and meals under the corporates and engineers of a developing India who earn their riches sitting in their air conditioned cabins to make sure these men work for every penny they manage to save at the end of each month- are just hands; abundant and expendable!

“Hey, kahan reh gaya tha?” a fellow trainee from BIT Mesra breaks the train of thought. “Tea point pe bhi nahi dikha tu? Badi training chal rahi hai lagta hai…” he teases mounting a hand on my shoulder as we walk away together.

“Are nahi yaar, bas aise hi. Chal chalre hain…” I say as we pack our belongings in a bag.

“1 ghanta se upar ho gaya yaar, bahot garmi hai. Teri bari hai aj, yaad hai na…” he reminds me as we leave the shop floor for the canteen for a routine round of mango shake. 

Perhaps we get what we get. It’s got nothing to do with what we deserve.

The Girl - VIII

...after The Final Question

An Epilogue to Chronicles of The Girl

She immersed her face in her palms on her knees and for just this while he knew she was more vulnerable than him…

The seething storm of emotions that she carried, imprisoned within the distracting stillness of her persona had soared to its pinnacle, as she fought herself with all the might she could summon. Apparently, the ferocity was too overwhelming to be restrained any more. It is in moments as these, where our deviously programmed brains find themselves grappling with unprecedented stimuli, for which they have never been customized to yield a rehearsed response, that the purest, most instinctive form of an individual is laid bare. It’s as if you’re The One seeing the Matrix, one bit at a time.

Within the revealing silence that loomed over, shrouding them from the rest of the world, she told more about herself than he could ever have known. When the siege finally receded, the tumultuous emotional commotion had given way to the illusory charm of a familiar smile. Standing before her, a silent beholder to the emotional revelation would be the closest that he would ever be to experiencing time dilation.

Words seemed to evaporate from her lips, leaving behind lonely phrases and useless syllables, painfully insufficient to bridge the gap between mind and tongue- incidentally, the story of his life. In a parallel universe, he would have sat next to her, holding a hand perhaps and in the comfort of silence let the march of time and warmth of touch calm her restless soul. In yet another, he might have dropped on his knees, searched deep into the decapitating infinity of her wonder struck eyes and told her something that she would never forget. In some other…

“I don’t know what to say…” she murmured, running her palms from across her lowered brow, all the way to the back of her head, her unsteady fingers rearranging all the lustrous locks on the way. Then she looked up, the daunting uncertainty writ large on her face over powered only by the hint of a wry smile bordering between innocence and playfulness. Those weren’t exactly the most inferential 6 words. In fact, they lay exactly half way between ‘Yes! You know…’ and ‘No maybe…’ But at least he had something to theorize.

“I can walk you to your hostel, we will never speak a word and keep wondering in awkward amazement and mournful wonder for the rest of our lives as to what went wrong that afternoon…” he suggested, looking deep into her eyes with an uncharacteristic fearlessness.

“Or we could move on…” he reasoned, “…forget about this, at least for a while, in which case we can go for a cup of coffee or something else…” That was not an instinctive response. Those were prepared words that he had chosen with immense caution and great care over a very long time.

They left that moment on the empty bench and walked into the sun. The gentle warmth of the December noon took some time to melt the ice and let all vital signs get back to normal. The walk to the local market was barely noticeable amidst a new realm of conversation and he realized women are the most genuinely curious species on the planet, or so it seemed.

Much to his delight, the gaping seats of the most undeservingly over-priced restaurant on campus longed for companionship. They occupied either sides of one of the lonely tables and a hot frothy round of coffee was served. Being with her there in that moment- with the realization that she knew, at least an abstract of it all- felt more reasonable than anything under the sun, especially those semester finals. It’s truly amusing how we can go about complicating life, blurting all kinds of stuff but not saying the things that we truly want to say.

The warm cup of coffee made steady rounds between the table and her lips, briefly interrupted by a few words. Those deep eyes, now like windows to her soul, seemed busy searching for an elusive something, way below her normal line of sight. She seemed far more composed now, perhaps humbled by the events of the day, but collected. And that was when he found her the most beautiful. Whatever comes their way, whatever happens, for him she will always be The Girl. And with anyone else, if and whenever, it will only be a partial derivative of what it has been with her- far simpler and with lesser power. With that thought, they left the place to its emptiness.

The slow walk on the shadowed road under the canopy of trees was serving a comforting climax to the eventful afternoon. It had turned out to be far more predictable than he had fancied, except for all the emotional turbulence.

“Hey”, she called out, “whatever happens… this doesn’t change”, as they reached her hostel entrance. The soft touch of her fingers in his palm during the generous hand-shake was a stark reminder of the current predicament. He took it as a consolation before seeing her off. With the semester break underway and the ever-extendable hiatus, it might be a long time before they’d see each other now, perhaps even forever. He knew, and had factored it into the scheme of things- maybe it was for the best. A lot had been said but so much still remained- only he knew.

He walked away, replaying and refreshing what could possibly be the last memories of the Girl.

PS: It took her two and a half months to conjure up a reason as to why they weren’t meant to be. It was right out of the opening pages of the first edition of “A Girl’s Handbook for Dumping Proposals”. He could see she was trying hard- her best- to make him feel better, walking besides him through the same shadowed streets where they had last met on that eventful afternoon, the same streets he had come to fancy over time that he’d walk by with the feel of her gentle fingers in his palm, until their long fading shadows would advise them to call it a day.

But perhaps, it was not meant to be. Who can ever know?

You can never make sense of such things in retrospect, joining the dots on their way back. It’s more instantaneous, momentary and subject to transient human whims and fancies. You can’t subject them to the cold judgment that you reserve for the rest of the world, for you don’t deserve a girl for being the hero of your own tale. Such things happen, just as easily as they don’t.

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

Perhaps, she will always be there, or thereabout, standing between him and anyone he wants to feel for, or against the balance of probability- anyone who feels for him.

BUT most importantly, she will also be a stern reminder of how for just once in his entire life, subliminally, he had allowed himself to be so vulnerable for someone. That may be the only way you can truly experience that treacherous emotion called love, but every hour, every minute and every moment of those months spent playing that day in his head over and over again, will shout and rebuke him for never letting that happen ever again for the remainder of his life.

There are two kinds of people in this world- the loved ones and the ones who tried a little too hard…

Thank God I am an Atheist

"Science and religion are like two sides of a coin. One relies on heads, the other believes in tales."

As a child who was brought up in a traditional Hindu family and taught in a typical convent school, I find myself in a rather dubious predicament here. After all those years of chanting prayers, reciting hymns, seeking blessings and making wishes, it almost feels like being bitten at 99, back to square 1 by the longest reptile on board in the game of snakes and ladders. 

Back then, learning by repetition, we are taught not to ask the questions that matter. Now that the good old days are over, it is time to rock a few boats. Treading on what most would term ‘thin ice’, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you have perhaps misunderstood what I said!

Born and brought up in different ways of life- religion that is to say- all of us possess concepts of faith that are derived out of differing texts and when it comes to matters of the Almighty, we are seldom on the same page. The question therefore- for most of us at least- is not whether or not we believe but WHY do we do. The truth may set you free but first it will piss you off.

Most of us believe in God, the Creator- an all powerful being who would have ‘caused the first cause’ and set things rolling to eternity. But, while religion believes, science doubts. It is so because if the ultimate purpose of this all powerful being was to create intelligent (or arrogant?) beings who can raise such questions, then He couldn’t have done a more inefficient job, for the human race wasn’t even around for 99.9999% of the time elapsed since the moment of creation. Therefore it is fairly reasonable to wonder whether or not He created the universe with a purpose and if so, what? 

People working at the frontiers of physics, perplexed by this revelation, are trying to confirm “God Particle” and are closing in on a model of our universe which is ‘finite but with no boundaries’ i.e. completely self contained, having no beginning or end. Then, as Prof. Stephen Hawking quite mischievously puts it, ‘what place for a Creator’? 

Some others believe in God, the Preserver- an all knowing being who knew apples HAD to fall down and not go up, that Carbon HAD to form long chains and crazy rings and who knew how to write and replicate 3 billion lettered codes, comprising of A, T, C and G- the DNA- with errors less than 0.6%. Is it surprising that we can identify laws governing our universe that never change when we also know that the same universe prefers a state of uncertainty and chaos over determinism and order? After all, there is no logical necessity for it to obey rules. 

But even preservation doesn’t quite seem to rank on top of His list of priorities, for natural forces directed by Him have left extinct 99.9% of all species that have ever lived. It seems that when the answers provided by the likes of Newton and Davy and Darwin seemed too complex or heretic to explain the mess we find ourselves in, we chose to believe someone up there orchestrated all of this in six days (by the spoken command “Let there be…”) and rested on the seventh. 

"God created nature to amuse and confuse the man. Man created philosophy to help God do so."

The laws of science that have been developed over the last 300 years have been able to explain the workings of our universe in all but the most extreme conditions. That is, we have a generally accepted theory of exactly what transpired after the Big Bang. But in the dearth of ideas as to what happened before it and in the lack of strong evidences as to what caused it, this event continues to be regarded as divine intervention or the work of God. 

Therefore, we ought to assume that an all knowing all powerful being chose a set of laws- or in the language of elementary mathematics, some very specific ‘initial and boundary conditions’- that govern our world. But if that is true why he now chooses to abstain himself from intervening in the large and small scale workings of the universe, continues to be a mystery beyond the grasp of my intellect. It’s almost like a referee who patiently chalks out the rules of the game but leaves the arena right after the opening whistle and kick-off (perhaps to enjoy it from a suitable vantage point), never to care enough about the score, the fouls or the result, knowing all the while that somehow the smartest of the players will eventually understand the rules and hopefully learn to play by them!

“You can have all the faith you want. But when it comes to this world don’t be an idiot because you can tell me that you put your faith in God to get through the day, but when it’s time to cross the road, I know you'll look both ways.”

It’s a funny world that we live in today, one that reeks of uncertainty and insanity and is sporadically marred by hatred and terror. So, if it makes some even a teensy bit happy to realize that what they read in their Moral Science texts- that everything happens for the good, that they’re here for a purpose etc- is true, then so be it. That is their belief, a notion of a ‘personal God’, someone they thank every morning and evening, for they believe He ‘gives them their daily bread and forgives them for their sins’. For people who couldn’t care enough, religion is shared belief. And belief is nothing but (unquestionable?) faith in something/someone we trust. Needless to say, it is nonsensical to waste time and energy proving/refuting the existence of something we only believe doesn’t/does exist.

"We are all atheists about most of the Gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one God further."

It is however, the concept of ‘absolute morality’ of religion that is most deeply disconcerting. Wars have been waged, heretics have been burned and blood has been spilled over centuries whenever religious fanatics blinded by shared delusions of some militant faith have tried to force-feed people their notion of personal God. Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than to say that all knowledge of good and God is confined in this book or that place of worship? 

Nothing exists in this world apart from atoms and empty space, everything else is opinion. So is good and bad. We create our own demons. What one might consider bad or evil might just turn out to be a different way of life, a radically different way of looking at the same thing. Religion and morality are, and should be, mutually exclusive things- two uncorrelated random variables. Remember- we create our own demons.

I don’t believe in God but I’m afraid of him. Perhaps, in our whim of ignorance and arrogance, we have all been blinded or as Amish said ‘…we beheld gods in what were great men of the past, for we believe that such great men couldn’t possibly have existed in reality. We see magic in what was brilliant science, for our limited intellect cannot understand that great knowledge. We retain only rituals of what were deep philosophies, for it took courage and confidence to ask questions. We divined myths in what was really history, for true memories have all been forgotten’.

Perhaps He has laid all the signs of His existence all around us in The Matrix or within the enormous bounties of nature and is patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper- placing the question of His existence squarely before us all. Perhaps we are not human beings who have a spiritual experience but spiritual beings who have a human experience. Perhaps the only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten you are divine.

"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother."

I find it fitting to borrow the words of Robert Langdon- “Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I’ll never understand God. And my heart tells me I’m not meant to.”

The Girl - VII

The Final Question

The caring warmth of the afternoon sun chasing the distant horizon seemed almost as surreal as the mildly stimulating embraces of the December breeze. The unearthly silence of the most abused street asymptote to the local market, the fortunate yet suspicious absence of civilization, but above all the overpowering magnetism of the girl, almost characterized his most intimately cherished dreams.

It was an aura of musical silence, when an unselfconscious touching of the forefingers would ruffle the alchemy of attraction, as if yearning to evolve into that invigorating sensation of contact poets call ‘romantic’. The feeling of her-charming-self walking beside him was, for all he knew, ‘Nirvanic’. Capitalizing on the graceful setting he had so tried- and destiny contrived- to accomplish, he knew it was time…

Last Night
Had it not been for the blissful silence in his wrecked hostel room two nights after the last semester final, the calming company of solitude which was Vitamin D to him, the comfortably numbing chill of the invading winters and of course for the ‘chance blessings of causality’ he so loved to call ‘signs’, he would perhaps never have managed to muster up enough courage to compile the 4 kb text message that now flashed on his cellular phone-

‘You free tomorrow? Can we meet? Any time.’

It had taken him 6 edits, 4 recursive reconsiderations, 2 spell checks and what seemed like an eternity to set the SMS to the precise point on a scale calibrated between ‘a casual encounter’ and ‘downright desperation’- working with just 26 alphabets can be tricky sometimes. His left thumb hovered over the ‘Send’ button as if possessed by those Gods of love he had never believed in. Few minutes later the questions were a stream of electromagnetic waves, bouncing off the nearest cellular tower to the intended destination.

Nearly all his friends had already rid themselves of the place and there was little reason for him, or The Girl, to still be there and yet now he knew there was nowhere else he’d rather be or no one else he’d rather be with. Perhaps the universe does conspire…

‘Yeah, sure. 11:30?’ she replied. Everything seems longer when you’re waiting for it.

‘Fine by me. See you tomorrow then. Good night.’ The way to a girl’s heart is indeed through her mobile. He mentally checked Step 1 of his Getting the Girl user manual.

12 hours from now he’d know exactly what he’d brought upon himself.

Morning
Moments leading up to the afternoon were surprisingly comforting. Maybe it was because he had always programmed himself to accept any possible response. Human mind is an amazing thing- regret, grief, despair, pain- it forgets almost everything, so you can go out and have some more.

At 11:20 he was headed to the meeting point.

Everything in the universe seemed like a blur against a constant foreground- her. He would find her in a stranger’s voice, in a sudden laughter somewhere, a phrase, a scent, a song, everywhere. Poets wrote about this, and singers sang about it and perhaps it was real, perhaps it existed. Who can ever know? They said love needed some falling and he was afraid of heights.

He saw her coming and instinctively realized he hadn’t seen a mirror that morning. By the time they met, he regretted it. She had deep soulful eyes and long hair that cascaded over her shoulders in countless ringlets, an infectious smile accentuating her loveliness. A long winter jacket enveloped her lissom form. There was that usual dignity about her he found appealing, sometimes appalling. Before her he looked like a leprous troll.

It took him a while to reboot couple of his crashed senses and by then she was already talking. Spellbound, and mentally preoccupied, there was nothing he could have added to prolong the conversation. Small talks was a social exercise he did not possess the stamina for.

‘There is something I need to say. Can we sit?’ he somehow managed.

She seemed pleasantly surprised by the interruption and followed him across the road to a desolate bench. He wasn’t sure she possessed the knees required to hear what he had in his mind and the uncomfortable silence that loomed over for the next few moments probably gave it all away.

So she sat beside him with that characteristic aristocratic grace, resting an elbow over her crossed legs and hiding a hint of a smile by the forefingers of the palm which gently held her chin, as if ready for the story. You should see how beautiful (and intimidating) women look when they are quietly expecting you to talk. He was moved by the sheer poetry of her face but as mercury boiled out of his emotional thermometer, he started making sense after a few gibberish syllables.

He had always believed that, statistically speaking, out of a zillion possible permutations of words in the English language, there did exist one which exactly encapsulated all that he wanted to tell her that day. One that could cause sentimental inductance and make her resonate at the same emotional frequency. Something he could say that she would remember for the rest of her life. But that perfect proposal is only for the movies. Guys like him always have to manage. So, what followed was the most unsophisticated prose but he meant it more than she knew, in case that matters.

At first it did seem like a story, one of that hopeless sentiment people call 'love', and she listened intently. But as more astounding subjects and predicates came up, the girl realised. She buried her face in her palms on her knees and for just this while he knew she was more vulnerable than him. For just this while he did not have to plan conversations in his head he would never end up having.

He left nothing for a tomorrow that he knew might never come.

The Evening
The bulky guy seated next to him was rocked back from sleep as the rickety Roadways bus hit another bump on the Martian road. He pulled out his cell phone as he adjusted the spectacles on his nose- no new messages. He slid the useless device back into his pocket. The guy was on the ‘home’ run.

His familiarity to the concepts of courtship was no more than a Kardashian’s understanding of Relativity. He just wished he had ‘perspectacles’, glasses which could have helped him see her perspective of things, especially him, for there was no reference frame for him to judge how well the events of the day had transpired. He had never met someone he thought was unworthy enough to be his girl.

But he no longer cared.

He knew he felt more content than anyone with a pulse and for him it was enough. It wasn’t the happiness he felt when he aced a pre-final once upon eternity or the relief he experienced while reading the SMS- “Your account has been credited with INR 3000…”- at the end of every month. It was different, more permanent and ethereal, whatever that means.

In hindsight, all the hiatus about the girl felt like an extrapolation of emotions. Reveling in the thrill of an infatuation is fine, craving for it as a momentary distraction- also acceptable. But emotion is a dangerous investment and an impediment to effective thought, with an incredibly simple but very destructive chemistry. Nature just has a peculiar way of denying what you want the most until you no longer crave for it anymore.

Or is it?

Only time will tell.

The Girl - VII

The Girl - VI

Reflections

“You what!” the fever pitched exclamation from across caused all nearest neighbors to skip a morsel at the dinner table, even as he watched the puddle of paneer-soaked rice drip off the guy’s spoon.

“It was an application for Prof Shastri…”, he replied humbly, several scales down on volume and tempo, amidst growing reassurances that only his best friend was privy to the little secret.

“You of all people running errands for some girl on a Sunday afternoon! Who would have thought Mr. Rainman would ever become the Mailman?” unacknowledged sarcasm drenched his voice.

“It was a one-time thing and you don’t know the first word about her”, he exclaimed pushing his unfinished plate away. Lately he thought neither did he but he needed a strong sentiment to leave a rare consumable meal at the hostel mess. Quickly devouring the paneers he had saved for last, the concerned friend followed.

“Oh really, like the one-time you compromised your no-lending-policy for novels for her. Or like the one-time you missed the Sachin 100 when you were busy finding your way to the college canteen just to fetch her misplaced umbrella! This new brand of your love-infested-insanity is sickening you, and to what use, you can’t even talk to her on the phone!” he said before slurping up water and gurgling out the last bits of rice into the sink. “Disgrace to brotherhood”, he grimaced wiping his lips, not allowing his friend and room-mate to get away as often.

“It’s better than how you make it sound in ways I can’t explain. Besides what’s wrong in helping a friend. I would have done no less for you” he tried to defend, as they reached the common room where the latest Bollywood chartbuster playing in the old TV set had gripped the short-lived attention span of the gaping engineers cum budding movie buffs.

“Nothing, but I would never sweet-talk you into spoiling a Sunday just so I can have the easy way” he reasoned. “Listen- Friendzone is the shittiest place a girl can put a guy in. It’s on the You-are-so-special Avenue right by the Feels-like-love lane but you’ll never see the No-Entry crossing, and beyond that is absolute curfew. So you admire her curves on the first introduction but wait till later meetings show up new angles.” This time the thought guided word-play was spot on. “See, I got to rush for this class now”, he said mounting a hand on his shoulder, “but remember- living with a broken heart isn’t dramatic. It makes you look like a douche, a big sick douche”. 

He spoke with an unwavering tenacity he thought his friend could never possess. For a moment he felt like Siddharth under the Bodhi tree, gaping at the old TV set, looking at the trepidation of the singing hero who was playing a rockstar caught between fame, alcohol and his girl in the latest blockbuster that had redefined love for the entire country- suicide. For a moment he felt like him- minus the fame- before an inspired sense of revulsion carried him out of the place- What a douche. Singing in the rain isn’t romantic. It makes you look like a douche, a wet cold douche.

It wasn’t often, lately, that he had experienced a heightened sense of well-being despite the girl or her soul sucking-nerve wrecking apathy to the numerous custom-made text messages he had so out-believed himself to send her or the heart stopping-mind numbing indifference she showed at times when he went out of his way just to catch a glimpse. But she was a woman, she had the right to change her mind, any-freakin-time.

He unlocked his room and lied down on his bed, staring above at the old ceiling fan doing useless rounds, as if relentlessly chasing the air that never so much as cared. ‘How am I any different?’. Her face, her smile and her words emanated from an empty corner of his brain and ricocheted off of his mind. Meditation is hokum. The thoughtlessness that followed was bliss. 

No one grows up with a right to be loved. It's a privilege you earn for yourself. It doesn't come naturally. You earn it. And very often, love comes. And love goes. And love comes back. And goes again. And so on.

For just this while, he could ease her out of his conscious and truly let go. For just this while, it was enlightenment in progress.

The Girl - VII