She listened to me calmly with her side face turned to me, I got off my back too and turned to face her, I looked into her eyes, they glittered, they gave away a strange kind of vibe, a rhythmic energy, and they resembled that of a child, the look of curiosity and expectation and the innocence. I moved forward toward her, she was still just looking, I tucked back the strands of hair from her face, and caressed her earlobe and the skin underneath, I reached even closer where I could just feel her breath out, the tip of my nose touched with hers, she remained motionless, and continued to glare in my eyes. I brushed her lips with tip of my fingers, faintly she smiled. Softly and gently, I brushed her lips and she kissed me back, her hand reached the back of my head and ruffled my hair. We continued to kiss, with every breath the passion grew, we just wanted each other. I never thought what started as a wild impulse over the dinner would eventually lead to a romantic getaway. Now, looking in hindsight everything looks perfect, getting out of the train, stepping on the ooty tour, missing the bus, getting stranded in an unknown village, it was as if the the cosmos themselves planned it. I wanted to get closer to her, that’s what I had in mind for always, but I never imagined that I would end up having much more than what I bargained for. Was I beginning to fall for her? Did she have a place for me in heart? It was too early to say anything what all this closeness meant, and I was in no hurry to come to any conclusions.
Floating into her eyes I saw the memories coming back to me. I was a nervous little boy in high school, contemplating my move. The days when I spent hours and hours on selecting songs for making mix tapes, taking them to a friend who had the recorder and who would only let me use it if I grant him a wish that he could use later whenever he wanted. He would promise that he wouldn't dare me to jump off the clip or ask for ten more wishes or... I’d think over the plan rolling from side to side in my bed till the night come to an end or i fall off my bed. Should i post it? Should i go early and put it on the drawer on her desk? Then I'd remember her best friend - the protective overzealous kind. Nervously, I would hand it to the friend, who would roll over her eyes as if she never knew you existed or you just looked like the serial killer who poster adored the walls of the town, and which I thought was cool because I wanted to be famous, infamous and break bad so badly that I wouldn’t have to make another of these tapes or talk to their friends. Before I know it I found myself in spiral going neither downward nor upward.
In the morning she opened the door and came out of that tiny room, she looked as fresh as morning dew. I rubbed my eyes and stood up from the mattress, I looked at her, she looked different. Last night, was it a dream? Somewhere a hen cuckooed in the distance, it was already a morning in the village, for the breakfast I only drank coffee, and more coffee, just enough to get me going for the rest of the festive season and whatever has left of the aging year.
How many balls can you juggle?
It was day when our transfers were to be announced a critical junction in our life which was to be decided by the uncertainties of fate. Our batch head, addressed us, he told us that the transfers are decided by a computer algorithm that he designed himself, he ate our heads out for next fifteen minutes, trying to explain how complex the algo, the permutation combination it does and the various parameters and factors considers itself. Out of all that BS I made out that the percentage of our preference is miniscule almost to a level of zero.
So, the dice had rolled and the verdict was out, I was going to the Silicon valley of India - Bangalore, I was not worried as most of the people in the room were, B'lore was a very good place to began your career with, I could only imagine the possibilities of staying at the HQ of our organization, better projects, speedy promotions, staying connected with the core. And then there was a way out for me as well if I wanted, with B'lore in hand I could easily find someone for a switch go to Pune.
So I broke the news to Ishika - I am going to Bangalore, and she reacted - she dropped the spoon in her plate and stopped eating, she looked at me and asked, "You got Bangalore" "yeah, I replied"
"Heard that, it's best for your career to start here at b'lore" I said 'here' I was already getting the feeling that I was in the city.
"On a second thought I think I'll take a swap to Pune" I said smilingly, knowing that she had got Pune.
"Why would you do that?" "What about your career?" She said dryly.
#
With her two suitcases and a bag around her shoulder she was ready to fly away. I have a good observation, the bag was new, she didn't have it when she came here, when I enquired when and how did she acquire the new bag, she told me it has all the new stuff that she had recently bought, in these four months she zero savings, it was different thing that my balance was not fat or to be boast about either. It was like I had lost my two arms at the same time, I couldn't function without them, I couldn't possibly imagine myself without them.
So there I was at some random platform waiting for a new chapter of my life to begin, once again I had left everything behind, in a snap, just like that. So, where was I going? You’d eventually know, or if you had paid any attention to what I had been blabbering, you already know the answer.
At the station I met the six prisoners, I was the seventh, Amar looked at me and smiled, he asked, you should have swapped with me if you were so fond of Vizag. They were standing there near the tea and pakore stall, Amar was holding pakore with one hand and eating with other. One by one everyone introduced to me, I was not amazed to know that everyone already seem to knew my name and knew me, I was the boy who went to the dizzying height and couldn't keep himself there, I was the boy who had the great fall, the icaras's fall.
A pink handkerchief with a blue U knitted on it was placed on the side lower of our coach, the seven out of eight were booked for us, and the eighth one belonged to the pink kerchief. I decided to stay on the side lower, and threw my bag on the other seat, my handbag crushed the kerchief. Was it symbolic of something, I wondered.
She was a beautiful woman that was my first impression of her anyway - a tall dark slim beautiful. She smiled through her brown eyes and sat down, she had an Elle or maybe Marie Claire (pardon my limited knowledge in this field) in one hand that probably she just picked up from the hawker at the platform, she swayed her coal black hair to one side, they were so long that they took their own space. I was so taken away that I noticed her shamelessly for full five minutes while she sat there pouring herself into the magazine, so she her had a shine but a dry one, a dry kinda shine, quite queer but possible for her, the skin of her arms, her face, the texture, all were same. That's quite uncommon too, I looked at my arms and I noticed it had two colors the area out of the sleeves had a different color, she wore a fit black gym slackers and a blue sleeveless tank top, I looked at the shoes that were... alright I checked her out pretty much which I ought not to, anyway there was one thing I didn’t notice or rather couldn’t notice, it was that all the other six kid in the block noticed me noticing her. They passed laughter like I was a standup comedian or like a circus monkey doing funny routine.
When I was done, I looked out of the window, fields of paddy passed by, and I saw women young and old, stooped over, working; the birds took flight as a little girl ran with yellow dupatta flying feverishly in the air; and far way greater men along the lines of horizon sweated with spades in their hands; outside the window everything was just moving so fast that I felt my life was just passing by in some sort of flash forward - zoop and... I cannot control it how it works, it's just that it works that way, we are observers to our own lives.
"What are you thinking?" Her questions took me out of the slumber. "Nothing, just looking"
"It's amazing isn't it?" She asked. "I am Uma" She introduced. I wondered whether I should introduce myself or not, did she know who am I? Or rather who was I. Of-course she must know. "You were in our batch?" I felt stupid for the question, it was another way of saying that you were so ordinary that I did not notice you. "Yes, I was" "You are I, ain't you?"
She asked. I smiled, "Yes, I am" "The triple swap guy" She mumbled. So I had a new identity, little did I knew! From straight A's to incredible swap guy. She told me that she was posted in Vizag just like rest of us, at that very instant I thanked heaven, but then she added that she wouldn't have to go as she would work something out by then.
It was the day our postings were declared only a handful people got what they wanted, there were upset people doing rounds, I was kind of okay, but my partner Neeta was crying, Why? I asked her, why was so, what did she get, I feared she was posted to southernmost tip of the country. But she spoke, she spoke with her big brown wet eyes, I listened to every inch of her words, she told me about her brother who suffering from Alzheimer, she told me that she couldn’t possibly imagine living away from him. Though her parents were there full time but she had to be there too, she had to take care of him.
At that moment, I thought and I wished if I could do something for her. And then it occurred to me, there was definitely one thing that I could do, I could get her a swap. And so I went around and got of hold the first guy that I could and asked if he had a Pune and needed a swap to Vizag, no was the reply to both questions, I then moved on to the next guy, Arvind, and then to Swati, and then Amar who said he's already going to Vizag and he asked me instead if I want to swap. I was going on like this desk after desk when a wise guy suggested me that I broadcast it on our Unix box. I thanked him and went back to my desk, I opened the black window of the prompt and shouted if anybody was interested in swap from Pune to Vizag, I got like hundred messages from which I basically inferred that every goddamn place Hyd, Pune, Chennai even Trivandrum was in demand except of course Vizag, nobody wanted to go there. why? What was wrong. I was lost in thoughts when I saw a blinking window of a personal message, mahesh asked if I wanted to swap with b'lore, he had Pune, of-course I wanted to swap but I was not concerned with myself, I replied back that no not at the moment, maybe later, and then it struck me, an epiphany, the thought of a three way, a triple swap, I will give away b'lore for Pune, and then swap with Neeta for Vizag-Pune. It'd be perfect, well almost, for the part that I had to go to Vizag. I didn’t know what possessed me at that time, I didn’t really know what I was doing held such a great impact in my life, Ishika's life, our lives. I replied immediately, yes I want to now. He gave me his seat number, after talking to him I talked to Neeta and there we go with mutual understanding we went with the proposal to our batch head. He was hesitant but then Neeta made a puppy face, he was convinced.
#
“I heard about you and Ishika”
I was taken aback, it was sudden, I did not know our personal lives were so public. “And I am sorry for that” She continued.
I looked at her and smiled, “there was nothing between us, there never was”
As I stared deep into those big dark lovely pair of eyes I recalled something -
In one corner near the stairs I saw something moving, my heart skipped a few beat. I was pretty sure I saw a figure in the dark, it was hard to make out, but there it was I saw whenever it moved, I stopped for a moment and argued whether I should go ahead and find out or I just ignore. When I was kid I had this morbid fear of so called wolfman, I wouldn’t dare go in the dark. I decide to see what it is, it was dark and it had its back toward me, as I grew closer I saw clouds of smoke rising up, not the one like that mushrooms out of an atom but still potent enough. I made sure I was as quite as possible, but you know you can never be sure, I expected it to be startled but it didn't, slowly it turned, but still darkness didn’t give away who it was.
"What are you doing here?" I asked her.
"Why are you here?" She replied.
"Couldn't sleep?"
"You, too?" She said as she turned.
"What?" She said, "You haven’t seen a girl smoking before?"
"No, nothing like that" The fact was I hadn't.
"Then?"
"Well-"
"Oh! You didn’t expect me too, you had an impression that I am all that jazzy kind of girl who loved pink unicorns and loved young-adult fiction and had posters of baby face celebrities"
I listened to her quietly as she spoke, I couldn’t understand her sudden outburst of emotion against me. Now when I reminisce about it, I know what it was or why it was, it was not directed toward me, or anybody in particular per-se, it was on life in general, a solemn expression on the nature of existence itself. The more and more I thought about it the more and more it made me a non-believer, I was never a puritan but I was not an atheist neither, I was someone hanging in between my ever hopeful heart wanted to believe but my rational mind refused to accept.
"It's bad for your health"
"Bad?" She replied taking even a deeper whiff "yes bad, but then what is not?"
"Isn't our lives miserable already?" "What difference does it make, if I die 18 or 80?" "Whatever it is, for me, the fact that I have lived is enough" "I want to live before I die"
"That's another way to say you don’t care?"
"I don’t care?" She said grudgingly, "I cared enough to plead my mother to come back" "She walked out once and never came back” “my father and she had a fight, and she drank and she was killed in the road rage, she killed herself, she knew what she was…“ “I was eight, who does that to your kid?”
"Anyway scientifically speaking-" She said dropping her sullen tone and smoothed her mood.
"Cancer has not been linked to smoking so far, there is neither scientific evidence nor imperial evidence to backup the claim"
"But it increases the risk" I argued.
"And so does going out on the road"
"You have a choice here"
"You can stay at home all your life if you want" She replied smilingly.
I assumed it was best to let the conversation die, she wouldn’t listen, and seriously why do I even care?
"I remember where I met you" I whispered softly.
"Where?"
"In the zoo" I replied as composed as I could.
But it didn’t crack her even a single bit. Nothing could, that night. She spoke after choosing to be silent for long time, the time when we just uneasily stared at each other.
"We met at the international heritage center"
'International heritage center' I repeated pondering, thing with me is my mind still runs on Celeron processor.
"Oh my god" I cried as the wave of realization swept me. "You are that girl in white" "How could I..." "Forget you". A tinge of smile floated on her smoky lips.
"My father want me to look after the business"
"The horse shoe business?"
"No, it was meant as a joke-" 'Then what? Undergarments?’ I said to myself.
"My father makes hydrostatic bearing, it's a small part used in space rockets and high speed cars alike"
"In recent years we have expanded a lot and every passing day it's becoming difficult to manage by himself, so, my father wants me to get in and -"
"But, I didn't want to get stuck into a family business, just sit there in one corner and parade the workers around." "And so I chose to come here" "My friend's sister is in IT she told me it gets pretty interesting, you meet people from all sort of places and languages" “People filled with dreams, and love; people, driven by ambitions and aspirations; and people filled by the youthful vigor and fueled by the challenges to come.”
That night I couldn’t get much sleep, partly because the tension snored at much lower pitch, and high voice level and mostly because what Ishika said to me kept looming into my mind, I saw my mother playing with a baby me, it was so vivid that I concluded it could only be a memory. Somebody told me that if you are extremely stressed about something you can access the part of brain which you normally can’t, I was certainly unlocking the mesh of grey membranes.
The next day while I was in the lecture hall, listening absent mindedly to the constant chanting of how JSPs are actually Java servlets, my mind floated to a distant horizon, I saw myself rummaging through th
e stacks and stacks of cloths and books and old discarded underwear and what not, and I finally found what I was looking for, frankly speaking I didn’t know what I was looking for until I actually I found it, those were the bunch of photographs from my childhoods. When I was but a child I created this fantasy guardian who would help me out of the situations that I found myself sucked into time to time. I was stuck again. For me the people never mattered for largely I held a belief that anyway we enact the most part of our lives, I am most interested in the difference between what people thought and what they did, I considered myself as the ideal candidate for the study. My own consistency with constant irresponsible, illogical behavior served me as the barometer with which I measured just how mad someone could be. I observed however nobody and I stress matched the level of mediocrity that I displayed through my life, I was a paragon of the field. Cold as snow, I felt as I have dug my face into a bed of fresh snow, pale and numb and painless I was going through the life. My head was caught into the whirlpool of undirected thoughts. I had to shake myself out.
At Chennai central she got down, and wished me goodbye in her language, tamil I think, or maybe it was Telugu or maybe Malyalam, how would I know? I wished her back, in English, the language Chennai folks understand.
Cast Away
On a foggy January night we reached Vizag from Mysore. We hailed a cab whose cabbie was resting with his feet on the wheel, I felt doubtful about getting in. He asked for 150 bucks and considering that it was so late in the night and the fact that we'd get reimbursed we said ok without any negotiations. We were one two three… six guys and still the cabbie magically fit in our entire luggage inside the trunk of his ambassador taxi. And how we all six fit in one car still is a mystery to me. It was so cramped and stuffy inside that I slid down the window, a cool breeze barged in, I took my head out of the window and tried to breathe. Somebody said something, probably the driver, but I cared less.
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