2. r

“Let’s go in” I say.

In an hour Sudesh and I were standing outside Mac’s. I had almost ran to Sudesh when I had seen him coming. Overwhelmed by the outrageous happiness of meeting him, I had dodged an Autorickshaw and went over to hug him in the middle of the road. Our high-pitched abuses to each other, had sent a wave of shock through the silent god-fearing people in the premises of the Railway Station.

There was no other peaceful way in which I could meet Sudesh. Over the numerous years of friendship, starting from school, we had developed a bond which went beyond the defining constraints of the word ‘Yaar’. Before I left the weird city, we were a part of each other’s every joy and plight. Circumstances had distanced us, but the chord between us had stretched like a rubber band over the fate marked expanse, recoiling itself and bringing us together as and when times arrived. A stage you attain visibly after a decade of friendship. A stage where you need no assuring factors for the connection that you share. No phone calls, no messages, no any other media of communication, till it becomes extremely necessary. A line of attachment that goes beyond all this to constantly reassure you at the back of your mind that your friend is there for you. A friend whose girlfriend who cannot eye upon.

After a round of public display of our emotional outburst, we moved to the safety of the footpath outside Mac’s. I suggested Sudesh that we go in.

“It’s crap yaar…” Sudesh replied.

“Mac’s?” I asked.

“Yup…It’s an economic drain” He stated.

“How?..” I ask. This time I am bewildered.

“Where does all the profit goes to?” He asks.

“Let’s go somewhere else” I reiterated his line. He had a point.

“Let’s go to the Irani across the railway tracks.” He suggests.

“Yeah…” I agree instantly.

I could always prefer an Irani over Mac’s. The rules were almost the same. Both had self service. You could sit at both the places as long as you could, till you had something before you. An both places provided a good environment for conversations. There were other things that differed too. Primarily the menu. Beginning from Chai to Chicken Biryani, it served everything that you could think of eating at different points of time. And what differed secondarily was the service. There were no over smart employees on the other side of the counter. Their smiles were real. Their affection was real. And their will to serve was the absolutely genuine. They served because it was their passion to serve. Because loved doing it. And they had spent years mastering the art of service. They knew that customer was the not just the king. He was the friend, a brother, a son and means of his daily bread. So they treated the customers like fellow humans. They knew the value that sprinkle of humanity in this large city of business. And that was what preserved them over the time in this Metropolitan. And that was what made them the preferred ones. It always scored a point over the fake plastic trained smiles at Mac’s. Where customers were treated like targets of business. The end points of the purchase process. And the multiplicands of profit.

We are about to cross the road when Sudesh’s phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket. Looks at the caller’s name. Gets awkward for a second and pushes it back into his pocket. It’s his girlfriend. He loks at me and gives a sly smile.

“I am in the loo” He says.

“And I ain’t there?” I ask.

“No…you are not a problem.” He smiles.

We laugh.

His phone rings again. He doesn’t pull it out this time.

“Attend it fucker” I suggest humbly.

“Why the fuck?...can’t she give me a moment with you?”

“Did you tell her that you’ll be meeting me?”

“Yeah”

“Then maybe she’s guessing that I’d turn you sodomous”

“My arse!!!”

“Yeah!...that’s what she cares for!”

His phone rings the third time now.

“Bloody shit man!...”

“Attend it jackass”

“Later man”

“You!...gonna be screwed!” I said making a gesture with a fist banging sideways in the air.

His phone rings once more.

“Attend it!” I decree.

“Yeah man…one more….and it turns messy”

“Go suck!”

“Yeah sure!”

There is a certain hypnosis about a girlfriend’s call. It mesmerises you and takes you away from the position you are standing in. You cross roads. Surpass traffic. Overcome hurdles. Cross rives. Jump over valleys. Climb up a cliff. Walk overs peaks. Swim through oceans. Transport over continents. And defeat celestial distances when you are talking over mobile phone with your girlfriend.

Sudesh slowly disappeared from my view and he drifted away talking with the new commander of his life. I stood where I was. Crossing the road. I resorted to the railway station shade to await his return from the distancing trance.

A cold wind blows out of nowhere in the scorching heat of the city. It soothes me. I keep looking in its direction. It slowly captivates me. It touches every pore on my body and seeps through it. I feel a coldness spreading across my skin. It burns lightly on my crust. It enters the layers below. It enters my blood. It enters my head. It makes its way to the mind and freezes my thoughts. I go blank. Everything before me fades gently. And I hear those alien voices again.

(Contd.)

2. q

The days when you are at home are peculiar. You take at least ten hours to settle down in the old environment. Like you have a jet lag after you travel by jets. Expressway has an emotional jetlag on me. I had to be back the person I had been. Remoulding myself to the limitations I had broken successfully in the new space. The margins in which I was constricted for years. There was a comfort in this displease. A temporary gratification till it began suffocating me again.
The things which I had painstakingly missed out in my sovereign life were forcefully stuffed back into me. And Mom played a pivotal role in it. Her primary target was my digestive system. She filled it with what it had grown unfamiliar of. Home-made food! That too thrice a day. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. At times also an evening snack. The system had to work over time, churning and burning the newly filled contents. Pushing it forwards through the ups and downs and requesting help from loose fibres in the matter it carries.

Then comes the information processing part of the brain. There is a term I know called flooding. That is exactly what Mom does. She keeps feeding information into me and I keep receiving it and processing it. Who married whom. Who did what. Which aunty met Mom in whose wedding. Which shopkeeper gave Mom a discount on a Refrigerator cover. Which new shop opened in the locality. What new tantrums does the maid throw. When did Dad come home mildly drunk. How someone in the society fought with their neighbours when their cars brushed with each other. How the woman in the next building burnt her chicken. How uncle’s sister-in-law’s mother-in-law’s sister got repayed for the dinner after they found hair in the food at an Udupi restaurant. How my cousin brother’s wife’s sister’s son’s wife’s sister found a teeth fallen on the road which she later realised was her own and how the woman in the third house on the fourth floor on the fifth building around the second corner of the sixth road had choked herself after eating a Gulab Jamun made by herself. Finally there comes a moment when you are not in position to accept any more data. It starts sending out error messages to you. And you tend to loose your concentration. Your eyes shift their focus from her and search for something more intriguing, like a pigeon feather floating in air, to settle on. And that’s when Mom says that living alone has made you loose interest in the family. The moment when your system burns out completely. A Hard Disk crash!

After several such sessions over the three meals I had successfully settled down with Mom’s help. I recollected the homely rituals which I had lost during my stay at the weird city. I slowly seeped into my household. Became a part of the large gear system that the house was. I appended my groves to the new groove structure of the house. The groove structure, which had begun to work without me. Yet, which had a place for me as an imperative attachment.

Out of the essential rituals of returning for me, I performed the fundamental one, as soon as I settled down. Catching up with old friends. Being away from home, living in a new backdrop for days had sidelined these names which were a vital element of my living once. A prediction of this state, even by an expert astrologer, would have been declined by me instantly then. Believing in the fact that I would live without my buddies was impossible. But now I was living this impossibility. I had doubts about my survival when I had set forth on a journey to the weird city. But I shortly learned that life had multiple ways of moving on. To the extent of forgetting your, then called ‘nappy friend’s birthday. That was how life was. Emotions were only possessed by people living it. Otherwise life is as impassive as it can be.

“Sudesh??” I said in the mouthpiece.
“Bol Randi…kaisi hai tu chinaal…aaj bahut din baad yaad aayi…customer khatam ho gaye kya?...” I hear on the earpiece.
“Haan saab…bahut din se aapki awaaj nahi suni thin a isliye phone kiya” I answer.
“Where the fuck are you?”
“In the city”
“When did you come fucker?”
“Around eleven hours ago”
“And you are calling me up now?”
“Yeah…eight hours I slept. An hour I took to settle down and two hours I have been shitting, brushing and bathing…now its your turn…where are you?”
“I am at the Railway station after an hour…usual meeting place…outside Mac’s”
“Okay…I am there!”

We disconnected the call. There is nothing much we need to talk. Because it all would be said when we are sitting or standing face to face with each other.

I felt a spout of energy through me. I found smiles filling me up. I felt a tremor of cheer. I laughed out loudly after I disconnected the call. Wherever you be. In whichever step of growth. Whomsoever be the people around you. Whatever be the fucking case with you.

Meeting an old friend always will always do this to you.

(Contd.)

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.