2. n

Drivers go crazy when they reach the hill station. They drive haywire when they are on its roads. Especially the highway which passes through its center. They drive as berserk as they can. The speed of the expressway catches up with them and drives them through its roads. Like winds high on horsepower. And when you enter its streets, you have to drive your vehicle finding your way amongst their dynamic existences. Dodging them. Preventing yourself and your motorbike from being tossed over by them. Being thrown off the track and being crushed under a truck’s gigantic tyre. Or being gently diverted towards a milestone and flipped over to bang your head on a rock. You have to exploit every gap and every small lane between these chariots to retire from this pursuit and come to halt at your destination.

We halted before the famous Chikkiwala post a strenuous struggle for safeguarding our souls against furious vehicles. The bastard stood there with a mobile to his ear. Talking to his wife probably. Telling her that he is safe. That he would have his lunch now. And that he was missing her and that he loved her. And telling her that he wished she had been here with here. How the climate was utmost romantic. How one could talk to the clouds. And how he would have loved walking holding her hands along the misty by lanes the hill station.

“Aman!!!!!” Shamita called out loudly over my shoulder, leaving a lull in my ears.
He cut the call hurriedly and turned to Shamita. Tall, hefty, fair, soft hair and a smile which girls particularly like and boys particularly hate. he was all that I wasn't. Shamita ran wards him and hugged him tight. He awkwardly took Shamita in his arms.

Bastard at the same time looked at me and smiled in acquaintance.

“Shamita!...leave him!...he is a bastard” I felt like shouting out loud before the entire crossroad. But I merely smiled back to him.

I didn’t feel like standing for another moment. I felt a gloomy cloud descend upon me seeing Shamita meet him so. I felt the two Medu-Vadas turn up inside me. They assimilated into two huge floats on the acid in my stomach and seemed to choke the opening of the pipe dropping things into it. The choke was ascended up to my throat. It jammed up every blood vessel in me. Pieces of coconut rose to my brain and began pricking it and the spices in the Sambar spread through my blood vessels across all its corners.

I kick-started the motorcycle, turned it around. Shamita turned back from Bastard’s arms. She saw me leaving abruptly. She cried out my name. It reached my ears but not my forcefully contained impulses. She kept calling my name. I left at the speed of madness away from the famous Chikkiwala. Away from the crossroad. Away from this hill station. Away from them.
The sudden loneliness gripped me as nobody sat behind. There was no warm touch of hand on the shoulder. There was no clutching of fingers on my waist at every emergency brake. No voice to ring ceaselessly in my ear. No romantic tales. No stupidity. No excitement. And no craziness. I rode in the sanity of the bike and myself.

I stole a look besides. Parallel to us stretched the Expressway. Looking down upon the irrelevance of the old highway in today’s times. And the old highway ran like an obedient old clerk, accepting its inferior status to the huge expressway.

A cocoon of solitude built up around me. And it was suffocating me. It was covering my nose, holding me back from breathing. Its arm choked my throat. Its shield blurred my vision. I rode fast to get rid of the cocoon. But it ran as fast as me. It chased me at a faster speed than mine. I kept thinking of getting rid of it. But it didn’t let me go.

Finally, I halted near a milestone under a Neem tree. I ungeared myself. Kept the helmet aside. Pulled out the gloves from my hands and stood beside the bike. Then I collapsed into my own palms. My face took a dip in the dry pool of comfort. The touch of my palms on my face helped me gain myself back. Like putting on the mask once again. I stood like that for some time. In the sun. Below a Neem tree, besides a motorcycle.

I didn’t know why I was feeling so heavy within me. What was it? Had I developed feelings for Shamita? Or was it just a momentary longing? Was it because I was so used to her that seeing her go into someone else’s arms so easily was unacceptable for me. Or was it because that Bastard was a bastard and I didn’t approve of her falling for him at all, but could not voice out my displease. Or was it simply because my male ego was hurt on loss of Shamita to him. I knew I had reasons. But I also was knowing that they weren’t curing me at the moment. Neither were they untangling themselves from their jumble.

The blaring of a truck horn, shook me out my reverie. I resumed with my journey. I looked at the expressway again for an instant. And I had a remedial option for my emotional turmoil. It blazed besides me on a huge road with separate lanes for each car, four on each side. There it stood, like a huge flooded river of cement and cars flowing on it.

“Home” was the word that shone before my eyes. It replaced the darkness in my closed eyes. I stopped the motorbike.

I remembered the line which Forrest Gump’s friend Bubba says before he dies. I remember the line I used to cling on to with my mother’s saree. I remember the line I used to say when darkness filled the skies as I played with other kids. The line which I must’ve uttered a billion times out for million reason. The line which was the ultimate emotional reality. More for us who lived alone. Like stringless kites floating towards descent in the lone skies. And I heard my self say it at that moment.

“I wanna go home!!”

I turn my bike and start my journey in the opposite direction. In the direction of my home.

I feel better.

(Contd.)