Request for Forgiveness

A bout of momentary depression kept you guys away from the new chapter. Maafi please!

2. p

I enter my lane. The boys standing near the turn wave to me. I nod in acceptance. I move further. The grocer smiles to me. I smile in return. I reach the gate. The watchman salutes me. I salute back to him. He opens the game with a loud screech. For a motorcycle. Like the elite guards opened the gate for the royal entry.

From the moment I had entered the lane, I had felt like a king returning back from a crusade. If I had a sword, I could’ve waved it at them. I had an empty hand instead.

I parked Piyush’s bike next to ours. Like a triumphant warrior I walked across the parking lot, towards the entrance of my building. I entered the corridor. Then the lift.

I was home. Finally home. The resort. The cove. A place which I would enter to regain myself. The me which I had always been. Till I had left for the weird city.

The lift door opened. I stepped out. I rung the doorbell.

The door opened with an exclamation.

“You?!....how come so suddenly!!!” Mom opened the door.
“I just felt like…” I said.
“Felt like??...you should’ve informed us at least….” She continued.
“Yeah…how come you came back so abruptly….no phone….no message….nothing…just like that” Dad joined in.

“What have you got for me?” sister shouted from the bedroom.
“How did you come?...” Granny shrieked looking at the helmet in my hand. “By a motorcycle??” she grew hysteric. “How could you travel the distance over a motorcycle?....Oh my god!!...this boy is crazy!!”

This revelation from her sent everybody in an excited state. Dad had an objection on me riding so far on a motorbike. Mom couldn’t comprehend how I got a motorbike. Sister was overwhelmed by my feat. Everybody has a reason to overreact over my arrival. There were questions bombarding over me from all directions. And I stood at the centre of them replying to each of them. Like Abhimanyu standing at the centre of the Chakravyuha.

There was a cacophony. There was surprise, anger, resentment and opposition all thrown across in my direction. Voices filled my house.

The cacophony descended into their interpersonal rivalries and it pitches rose to include their yelling upon each other. Finally they dispersed in different directions, mumbling offences and abuses.

I went to the small can stool and sat on it. I untied my shoes. I try calling up Piyush from my mobile. I realise it’s low on balance. I call him up from my residential landline number. I tell him that I reached safely. He congratulates me on it. I assure him his bike is safe. He threatens to kill me if I speak such shit. After a brief conversation, I disconnect the phone.

I undress myself, and wrapping a towel around me, I walk to the bathroom for a shower.

Their voices still ring in my ears. Staying away from the family makes their voices alien to you. I tried to wash my ears to get them cleaned off there. But they stay stuck to the walls of the cavity. Resonating in its emptiness.

I stand below the shower motionless.

The home which I had yearned for endlessly during the times of extreme loneliness, is here.

I welcome myself to the warm place I dreamt of.

I welcome myself back home.

(Contd.)

2.o

Wind filled my clothes. Wind coming from my city. It actually wasn’t coming from my city. But it was a pleasant thought. To own those stray winds.

As I approached my Island city, I felt its heat catching on me. In literal sense. The comforting coolness of the hills gave up to the scorching heat of the depleting Ozone and sweat oozed out secretly beneath my clothes. I took a halt and took off my jacket and knotted it around my waist. It was shameful to do this somehow. It reminded me of the advertisement for a Sanitary Napkins where a teenage girl used to testify how her jacket had helped her escape the embarrassment of a stained skirt. I could have avoided if I wanted. But the heat could have boiled me to a softly cooked potato. I lingered for a moment at the halt. As if bidding a farewell to the hills. I knew I had to return to them. Yet this momentary separation was consoling enough. I sat back on the motorcycle and sped towards the boundary of separation of these two zones.

“Piyush….” I had started dubiously, after moving some ten kilometers away from the hill station towards the city. “Arey…I wanted to ask for something” I continued.
“What?”
“I…can I have your bike for two more days?” I asked stumbling on my words. “I feel like going home….please”
“Of course yaar!...its yours…fuck man…don’t beg you bastard!”

I could have expected this reply if I hadn’t seen Rahul following me. Harshad was slowly tutoring me on loosing my belief in people. I had said ‘please’ for safety. But I am sure Piyush had made his decision before that word.

But I am also sure the line “I feel like going home” had a much larger influence on him. His home was miles away from the weird city. Too far to ride back home. Too far to even think of it. There were moments when even he longed to go back home. Slip into his bed. Cover himself in his bedsheet. Under his fan. And wake up to his mother’s call. Shit in the loo he had been familiar with. Have a breakfast cooked by his mother on his fixed seat on the dining table. Or on the ground before the TV. To fight with his siblings. To meet friends he had left behind. To smoke with those who had taught him smoking, sitting below the Banyan tree. To ride his father’s motorbike through the known lane of his town and whistle at the college going girls clad in Salwar Kameez from neck to toe.

The word 'home' in my sentence must’ve rendered his heart. Dampness gathering in his eyes. Memories of left behind times playing on a reel before his eyes.

His approval was just an affirmation. The momentum which had driven me for ten kilometers would have brought me to my city back. If he hadn’t agreed I would’ve rode back to the weird city again. I had to rest in my city’s arms. To evade this bubble of seclusion that surrounded me.
I had thanked Piyush and resumed my journey.

“1000 MTS
Expressway Ends.”

The board said. 1000 MTS more to enter my city. To cross a creek and enter the island. The island of madness. The Island of life. The island of my home. Once my favourite writer had written in his profile ‘The writer lives on a private Island off the western coast of India’. I always took it as a joke, till I realized it meant a private Island. An Island all to oneself. A feeling of ownership of it. The feeling that you and only you were the Lord of all its corners. And nobody dared challenged your supremacy. The city did give that feeling to you. And I realized this more strongly when the weird city tried establishing its sovereignty over me. I retaliated as anyone from my city did. But the constant feeling of being watched and scrutinized mad me feel pressed under its rule. Though not prominently for being an outsider. But at times for being the son of the same lingual soil. The Island city didn’t do that. No matter where you were from, it accepted you and let you grow in it. It moulded you, chiseled you and made you a winner. A winner of its fate and yours along with it. You didn’t just exist there, you owned it. You ruled it and could exploit it whenever and however you wanted. It was your private island.

And so it was mine. I just shared it with three crore more people. And my favourite author of course. Our private Island.

The excitement to reach home had driven me almost two hundred kilometers like a wind. It had taken me away momentarily from the incidences in last days. I was one with the bike. It is amazing to know how a machine and a human blend with each other at such times. Another example could be shooting I think. A man and a gun blending into each other.

I had rode continually through the distance, with only two tiny halts. But I wasn’t exhausted. I was going home.

I cross the toll post. I enter my domain. A half an hour ride more and I would be reclining lazily on the sofa.

As I waited for each signal to turn green, I looked at the houses along the highway. Houses full of light. Houses full of action. Houses full of people. Homes.

I get crave to reach home more at the sight of each of these homes. They remind me of my home. The lights. The people and the action.

I cross the last signal. The traffic is well behaved than what I have been seeing in the weird city during the days I spend there. I neatly steer my vehicle with the lot. I take the turn.
The last turn. The last turn before home…

(Contd.)

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.)

APOLOGIES!

The writer was travelling over the Expressway for two days. Work, Memories, Friends, Colleagues, Roaring machines, Melancholy, Nostalgia and Longings. A Wierd weekend in the Weird City!

It's a place that would leave you restless too.

2.m

“Do you know that famous chikkiwala?” Shamita asked inquisitively.
“Yeah re” I replied taking a painful bite of my Medu-Vada.
“You are sure na?” one more query.
“Yes ma’m!”
“And you know the Resort near it na?”
“Yes!”
“And you know its main gate na?”
“Yes of course….and if we don’t find it…we will ask someone” I said firmly.
“Ask??...why do we need to ask when you know it??...are you sure you know it??”

“No” I felt like saying aloud enough to shatter the glasses of the place, crack the walls and break the furniture into pieces. But I control myself. I don’t want to make her go berserk in this hyperemotional state. A liitle high pitch and I know she would break into tears. This is one of the time when she is happy, sad, anxious, guilty and excited at the same time. Humans are supposed to behave panicky at such times and then break into a pang of extreme happiness or extreme sadness. I couldn’t handle any of her state in that matter.

I politely said “Yes dear…don’t worry…put some more ice in the juice!”

“Shut up!” she said playfully and dissolved it into laughter. I thank god for it.

“I can’t believe that I am going to meet him again…..when he said that he will coming to the hill station…I went crazy…” She began speaking. I nodded after her each line. To take myself away from her blabber, I look outside the window at the bike stand. The bike is safe. But my ears aren’t. She keeps talking. I keep nodding looking outside the window. I see some shady moments near the bike. I look more intently. I see someone familiar looking at Piyush’s bike’s number. He turns and sees another person on the bike. He too looks at Piyush’s bike. They look at the hotel board and then they look at each other. It’s the moment I recognize them. It’s Rahul and Gaurav. Harshad’s roommates. The one whom I call Aditya Panscholi and the other who is always flabbergasted when I visit their room with beer. I am surprised to see them here at the moment. For a moment I have an instinct to wave out to them. I am about to raise my hand and something stops me. I see them looking at Piyush’s bike particularly out of the entire lot. And they don’t seem to be surprised by it. They look as if they are probing into something. Like cops investigate a murder. Staring at some evidence. Taking close looks at it. Discussing something amongst themselves. Something strikes me hard.

“Behenchoad!” I say to myself in revelation. Bastards are following me! Bloody shit! Damn the arseholes. They are following me.

“Shitholes” I blurt in a hearable tone.
“What happened?” Shamita asks me.
I take a long pause as if to say something and I say “Nothing!”

I look out of the window again. They settle down on their bike near the exit of the restaurant. Below the tree where the exit meets the Highway.

“What are you thinking then?” She asks.
“I am thinking of having one more tea…” I want to spend some more time here. I don’t want to leave as long as they are there. That will give them a clear opportunity to follow me. I stretch out in my seat.

“Are you in a hurry?” I ask Shamita.
“Not as long as I am not late” She says.
“We’ve left early…you won’t be late.” I reply confidently.
“Then have another tea…”

I ask the waiter to get me another tea. My eyes are still on them. They are smoking a cigarette. They stare at the hotel board time and again and discuss something amongst themselves.
My tea arrives. Shamita keeps talking. I keep humming and nodding. She actually doesn’t need me as an audience. She is talking to herself. Telling herself how things are, were and will be. I don’t really care about them. And she doesn’t really care if I am listening or not.

Another tea arrives. I sip it idly. Trying hard to stretch the passage of time. And they don’t seem to budge.

I am done with my tea. Having another one would look stupid. It’s funny that humans even in their moments of distress care about how they present themselves. Or maybe it is an attempt to show that everything is normal.

I think of a way to extend the stay in the place. As I fondle with this thought, the waiter comes with the check. Sometimes people read your mind. And Ticket Checkers and Waiters top the list. They rightly know what you are thinking and they know when to assault. We should consider their consultation while planning our distant strategies. But the problem is that they would have to serve them before. However, that does not take away the honor of sending them as spies into our enemy territories.

I pay the bill. Leaving the place becomes inevitable. I keep thinking of ways to keep us within these walls. I find a strong one.

“Do you need to go to the loo?...go now if you want to…we won’t be stopping anywhere on the road now ” I tell Shamita. There was the idea.

“Yeah re….I will go and come back quickly!” she assures me. I don’t need it.
“Take your time” I say.

She rushes into the loo. I take a position behind the gate to keep an eye on them. They keep sitting there. Shamita doesn’t come back from the loo.

They smoke two cigarettes each. One after another. Then they share a cigarette amongst them. Maybe the last one they had. They finish it. They throw away the box and prepare to leave. They both look at the board of the hotel, say something and nod. Gaurav starts the motorcycle and they leave. I keep looking in their direction to assure that they won’t return. They don’t.
I feel relieved. I have a strong urge to go to the loo. I wait for Shamita to come out. She doesn’t. It becomes difficult for me to control the outburst of my bladders. I drop her a message on her phone and leave for the loo.

As I pee, a thought encircles in my mind. What if Shamita stands there alone and they return with a new pack of cigarettes. What if they see her. I pressurize my entire urinary system to finish the task faster and rush back to the point where we separated. Shamita isn’t there still. I wait for some time. I have a crazy thought of her being abducted by them. I call her up. She doesn’t pick up. Instead her stupid caller tune keeps going on in a loop. I keep trying. She picks up the 287657896th call. And all she says before cutting it again is “Coming baba coming!...one sec!”

And she comes.

I am taken aback. Shamita is different now. Her top and denims have transformed into a yellow Punjabi suit. Her earrings have changed to yellow hanging stones. Yellow bangles congregate in neat lines on the wrist and a yellow ring on her finger. I wonder how her bag didn’t transform into yellow. He walks up to me.

“What’s this?...yellow metamorphosis?” I ask.

“He likes to see me in yellow!”

My face broadens into a smile. I make it appear like an appreciation. I am actually finding it ludicrous. I smile in appreciation of the effort.

“Sorry….I took a bit of time…but you know…I want to surprise him!!!”

Yes! Yellow will surprise him. In fact it will surprise anybody.

And I do forgive you for the time taken. You saved us from spies. But they won’t be able to forgive you. Because they finished an entire box of cigarettes because of you. And they were prone to have nicotine lungs because of you.

We walk back to our bike. I start it. As I turn it towards the road, the board of the hotel catches my eye. I connect with the minds of the spies. The last line was an epitome of doubtraisers.

The board says:

Hotel Rajat Kaksha

Lodging & Boarding

ROOMS AVAILABLE

2.l

We took a halt at the passably decent hotel on our way to the hill station. The moment Shamita got down from the motorbike, she rushed to the ‘Ladies Toilet’ as they are known popularly on the Indian roads.

I settled down at a place with the view to the road and the ‘two -wheeler’ parking lot. I am very dubious about leaving somebody else’s bike at a parking lot 100 meters away from the place I would be sitting at. There is a constant fear which grows in my mind like a tumor that the bike would be stolen and I would have to pay for it. The fear keeps me uncomfortable and anxious through the time I spend away from the motorcycle. I keep my eyes glued on it. Every human movement near the bike sent my fears rising.

Shamita came and sat before me. As attractive as ever. I regretted not realizing this charm in the years when winning over it was possible. And easier too. It happens a number of time. A simple unattractive girl from your school or college, meets you again in your later life, appearing as attractive as ever. The moment when you instantaneously fall for them, realizing what enormous blunder you had committed as you had neglected them over other fair skinned beauties. You want to go to them and apologise your behaviour. You want to say that you were sorry that you had neglected them in those times. You want to bend down on your knees. You want to lie that you had noticed their beautiful eyes then. You want to bluff that you always like them within the restrictions of your heart but couldn’t express your feelings. You want to tell them that you love them. You want to make them yours in any condition. You want to give your right arm for it. But by then its too late. Too late realize they had wiped you off their memory long ago and begun completely new lives, with new people and new voices around them. They actually defeat you.

She untied her jet black silk and let it loose. I wondered how an hour of bike ride hadn’t soiled the freshness on her face yet. She kept her bag on the table and took out a lip gloss from it and rubbed it on her lips. That was the moment she served me my answer on a platter of convenience. I realized that she had rushed to the loo the moment we entered the restaurant. And she must’ve had had loads of stuff to do, except the purpose for what she rushed there. Maybe, what I considered to be the reason for the rush, would not have been the reason for rush at all. There was so much for a girl to do in the loo. Face wash. Face wipe. Quick cleansing. Kohl, Combing, Sun guard, This guard, That Guard, Fairness cream, anti ageing cream, Orange peel off, mango peel offs, Papaya nourishment, Watermelon hydration and numerous other things which make them appear, as attractive as ever, before they present themselves to the people outside the loo. Right from the stray ant outside the loo, to the manager of the restaurant. Everybody in that space of contact. And yes, the accompanying person too. To keep them wondering.

The waiter comes to our table. I ask her what she would like to have. She says Orange juice. I laugh on her face. I find it ridiculous when people come to such low profile restaurants and ask for juices. The waiter turns to me. I say “One Medu-Vada Sambar and Tea to follow”. Waiter leaves. Shamita sits looking at me annoyed.

“What happened?” I ask her.
“Why did you laugh???”
“Orange juice!” I start laughing again.
“What’s so funny in it?”
“What’s not?...of all the things you only ask for Orange juice!!”
“That’s the only thing I can trust here.”
“Trust??...as in??...sedatives??”
“Nope yaar…hygiene!”
“oops!” I withdraw my argument. I still have a question to ask her “but still…eat something na…aren’t you hungry?”

“The only thing I am hungry of….is meeting him” she says. Films have a deep impact on our society. Someone said, ‘Cinema is the mirror of the society’. I feel he should have quoted it the other way round. ‘Society is the mirror of the cinema.’ Or maybe Cinema is different from Hindi films.

The waiter returns with Medu-Vada Sambar. I take the first bite. My lip hurts. Bad enough for me to stop chewing.

“Bitch!...” I say to myself silently.

Shriya had bit me on the lip while kissing me last nite. I thought it would pass off as an ordinary lesion. But it had begun giving problem since morning. It pained on drinking water. It pained on brushing my teeth. It pained on having tea and it pained on smoking. I wasn’t able to recognize if it was love or retribution.

We sat there lip-locked for quite some time. I wasn’t in state to start the stop watch and stop it when we ended making out. We also had intermediate breaks for the players to relax. These were utilized by her to button up her night shirt unbuttoned by me in the miasma of fervor and pull back her shorts back to her knees. While I used it to wipe out the creases she had put on my T-Shirt. We stopped when she pushed me away on finding my lips loosing their path down her neck, crawling towards her bosom. The move made her realize that it was too late and we had to leave. Or maybe she came back from her trance and realized that those were the wrong lips she was nibbling. We walked back hurriedly to Shamita’s room. Neither of us said a word to each other on our way back. An awkward silence clogged the conversation between us. A silence of unfulfilled desires trapped in the mesh of morality.

On reaching, Shriya ran into the compound without any farewell. I turned back bearing the weight of my guilt. She called out to me, returning to the gate. I went back to her. He stared at me with fiery eyes. I felt strangely uncomfortable standing before her that moment.

“What?” I asked.
“You can’t give me what I want” she said in cold voice. Her words pounded heavily on my chest. I was about to loose my balance and fall off. She turned and disappeared into the darkness inside the gate.

I was walking back to my room, when Shamita called up. I told her that I had arranged for a bike. She shouted in a pitch that tore apart my ear drums on phone.

W decided to leave early in the morning. A journey of love for her. A journey of friendship for me. A two hour bike ride to the hill station from the arse hole of the world.

(Contd.)