Two Lives

Kaushik, less heavy than he would be two years hence but still sufficiently stocked up for post-apocalyptic survival, went to Business School in the summer of 2006, two years after he’d finished his Bachelors in Engineering. The two colleges were of vastly differing statures, so much so, that he was perhaps the only human being in history to have studied in both. The Business School – IIM Lucknow, was considered amongst the best in the country, having mass produced future wearers of double-breasted suits for over two decades. The Engineering College, on the other hand, was a rather more modest affair, its greatest achievement being that it was the best of three colleges in the sleepy town of Dhule, located near the middle of the country and of nowhere, miles from any city of significance. In years to come, this would become the object of much friendly banter from his more illustrious Business School mates.

But, as he never missed an opportunity to point out to them, they were there and so was he. When his cab, led and followed by a continuous stream of other cabs, entered through the gates of IIM Lucknow, he felt he had left behind him an entire history of mediocrity and nobodyness. Understandably, it was the happiest Kaushik could remember himself being in a very long time.

There was a touch of apprehension too. He didn’t know if he actually fit in. In the months that led up to the start of the session, filled with self doubt and a need to lab test himself before plunging in, he had spent hours on Social Networking Sites, searching for would-be classmates and seniors, urgently pursuing conversations, whenever he found someone. The exercise proved inconclusive; most of the chit-chatting was amicable, even pleasant once in a while, but essentially cold. Like him, everyone else was testing the waters too – curious but wary, clinging to the safety of commonplace subjects. Kaushik slyly mentioned the existence of his blog. It was read and politely appreciated. A few years later, Kaushik, his tastes evolved manifold, re-read the material and was embarrassed to find how utterly juvenile it was.

And so, he carried his apprehension with him to Lucknow. The first couple of days, he wandered around the campus with his parents, as did most others. It was a large, lush place - narrow alleys leading up to short, pretty red brick buildings, widely spaced and surrounded by slender trees towering over dense undergrowth. A single tar road circled around the entire campus, bordered by a footpath dotted with cozy wooden benches. One could spend hours sitting on these benches, undisturbed and isolated, apart from the odd motorcycle whizzing past or a couple of students on a rejuvenating walk. The sense of peace and desertion was complete; it was difficult to believe there were nearly a thousand people inhabiting the place.

He was allotted a room in one of the newly constructed hostels. It would be a ten minute walk from there to the academic block, he surmised. Over the course of the two years he spent there, he realized it was more like a frenzied three minute sprint to reach the classroom in time. His room was small, clean and unimaginative, as hostel rooms are. There were scribbles on the walls and the doors, ranging from rants of megalomania to declarations of love, mostly copied from 70s and 80s rock songs. There was a small balcony too, although its effect was greatly reduced since his room was at ground level and all he could see outside was wild foliage. A solitary window opened onto this balcony from the room. It was covered with fine meshed wire to keep out the insects and mosquitoes, of which there were millions. Two shelves, hollows in the wall, a chair & desk, and a wooden bed. It was a five star suite compared to what he’d lived in, in the other college.

He met a few students, fellow hostellers; the conversations from the online chat rooms reinitiated face to face. A three day official induction began – the batch, three hundred of them crowded into a large hall, were told how special they were to be sitting there. They were told what they would go through in the two ensuing years and where that would lead. Intense rigour and competition were hinted at. Their dreams, already plump, were bloated further. They cheered.

The parents trickled out gradually. The session began. They learnt of the idiosyncrasies of their professors along with the obligatory legends and anecdotes. The pretty girls were spotted; courtships begun. Life became regular. It was then, that friendships were finally formed. This was when Kaushik first met Ritankar, Ashish and Suresh although they wouldn’t become close friends until much later.

In one lecture, every student was asked to make presentations on various topics. Kaushik waited his turn nervously. When it came, he walked onto the platform and started to speak. Somewhere in between, he cracked a joke, even as his palms and underarms sweated. It came off well and the class applauded. That was when he finally decided that he did indeed belong.

In later years, Kaushik often reflected on how little he remembered of those first few days. There were hardly any actual incidents and images his mind could recreate, just a vague, muddled sense of the time and place. All his concrete memories were from much later, when the lines between his friendships and casual acquaintances were firmly drawn and he knew where he stood.

Cafe Ideal

They entered the café and found their preferred table unoccupied as usual.

The table sat next to the window which opened immediately onto the Marine Drive, or the Queen’s Necklace, as it is known, somewhat more dramatically. On the other side of the Drive, the Arabian Sea could be heard crashing perpetually into a bunch of artificial boulders, shaped like the Mercedes star – only much thicker – that stretches across the length of the QN. A little to the right, lay Chowpatty – one of only two piles of sand in Mumbai that are passed off as beaches. In the evenings, Chowpatty teems with townsfolk in search of fresh sea breeze and shabby makeshift fast food joints that sell spicy Indian and Chinese food of questionable hygiene. Jute mattresses are lain out on the sand in front of these joints to seat customers. Sand and dirt waft perilously close to the food whenever people pass by these mattresses, which is continuously.

At 8 in the morning, however, the place was entirely devoid of activity.

There were two occupied tables besides the one they slid into. One of them by a family – man, woman, teenage son, grandfather and grandmother – that had just gotten off the train from somewhere in southern India, as evidenced by the four suitcases and about half a dozen backpacks and handbags that encircled their table. At the other table sat two Parsi men, in their sixties, sipping coffee.

“So, what do we order today?” asked Ashish, poring over the menu card. Kaushik shrugged. So did Ritankar. Suresh snatched the card out of Ashish’s hands and began running his fingers down the list. It didn’t matter that barely six items comprised the ‘Breakfast & Snacks’ section in the menu, all of which they knew by rote.

“The Egg Sali, we obviously will order”

“Yes, and the scrambled eggs on toast, as well”

“Right, and lets see…french toasts?”

“Sure, and what else? Boiled eggs? Or do we go with an omelet?”

“Omelet would be nice, I think”

“OK, an omelet then. And four cups of tea, of course”

The waiter noted down the names, offered to him over a span of five minutes.

Café Ideal had been Kaushik’s discovery. He had found it completely by chance when, right in front of the café, he’d stopped to ask for directions to someplace. He had been offered the requisite directions, correctly, he later found out, but had decided to chuck that part of the plan and enter the café instead.

They were regular visitors to the café since then.

The café stands, shaped like an arrow head, on the corner made by the Marine Drive and a road that empties into it from the innards of Mumbai. A row of windows line both the outward facing sides. The windows reach up about 10 feet from the ground; they are covered with glass, clean and transparent near the top and frosted and embroidered at the bottom. The name ‘Café Ideal’ is written on a shiny yellow facade with red paint in English and repeated immediately under in Hindi. The Hindi font is much smaller, illegible from the other side of the Marine Drive and displayed with the sole purpose of avoiding political ire. The furniture inside is wooden, polished. The tables are rectangular; a white formica sheet sits at the top. The chairs have erect backs, meshed jute held together in place by a solid wooden border. They have no armrests. The walls above the windows are layered with colourful vinyl pictures of famous sights from around the world – the Eiffel Tower, the Gateway of India, The Statue of Liberty, The Taj Mahal. Sunlight floods in through the windows throughout the day, making artificial lights redundant. The drinks counter stands in the darkest corner. Beer and wine glasses hang upside down from stands drilled into the wall and cheerfully reflect an invisible yellow bulb somewhere above them; a large red-lit sign with Budweiser written on it hangs over the counter. Right next to this counter is the billing counter. On the wall above it is a poster of the Lord Balaji. It is perhaps the only concession to the café’s Indianness amidst all the quasi-European paraphernalia.

The four huddled around the yellow-orange jukebox, armed with three coins. Inside it, back covers of CDs and pieces of ruled paper with song names handwritten or typed, each sheet and each song meticulously numbered, were stuck neatly to plastic leafs that could be flapped over like pages by clicking a button at the base of the box. The choice of music was evidently not high on the list of priorities of whoever managed the contraption, for the music ranged from the utterly ludicrous to the mildly amusing. Nevertheless, three songs were all that were required, and given that the total collection ran into thousands, a palatable selection could always be arrived at. They chose, as they always did, a Hindi song they could ridicule, an English song they could recognize and a French one they did not understand but enjoyed listening to. The obsession with French music dated back to a year when, during the course of a film, they had heard a husky, utterly sensual female voice singing in French on the soundtrack. Further investigations had revealed that the voice belonged to one Carla Bruni, a fact that had added to their enthusiasm considerably.

Back at the table, breakfast had been served. Suresh had brought with him a two day old edition of The Economic Times, which he now proceeded to unfurl. It was India’s leading financial newspaper, at least as far as volumes went, and inescapable for anyone who worked in the financial sector, which Suresh did. The top headline read ‘After sex scandal, minister ejects prematurely’. To this, Suresh began to giggle and rapidly graduated to uncontrollable laughter. The other three looked at him, expectant, for they knew an immortal line would soon be delivered, as only Suresh could. They were not disappointed.

He looked up at them, suddenly aware that he was the object of their undivided attention, and said “What? I like penis jokes!”

They discussed the previous night’s film, which they had watched over multiple glasses of wine. It had been enjoyable in a way that Ritankar didn’t approve of particularly, for it had nothing to say; just a couple of hours of lighthearted whimsy. Ritankar’s knowledge of film was encyclopedic. Ashish and Kaushik maintained that he was the sort of chap who could outclass IMDB comfortably. He could reel of names of films, their entire cast and crew and, in turn, their filmographies, biographies even. So advanced was his state of being in this regard, that for him, conversations with lesser mortals had become increasingly limited. Indeed, the other three felt privileged to be able to at least hold his attention whilst they spoke.

Traffic on the Marine Drive, from where they sat in the café, looked sparse. It was only nine in the morning. A solitary white Maruti 800 with large ‘L’s taped over the windshield and elsewhere drove fitfully past their window. Inside it, a middle-aged lady sat clutching the steering wheel with all her might. Next to her sat a nondescript man with one hand on the handbrake between them, looking straight ahead. On the sides of the car, in huge red letters, was written

‘Good Luck Motor Driving School’

They burst into laughter again.

By and by, breakfast ended. Additional cups of tea were drunk. By 10, as the place started to fill up, they walked out into the warm summer day. The last leg of the ritual began - the smoking of a cigarette. None of them were regular smokers, but in their minds it completed the experience. Standing in the sun on an empty footpath, blowing puffs of smoke at the sky as the breeze flew in languorously from the sea.

Sunday had just begun.

The End of Summer

He alights from the coach and finds that the connecting train has already arrived. It means he will not find a place next to the window. On most days, he is able to sit next to the window since he arrives before the train does.

It is not just the view and the wind that make the seats by the windows attractive; it also allows him to keep an eye on the traffic on the bridge that passes over the rail tracks near where he gets down. It’s a bridge that his cab travels through on the way home from the station. On days when the traffic on it lies thick and unmoving, he walks to save time.

Indeed, the seats next to the windows are taken. There are plenty others available, however, and he lowers himself into one. There is still time before the train is to depart. He unzips the front pouch of his worn backpack and takes his Ipod out. The gentle, idyllic sound of the Kings of Convenience permeates into his ears; it evokes visions of Scandinavian quietude that he finds relaxing after a day at work. He closes his eyes and waits for the train to move.

A minute or two after the train rolls out of the station, he sees the creek. The train glides over it, gathering speed, till the motor vehicles on the bridge next to the train’s start to fall behind. In the distance, waning sunlight and the warm moisture in the air make the hazy outlines of tall, lean buildings quiver. The sky is a resplendent pink. Overhead, trails of angry, dusty clouds lie haphazardly in the sky, as if they were passed through a shredder. They foretell gusty winds and heavy, scant rain drops. A light, cool breeze seems to be blowing; he cannot be sure for it could be an illusion borne out of the train's motion.

He knows the sky's pink colour is due to increased particulate matter in the atmosphere. He has read it somewhere. He wonders if this has anything to do with pollution. He suspects not. Such evenings must always have been there. Nevertheless, he finds the mankind’s response to such matters as pollution and global warming fascinating. Some say they will damage the planet irrevocably. Others don’t. It could all come to good or bad. Nobody knows for certain. And so, everything continues as it always did. It is as if the world as a whole were smoking cigarettes.

Through the window, he sees the cityscape in vivid sepia tones, as if it were a flashback in a film. The train has now crossed the creek and is on firm land again. Box shaped railway quarters with decaying walls form the backdrop for a continuous line of tin-roofed, temporary cottages on either side of the tracks, shallow gutters half covered by broken, discarded tiles in between. Groups of dirty looking kids, in soiled half-pants and undershirts, run around, playing cricket. Their mothers are inside, cooking their evening meals. Their fathers are out at work in far-off mills and will return, drunk, long after they've fallen asleep.

On another day, these sights and ruminations would depress him. Today, everything, bathed in the pink of the sky, appears magical. The city looks like it should when he sifts through its memories, many years later.

He decides, traffic or no traffic, he’ll walk home today.

Obeisance

He sits waiting, patiently, for six-o- clock to happen, turning his prized Parker between the fingers of his left hand. His right palm cups the electronic mouse; the fingers clicking away, continuously refreshing his mailbox. There are ten minutes before he can leave.

He’s not expecting any emails at this time of the day. At least not very pressing ones. The constant refreshing is borne out of habit, formed over hundreds of meaningless hours that he has idled away. Around him, his colleagues bustle around, engrossed in their own methods of appearing busy and important.

With less than five minutes to go, a mail appears. He curses softly under his breath. Its from the HOD. The subject line informs him that it is a reply to the long chain of mails that he has helped lengthen through the day, wilfully frustrating attempts from another team to enlist his assistance. They want access to a document which he is in possession of. He is unwilling to give it, for no other reason than that they want it. The HOD’s mail is short and crisp, as most HOD mails are. It contains a name, two words and a comma. His name, then the comma, and the two words – please expedite.

He considers his options. He doesn’t have many. He can delay, just leave for the day and think about it when he returns the next day. Or he can reply to the mail and stand by his position, which he cannot do since the HOD may not take kindly to such behaviour. He considers discussing this face to face with the HOD, explain to him why the document need not be shared but decides against it, for it is too trivial a matter.

For a while, he fantasizes. He imagines himself typing out ‘I will not’ and other stronger variants in reply. He conjures up the consequent face-off in the HOD’s cabin, where the man screams at him in hysteric disbelief. At which point, he calmly lays his resignation on the table and laughs in his face, before walking out with his hands in his pockets and a whistle on his lips.

He finds the document, attaches it to the mail and sends it to the other team with a word or two by way of apology. He checks his watch and finds the long hand shifted two cuts beyond twelve. He curses again, a little louder this time, switches off the computer, picks up his backpack and races out.

Out on the road, he spots the train sliding into the station on the opposite side. He checks the oncoming traffic on both sides of the road, at highspeed for it is an expressway, times himself and sprints. He hears automobile brakes in the background but doesn’t turn to check. By the time he enters the station, the train’s begun to move again. He quickens his pace, elbowing out a couple of college boys who seem to have admitted defeat, reaches the platform just as the train starts to accelerate, races past half a dozen other people, grabs the iron pole in the middle of the compartment’s wide, open entrance with his right hand, jogs two more steps before jumping aboard.

Week End

My flatmate in the next room alternates between football and cricket on TV. Through curtain-less unwashed French windows, the dipping Sun, blazes its way into the apartment and obliterates most of what appears on the television set and on my laptop. I see myself reflected on the screen whenever it grows dark in the movie, which is often. There are four more suns there, two each on the retinas and on each glass of my spectacles. I’ve shut the windows for the wind outside is strong and the ceiling fan swayed and squeaked too much and made nervous. One day I must die, but not by a ceiling fan landing on me, if I can help it. Or by being blown to smithereens by some crazy terrorist contraption or being run over on the road and most certainly not while I am sleeping. When I woke up this morning, I found the lower eyelid of the left eye swollen and sagged. An insect bite probably. A two day malady, I suspect, during which I must live with the facial asymmetry. There are no longer the four suns. The real one’s behind the air conditioner at the moment. The room’s a cooler, more elegantly lit place. Small and large buildings infest the scenery outside. From afar, they all look white with black rectangles where the windows are. Later in the evening, when the lights on the staircases are turned on, the consequent zigzags will be visible. Lower down, a green flag with a white crescent moon flutters casually. Below it, a maze of tin roofs and blue tarpaulin sheets stretch into the distance. Pretty soon, the mike will screech again and bestow the knowledge of Allah upon whoever cares or does not care to listen. One can hear it several times a day, starting 06:00 Hours. Started off being a major irritant, but these days, I find the noise curiously relaxing. It used to wake me up in the mornings earlier, but my sleep’s gotten used to it off late.

The speakers, along with a mosquito repellent and a cell phone charger, stand on top of the woofer, lying on the ground. One of them doesn’t work anymore. I realized that when I picked it up and put my ear to it. Must’ve been that way for months now. So much for a good ear for music. I don’t tell my current set of friends I’ve bought cassettes of Aashiqui and Saajan, amongst others, in my time. All of us have a good laugh over the music of the 90s these days, although I suspect, it wasn’t laughs they started off listening to those songs for, either. On my hard drive, I only carry independent music from Swedish and Norwegian bands. All the Hindi music is stored on another hard drive, safely hidden where not many can find it.

The day has trudged past while I stared at the laptop, played Spider Solitaire and thought of writing. Picked up one or two of previously abandoned stories and tried taking them further. After every two words, played Spider Solitaire, checked mail and took a piss. If there’s any inspiration waiting to burst upon me, it better be fast. Cute two page essays do not an author make. Twilight’s here. Sky’s pink above and pinker at the edges. Zigzags visible. No sound from the TV for some time now, flatmate’s asleep or perhaps wrestling with Kundera. If the first bit of printed material one reads, outside of course books, at the age of twenty six, is Kundera, then one is in trouble.

Well, anyway, the day’s almost over and the cricket match I want to watch will start soon. Tomorrow another week will come and go, quicker than the last one for this one’s only 5 days. At the end of which, I’ll again do more staring and little writing. Maybe, something will come out of that. Till then, this will do.

Common Cold

At the most unexpected moment, while I am going about one or more of my various daily businesses, I feel a faint harmless tickle in my throat, as if the microscopic army readying itself for a stealthy attack on my body, has exposed itself too early and, facing certain defeat, is now debating whether to make a quiet exit and live to fight another day or go the Japanese way. Their eventual decision remains the same every time. It signals the onset of the now unavoidable battle that my body must prepare for and I must suffer through, in the days to come.

Each time I have this dreaded sensation, though fully aware that I merely kid myself, I gulp several times at frequent intervals in the hope that it is only an obstinate foreign particle, embedded in the inner lines of my oesophagus, that is the cause of this itch and will presently, goaded by my actions, continue on its journey into the stomach. The effort, in addition to being fruitless, in fact has an effect contrary to what I intend. For my throat begins to itch with intensified vehemence.

Resigned, but still vain in hope, I quickly help myself to hot tea or coffee in generous quantities and swallow it with greater vigour than usual to ensure that the affected region is thoroughly rinsed. Immediately afterwards, I gulp a few more times to check if the beverage has had a positive effect. The first couple of times, the itch seems feebler, and my fears are temporarily allayed. The relief does not last for long; the third time, it is inevitably back.

I wonder what it is that this bunch of pitiful invisible creatures find exciting in these doomed ventures for them to keep coming back. Surely, they realize they stand no chance at all? That the human body is simply too large and too powerful for them to ever take down? There are, of course, others of their kin who do possess that ability, but who is to say if they are even aware of the existence of their lethal brothers in arms! Nevertheless, they keep coming anyway, perhaps in the hope that they pave the way for their descendants to succeed, many generations later.

On the second day, the minor skirmishes end and full-fledged war commences. The attackers, resigned to their fate and fearless, launch their assault on all fronts. The defenders, initially caught off guard, have gradually begun to bring coherence to their campaign, invigorated no doubt by the artificial reinforcements that have arrived in the form of pills I’ve deployed over the last few hours. There is, however, still some time before they clearly stamp their supremacy in the battlefield. In the meanwhile, the throat suffers as do, now, the chest and the nose. My eyes water.

I sit in office, drowsy, feverish and afraid of calling in sick, finding it difficult to breathe and trying to invest myself in the requisite chores. In the course of the restless night spent, the incessant itching of the throat has been replaced by a palatable dull ache, consistent but manageable. The problem is the nose. Innumerable blows into the handkerchief and violent sneezes later, it remains clogged. Stray rivulets of water trickle out embarrassingly and continuously, which I wipe off before they reach the upper lip. I smell nothing. The food tastes bland. Spraying the deodorant doesn’t make me feel better. My socks probably stink.

I obsess over little details. Like, if I tap gently on one side of my nose, there is a wet, audible click, spawned, no doubt, by the exploding of mucus bubbles that are entrenched in thousands inside. Soon, I am addicted to the sound and can’t stop myself. I fret.

My voice sounds nasal and muffled. I try to camouflage this by speaking in hoarse staccatos. My parents pick it up anyway. They fish around for details, prescribe medication and advise a trip to the doctor. Exasperated, I assure them of a recovery within a day or two. This little exchange has played out and will continue to, identical to the smallest detail, forever.

By the afternoon of the third day, the tides begin to turn. The nose, still clogged, doesn’t run anymore. The mucus has attained a great level of viscosity. When I inhale sharply, I find the shriller sound of liquid retreating from the outer fringes of the nose replaced by a deeper grunt higher up the nasal tunnel. That is a good sign. I know now that I will be well when the sun rises on the morrow.

When I wake up next morning, I feel dried mucus in my nose. I dig my fingers into my nostrils, pry out the contents and roll them for a while between my fingers before flicking away the consequently formed ball nonchalantly. I inhale fresh air, deeply, and commend the body on another efficient performance.

Short Story - Murder

That night, he woke up, barely twelve hours after he’d died.

The logs of wood, turned to charcoal underneath him, still simmered gently. They couldn’t touch him anymore. He sat up, yawned and stretched his limbs and found the action unnecessary since they weren’t the least bit stiff.

He knew he was dead. He had figured that out almost immediately after he’d recovered consciousness, aided by his final living memory – his daughter nestling his hands in hers, various people standing between him and the two lovely French windows in his hospital room, looking at him, teary eyed and smiling, while he lay in bed, his own eyes moist and feeling claustrophobic. He shrugged and let himself smile. Although he’d much rather still be alive, now that he wasn’t, no point making a big deal out of it, he figured. He’d never been one for melodrama.

He wondered if he could recollect anything that had happened to him in these twelve hours. He felt he had been dreaming. He vaguely remembered visions of his daughter, on her haunches, sniffing softly in her room, curtains drawn, an untouched cup of tea by her bedside and a book, open and inverted, forming a tent on her bed. He thought this last detail important somehow, although he had no idea why. Her lips kept moving; what she said was inaudible, but there was another voice in his head that sounded just like hers, asking him to come back.

Well then, back he was. He dusted the ash off him and swung himself off the pyre, landing noiselessly on his feet. He stretched again, out of habit. The night was pitch dark; he estimated the time to be somewhere around 3 AM. There wasn’t anyone in sight. He took a few steps and turned to look at the pyre. He had of course seen several while he’d been alive and it pained him briefly to find his own not look very different from all the others. He shrugged again.

He knew his way around the crematory fairly well. After all, he’d worked there for over thirty years. He remembered the day, nine years ago, when he’d finally decided he was too old to be cremating other people. The two men who had worked with him for most of those thirty odd years, wordlessly going about their businesses through the day and sharing a few cheap drinks in the evenings, equally wordlessly, had offered him a warm send-off, even finding it in themselves to shed a tear or two. “Feels weird to be bid farewell like this when I am on my way out of a cemetery” he’d quipped. They had asked him to visit them sometimes when he felt like it. “The only time I am coming back now is when its my turn” he had said. Those two men still worked there. On his way out and on his way in, they had bid him farewell both times.

The small office building, where he’d spent so many days surrounded by stacks of files with records of dead people, stood silently in the night, bathed in the spectral luminescence of the full moon. The outstretched tentacles from the shadows of palm trees slithered and swayed gracefully on the walls, as if trying to rub the whiteness off them. He tried walking in through one of the walls and found he could not. He tried smashing his fist into the wall; the wall didn’t budge. His hand didn’t hurt either. He walked around to the front door and let himself in, thankful that they never locked the place. This wasn’t a place thieves were likely to favour.

His face in the bathroom mirror looked ordinary. He’d expected something a little more dramatic. He had walked up to the mirror with his eyes closed, stood for a while and exhaled deeply, before opening them. The face, of course, looked a little ashen, but that was because it had a lot of ash on it. He rinsed his face with water from the tap and found it easily wash away. He looked almost normal; even a little younger, he thought. Next, he washed his entire body, then dried and sniffed himself. He still smelt of burnt wood. He contemplated using some soap but decided against it. He wanted to feel a little dead.

The streets were, expectedly, empty at this hour. His, was a small town. He had walked back home after late night cremations several times over the years. It was something he enjoyed doing, especially in such moonlit nights as these, by the shuttered shops and houses with thatched roofs, the only sounds, that of chirping crickets, the gentle hum of the sea or a stray bark of a dog. A gentle breeze blew over the city, whistling lazily through the narrow alleys, bringing with it the whiff of the ocean.

By now, he had decided he would go back to see his daughter. He had brought the girl up since she was eleven, which was over fifteen years ago, after his wife had died of an unexpected heart attack. She had been burnt in that same cemetery. He had spent the rest of his life raising her as best as he could, which wasn’t very well. She had grown up unintelligent and unattractive. He had found her work as an assistant in one of the town’s grocery stores. He knew her marriage prospects were, therefore, never very promising. Besides, she was his daughter – the man who worked at the cemetery. Nevertheless, when she miraculously found a willing lover in a neighbouring town, he personally travelled there with his two friends and beat the daylights out of the boy.

The daughter had shown no real resistance. She had accepted things as they were and continued working at the grocery store and tending to her aging father.

At the sight of his modest two storey house, inconspicuous as ever, he slackened his pace. He spotted the dark silhouette of his daughter, sitting on the wide parapet of the balcony on the first floor with her back towards him, her head leaning against the wall at one end, staring into the distance. He crept through the shadows and found his way to the front door. There, he stood and gathered his thoughts.

Would she be able to see him? Or hear him even? What would he say to her? What would she say to him? Would she be scared of him? Would she even accept him as her father, come back from the dead? He had decided to propose to her that he continue being in that house forever and take care of her, now that he was not going away after all. But how would he broach the subject?

Like most houses in the town, the staircase leading to the upper storey was built outside, in the compound, grazing one side of the structure, allowing the space inside on both levels to be utilized better. He climbed up these stairs and pushed the door. It opened. He noticed his heart, which was was supposed to have been beating fast, was not.

Disturbed by the creak of the opening door, his daughter was already looking in his direction when he entered. At his sight, she gasped, half screamed, lost her balance and fell.

He raced to the balcony and looked down onto the fallen body of his daughter, the glisten of moonlight on spilt blood slowly spreading over the ground beneath her. He tried to scream and found he had no voice and jumped after her. He landed without sound, unharmed and ran back upstairs, screaming silently, and jumped again, landing, uninjured.

Short Story - The Barn

Generally speaking, I like waiting. I have to in my line of work. But even otherwise, I like it. It allows me to sort my thoughts, iron them out a little bit. They can get awfully muddled sometimes, these thoughts. Need sorting from time to time. But every once so often waiting can become a real shit job. Like right now. If I’d known that the man meant this place when he said ‘keeping an eye from the barn’, I’d have given the matter more thought than I did before agreeing. My fault too, I suppose. Just that I didn’t expect middle-aged white collared gentlemen to actually keep alive and kicking fucking cows and goats and what have yous in the barns of their fucking farmhouses. And then have one solitary caretaker to clean the place up once in ten years. And hire a lousy broke detective to keep watch from it at the start of the tenth year. Ah, strike off lousy there! I must’ve gotten carried away in the general stink and depression.

I kind of let slip my being a detective, didn’t I! Should be more careful! I mean I know I am only talking to myself. I have developed this habit over the years, one of the things I do while waiting. Talk to myself like I were an external audience. Most of the things I do, I can’t share with anyone else due to, you know, reasons of confidentiality. So I just narrate my exploits to myself like this, makes me feel good. Besides, it keeps my thoughts from straying too much. And then, sometimes, in the middle of the story, the audience in me jumps up and asks a question which I, as the narrator haven’t thought of. And that leads to a train of thought that I hadn’t thought of. Nothing like another man’s opinion! But coming back to the slip of tongue, I like my self-narrations to be suspenseful and intriguing. Like a thriller novel – only necessary information at appropriate times. But never mind, what’s done is done. Let me assume I now know I am a detective.

One of the great things about waiting is observing people. It fascinates me to look at people everywhere. I believe if one looks hard enough, one will find every single man and woman has a reason to kill some other man or woman. I am convinced of this. The more people I meet and observe, the more convinced I am. I know a man I want to kill. If that man comes to know of me, he’ll probably want to kill me too.

Its been over two hours and there’s no sign of anyone yet! Looks like a false alarm, this. So anyway, I was talking about the man who’s making me wait in this shithole. Now, apparently, this chap has this really young beautiful wife. Trophy wife, I’d say from the sound of his voice. I mean, I haven’t met the man but on the phone, he sounds like one of those focused, boring money making machines who derive all their humour from the stock market misfortunes of others. Nothing that would truly interest a young beautiful woman. Other than the money, perhaps. Therefore, the trouble, I should think. Neha, the lady is called. Interesting coincidence, that.

So now this man, Arvind, thinks his wife is cheating on him. Very likely, I think. I personally don’t see any harm in these occasional acts of breaking the monotony. I mean, honestly, how exciting can it be to sleep with the same person year after year, and in this particular case, I daresay without the least bit of adventure on or off the bed? I am having this really cute affair with a married girl myself at the moment. About three months now. Such a nice girl. Visits me thrice a week, always afternoons, and quietly gets down to business. Very little talk. Spends a couple of hours with me, gets up, makes some tea and leaves, closing the door noiselessly behind her. Very much like how the relationship will eventually turn out. If it were not for this silly exercise, I’d be with her by me right now. Sometimes, when I get a little sentimental, I feel like I should murder her husband and take her away. With the experience I have, I am confident of doing a good job. Ah, I hear a car in the driveway! Some action finally!

I can’t quite see the car yet; the car park’s a little out of the line of sight of this rotten fucking wooden window. Admittedly, not the ideal place for surveillance, but what option do I have? At any rate, the front porch and door are right in front of me as are most of the windows on both storeys. Yes, now I hear their footsteps crunching on the fallen leaves strewn across the courtyard. Should spot them any moment now. Good thing, all those fallen leaves. The strange screwy sound of my old camera will be impossible to...hey, wait a minute! What the hell is this? This is his wife? And who the fuck is that guy with him? No, this cannot be true! This can’t be the wife! Oh dear! He said his wife was called Neha! Goddamit! And I thought strange fucking coincidence! Fucking bitch! So its not just me...this fat oversized slob as well! And who knows, maybe she’s got a bloody chest full of them!

Straight down to business, I see. Its been barely two minutes since those two went in. And they’re already on the top floor and...and doing what they’ve come to do! They don’t even close the fucking window...what balls! The bitch! I am going to kill them! The husband can go to hell with his briefcase full of money! I am going to choke the bloody life out of her with my bare hands! No, gloved ones! Hold on, be calm... Take it easy! Where’s the camera, where’s the bloody camera! There! That should make your husband proud!

Been an hour since they went to sleep, I think. Good thing too, I am much calmer now. If they had gone on with the romping and howling much longer...I wonder if she’ll wake up and make him some tea as well. Bitch!

Ah, there’s the tea you fat prick. Yeah, go ahead, sip it like...its all yours!

Gone into the shower now, the two of them. No, strike that. They’re out now. And getting dressed. Hold on a minute! He’s taking out a shirt from the wardrobe! So she allows him to wear her husband’s clothes too! No no, wait. There’s something wrong here. He’s already tried four of them. There’s something wrong! There goes the sixth one, flicked carelessly onto the floor. He’s treating them like his own clothes. His own clothes! Yes, that’s it! That’s it! But what’s the point of this! This...oh my God! Oh my God! He wants to kill me! They want to kill me! That’s what all of this is about! The bitch! She must’ve told him everything! I’ve got to get out of here! I’ve got to get out of here. No, I will go in and kill them myself! Yes, that’s what I’ll do! And nobody could ever connect them with me. There couldn’t even be the remotest connection! Yes, I must look for a...yes here, it is. Fancy that! An axe right by my feet! Yes, nice and heavy! Time to go! No, let me think through this. Could there be anyone else in the house? In the car? A servant? A guard or something? Can’t be, I’ve been here for hours now. Didn’t Neha tell me once about that sinister looking friend of her husband who always stayed with him? Could he be here? Hey, wait a minute! Wait a minute! They want to kill me! They, could he be the...I need to get out of here! Forget the axe. Just, lets get out of here! Run, run run...yes, there’s the barn door...And, oh No!

Gunshot.

Short Story - The End

The place looked like it looked most Thursday evenings: full but not crowded. The familiar smoke and noise. The hazy phosphorent blue lights peeking from false ceilings and walls. A local band was reproducing mediocre improvised versions of popular 70’s rock songs. The crowd, most of them young boys and girls with rich old fathers, sang along sporadically and cheered at the end of each number to indicate that they had recognized it. Night after night, different bands produced near identical playlists, goaded on by an energetic audience that couldn’t care less what was being played as long as it sounded familiar. The song, as Led Zep would’ve put it, did remain the same.

He sat, nonchalantly sipping beer, and studying the two girls and his friend sitting with him. Very early in the conversation, he had been left behind, beaten by his friend’s aggression and experience and his own diffidence in the matter of random dating. Right from when drinks had been discussed, decided and ordered for and his friend had asked the waiter for a weird sounding chicken dish that was not to be found on the menu but was prepared for esteemed customers such as him, he knew he was out for the count. And so, he contended himself with odd sarcastic remarks here and there while he studied the two girls closely, a consistent half smile plastered on his face.

It didn’t help matters that the girls performed so dissimilarly on his appearance rating scale.

One of them had the kind of face that rarely inspires poetry and yet, is oddly attractive. This was complimented by a suitably dusky complexion, a magnificently toned body and well-chosen attire - in this case a well cut green gown. She spoke almost exclusively in excited monosyllables, in a sharp clean voice, and laughed gregariously.

The other was chubby and bland. Flat, pudgy face, puffed under the lips, accentuated by sagging cheeks. Unremarkable hair. She wore a brown corset, too tight for her, over bland blue jeans. The corset’s ends pinched into the flesh close to the armpits, about where the breasts begin to rise, forming a rippled mound of surplus fat. He felt almost revolted at the sight.

He felt sympathy for her, a sympathy he shared with himself. Here they were, he attracted to her friend and she to his, but fully aware that neither could hope for their attractions to be reciprocated. For a while, he had tried to chit chat. She was from Orissa, she had informed him. He had nodded and gulped down the tasteless Oriya jokes that scrambled into his mind.

“I am from Kolkata” he had ventured, to which she’d made no comment. So they had fallen silent again.

That had been over ten minutes ago. He decided to try another time. He thought awhile for appropriate and witty rejoinders after ten minutes of silence and came up with none.

So he went with “So, when you go to Orissa from here, how do you go? By train?”

Immediately, he realized just how ridiculous the question was. His mind flashed back to the time when he had been on a flight to Kolkata seated next to an American girl touring India. Having exchanged pleasantries, he had picked up his novel and pretended to read while contemplating how he could manufacture a conversation. An hour and a half later, he had noticed the girl fumbling through the magazines and instruction manuals inside her seat flap, out of boredom, and eventually picking up the air sickness paper bag and fiddling with it. “Do you feel like vomiting? I have some chocolates.” He had said.

“Why are you smiling?” the girl asked.

It was a habit that had come subconsciously to him and would not go away. It annoyed him that it would not. Whenever he indulged in wistful memories such as these, a smile crept into his face and held itself there until he realized it was there. On innumerable occasions, he suddenly became conscious that his face was creased in a wide smile, while waiting at the bus station, travelling in a train, walking on the street. He would immediately look around embarrassedly to check if people had noticed.

“Oh, nothing. Just remembered something.” He said.

He gazed around the place. Gradually, the dance floor had filled up. He realized with a shock that they were dancing to a remixed version of The Door’s “The End”.

“I did not think I would ever see this in my life. The End on a dance floor? Do these people even know what the song means?”

The girl laughed with genuine amusement.

“Yes, I noticed. They were using Another brick in the wall before this.”

“Quite appropriate, I’d say.”

“So, you listen to a lot of rock?” she asked.

“I’ve heard my share, yes. I prefer country though. Nicer and softer and less grandiose ambitions. And fabulous voices.”

She smiled again and looked away politely. He noticed his friend and her friend holding hands. He sighed.

He wondered if he’d ever have the opportunity to do that himself. Or be able to. He turned back to her.

“You want another drink? I’ve finished too, we could order one more?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You’ve ever been to Kolkata?”

“Yes, a number of times. I have an aunt who lives there.”

“Ah. Where in Kolkata?”

“Kankurgachi, I think.”

“That’s a long way away from where I used to live. How do you like the city?”

“Dirty”

“Commonly held opinion! Its a strange city though. It looks like there’s always something happening, continuous flux, movement, worried looking people...but in truth, nothing actually does happen.”

“And it never seems to change. Kolkata looks the same every time I go there.”

“It‘s probably been like this since the 1800s. When they make a time machine, it’d be useless to use it in Kolkata.”

She laughed again.

“Time machine? Duh...that concept is all hot air.”

“You think so?”

“If they are ever going to make a time machine, then at some point in the future its already been made, right? Which means, it should’ve been here by now. In fact, it should’ve been to the prehistoric ages by now and introduced it to the Neanderthals themselves. And then, there’d be no need for all this gradual human evolution and gaining of knowledge and all of that. We’d be as advanced as we are ever going to be right from the beginning...”

“And the fact that that has not happened means they’re never going to make one?”

“Logical, no?”

“Depends on how you interpret a time machine. They could make one where you don’t physically time travel. So you can’t interfere with what has happened, only witness it. Something of that sort”

“And how would they make that?”

“How could they make either? This is just hypothetical shit we’re spewing...”

“True”, she reflected on this for a while.

“I have another theory though. Or rather, an slightly silly interpretation of time itself. What if time is continuous and cause-effect driven in the present and the future but malleable in the past?”

She looked at him quizzically.

“Like an assembly line process where once the material passes a certain phase in the process, you could keep breaking and disconnecting or do whatever with those phases and, ideally, the material would still come out the same. You get it?”

“Yes, vaguely.”

“So, lets say time moves like that. So you pick up a point and call it present and everything beyond it future. Now if you go backwards into the past and modify something, it doesn’t matter because the future doesn’t know the past has changed. So everything goes on the same way, see! So maybe, the time machine has been made in the future and has gone into the past and changed things but we have no idea! Maybe the second world war never happened!”

She smiled and nodded to let him know that she had lost interest. He was too excited to notice.

“Of course, the counter argument is what do you consider as Present. Which is a tricky one. Because the counter to that is quite depressing.”

He paused, finished the rest of the whiskey in the glass, and looked intently at her, to communicate the seriousness of the issue.

She understood what was expected of her.

“And what would the counter be?” she queried, anxious to get done with it.

He chuckled, “Destiny. Doesn’t matter where you start in time. Whatever you change in the past does not matter and whatever has been changed in the future, you would not know in the present!”

He beamed widely again. He was starting to enjoy her company.

“So, how long have you lived in Mumbai?” she asked, exasperated and did not bother to register his reply.

She remembered reading on his facebook profile that he’d like to be a filmmaker. That had interested her. That was why she'd agreed to come in the first place. Besides, from what she could gather from his profile pictures, apart from being slightly short, he was pretty presentable. Through the course of the evening, she had found him a little nervous but otherwise agreeable. She had waited for him to settle down and start talking. On the evidence of what he had spoken, she felt, if he ever did make a film, she wouldn’t want to watch it.

“I didn’t notice, those two are over there, dancing.” He said.

“Oh, they are? I didn’t notice either.”

“Well, would you like to dance as well?”

She thought quickly, looked at her watch and said

“Yeah, sure. I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

At the Salon

Loud cantankerous music blares its way out of two enormous speakers connected to one pocket size stereo; the speakers, wooden and with cavernous apertures expected to woof, emit the kind of sound one was used to inside cars before the time of Bose. Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan take turns to express love or the end of it on behalf of Ajay Devgan, Sunil Shetty, Akshay Kumar and other popular Hindi film heroes of the nineties. These are songs nobody admits to listen to anymore from films that nobody watches anymore. The audio cassettes from these films that T Series, Venus, TIPS and HMV sold in generous quantities have made mysterious disappearances over the years. This, here, is one of the last bastions of that era, mothballing itself from the transition the rest of the world has made.

A mirror runs the entire length of the wall and is faced by three of those amusingly shaped hair salon chairs that have not changed at least since I was born. A single leg protrudes from under the seat, broadening as it moves downwards, much like barstools. The seat is filled with cheap cotton wool and other assortments hidden by a squeaky layer of resin. There are knobs somewhere at the bottom that crank the seat up or plonk it down depending on the mismatch of one's height with that of the barber’s. There are, of course, special arrangements for kids who don’t fall into the prescribed height range of these chairs. Whenever a kid appears, accompanied by a doting father, the barber whisks out a wooden plank from one of the several shelves and drawers in the shop and sets it up on the chair’s armrest. The kid is then placed upon this plank and has to suffer in silence through the rest of his time in the salon.

Having patiently waited my turn for a quarter of an hour, I am finally beckoned by one of the two men manning the three chairs. Even as I walk up to the recently emptied chair and work my way into it, the barber swiftly slaps the dust and hair off the seat with a cloth caked with dust and hair. He then produces a white cloth that is to be tied round my neck and expected to function as an apron. The cloth has evidently been in use a few times since the start of the day and the man slaps it aggressively a few times to underline his regard for hygiene. ‘The usual’ I say and work commences.

A loyal consortium of retired or out of work men hangs around perennially, reading vernacular newspapers and tabloids, sipping tea and making lewd observations about the scantily clad women that appear in these publications. They’ve stuck around for years, these men, even as their children have grown, their wives aged and their parents withered and died. In the evenings, when the salon shuts down, they trudge back unwillingly home and squabble with their screaming wives about life and money. But in the salon they are kings, backslapping and cursing each other out of their miseries. For their fierce loyalty, these men are allowed to jump the queue, a strange privilege, considering that they will hang around the place the entire day anyway. They are sometimes offered complimentary tea but rarely ever, a free haircut.

In the middle of all this, I sit on the chair, staring at myself and others in the mirror while the man I scarcely know fiddles with scissors and other sharp instruments inches from my face. It is as helpless a state as one can get into; there is not a thing one can do if the barber suddenly develops Sweeney Todd like tendencies. It is, I confess, one of the less agreeable effects of watching films and reading literature in that one’s imagination seems to run wild in the most trivial matters, goaded on by the references and remembrances of outlandish events in similar settings. And so I pass the next few minutes remembering and visualizing everything from slasher films to torture porn, reasonably confident that such fate is unlikely to befall me and yet, sufficiently worked up, to fidget uncomfortably in the chair.

For all its dangers, the chair does afford me a peaceful time. At such times, I often become acutely aware of my physical self. It is astonishing how much discomfort can be attained by merely thinking about such things, once they are wrenched from the sub conscious into the light. How one’s arms rest on one’s lap, for example. Once one is aware that is where the arms are, there does not appear to be a correct way to keep them there. Or one’s jaws and how they are set. Are the upper and lower sets of teeth supposed to touch each other? Or is there normally a gap between them? If one lets the teeth touch, the jaws feel clenched and unnatural. When one draws them apart, the face appears awkwardly stretched. One tries out various combinations and is dismayed how difficult it is to remember how one has set one’s mouth since the day one was born. And one admires the mind’s fantastic ability to forget about its own body with such deftness as to let us not bother about these things all the time.

To take my mind away from my arms and jaws, I force it to think about something else and settle on what I should write about next as the most promising train of thought. The last time I wrote was a month ago when I wrote a two page story and that is not the kind of pace desirable when one harbours ambitions of publishing one’s works. I fumble with a few half baked ideas I’ve had for the past few weeks – about a man who falls behind the rest of the world by a day, a paedophile who laments how his greatest fear is to become a father and his greatest curse that his romances must always be transient or a man who undergoes a sex change operation and realizes it was a mistake and wants to change back. I make a mental note of researching on Google about the scientific viability or otherwise of such intentions. At some point, I convince myself, I shall work upon all of them. But for now, I feel too lazy to delve too deeply into these concepts. That is when it strikes me that I might as well write about the hair salon! I quickly do a mental feasibility check and conclude that there is enough shit that can be spewed on the matter. The next task is to carefully reconstruct the haircutting experience, observe and memorize important objects and points of interest around me and try and recall other relevant experiences and observations from past years. So I notice the chairs, the instruments, the stereo and the speakers and the other men in the salon. While this goes on, I also simultaneously ponder upon methods of introducing elements of seeming profundity into the piece, perhaps a paragraph on these men wasting themselves away. And then there must be inserted a couple of absurd observations that sound cute and appear interesting – the setting of the jaws maybe?