2. f

“Where’s aunty?” I ask Sneha.
“Not at home…” She says with a smile. It’s their motto. Service with a smile!
“How long?” I look around and ask grinning mischievously.
“Fifteen minutes….” She says poking my nose with a ladle in her hand.
I say “Enough for us!”

Sneha was the first girl I interacted when I arrived at this place. Her mom a small food joint opposite the campus. The rear of the joint, dissolved into their one storied bungalow. After we had finished our admission procedure, Dad desperately wanted to have a tea. Aunty’s food joint was lot more tempting than the campus canteen. Dad preferred Aunty’s Joint over the canteen. Later I knew that his choice was right and numerous other campus dwellers did the same. A cozy place, run in the backyard of the bungalow, through the kitchen window. And an adjoining door for the servants to collect the left-overs. As I accompanied my Dad to the place for the tea, The first thing that caught my eye was not the coffee machine there.

Aunty had spotted the potential customer in me then, and had started a conversation with my Dad. As our parents talked, we had talked through our glances. Some nuts are easiest to crack. And they send you an electromagnetic wave. If you catch them rightly by your antenna, you get the opportunity to crack them. It’s science. Pure science.

As we left, I throw a last look at her. And she had smiled. I had smiled back. She had then quickly waved a good bye to me, stealing a moment from her mother’s reign over her.
Later, when I was searching for a Mess in this place, I had walked up to her, at the end of the day, when she was winding up the joint alone. I helped her gather the plastic chairs and foldable tables and arrange them in a neat stack at a corner of the backyard. Starting from the mess, we talked about thousand other things. About life, about the place and about each other. The chord was struck then. And the music played till date.

I slowly crept my hand inside the window slit Aunty had made for serving stuff and reached for her hand. She whacked on it with the ladle. I pulled it back with an impulse. She laughs.

I turn back. I see Rahul entering the joint. Harshad’s old friend from To conceal the mishap, I wave to him. He doesn’t wave back. He is obviously pissed with me. Like many others who are a target of my mockery. What could I do if he looked like Tej Sapru of all. Harshad had opened my eyes to this fact. It was his college fact. I just traced it further. I started with calling him Tej Sapru. Then Sapru Saahab and then Tej. Unfortunately, people had started calling him Tej like me. He was busy these days suppressing the wave.

“Ask him what he wants…” Sneha winked at me. I took up her demand for entertainment.

“Oye Tej…kya lega re…what will you have?” I ask him at the top of my voice. Everybody hears it. He gives me a fiery stare. I see aunty coming. I quickly turn back, pick up my sandwich and get seated away from the window. I am about to take a bite and I see a shadow hovering over me. I turn in its direction. Rahul stands beside me.

“Arey Tej…..What happened?” I ask playfully.
“My name is Rahul…not Tej…this is the last time I am telling you this…next time I won’t tell you…” That was a threat. I had realized it. Sometimes I am scared of situations. I have a pent-up fear of them.
“That means you would get used to it by then….” I joked smartly to avoid the situation.
“Too much of smartness has got into your arse eh??....Its not difficult for me to beat it out…” It infuriates him further.

I stand up facing him.

“Last time” he says sternly and leaves.

I am shaken. Yet I appear to be calm. I sit down and I bite into my sandwich with trembling feet. Was I scared. Yes I was. Inside my pretentious fearless self, lies a coward. I cannot fight. The fear of getting beaten up grips me. I can’t face an opponent into his eyes. I cant react quickly to his physical assault. All I can do is destroy the opponent completely with my brain. That is my way of responding. I always believe that, those who cannot use their brain, use their hands. I use the brain. That is all that I know about myself. That I have a brain. And therefore I am.
I chew the sandwich with a determination. I have to find a retort for Rahul. I cant keep getting threatened in public places. Especially like these. I throw a fake smile at Sneha.

Somebody closes my eyes tight suddenly. I can feel gentle fingers pressing my eyelids.

2. e

We sit there wordlessly smoking our cigarettes. I keep looking at the Expressway. India’s first Expressway. A party head’s dream. A government’s mission and a state’s pride. It joined the two capitals of the same state. Two divergent urban civilizations separated by a mere distance of one hundred and ninety five kilometers. One cultural and one economic. One disorganized, one crazy. One easygoing, one stringent. Like two contrasting siblings born astonishingly to a same mother. A thick line holding them together. Binding their bodies while preserving the individuality in their souls. It was a belt that held the two wheels of a machine together.
I looked at the western end of it, in the direction of my home. It dissolved in the dark horizon at the end of the curve. Like everything else, it disappeared after it. It must’ve dropped off the edge like the Greeks thought. Maybe they were right. If not in the geological sense, but surely in a sense of perception. Horizons did trap us. We only crossed them when we wanted. Till then it was the point where the land ended for us. And those who did, returned back to the lives marked within the horizon or kept yearning to do so. Dreaming of it, every moment they spend outside the horizon.

I had my home beyond the horizon. In the other city. The place where I was born and brought up. The place which built up my soul. The city which ran through my blood. The city across the sea. The city on an island. I didn’t go there much. I was happy here. Not because I loved this place. But it gave me a frameless world to live my life. This sovereign way to life was what kept me glued to the place. It was not that I didn’t want to go there. It was just that I didn’t preferred going much. Here I had my own life. It was imperfect in sane senses. But it was mine. I ruled it. I lived it.

This was the Expressway which had brought me to this place. And I know that this is the Expressway which will take me back home. It had shown me freedom. It had introduced me to independence. It had taught me to stand up for myself. And it had given me the license to behave the way I want. And when I had to be to myself, it seated me besides it. Endowing me with peace and solemnity to get back to my life in the arsehole of the world.

“Why did this happen?” Piyush spoke taking a puff. He had curled up his legs to his chest, like a villager sitting before a flame. Villager that he was. Villlager that he will be. Such moments take the villager out of him.

“It shouldn’t have” I reply smoking mine.
“”Why does this happen to me?...Why?”

This is the line I hate the most. It incenses me when someone utters this line. The line is a fucking epitome of self pity. Why did it happen to me? What do people want to prove with the line? That they are the only sad individuals on the back of this earth? That nobody is sad except them? What do they want to say? Bloody losers! After being used by billions and trillions of people around the world, the line now carries a profile.

Line: Why does this happen to me? / Why does this happen to me only?
Users: Every individual loosing an opportunity.
Purpose: Express sadness
Target: Men target women; Women target men and women
Success: 78%
Expected answer: Awwwww….don’t cry! Poor baby!
Inappropriate answer: It happens to everybody…all of us…

“It happens to everybody dude…all of us…” I said rather impartially.

He looks at me shocked.

“What is important is what we do in such situations…” I continue with same state of commenting.

A silence lingers between us for some moments. He seems unable to react. His silence speaks for him.

“What are you doing?” I break the silence with my question.
“Harshad is my friend…”
“Hmm...”
“A part of our brotherhood…”
“Yeah”
“His happiness….is my happiness…”
“I asked you what are you doing?” I stress on the word ‘you’ on loss of patience to his overtly expressive statements.
“Giving up” He replies proudly.

Sacrifice! Arsehole never loved her. I believe people who are ready to sacrifice in love, never are in love at any point of time. They just feel that they are in love and enjoy the pleasure of being in it. In the deprived society of ours, even this feeling gives them an upper hand over others who don’t fall in love predecidedly. It makes them feel special and they find the trip equally worthy of falling in love itself. The quick sacrifice from Piyush was doubting the validity of his feelings before me.

“Are you sure?” I ask him.
A long silence prevails. I wait or an answer. It doesn’t come for a long time. I wait more.
“Are you sure?” I ask him, utterly frustrated by his silence.

He again took a pause. A small one this time. Then he twists his face. And then he answers. Finally.

“No…”

Clever arse. He keeps a room for himself. After he had lost hope, cribbed over his fate, cried like sucker, decided to secrifice, he says he isn’t sure if he will let Harshad take her home as his wife. He does expect a miracle secretly within him. Bloody hope dies hard! I catch him with that line.

“When will you be?” I ask.
“My mind says No….but my heart says..” He begins.
“I asked when will you be sure?” I cut him off.
“Don’t know”
“Piyush….” I speak with a determination “As I said… What is important is what we do in such situations…And you don’t know what you have to do….And when you don’t know that….you suck!”
“I do suck…I know..” he begins another emotional mono act.

“Shut the fuck up” I shout on him “Know what you want to do…decide it fucker!...sooner the better..”
“But….”
“I will ask you this question once more….decide it till then…” I don’t let him speak. I strike my sentence on him like a threat and I leave from the rock.

Shaken to the core, Piyush starts following me hurriedly, to catch up with me.

I give him time. I buy some time. Not for him. But for myself. I have my plans. I won’t speak it out this time. Speaking out plans, spoils them for me. I am jinxed in that matter. I’ve realized this lately.

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.

2.d

Plan:

I go to Piyush. I will find him giving some emotional discourse on life and the involved sadness. I meet him. And I tell him that Shamita has an affair with a married man. His views about her are tainted. He withdraws. The subject comes to a full stop. Pretty cool.

Execution:

I reach my room. Piyush is sitting delivering a discourse to Samrat. Samrat is listening religiously to him. I have never seen a much gullible guy than him. He is naïve, Idiotic and at the same time innocent. Dickhead is elder than us by a year. Yet he seems five years younger to us. And if anybody within the walls of these two rooms needs an audience. Samrat is the man. He would listen to your story. Coincide his feelings with you and make you feel better. He knows every soul’s secret within these two rooms. But not a single one has leaked out of it till date. Because it’s Samrat. Piyush is giving him some emotional discourse on life.

I go and sit before Piyush. He turns to me.

“Welcome…welcome…”
“Yeah…I am in…”
“I need to talk to you…”
“Me too…” I say somewhat seriously. Being casual in such moments could be dangerous. It could distort the overall effect of your words later and give wrong outcomes, which would collaterally be against you on a whole. So, I build up a preface to my plan. I act serious.

Piyush finishes his discourse for Samrat. I feel like standing up and applauding. I avoid it in this delicate situation.

Piyush moves towards me. He looks grave. Grave enough to topple me over. I have a baseless fear gripping me. I fear he knows my plan. I fear he knows about Shamita’s indulgence already. If you are in the ring to kill the tiger, you always feel that the Tiger knows that you are here to kill him. I’ve never killed a tiger personally. But I have heard a lot about it. From Jim Corbett and my paternal relatives who like killing tigers. Who never killed tigers somehow. And I also know that this is the exact time to feel this. “Let’s go to our room…” he says with the same intensity.

I follow him to the room as if hynotised by his words. Zombified by him. Following my master. I do master. Let’s go to the room. Samrat feels left out. Who cares? Zombies don’t care. Zombies in fact don't do anything. They just be themselves. Zombies that is.

He sits on his bed. I sit on the empty chair opposite to it. There’s Dilip’s towel on it. I whirl it away on his bed carelessly.

Piyush drinks water from his bottle, rinses his mouth and swallows it. He then clears his throat and speaks.

“Mera pehla pyaar….adhoora reh jaayega…” and his eyes turn moist. How pansy. This is how films seen while attaining puberty effect a person's psyche in the years to come. One starts crying because the only love story in his life would remain incomplete. That too in a contemplative state of affairs. It sucks. Effeminate arse.

“Kyun?....kya hua?” That’s called concern. More for my arse than for his.

He starts weeping silently.

“What happened Piyush?” I ask him the same thing second time.

“I will loose her…” He says.

“Why?” Every time he makes a statement, It scares me more about the next one.

“Harshad is in love with her…”

Goddamnit! Who told him this? Barkha has been with me since the secret was leaked out to her. Neither did I tell anybody else except myself about it. Then how did this child of god come to know about it? What is happening? Does he read minds? Or did I blurt it out when I was drunk. Least chances. I am always in check of myself when I am drunk. Samrat? But I didn’t tell him anything of this yet. Did he see them together, as an outcome of my previous plan? What the hell on the earth made him realize this? I see my plan descending rapidly towards crash site. An unreasonable hope keeps me hung to it. If I knew the source of comprehension, I could still tackle it easily, keeping it afloat. Source. It was the solution for my solution.

I keep wondering. At a point I give up and as the man himself.

“Harshad??”

“Yes” he wipes his eyes with an impervious look on face. What an act of personal strength.

“Who told you?”

(Contd.)

2. c (extension)

“How did you know?” The question impulsively erupts in my mind. I hold it back.

“Yeah???...” A fake laughter and then a “Really?” As if I don’t know.
“Yeah” She plays with the sparse hair on my chest.

“How do you know?”
“He told me today.”

Damn bloody Idiot! I thought he won’t tell anybody. But he dis. He spilled his sanctity before her. And of everybody else, her. The woman whose brain was like an uncovered milk vessel on flame. It keeps spilling its contents all over. Like it had spilled it over me. It will begin spilling on everybody else slowly. And the entire world will know Harshad is chasing Shamita. Sorry! He is in love with Shamita. And then it would cause a bit of discomfort for Piyush. Just a bit.
Shit! This wasn’t favorable for my plan. All would be ruined. Why did the Chutiya have to tell her? I hadn’t yet had a counter plan for Piyush. I would have to race for a plan now. I would have to be fast. Faster than her words.

“You are his sister na….” I say teasing her. My mind contemplates on a plan.

“Yeah…”
“What’s up with you guys??....this brother-sister business?” I ask. My mind wanders through instances.

“He has a cousin sister whose name was Barkha…like me…so….he considers me his sister”
“Thank god I didn’t have any cousin sister by that name”
“If u had…you would have slept with her too”

I pinch her hard. She cries in pain. I find a plan.

(Contd.)

2.c

She rolls over. Holds me in her legs and leans over me, pressing me down by shoulders. She runs her hands down my chest. I rise myself up to pull her down to me. It’s the colour. Dairy milk chocolate. I want to take a bite. My chocolate knows it. She grabs me by my arms and presses me down again. Smart chocolate. Sometimes I loose my patience in such moments. I struggle to take a bite. Chocolate likes to make me strive for itself. She moves her miracles over me. I struggle again to reach them with my mouth. Chocolate holds me down harder. She gently rubs them over my lips quickly. I yearn for them more. She pulls them back and bends her head. Her hair flow down on my face. With a flick of her head, she spreads them around my face. In the veil of her hair, I see her face. Her eyes twinkle in their shade. The fragrance from her hair fills the space between us. The urge in me soothes as it seeps into me. She bends her hair further and lowers her face towards mine. I see her approaching. Chiseled ebony face surrounded by stripes of light, the gaps in the cloak of her hair. I close my eyes. She touches my lips with hers. We open our mouths and passion spins itself in a ballet within their enclosure.

She starts jerking herself during this succulent trance. One of her hand looses its hold on my hand and works on the link between us. We conjoin. The miracles rub on my chest. She gains a new rhythm. Culmination starts building up itself within me. Every moment its makes itself stronger. It moves in steps towards the conclusion. The momentum arouses through her. The pinnacle is approached with a rapid pace. She looses her hold over my hands. I garb her and press her against me. Her arms wrap me in them. The moment of conclusion arrives. We hold each other tight. Her voice fills the haze. The darkness in my closed eyes glitters up. The florescence spreads. My teeth dig into her ear.

“Manish….” she cries.
“Anay…” I shout.
“Sorry…” She cries in a hoarse voice.
I yell. Her hoarseness conjures up with my roar. He nails dig into my back. A tightest grip. And we loosen up.

She rests her head on my chest. I run my fingers on the slopes of her back like playing a cello. She rests her palms on my chest and parks her chin on them, looking at me. I look at her.

“Manish… ” I say mischievously and smile.
“Used to…” She says and smiles grimly.
I kiss her forehead.

A moment of silence passes between us. We search for a topic to assasinate her guilt and destroy it. Mission guilt tilt. She succeds.

"You know what..." she begins.

"What??" I ask relieved to know that she has a subject.

“Harshad is in love…” she says.

(Contd.)

2. b

“I need tips!” Harshad said. He is wiping the spokes of his motorbike. If you go speeding through the sudden rain of this crazy city, the next day you spend doing this, if you don’t have enough money left with you for a service. The money which you spend on alcohol and chicken for your friends. Friends like me.

“Tits?....get operated” I say.
“Tips fucker”
“For what?”

He doesn’t answer. But blushes instead.

“For what?....epilating?”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing…..tell me…”
“I want to impress her..”

Chutiya. Speaking on serious terms, I don’t think anybody can give you tips to impress a woman. They get impressed by you, if they have to. And don’t if they don’t have to. It is that simple. But when a feeding friend asks, you have to stand by his side.

“Hmmm” I hum a pause like a knowledgeable man. “To impress a girl you actually need to know her…because every girl is impressed by a different thing…” The sermon begins.

“That’s why!….that’s why I’ve come to you…you know the right things man!....”
“Come on now…its fine” I smile modestly
“Please tell me how to know a girl yaar…you know na….I am not so good at these things…Please help me yaar!”

“Yeah dude…” I say with poise.

“Listen now….see…If you have to know a girl…you need to get close to her first”
“How?”
“Try to be with her more…spend time with her….try to know what she likes…what she doesn’t like…what she wants…what she needs…once you begin to know her well…you will automatically start impressing her…because you will know what will impress her….understood?”
“Yeah…but…”
“But what?”
“But……will I impress her automatically then??”
“Yes man….” Damn! This man needs an extensive explanation every time. Dumb dick! “See…when you will know what she likes…you will start taking care of it…you will only gift her those things that she will like…and then she will start liking you…and then….do I need to tell?”
His face reddened as he smiled. He looked away. I teased him. He blushed further.
“Thanx man!”
“Come on dude…but remember….understand her…know her completely and only then think about further things okay? ”
“Yup..”
“And don’t forget whatever she says…because her every word will be your key to her heart!”
“Yes sir!” he stood up and saluted me. He had learnt it from his father probably. He must have taught Harshad right from childhood. “Beta salute karo!” I felt like laughing madly at this thought. As a child he must’ve saluted every relative visiting his place. And his father must’ve felt proud at his salute. “Beta…Salute karo!” Old habits die hard.

“Chal….isi baat par…let’s have beer.” He said winding up his rim clean up.
That’s what I love him for. He is always ready to treat.

“But have you got cash on you?” Every free fed is worried about the generous.
“Enough to buy beer for both of us!”

Pretty cool! I was completely fine with it. As long as he has enough to buy me beer.
He went to his room to come back appearing more presentable for a human society. His efforts to adapt himself to humanity are appreciable. I allot with him with as much time as he needs.
In the mean time I think if my words will have any effect. I know how deceptive a human mind is. But an effort makes all the difference. His demand for tips was an opportunity. The hum pause was when the plan shaped up. And my suggestion to him was the backdrop for its execution.

I hope it works out.

Plan:
Harshad will get close to Shamita as a friend. She will start leaning on him. The more she leans, the more frank she will be with him. And at a point she will reveal her lascivious affair to him. And he will withdraw himself from falling for her any further. And one problem will be solved for both of them. Seems cool.

He comes back dressed up.

He walks past his bike. I sense an effort to walk. I keep my fingers crossed. I pray to god that he takes his bike. He comes to me.

“Let’s not take the bike. Its still muddy. Tomorrow I will have to wash it all over again.”

‘Bhosda!’ I say to myself.

(Contd.)