The pretender and the fool

It was a girl's voice that answered the phone. After a moment of hesitation, I introduced myself. She sounded pleasantly surprised! A brief session including the exchange of each other's whereabouts followed. With an option to call her during a later hour, I hung up.

I knew Shahana through a roommate of mine from Delhi. She was an online friend of his, who had later turned into a phone pal. I always found it hard to relate to a voice without a face, or texts without both of the above. But he seemed to have no problem at all. He knew hundreds of such Shahanas. It was when I told him about my intention of moving to Bangalore, that he decided to part with her phone number. Tales of my prospective loneliness in a strange city just made it quicker.

She was preparing for her final exam when I called her the second time. I made no secret of my intentions of meeting her. Surprising me yet again, she readily agreed. Strange for a Muslim woman, I thought. Even stranger was the picture of mine I had painted. The me whom she knew was nothing but a bundle of lies I'd spontaneously cooked up; me who was a business analyst with an exorbitant pay packet; me who was the only son of very rich NRI parents; who drove 3 expensive cars; and was a lot of things that an innocent small town girl trying to make a living in Bangalore would dream about in a guy. Oblivious to the truth, she had agreed to meet me.

The day of the meeting arrived. It was a Saturday. The proposed venue was the Fifth Avenue, a popular hangout on Brigade Road. Before arriving at the spot, we had exchanged the details of our dress code in order to make identification easier. I had lied about mine, just in case… But she had not lied. She stood at the entrance clad in parrot green salwar-kameez. She was dark, moderately tall, and beautiful. It was time to make the move. The date was on.

I caught her by surprise by whispering her name from behind. She was startled. She panned me with her eyes from head to toe. She grinned. For two reasons – my appearance had pleased her, and second, I was wearing nothing like what I'd made her believe. She gently slapped on my shoulder followed by a gesture with her lovely eyes. The blame game, the fuss, and the patch up were all over in one sweeping movement of her eyes.

We took our seats towards the corner of the shop. She was lovelier than I had imagined. The features were sensual. The cheek bones, the dusky skin, the glittering and unusually sharp canines. There was something amorous even in her silence and the giggle she occasionally let slip through her pursed lips. Despite my persuasion, she refused to eat or drink anything, but a glass of water. I was beginning to like her. I wanted to tell her the truth. The romantic fool. But some tinge of sense from an evil corner of my heart prevented me.

A couple of hours passed. I was completely entangled in the spell of this lovely woman. I had to break the world of pretense I had created around her. After all, I was falling in love with her. How could one be untrue to a woman one was falling in love with? Ignoring the constant calling from the evil corner, I opened my mouth. "Shahana, I…," I started. Interrupting my confession, her phone rang. She excused herself, walked a few feet away and started speaking on the phone. I noticed an unusual stream of life flow into her. She was throwing regular glances at me, and giggling. I even noticed a blush despite her dark complexion.

She returned to the table a good fifteen minutes later. I looked at her with curious eyes. "Was it her boyfriend she had just spoken to?" I wondered. As if she could read my mind, she said, "Don't worry. It was not my boyfriend." A sigh of relief followed from my side. She giggled again at my expression. Though the joke was on me, I joined in. It was more of an effort to get over the embarrassment. The giggle turned into a laugh. And then into a frenzied roar. I was almost falling off the chair when she stopped laughing, for breath. I looked at her, through welled-up eyes. She gasped for one final time before she said - "It was Shahana."

And again...

I woke up in a long corridor. I could not remember how I got there. But then again, after a night of thorough binging, nobody would. The place looked familiar. I slowly got up. My knees ached. I must have walked a long way. Or maybe it was the cold floor I had slept on. Crawling on my buttocks, I rested my back against the wall. I felt like crushing my head just to rid myself of the headache. It was excruciating.

It could have been early morning. Or late evening. I did not care. Keeping track of my mind was hard enough. Yet some part of the dying rationalist managed to drag out the mobile phone from my pocket. It was lifeless. Time still remained a mystery.

I was not sure whether I wanted to get up and explore. Or to just slip back to oblivion. I generally woke up after these alcoholic nights with people around. I was alone this time. I wanted to call out. But I neither had the voice nor the recollection of my allies from last night. I dismissed the idea. The most convenient option at the time.

Using the wall for support, I slowly got up. I staggered down the dimly lit corridor. The end was hazy. A few more paces and a sign that read ‘toilet’ slowly came into view. I stepped in. By then, I had somehow figured out that I wanted to take a leak.

The sight that welcomed me was gruesome. Dozens of decapitated and mutilated corpses lay in a giant pile, almost touching the ceiling. Blood was still flowing from the fresh cuts on some of the corpses. I looked at my feet. I was standing in a pool of the red fluid myself. My slippers were soaked. I trembled.

I think it was the alcohol that prevented me from dashing out of there. Instead of stepping away, I walked towards the gory mess. They were all familiar faces. Strangely, what was left of all those bodies had one thing in common. They were all in uniform. It was then that the realization struck me. This was my school. Good old Udyogamandal School. And all these lifeless bodies were friends I had known at some point of time.

My eyes scanned the room. And to my utmost horror, I saw her. She stood in the corner, with her face partially covered with hair. Her long and crumpled night dress had blood all over it. Her hands dropped lazily by her side. One of them held a dagger. Blood dripped from the tip that pointed at the floor. I couldn’t see the face clearly, but the intent was unmistakable. I fled.

I knew the way out. This was after all the place where I had spent the major part of my childhood and teenage. I ran down the corridor, to the gate that opened into the basketball court. And from there I would make my escape through the main gate onto the road, I thought. Those hundred meters were toiling miles to me. I panted heavily as I ran to the gate. And then, just like in the movies, I fell. It was as if I tumbled on a block of some supernatural brick. But fall, I did. I heard footsteps approaching me. I had no energy to get up. My feet and my hands were immobile. I turned around, and lay on my back. I saw her slowly approach me. She knelt besides me and paused. She parted her hair, revealing her bloody face. I recognised her. Her eyes were cold as she raised the dagger. She slit the scream in my throat with a neat and indifferent swipe. Clutching my throat and choking, I woke up.

It was a dream, I realized. With a huge sigh of relief, I dragged myself to the wall to rest. My head hurt as if a thousand bombs had exploded inside my skull. I could hardly open my eyes. Too much alcohol from the night before was taking its toll. My knee ached terribly as I got up. Dazed, I started walking. My destination was a faded glow at the end of the long corridor.

A bus journey gone wrong - and then slightly right!

If you think the corner seat on a bus with bad or no leg room during a 10-hour journey was bad enough, add to it bumpy roads, middle of nowhere, cold weather and claustrophobia. I would have preferred an Iron Maiden. At least death would have been faster.

It was well past midnight and it was getting worse with every passing minute. The guy who sat in front of me had just decided that it was time for him to go to bed. And with the reclining of his backrest, I was off. I had to escape.

There were bodies everywhere. The line might sound straight out of a war movie, but to me it was no less traumatic. Except for the fact that dead bodies did not scream out abuses when stepped on, it was ditto. I stepped on at least a couple of them sleeping in the aisle and received welcome gestures before I reached the driver’s cabin.

“20 kms to the next taxi stand,” said one of the umpteen voices in the cabin. On any other day, I would have been two and half cigarettes down and happily getting down. But this was not just any other day. Out came a string of expletives. I had no choice but to wait. And I couldn’t even smoke. An opportunist next to me took pity on my state and traded his window sill for my seat. 2 minutes later, he was thrown off his seat and was back demanding his two-inches by the window. I did not return the favour. Darwin would agree. After all, I was getting off in another 20 kms!

Hairpins came and hairpins went. There was no sign of civilization as yet. It is so strange how perspectives change with circumstances. These were the same hairpins I got blissfully lost in during the dawn from a day before. And here I was, counting every one of them, with profanity studded between every number.

And then there was light! Houses! People! I was Gulliver. I was Robinson Crusoe. I was almost everyone who has ever been stranded. I was probably the only one who had a phobia though. The bus had reached Manandhavadi, something that resembled a town. To me it looked like a city from the future. Active night life, food on the fast lane and supersonic cars; mainly jeeps.

A bunch of jeep drivers gathered in conspiracy as I downed two glasses of very bad looking water at a nearby pushcart. I walked over slowly as they reached a consensus. A car was available, an ambassador. I did not even bother to bargain as I got into a rickshaw to summon the driver and the car from a few miles away. Rs.14 a kilometer for 400kms was cheap for Alexander Selkirk.

The road to the driver’s house got spookier and spookier. If I were to be murdered on the route, I guess it would have taken another stranded me to ever find the body. But due to the million other options I had in the matrix, I sat with my trap shut. I was prepared for a fight if needed. My mind was quickly beginning to contrive as the road curved into oblivion.

“So where are you coming from sir,” asked the curious driver. I answered. “Anything in particular,” came the next question. “I had gone on an investigative mission,” said I. The man obviously thought he had heard me wrong. But the rickshaw did stutter for a moment. “Are you with the police,” said the slightly intimidated rickshaw guy. With my attire and weight, it would have been very hard to pass on as a cop. “I am with the CBI (central bureau of investigation),” I replied in whatever baritone I could manage amidst the suppressed giggle. If he had any intention of doing anything that my idle mind had cooked up, it evaporated there. The message apparently was passed on to my driver the moment he was woken from his midnight slumber. Because, silence was the only language spoken through the length of the remaining journey. I finally smiled. And I slept with it on.

The masks of sorrow!

It is my second month in the new firm. I have become familiar to a lot of people and they have become familiar to me. There comes a colleague of mine, a familiar and ‘pretty’ woman who shared an hour-long conversation with me in the cab just 12 hours back. I have rehearsed my greeting at least a couple of times over in my head. The smile is pasted neatly from ear to ear. The words are almost off the lease at the tip of my tongue. Eye contact remains the missing link before I pull the conversational trigger. Ten steps away. Five steps. Two steps. Zero steps. We pass. No eye contact. I swallow my words and erase my smile. All I have on my face is a confused WTF expression. Period.

I remember reading in school about a mythological demon named Medusa, into whose eyes if one stared, would turn them into stone. So far, I am not aware of me or anyone for that matter with such powers. I wasn’t around a few thousand years ago, so I can’t take Medusa’s case. But today, I am sure there is no one. If there was, Bangalore mirror would have covered him/her for 3 months with full page reports. So why on earth do people find an eye-to-eye such a tedious task?

The lady in the first paragraph for instance. Had I made a pass at her during that long midnight ride, being a married orthodox-looking woman, she would be completely justified. But all we did was talk about the death of advertising and the rise of PR. And there was nothing gory or unmentionable about it, despite the nature of the industries. So that options is ruled out.

Another theory could be the oncoming person’s face. In this case, mine. Well considering me, I don’t have the most beautiful of faces. Scary is what some define my face as. I agree. But even when scary, won’t you pass a glance, just for the sake of amusement? Just for kicks. Just like when you are walking the lonely road and you are sure that someone is following you. There comes this urge to turn back despite the ultimate fear. Just to kill it. I think there is. In which case, this also can be erased from the list of possibilities.

The next one, and a very probable one under any other circumstance, could be that she and I do not speak the same language. Or for that matter, we do not share a mutually comprehensible medium of communication. That is untrue unless we used sign language the previous night (which is quite possible considering that I was drunk up to my eyes and by tolerating me, she proved that so was she). She speaks English. I understand. I speak English. She understands. And then again, there is the universal language called smile.

Now the fourth, the very cynical and hence the very realistic thing. The mask. Everyone these days wears a mask – the mask of insecurity and hence one of indifference. Insecurity due to jobs, and lack of them. Insecurities from relationships and the absence of them. Insecurities due to challenges and walkovers. Insecurities due to the others and strangely due to oneself. The fear of being exposed steals the very essence of being human from each of us. The power of being social. To think of it, it is one small gesture that takes very little effort. As the cliché goes, fourteen muscles are all it takes. Then why bother counting the bricks in the wall when a warm ‘hello’ can keep you the human you were? Why create imaginary Sudoku puzzles in the air and solve them on the move, when a gentle smile can ensure that you have not evolved to the point of no return? Why can’t we just keep the romance alive like the good old days? Why can’t we just keep loving?

The bold line between fantasy and everything else...

The tea was getting cold. An old melody fought to freedom from the dusty Panasonic cassette player. The occasional tap of his feet seemed to acknowledge the fight; and maybe even inspire it. But Vivek’s attention was wandering beyond all that.

The road in front of him lay like a memory from a dream he’d often dreamt. It was a funny road – the road of his dreams. Every dream began at the same spot. Then he walked in the same direction; by the same canal; treading the same red earth. And eventually, he’d end up at one of his ancestral homes. But he had never been able to predict which one it would be - his mother’s or his father’s. But one of them, invariably it would be. If they’d been on separate ends of the road, it would’ve been easier. But they never were. Or probably they were. Even if they were, they looked so alike – both the ends that is. A palindrome of a road, he thought.

It was during one such journey towards the unpredictable that he’d come across the twist in the tale. He realized that he had passed it several times without actually noticing it. The tiny breach on the wall hidden behind a curtain of creepers had stayed hidden from him. If not for the squirrel that disappeared through the opening, he would’ve missed it that time around too. But that was not to be.

He carefully scanned the creepers for spiders before he parted the creepers. Though a renowned killer of the arachnids in his tender years, a close encounter had instilled the fear of the creatures deep in his mind. Apart from the resistance of a grasshopper, the encroachment was peaceful.

He walked through the narrow trail of ground that was the path as if following something unknown. He never wanted to stop. It was as if he knew it was leading somewhere more pleasant than sinister. The way his life had been treating him lately, something more evil was anyway out of question. It couldn’t get worse. In the clearing ahead, he found his answer.

The pond was crystal clear. He could clearly see a couple of sharks settled conveniently at the floor of the pool. And there were only sharks. Of all sizes and shapes. They crowded the pool and splashed water all over. The giant ones swam like whales with the tail fin held high up.

It was wonderful. He thought he would never be able to take his eyes off them. But he was wrong.

She was basking in the sun, on a rock by the bank. It was her. She was a mermaid now. But her it was. Doubtlessly. There was that same smile of nonchalance on her face. She hadn’t seen his prying eyes. Even if she had, she plainly ignored them. Like many a time outside the dream world. She was basking in her new-found, yet unpleasant independence.

Was this his moment? He thought. He hesitated. Would she dive into the depths of the pool and leave him stranded as always? Or would she turn her lazy head, and spare him a cajoling look? “Well, this was a dream. He could dream again. What was the big deal,” he said to himself with a mixture of 20% conviction, 30% apprehension and 50% fantasy. He took a deep breath. “Ziyaaaa,” he screamed. He had done it. He waited. His anxiety almost made his eyes bulge out and fall off. Terrifying seconds followed. Every tick was like the blow of a hammer. The nail was sinking. But then, against all the possible odds of heaven and hell, she turned. She looked at him for a couple of seconds; to him they were a million years. And she smiled. Flowers bloomed. The sun shot up. The seal on a bottle of rum broke. He was immortal.

In the real world however, things were quite different. He knew exactly where the road led. Winding by the thick mulberry bushes and the thorny fence; shouldering the toddy shop at the sharp turn; sliding by the thirsty river, it led to where his eyes were set. He got up slowly, emptied the cup in a gulp and looked at the watch. It was about time.