Chapter ! - 1.a

1.a
I was sleeping in the room. Siesta, like the Italians call it. A long nap in the afternoon. After lunch. There’s nobody in the room. Everybody has something to do. Even I have. If nothing, I have to attend the lectures. But I don’t want to. I never do it these days. It bores me to the core. Everything bores me here. No big deal. Piyush is attending it. It’s good that he is. I don’t want him at the room at this moment. He speaks like shit. He keeps speaking. Then he gets emotional and then he starts burrowing into my brain. He can’t be dealt with alone. He is wisely conversed with in public. Wherein you can distract yourself from his overflowing emotions by indulging into a conversation with someone else and divert him to some other self. World seems a beautiful place without him. At least I can sleep. At least. But I am not able to. I am trying hard to lying on the mattress. But I am not able to.

I begin thinking. I know this will work. I wasn’t sleeping because I had nothing to think of. Only depressing shit. Like future and all. Not worth. But they still intrude my state of well being. I’ve just set them aside. I am thinking about aliens. Worth it. Aliens. If they exist. Do they exist? Why can’t they? They must be. We can’t be alone. And space is seamless. I remember somebody saying space is big. It can’t be big. Something is big or small if it has seams. Seams decide a shape. Shape define size. Space doesn’t have a size. It is not big. It is just seamless. Just like that. This thought depressed me as a kid. It still does. It burdens up on me. It presses me beneath it. I feel blank. I feel helpless. The feeling of endlessness fills up in me making me heavy. I feel weighed down. Darkness fills in. My body loosens up then. Strain oozes out of the threads holding my body together. I feel like a puppet that has lost the ties with fingers that command him. I am slowly dissolving into the darkness before me. My thoughts float away from me. Head that held them starts softening up and the creases are soaked in darkness to flatten up. I hear nothing now. Doors of my ears have closed like those large doors of palaces. Slowly with no one in the vision to operate them. Seeming like a miracle. Out of sheer misconception. I start floating. I am transported to a lighter space. Every inch of me is in a repose.

Just then the mobile phone rings. Fucking phone. Fucking shit. Bhenchod!!! Maa ka bhosda!!!
I open my glued eyes with extreme efforts. I abuse the caller more. A thought of it being my father makes me control it. Irritated me picks up the phone. Irritated me looks at the screen. Irritated me sees a name. Irritated me says ‘Madarchod’! Irritated me answers the call.
“Bol”
“Are you free now??”
“No…why”
“Where are you??”
“Nowhere..”
“Fucker its serious…”
“speak”
“Can you meet me??”
“Yaaaaawwwwwnnnnnn”
“Beer”
“Where??”
“Come to the chowk”
“Okay….wait there…..I am coming”
Harshad on phone. Doesn’t bore that much. Just that his humor is sick. Not sick exactly. It’s filthy. It gets stuck in the urinary tract and fecal matters. It smelled. No, It stunk. It was a proof of his lame imaginative.

I toss aside my bedsheet. Sit lazily on the mattress. I am too pissed off to walk over to the Chowk. But the word is beer. And it is Harshad. Generosity supported by the mess of law and order. Baap Ka Maal. My Dad bribes policemen. His Dad is also bribed by several such Dad’s. He gives a part of it to Harshad to get a degree. He gives a part of it to me for friendship, company, suggestion, guidance and all such shit. But this helps me build a gratitude towards society. Because , it gives me a feeling of being fed by all these Dads along with my Dad. Harshad said beer. When he says that means he is going to crash drinking. We will go!!!

Also when he says beer, either he too is sad or he is too delighted. We have to see what it is.
We stand up. Pull up a jeans. A t-shirt. Fuck I need to wash it. Fuck who cares. Waiter’s not gonna sniff my arm pits. Harshad may. But he’d be drunk.

We leave.