2. q

The days when you are at home are peculiar. You take at least ten hours to settle down in the old environment. Like you have a jet lag after you travel by jets. Expressway has an emotional jetlag on me. I had to be back the person I had been. Remoulding myself to the limitations I had broken successfully in the new space. The margins in which I was constricted for years. There was a comfort in this displease. A temporary gratification till it began suffocating me again.
The things which I had painstakingly missed out in my sovereign life were forcefully stuffed back into me. And Mom played a pivotal role in it. Her primary target was my digestive system. She filled it with what it had grown unfamiliar of. Home-made food! That too thrice a day. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. At times also an evening snack. The system had to work over time, churning and burning the newly filled contents. Pushing it forwards through the ups and downs and requesting help from loose fibres in the matter it carries.

Then comes the information processing part of the brain. There is a term I know called flooding. That is exactly what Mom does. She keeps feeding information into me and I keep receiving it and processing it. Who married whom. Who did what. Which aunty met Mom in whose wedding. Which shopkeeper gave Mom a discount on a Refrigerator cover. Which new shop opened in the locality. What new tantrums does the maid throw. When did Dad come home mildly drunk. How someone in the society fought with their neighbours when their cars brushed with each other. How the woman in the next building burnt her chicken. How uncle’s sister-in-law’s mother-in-law’s sister got repayed for the dinner after they found hair in the food at an Udupi restaurant. How my cousin brother’s wife’s sister’s son’s wife’s sister found a teeth fallen on the road which she later realised was her own and how the woman in the third house on the fourth floor on the fifth building around the second corner of the sixth road had choked herself after eating a Gulab Jamun made by herself. Finally there comes a moment when you are not in position to accept any more data. It starts sending out error messages to you. And you tend to loose your concentration. Your eyes shift their focus from her and search for something more intriguing, like a pigeon feather floating in air, to settle on. And that’s when Mom says that living alone has made you loose interest in the family. The moment when your system burns out completely. A Hard Disk crash!

After several such sessions over the three meals I had successfully settled down with Mom’s help. I recollected the homely rituals which I had lost during my stay at the weird city. I slowly seeped into my household. Became a part of the large gear system that the house was. I appended my groves to the new groove structure of the house. The groove structure, which had begun to work without me. Yet, which had a place for me as an imperative attachment.

Out of the essential rituals of returning for me, I performed the fundamental one, as soon as I settled down. Catching up with old friends. Being away from home, living in a new backdrop for days had sidelined these names which were a vital element of my living once. A prediction of this state, even by an expert astrologer, would have been declined by me instantly then. Believing in the fact that I would live without my buddies was impossible. But now I was living this impossibility. I had doubts about my survival when I had set forth on a journey to the weird city. But I shortly learned that life had multiple ways of moving on. To the extent of forgetting your, then called ‘nappy friend’s birthday. That was how life was. Emotions were only possessed by people living it. Otherwise life is as impassive as it can be.

“Sudesh??” I said in the mouthpiece.
“Bol Randi…kaisi hai tu chinaal…aaj bahut din baad yaad aayi…customer khatam ho gaye kya?...” I hear on the earpiece.
“Haan saab…bahut din se aapki awaaj nahi suni thin a isliye phone kiya” I answer.
“Where the fuck are you?”
“In the city”
“When did you come fucker?”
“Around eleven hours ago”
“And you are calling me up now?”
“Yeah…eight hours I slept. An hour I took to settle down and two hours I have been shitting, brushing and bathing…now its your turn…where are you?”
“I am at the Railway station after an hour…usual meeting place…outside Mac’s”
“Okay…I am there!”

We disconnected the call. There is nothing much we need to talk. Because it all would be said when we are sitting or standing face to face with each other.

I felt a spout of energy through me. I found smiles filling me up. I felt a tremor of cheer. I laughed out loudly after I disconnected the call. Wherever you be. In whichever step of growth. Whomsoever be the people around you. Whatever be the fucking case with you.

Meeting an old friend always will always do this to you.

(Contd.)