5. h

From the place where I sat sipping my Rum in cola, I could see the passage that went up to the stairs that connected the individuality of each floor. I had just filled up my glass. I was about to take a sip and I saw Harshad rushing down furiously. Before I could get up from my place and stop him, he was gone.

I stood up and rushed towards the passage with the glass still in my hands. I saw Piyush alighting the stairs walking heftily.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Let’ go to the tower…” He said in a baritone of a murderer.

“Now?...What happened?...Are you okay?” I was zapped by the sudden change in him.

“Yeah I am okay…get a bottle and two glasses…let’s drink there” He continued in the same baritone.

I slyly entered the drunk zone, grabbed a bottle of rum and a Thums up, picked up two plastic glasses and smoothly escaped from the drunk hounds.

Piyush had started his motorbike by then. I sat carefully balancing all the goods in my hand and we were off.

Tower was a dilapidated factory near the expressway. Someone had a vivid plan of building it near the expressway. But luck didn’t favour him. And neither did the government. So the half complete structure stood there for long years. And then, one fine day, it began dilapidating. After a long wait, it gave away its being to fate.

And its rapidly degenerating form became a hide out for many. Including us. It was one of the places where you had a loft all to yourself, wherein you could sit and enjoy your drink looking at the cars passing by. The place was also used by bongers and bangers. But each one had a solitude in their space. And it rarely happened that two beneficiaries landed up at the place at the same time.

When we reached the tower, it was supposedly empty. We went to the topmost loft and set up our session there. I made a drink for Piyush first and then poured one for myself. We settled down with our glasses on the cement sacks, which had by now hardened into stone and served purely as seats. Some artist had also arranged it to seem like a sofa and had a pile of similar sacks before it which served like a table.

We sipped the beverages from our glasses and lit our cigarettes. I reclined on the hard back rest like elevation near my back.

“Tell me now…what happened…” I asked taking a sip from my glass.

“He failed….” Piyush said gravely. “…badly!” He added.


(Contd.)