The Other Sides...

It was an hour since he has been trying her number. He started at 11:40pm. It was a 'CALL WAITING' then. Then it was 1:00 am, and it still was 'CALL WAITING'.

He had called her up after these som many days, to get the answer of a question that he didnt dare to ask. But a colleague of his had raised this question today again, and he had no answer. So he just dodged it, changed the topic, and dragged the conversation to somewhere else in a different space time.

It was nothing in particular, like they say. It has never been anything in particular, something which like a special page in a long book, that can be earmarked. It was about so many things, the this, the that, and the other. And yet it was nothing. Nothing in particular.

His friend had asked him casually, very casually; 'Was he still in touch with her?' And he had said yes. Afterall he was, so what if the touch has now started meaning, a mere exchange of two-three sentences. He wasnt lying afterall. But the answer started to work on his self. He had always been accused of having a too fertile imagination. Of attributing happenings to some obscure philosophy and rationalizing everything to a logical reason. Yet it was his imagination that caused him so much agony.

And so he called her upto ask her. About how did she answer such queries? What did she say to the question, "Are you still going steady?" Afterall it was her decision to let things be. let the manuscript stay unfinished, and the symphony incomplete.

Starting at 11:40, and retrying after every 5 minutes, he accustomed his ear to a CALL WAITING tone. His discomfort became evident, when for a few minutes her phone got free but she kept cutting his call. All he heard, was that cheerful prerecorded message voice, "THE NUMBER YOU ARE TRYING TO CALL IS BUSY". Alwys irrittating, now even more so. And then the phone got busy again. At 12:55 am the line was on CALL WAITING, at 1:00 it was switched off.

Has someone else stepped into my shoes? Has she moved so swiftly? While he was still there, trying to find the pieces, hoping to stick everything back, so that the porcelain vase of past, could bear the blooms of future, was she making rainbows in someone elses life? A fertile imagination can haunt you worse than your scariest nightmare, because then even with open eyes you see visions. With so many questions, like he always had had; questions that had scared her so much that she chose to not take them anymore; he drifted into the abode of somnus. His eyes started another dream.

6 hours later. Somewhere else in the morning, a roommate thanked her roommate for the phone she had borrowed last night, to receieve some incoming calls.

-"And ohh yes! someone kept calling you so many-many times. Check who it was in the missed calls register. There was this continous buzz while i was talking."

"Who was he?"

-"I dont know, i didnt see his name. After my calls i just switched of your phone and went to sleep."

imaginations can kill, but you dont die at once...

When It Rains...

Monsoon touched his city today. Since last night, it has been drizzling. The haze of smoke and dust has been replaced by that of water vapor. The leaves have come out of their tepid countenance and picked up their verdant palette. The air smells of wet grass, and damp mud, the otherwise prevalent smell of sour sweat, and rotting waste is gone. The smell of heat has been replaced by the flavor of the rain.

He woke up to find the moist air filling his nostrils. With arms wrapped around himself, he sat on the stairs outside his room. With his eyes towards east, he could see approaching planes in a grey and green morning. As he breathed in the beautiful morning, his face felt the soft caresses of the wonderfully cool breeze. And inside is closed eyes he was taken behind in time. To a place that is still there, in a moment which is not.

It was the top floor of his college, in the gallery that joined the two opposing wings of the two departments. The end which was a favorite haunt of the honey bees. It had a big brown honeycomb, that during the summers smelt of honey, wax, and honeybees. Sometimes a bee used to zip past your nose dangerously close, sometimes it did bite too, but these times were rare. They both were there that afternoon when it was raining. It was lunch and almost everyone had gone back to have it. but they had lingered behind. In the time that passed in between their sentences, the skies had started to pour. A soft drizzle had joined the landscape, and air now carried a waft of water falling on the dry earth along with the faint smell of the eucalyptus blossoms. In the distance the orange earth had started changing their colors. The air had cleared and they both could see far ahead, towards the place where the river turned a horseshoe turn. Towards the fields that had been barren for a while. Towards the plots where foundations were being laid for buildings to come. Towards a present that was being moulded for future.

He could smell the faint sweet smell from a tress of her hair that had come loose in the wind and drifted towards his face. Brushing so softly against his eyes. He could see the faint glitter of the sun playing hide and seek amidst the clouds in the gold of her earrings. And in her eyes he could see himself.

In moments like these, you feel you can see yourself snuggled safe in your future. The eyes behold your vision, and you behold those eyes. Its a perfectly symbiotic relation. Each sees what one wants to see. Every twitch of the lips, every flicker of the eyes is taken in. A thousand unuttered words, hidden within the pregnant silence are taken in. And a hundred sighs are let out in one. In these fleeting seconds one lives a hundred years. Yet it takes just a small knock to break these porcelain moments.

Like the room-cleaner coming up and tapping him softly on his shoulder with two protracted fingers, to cheerfully say, "Good-morning Sir..."

30 Full Days...

It has been a month now. 30 days since you decided it was all over. 30 starry nights that were all dark because you had ceased to shine. And two full moons, one of them today.

I thought, that true love doesnt die. That if i really loved you, i'd let you go and that you will back if you were mine, and if not then you never were. That somehow all the syrupy phrases and anecdotes were true. That illusions dont exist outside our brains, and that it is love that makes the world go around. I know now i was wrong. At least at some point or some place i was. Either all that i had known was false, or else ours was not a true love. Remember that night two years ago, when you had decided to leave me? I had said, either i love you and you'll stay, or all my life i have been wrong. That every plus of mine was actually a minus. That i was not you and you were never me. Maybe i was right that time.

You told me, it was better if we stayed without talking. I knew that our love had somehow died. I knew that time was infact a paper moon as in the Queen song, that we all need some time on our own, and that is a lot of time. That is all the time. That bliss is always transient, that capacitors do discharge with time.

But what i didnt know was that our love had also started to rot. And its stink was something that would permeate through all the illusory defences. That it was ossified, like mummies which have no vital organs in them. A body with a pacemaker inside. An eye, that is just a glass bead.

It has been 30 full days. And nights too were never the same...

DISCLAIMER: Every incident and all characters in this story are entirely fictional bearing no semblance to the living. If any likelyhood is found, it will be considered to be mere coincidence. And nothing else, just like me...

45 Degree C...

It has been one of the hottest days. The meteorogical department has been saying it for days, but the heat just turns hotter. Amidst the dust, din, and sweat that forms the complete package of this city; with its packed markets, and million cars, parked into a hundred malls; life manages to go on. Sometimes succefully, other times not so.

Concomitant with all the colors of this city, with its smoky evenings, and blinding days; somewhere in everyday life, a thousand stories are born, a writer is created. What these eyes see, and this blistered skin feels is added to the rare threads of minute electrical impulses inside the neurons, and somehow all this adds up into a tale of this city. A cinamscope of its life. A biopic of its lives.

Theres that guy, in his neatly ironed pink clean shirt. His hair is decently cut and he flashes a honest smile, bpth getting rarer these days. When you go upto him, he'll ask you with a cheerful smile about where you want to go. His green auto, with a yellow synthetic top and a red reccine seat, is quite like every other auto. But he makes a difference. His bright eyes are slightly wet at the corners. Thats natural if you aer the eldest in the family, with two younger sisters. When you have had to pick up the auto driving as a part time measure to provide sustenance, after your father lost everything in his business. When you have to smother your dreams so that other eyes can peacefully sleep. And when you find that 'for-a-little-while' job turning into a full time commitment. Responsibilities tie, and freedom doesnt come for free.

It maybe those five kids at the McDonalds, sharing a cone of 'Softy'. Digging with their dirty fingers, into a vanilla cone that has to be divided among them, and who gets how much is determined by their leadership instincts, and ofcourse who eats the fastest. And while you see this, you may realise that what you have just gulped down in a jiffy, is worth ten such cones for them. And that little vanilla scoop is not a harbinger of the rise in the social equality, but the border that divides us from them, the other 'us'. Or you may choose to turn your nose, and look out in some other direction, while your lips twitch into a, "Ohhh! these urchins..."

It may also be a ride late at night in that big green DTC Bus, one that has a plus sign within a circle. More often than notm before you manage to step onto it, it will already have started moving. And once inside, you will buy a ticket from a conductor who will not move fom his seat, nor will let anyone else sit next to him. While you hand out the coins, ten voices will participate in a rhapsody, that would cause any other soul to jump out of the window. But the conductor would calmly tear the little white tickets from his bundle and hand them to the out stretched hands. Some fair, some not so fair, some dark. Full sleeves with clean cuffs, is rare; what one often gets is half sleeves, or dirty cuffed full sleeves. But if you get very busy observing this, the conductor will shake you and ask you to move on, if not him then other passengers would jab you, and you will have to. So all this needs to be taken in a moment, for the bus wont give you time. And it has to be retained, in bits and pieces till one day you can see the full picture.

Then the bus would also make you realise one very important lesson, that no matter how much of deo you apply or which brand you follow. What you smell is invaraibly your standing neighbor. Who so in this oppressive heat would be miraculously grinning at you, or staring at your watch because it has a big white dial, with a weird green strap. Seconds would morph into minutes while the eyes will constantly scan for a person who is twitching before getting off his seat. If you dont secure that seat before he gets up, maximum chances are someone else will have it. And once seated, you will only know how far you have travelled by the gusts of hot air that will keep hitting your face from the dirty glass window that is always stuck in between.

And as i told you it was one of the hottest days today, i just got down with a sweaty shirt, and defeated deo, theres an electronic signboard nearby, it reads the temperature... 45 degree celsius. At a small tea stall nearby an autowallah is asking a ragged shirt wearing kid to make some tea. He picks up a newspaper, which is crumpled because ts two days old, and fans himself with it. He turns around and looks at me staring at him, his lips move and i can hear him say "Such a hot day..."

Dusty Gray...

It is that time between the day and the night. A little after the sun sets, and just after the orange glow dissappears into the dark of the approaching night. Its the time when the last of the grazing cows hear the calls of their cowherd, and start their way back home. It is the time when the nurse from the morning shift, gets up, and washes her face. The water flows from a steel faucet, the blue capped one. Blue for cold and red for hot. She wipes her face, and then rubs her hand on her apron. The starch has cracked, and what was crisp white in the morning has now crushed and taken a dusty gray color. Just the color of the sky outside.

The road outside the hospital is under repair. All the paths get worn out after some time, the novelty gets faded along with the metalled tar. And all that remains is dust, along with some cracked pieces of broke concrete and the reddish brown stones. The orange low quality bricks add the orange color in some places.

She has taken her apron down in the laundry, where it will be washed and starched. Tomorrow morning she'll have to wear it again. She picks her little black faux leather bag. She bought it from the footpath in the sunday market. They say you get good bargains in there. This bag had a marked price of 200 rupees, she had managed to get it for 100 rupees. It used to have a golden buckle. Back then she was very proud of her bag. Now it had gone a little older. Instead of the golden buckle, there were now two holes, frayed on their periphery. Acting as a constant reminders of the golden times.

She comes out of the gate. And treads carefully amidst the broken road. It had rained last night, and water had collected in the cracks of the road. The ensuing dark brown puddles, after a day of scorching sunshine, had turned into slush pools of chocolatey mud. She cannot get her suit stained, she wont have time to wash it. And she owns only two pairs of dresses, she had been saving money to buy another one. But then her son had fallen ill. Meningococcaemia, the doctors had said. This disease has spread rather quickly in the city. The treatment was not very expensive, but it was enough. Enough to postpone her dress for one more month.

All day she had attended, to the 9 year old boy who was suffering from the same disease. His parents didnt have enough time from their work, and his fever was severe. He was admitted that morning, he was discharged just minutes before her shift got over. All day she was thinking of her son, while tending him. It concerned her that there was no one to look after her 9 year old. Yet there wasnt much she could have done, for their sustenance she'd have to work. And the school fee was also due.

Tomorrow will be the sixth day since he fell ill, if it continues for 8 days she'll have to take him to the hospital. Where will the money come for that? Maybe she'll have to start washing clothes in the evening. Where can she start that? Who will keep her? When will her son be playing again? She looked up the bus stop had come. The sight of the rusted olive green with patches of reddish brown metal stand, told her to stop. The little commotion among the standing people told her about the approaching bus. She saw the number, it was the one. She stepped into the bus, amidst the stabbing elbows and brushing thighs. While holding out a silver gray 5 rupee coin to the conductor. The thoughts inside her mind went round and round, about her son.

In the hospital, her apron whirled inside the laundromat. The clear waters turned a dusty gray, as it went round and round...

And Then...

He was picking the discarded mineral water bottles from the garbage heap. His hair was rough and unkempt. Lack of care had caused a brownish tint, and dust matted them like a skilled stylist. Dressed in khaki shorts and wearing a not so white shirt, he could have been a school going kid, but in the place of the bag there was a satchel. A jute sack, that was filled with plastic bottles. Those, that had been a thirst quencher, would conquer someones hunger for the day. If not much, atleast a square meal.

With dirty scrawny fingers he'd deftly peel off the labels from the bottles. Some pink and some blue. These lined the muddy sideway in haphazard patterns, like jetsam scattered in the ocean. He raised his eyes occasionally to look into the cars whizzing by. There was a little tint of hope in his eyes then. Maybe dreams are irrational beings, they dont think about fitting into class or order. To them eyes are just eyes, for sleep is just the same.

His sack would soon be filled with bottles. Summers are a blessing for him. People here drink so much of bottled water. He once had tasted the water, that had been thrown out of the window, by some swanky kid in a flashy car. Almost half a bottle. He remembers the bitterish taste that he had discovered. Afterall "mineral water" has no added flavors that the tap water had. For a scotch afficianado, no whiskey would do. Like there is no magic that is not black.

With hurried steps he'd make his way to the scrap dealer. There he'd get 50 paise for every scoured bottle. The dealer would sell the same to the fake water bottlers for 1 rupee. The neo-bottlers would wash the bottles in a rusty drum, painted with peeling blue paint, fill them with tap water, add a slight bitter flavoring, paste forged labels, and market the same bottle as the original mineral water. the kid was a clone of its parent, devoid of the gene structure.

Then that junior in khaki shorts would scuttle to the road side hawker, and buy his lunch for the day. If lucky he may also buy dinner for himself. But for now he'll have lunch. Then he'll drink the water from the broken tap, one feet above the ground. And while he rubs his hands on the behinds of his tattered shorts, he'll look at the cool corner just ahead. There a guy in a black Honda Accord, would be getting down to buy a bottle of mineral water. The seller wil hand him a bottle that is very familiar to our junior in the khaki shorts. He'll remember that it was the same crooked neck bottle that he had wrung this morning in desperation, and then tried to mend. The major portion was smoothed, but the distortion was stil there. Yet the scrapdealer had bought that bottle for him. While the Accord dude, gulps down refreshing cool, "mineral water", our junior shows a faint smile.

Maybe these water bottles could bring a social equality, afterall now he and the 'Accord'ian were drinking the same water, and the junior in the khaki didnt have to pay for it. Maybe he could have a car someday, and then who knows...

Criss Cross Footpath...

Coming back from work today, he chose to skip the last bus and walk the last haul to his home. It would have been a stretch of about 2 kilometers. And the traffic in the roads is much less, lesser than it generally was at this time of the day on the other days. It is a Saturday.

The pavement is being relaid by the municipal council. At some places it is done and at others heaps of rubble lie. On varying intervals, one can encounter icecream vendors, offering chills to beat the heat. Some Red, some blue. Not so frequently one cand also find old women, weakened by age and poverty, trying to raise additional income by selling roasted corn cobs. In local language they are called bhutta. The roasts inside their verdant green, add more heat to the prevalent scorch. And if one gets thirsty, there is that guy selling coconut water just at the crossing, where from he will turn left to redirect himself towards his dwellings.

But we are not talking here about the Weak women or their emancipation. Neither is this story about the red and green icecream stalls. This story is about his way back from office, and we'll continue with that.

It has been a long day at work for him. The boss was late for a meeting, and so it came to him to entertain the client in the meantime. It has always been a trauma for him, to feign a smile, and pretend to be interested in a conversation, which he would never choose to be in. But an hour passes, and there is his boss, with that hypocritic smile and all. And a bundle of effusive apologies. He always wondered why didnt these people see through the crap, was it their own character that made them permeable to this swarm of hypocrisy, or have the times really changed and hypocrisy was a nonexistent phenomenon now, something that was takebn for granted, a lot like gravity.

Then six more hours of meetings, or arranging for meetings. And then at 6, he picked his bags and re-crossed the threshold , with a different velocity vector, more comonly put, in the opposite direction. But that again is common sense, isnt it? And i didnt need to put it. But the damage has been done.

At last he boarded that little bus, which will be jam packed in a little more time. And began the journey to his room. The rocking bus and the blaring FM always made him sleepy. And sometimes he had to force himself to keep his eyes open. Missing his stop meant going far further, and that added a lot of nuisance value.

But he was walking when we started, didnt we? Well he still is, just that he has already crossed that coconut water seller on the crossing, and now he is on the newly laid footpath. The big gray concrete slabs are laid in squarish fashion, with cement linings that run between them in the criss cross fashion. He stares at them, and in his mind he is reminded of a chess board, in which the squares are neither black nor white. They are not even squares, rather something in between. And yes the color is GRAY, neither black nor white. And he wonders, what kind of moves can one play on this board, with the expected rules. When can one square be yours and when not, no one can know. And no one is sure of a safe move on this board.

He looks ahead, and watches, this footpath continuing in a long stretch, complimenting the dark metalled road. He shrugs his shoulders, and walks along, you see home is still a bit further. And there are too many grey squares along the footpath of happenstance.

One has to walk, to reach somewhere. And stories are not much of a help. After all when ones sliderule is a criss cross footpath, how can one thing not be linked to another. How can a story be just a story...?

Stars Shine...

It is a dark night. From the balcony of my room, i can see an approaching plane, its headlights grow bigger as it nears. There is a little gust of hot wind that rustles through the dust laden leaves of a few stunted mango trees. And some others that form the vicinity, also feel the heat.

A little toddler walks in the adjacent hospitals lawn. His shoes on the grey cemented paths that criss-cross the greens, let out their squeaking sounds. Squeak-Squak, squeak-squak. Sounds that otherwise have the potential to irk me, now feel funny. That the toddler holds the finger of his avuncular granddad, like a scene straight out of a picture book, adds to the beauty.

In the slight distance i can see the hotel top. The red lights on its roof, glower like the eyes of a fabled monster. Goliaths in the city, with umpteen Davids, who have chosen to melt in the dullness of their lives. The gray stone of the walls on the other side show a complete array of colors, from the yellow of the sodium lamp, to the dark of the night. A scraggy lizard flits around the lamp, its dinner time for her. In darkness, an insect fights.

Just over the lamp, to the left is a window. Through its bluish panes, i have been watching a frail woman waiting inside. Three days, and yet she is there tending; to someone who must have mattered for her, really mattered. Though generally covered by curtains, but sometimes they part, and she stares out. Weary eyes, meet the wearied night. And a silent exchange, a mute conversation occurs. She has to wait, she doesnt know how long. The night also has its life, till the sun choses to shine. Both find solace in each other, both melt into one.

And in all this darkness, the stars shine. Some bright with hope like the eyes of the toddler, who is discovering the joy of life. And some faded like the woman who waits, wearied by the tiring nights. But bright or faded, sparkling or jaded, like the silent spectators who have connived in this entire plot, the stars shine.

Beginning of an End...

How does an end begin? And more importantly, when does it begin? Today starts another month, yet for us it is a trivial issue, but all the same; when January starts, the frenzy seems to be a bit irrational, doesnt it?

Human Nature needs reasons to celebrate. But if one has no desire to celebrate, where does one go? The celebrations are just an icon of ones own anguish, and instead of being happy, one gets aggravated. The more others try to involve him, the more he retreats into his own shell.

I am building this story, for i hope to find a new beginning. But every thread i pickup, leads me to the end of my end. But the irony is that i see no end to this. All the castles that i try to rebuild are blown to dust without the slightest of winds. The reason is that, i dont want to live in them, i know where the keystone is, and everytime i try and remove that stone, my entire model bites the dust. What canm you tell a man, who doesnt want to listen. How do you make flame without the fire, and passions without desire?

I have become an elopist is what i think. I just run away in the unending expanse of my imagination, where every other thing takes me back into that time and place. There, where i always want to be, while knowing that it is NOT. I am dreaming a dream inside my dream, and i dont want to let go of it. I dont want to open my eyes. I dont want to exhale, for i fear that the memories too will find a way out. And though they hurt, yet memories are all i have, they are all i can have.

This all reads like a sermon, a prosody to myself, an ode to my psyche. They say, those who cant do, teach! Am i doing the same?