4. b

I return to the room. People frolic around me. They try to include me in their attempts to keep themselves happy. I try to be a part of their effort, but then slowly slip out of it. I feel the loss of an otherwise present, inherent urge to jump in co-ordinance with the spouts of happiness. But I am in no mood today. I don’t feel being myself.

I tried calling her again. And she didn’t answer. So I had tried again. And again. And Again. And again. And again. I kept trying to call her till it was time for me to give up and accept the fact that she had gone away.

I rode all the way back to the arsehole of the world in a daze. The daze of quantified dejection. I don’t remember how many cars I bumped into. How many bus drivers rode past me abusing me for my pathetic riding skills. How many aunties crossing the road shrieked of horror when I road through their pack indifferently.
Her wordless farewell blazed like smouldering coals within me.

Her silence had sublimated every tether of togetherness that was between us. Every moment that we had spent together, every hug, every kiss, every touch, every laughter, every wonder, every squabble, everything of it was just wiped off. Every evidence of our liaison had disappeared abruptly. All that was left back were the memories. Memories which had become sharper with the suffocating silence of her exit.

I climb up to the terrace and sit atop the water tank. The night is darker than the usual. I decide to myself that I should forget her. I look up. Stars shine in their clusters with a disjoint unity. I look around. I see the tops of the bungalows scattered in all directions. I light a cigarette. Scattered was the word. Maybe they weren’t scattered as I saw them. Maybe I saw them as scattered today. Unlike every other day when they must’ve seemed organised to me if I had looked at them. I took a long puff.

Flashback:

Apu and I were sitting on a rock on one of the hills. She had driven me on her scooty. It was a pride to be her pillion rider. She talked to winds. And I to her hair caressing my face.

She owned the road. And the hills aligning them.

She stopped besides one of the hills in her kingdom. Parked her scooty besides an old Banyan tree and dragged me to a hill top holding my hand.

We sat there staring the sun slipping down the curtain of sky. I wondered at the moment of the sun. One never saw it moving but yet one could see it moved. From one place to another. People called it science. I felt, sund didn’t want to be caught when he was on his way forth. He purely hated farewells. He just wanted to slip away without his absence being noticed. He assured you that he was there till his last bit was lost below the horizon. And then suddenly you realised that he was gone.
As opposed to humans, in whom the loss was evident and prominent. We could see people leaving from our lives and it made us loose ourselves and our minds.

I took out a cigarette and lit it. I began smoking. I spoke out this thought to Apu.

“There is one more difference between them….” She replied. Her eyes fixed on the horizon.

“What?” I asked. Eyes fixed on the horizon.

Apu took the cigarette from my hand.

“We can’t stop the setting sun…..but we can stop a human leaving away…at least try…” She took a long puff from my cigarette and coughed badly.

I took her in my arms to calm her. Her words echoed down the hills in their feeble way.

“We can’t stop the setting sun…..but we can stop a human leaving away”

Flash Forward:

Fuck! Why the fuck do I remember this incidence now! At the time I need to forget her the most. That is the fucking irony of life. You remember only those people, whom you are trying hard to forget.

I throw my cigarette off the edge of the tank and I get down from the tank.

I join the cacophony below. I have a company in my cheerlessness. Piyush.

I still wonder how Apu could go so abruptly.


(Contd.)