2.d

“Harshad” He says pulling back his molten mucous.

World halts for me for a second. Everything comes to a pause. It’s all blank. Unknowingly my hand moves towards my forehead. I divert it towards my hair and plough my fingers through them. I try hard to hide my disappointment. But it is clearly visible. I could have easily passed it as a disappointment for Piyush himself. But I was not in the state to use such smart tactics at the moment. I realize the bend in my spine.

I erect up. Choot was destroying everything. He has blown up both the plans. This is going to get worse. Things will sour up. I knew it from that night itself when these two yearned for the same thing. I tried my ways to avoid. I tried to soothe out the flow of events. I tried to shield the three entities from each other. But he was hell bent on spoiling everything. And he has succeeded. What the fuck is wrong with him? Arsehole thinks being in love is like being on the moon. Equaling Neil Armstrong’s achievement. Hoisting a flag on moon. I don’t know how many others he has told about this. I don’t know how things will be in future. And I don’t know what next I can do to avoid this future. Rascal has put me in a catch. He has shat heartily. Now I will have to wipe it clean.

Piyush has begun sobbing all over again. That irks me. I still stroke his back and try to console him. He holds my hands and starts sobbing on it. His tears wet the back of my palms. I want to push him away. Slap him and leave the room. I tousle his hair instead. Try comforting him. . To the extent that people seeing us at the stroke of that moment would have called us homosexuals. Better known as gays. it happens so that you want to hate some people for what and how they are. But you never end up doing it. You try hard. But you are never able to. On the other hand, there are some people you never are able to get close, to in the presence of the fact that you yearn to be in their inner circles. You force yourself with that feeling, but you never feel like crossing the line of proximity. In spite of your efforts, you are not able to connect with them. Whereas, there is a thin line connecting you to people you want to hate, which disallows you to renounce them completely. That was a line which connected me to Piyush. I couldn’t push him away despite the fact that the sound of his mucous is getting on my brain. I let him cry on my hand.

Like a lightning, realization strikes him and he stops crying. He goes to the loo and washes him face. I hug him by the side and press his arm. He smiles faintly and sits on the bed.

“Chal…” I say.
He looks at me in astonishment. “Where?”, he asks.
“Expressway” I say, adding “We both need some open air.”
“Yup” He agrees to my surprise.

He changes to his, similarly ridiculous as indoor, outdoor clothes and we leave on his bike.

- - -

It’s a three minute ride. There is a chill in the air. Especially at this point of the evening. The air still carries the possibility of a sudden rain in its moistness. Piyush rides slower than usual today.
The chill soothes us of our worries. We halt at a Pan Beedi shop and buy some cigarettes.
We turn to the local run running parallel to the Expressway. Piyush turns the bike into the barren field and rides it upto the foothills of the mountain next to the Expressway. We climb up to our usual rock and sit upon it. ‘The Rock of Lonliness’ we call it. Because however we be a part of this large community of people in the college, we are lonely in this place. This arsehole of the world. Away from our homes and families. Away from our friend circle. Trying to connect to completely new people, different from those we always had around us. Trying to create a new circle at the cost of closest things. Trying to creating a new family with oddest of elements. Enjoying a freedom with a heavy price. The price of loneliness. The price we took by our choice of flying farther than our boundaries. Forgetting the fact that only loneliness prevails beyond them.

We sit on the ‘Rock of Lonliness’, light our cigarettes and start smoking. As the small bits of fire burn at the ends of our cigarettes, we stare blankly at the Expressway. A road in all it’s splendor.