Montefioralle

It was the first time they were both together in front of the camera. The camera, placed on the parapet that separated Montefioralle from the lush Tuscan landscape, stared at them motionlessly, while they sat on a wooden bench and gazed at the unending countryside that the camera couldn’t see. There was nobody else in sight.

They remained silent for a long time. The camera heard the peaceful sound of birds and occasionally, the church bells toll. A light rain fell and the cobbled streets and ancient stone walls glistened. Tiny droplets fell on their shirts, darkening the colour where they fell and then spread, lightened and became undetectable. The glow of their cigarettes reddened when they drew in smoke.

“I wonder how they capture that sound of paper and tobacco burning when people smoke in films.” Kaushik said aloud.

“I don’t know. I think they use unfiltered cigarettes.” Ritankar said.

Kaushik nodded and stole a glance at the camera, then looked away again. The church bells chimed again.

“How about we describe what we see in front of us, the magnificence that lies there unseen to those watching through the camera?” Kaushik said.

Ritankar did not respond and continued to stare into the distance. They heard the fleeting sound of a car passing by on the highway behind them, hidden by the walls of the church.

“Look at them hills yonder,” Kaushik began, “green, wonderful. Oh bliss.” He sighed. “Those clouds brooding over them, perhaps drawn to their beauty as much as we. Those tiny houses with red roofs down in Greve clustered together like in a dream. Oh, that smoke rising from the chimney over there, snow white against the green grey.” He paused, shook his head thoughtfully and looked straight at the camera. “I wish you could see what I can see.” He clucked his tongue, “Oh nature, why art thou so cruel!”

Ritankar smiled but did not comment.

“This must be right up there with the best of our trip”, he said after long minutes had passed.

“Yes. With Cinque Terre and the Père Lachaise.”

“I hope the Aeolian Islands turn out alright. That should cap everything off nicely. And Rome, obviously.”

“I think this is going to be the best scene of our travelogue,” Kaushik mused, “if we do manage to compile one.” He added.

Ritankar stood up and strolled around for a bit, moving out of sight of the camera. Kaushik took a sip of water from the bottle he’d carried and settled back into the bench again.

“Must be twenty minutes since the camera started rolling,” Ritankar called out from where he stood, a few metres away, staring up at a streetlamp.

“Yes, must be. Why?”

“No. I guess we beat Hunger. That was seventeen minutes, wasn’t it?”

Kaushik laughed. “Yes, thereabouts. We weren’t that intense though, were we?”

Two years hence, Kaushik’s hard drive would crash and take with it everything they’d shot. In that time, they would’ve watched the videos once and never have worked on them.

“What time is it?” Ritankar asked.

“One. You want to leave? We’ve got to get back to Greve by three.”

“Lets walk through the village one more time. Then we can leave.”

Kaushik walked away from the line of sight of the camera and then detoured to it from its blind side. He switched it off and picked it up. “This should be fun to watch.” He said.

On their way down to Greve, they walked by the cemetery compound again – a small space enclosed by a thick wall that rose up to their chests. On the other side, over the wall, Tuscany rose and fell in all its glory. Stone plaques, some with faded photographs on them, stood in a four uniform columns. They read out some of the names under their breath, fearful that a raised voice might disturb the exquisite equilibrium of the place. They mulled over the paradox of what they felt – extreme calm and a warm melancholia.

It was only when they’d descended to Greve and sat in what appeared to be the only café in town, sipping warm steaming cups of cappuccino, that Kaushik finally spoke aloud.

“Not a bad place to die.”He said.

Amores, indeed, Perros

They were seated on the stone parapet that separated the tube-lit street from the sand. Around them, hawkers were preparing to shut shop for the day. It was a weekend and they had perhaps sold off everything earlier than usual. Pieces of old vernacular newspapers, folded into cones with hollow bottoms, lay about; a stray peanut or two peeked from a few. The smell of roasted maize hung in the air. On the street, the occasional group of tourists passed, hurrying to their hotel rooms, oblivious to the brooding hum of the invisible ocean to their side.

“What time is it?” Ashish asked.

Kaushik peered at his watch, twisted his wrist in search of a stray column of light from the streetlamps, for the dial not immediately visible in the darkness.

“About half past nine.” He answered.

“Early days yet, although by the looks of it, sufficiently late for everyone else.” Ashish said.

“Anyone wants more tea?” said Ritankar and waited for the other two to nod. “ Lets order before the fellow leaves.”

They called out for three more cups from where they were seated.

“I wouldn’t mind an omelet either.” Said Ashish.

“You go ahead. I am stuffed.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Oh well, then I guess I’ll skip it too.”

They had reached Murud that afternoon with growling bellies and aching backsides, a five hour bus ride behind them. Apart from the quaint thatched houses with sloping roofs and the faint, agreeable odour of cow dung that hung perennially in the air, the first thing they had noticed was the street names. Every street, even the narrowest by-lane, was named after a popular figure of the Indian freedom struggle – Gandhi, Nehru, Bose, Patel, Ambedkar, Tilak. Evidently, Murud thought itself important enough for this to be construed as bestowal of honour. They had found themselves a cozy little room on the first floor in a makeshift two storey hotel; the owners themselves lived on the lower floor. The stairs opened straight into a grassy courtyard with a palm tree in the centre, which overlooked the ocean. They had found the place enchanting although the bathroom door wouldn’t lock and the ceiling fan screeched and shuddered every once in a while.

A handful of tourists hung around the beach. They were surprised to note that some of them were foreigners. They couldn’t imagine how anyone outside India could’ve heard of this place, tucked away as it was in the long and largely inaccessible Konkan coastline. The nearest train station was two hours away. Three buses, state owned, plied to and from Mumbai each day on roads, narrow and bumpy, that weaved in and out of the lush Western Ghats. Whenever two buses crossed each other, they came so close one could smell the passengers’ breath in the other bus through the window.

The tea arrived in plastic cups. Kaushik blew into it and the vapour settled thinly on his glasses, then gradually faded away. The breeze had picked up and now ruffled his hair. He passed his hand through them and it came away with particles of sand sticking to it. He remembered he’d forgotten to bring the shampoo. He grimaced.

“I will be travelling to the Philippines next month.” Ritankar announced.

“To Philippines? What for?” Kaushik asked.

“It’s the annual conference for our company,” Ritankar said. He stood up and stretched his legs before continuing, “they’d eventually told us it would be in Beijing but it appears they’ve now chosen Manila.”

“Perhaps they need to send out a lot of letters during the conference,” offered Ashish, “Envelopes must be cheap in Manila, no?”

They laughed.

“So, how many days?” Kaushik asked.

“About two weeks I think.”

“Two weeks! I’ve never heard of an annual conference lasting that long!”

Ritankar sat down again. “No, the conference in only 4 days.” He said.

“So what about the other ten days?”

Ritankar stood up again and lit a cigarette, with difficulty since the breeze was strong and he wasn’t very good at cupping his hands around the matchstick. In fact, none of them were. He sat down again.

“I have something to tell you guys,” he said.

Ashish and Kaushik looked at each other. Kaushik raised an eyebrow.

“Go on.”

“You remember that girl from China I told you about? The one that works in our Beijing office?”

“Ah yes. She was here a few months ago for some training, right? Told you she didn’t like shopping for clothes, I think.” Kaushik said, glancing once again at Ashish.

Ritankar nodded. “Yes, she wanted to go to a bookstore, instead.”

“And you took here there. Yes, so, what about her?”

“Well, you see, I’ve been chatting with her since then,” Ritankar’s tone was almost apologetic, “off and on.”

“Off and on, I see.”

“Drop the sarcasm for once, Kaushik” Ashish said.

“Yes, of course. And I did not detect any in what you just said.” Kaushik countered.

Ritankar grew visibly impatient.

“Ok, Ok. Let’s get back to what his story now. Yes, so you were,” Kaushik paused, “chatting off and on.”

“Yes. And it, sort of, clicked.”

“Clicked?”

“Lets get more tea” Ritankar suggested.

Kaushik yelled for more tea again.

Ritankar went on to tell them how it was that they had clicked. He provided excerpts from their conversations, which turned out to revolve mostly around love and life and their meanings. “If you were divided into equal halves,” she had asked him once, “would one half love the other?” “Oh, really?” Kaushik remarked, “She asked you that? Very novel. Very subtle.” Ritankar waved Kaushik’s comment away with his arms and continued on. They had grown used to each other over time and spent an increasing number of hours chatting in office. They had exchanged novels and later, text messages, with each other. The girl, Ritankar told them, had majored in French literature. Kaushik and Ashish nodded approvingly. At some point, Ritankar had mentioned his interest in her was beginning to evolve beyond the confines of their chat window. Kaushik was certain Ritankar could never have said that if the two had been face to face, but did not mention it. The two had then agreed to find a way to meet again.

“So anyway, where do matters stand now? In all of this, that point has remains unclear.” Ashish said, when Ritankar finished.

“I don’t know. We’ll meet in Manila, spend a few days together and see how it works out. I am not sure.”

Back in office after the weekend in Murud, refreshed and bored, Kaushik and Ashish discussed this new development and sipped coffee pensively. “What the fuck man! What wrong have we done?” they said to each other. They determined they must get Ritankar to share a picture of her and based on what they saw become a little relieved or more depressed. The weekend before Ritankar was to leave for Manila they met again and wished him luck.

When Ritankar returned from Manila, he was convinced he had a future with her. So was she, he told Kaushik and Ashish. They had spent a fabulous week together, travelling through Philippines and its many islands. They had discussed their future together and a way out of, as Ritankar put it, all this.

“Does she have any lady friends she can introduce your friends to?” Ashish quipped.

Once

Kaushik’s interest in Ritika, as much a product of incessant suggestion as of actual attraction, was firmly established, in his mind and of others’, by the time the second month in Lucknow had begun. She, with her aquiline nose, high cheeks and terrible voice, was one of the most sought after, although not overwhelmingly so, for that year the campus had witnessed a markedly increased influx of attractive women. The presence of competition – stiff is not the appropriate word to use in this context – meant Kaushik did not even try seriously, although it was unlikely he would have succeeded even if he did. For a long time, he wasn’t even sure if she knew his name.

It was still that phase when Kaushik was only feeling his way into the company of the Illustrious and therefore, his poise, never assured amongst womenfolk in the best of times, wasn’t what could be considered self-confident. Indeed, he fell back, more strongly than ever, on his time-honed defense of sarcasm and feigned indifference.

He never really had been a ladies’ man. In school, as a kid only dimly aware of man woman relationships beyond that of playing Snakes & Ladders together, he, along with his friends, had enjoyed the company of women often. By the time his dim notions had developed into more coherent physical urges – he woke up to these much later than most of his peers since at the time his naïve faith in his parents was unshakeable and they had begun to drop frequent, subtle hints, that he shouldn’t be getting carried away with himself at this precarious age -, he was almost through school.

He went to college in Ahmedabad for a couple of months to pass time, while he waited for the letter, from Dhule as it turned out, to arrive. There, he noticed how the women wore dresses very different from the full sleeved shirts and ankle length skirts that had been their school uniform. He registered the clearly defined curves, accentuated by the tighter tees and jeans, and the occasional, bewitching, sight of an exposed knee. At this stage, he himself was barely above five feet and in the nascent stages of obesity, and this meant, his advances, friendly and unsure, were met with only mild, somewhat sisterly, reactions. The subject of his height, a matter of great concern to his Mom & Dad for the past few years, suddenly became important to himself. He hunted around for girls his own height but found himself hopelessly distracted by those that weren’t. He went into a shell, eating sandwiches at the canteen alone, and taking the bus back home as soon as lectures ended. Sometimes, when he bunked class, he went to the neighbourhood bookshop and read.

The problem of his height alleviated significantly by the end of his first semester in Dhule. He never became an imposing presence, other than horizontally, but he grew enough to have a physical vantage point with respect to most women. But the Lord that gaveth also, snidely, taketh. Dhule proved barren in more ways than one. The one female worthy of, at best, passing attention garnered so much, she abandoned college, two weeks into the first session, and returned to her hometown. There were a handful others who were alright, not unworthy of mankind saving liaison after a nuclear attack by machines wrecks the planet leaving only two survivors, and these were quickly picked up by the locals boys, who, armed with a bunch of hockey stick wielding sidekicks, wrestled their way through the cluster of less connected aspirants and into the women’s hearts. Kaushik, of course, stood no chance.

And thus, by the time Ritika turned up, his wooing and conversational skills were still only marginally better than at infancy.

She was interested in literature and in western music. She maintained a blog which sounded profound and vague. She had a sense of humour, it appeared. Kaushik mentioned his interest casually to his friends and they latched onto it at once. They cajoled and goaded on his desire for her.

He constructed conversations with her in his head, fretting over each detail, going back and changing his own words, wherever he felt he had gone wrong, but never hers since what she said was of her own volition. They all turned out to be conversations worthy of the best noir and that he couldn’t actually have them with her depressed Kaushik further. He passed her by several times each day, at the coffee shop, at the student mess, in classrooms, but never said hello, choosing instead, to steal sidelong glances at her. Once in a while, when his glance would be caught by hers, he offered a frail smile and quickly looked away, not waiting to check if she’d smiled back. At this point, everyone was adding everyone else to their Social Network friend lists and Chat lists, but Kaushik desisted from sending her an invite, afraid he’d be turned down. It wasn’t until they were grouped together, along with a couple of other fellows, for a project, that he eventually sent her an invite, making up his mind to clarify it was to discuss about the project lest she harbor suspicions.

It was around this time that he met Raakesh, who was then struggling with romantic demons of his own. Since his gift for the written word was universally acknowledged by this time, Raakesh had figured he could use it to his advantage to make headway with the object of his desire. And so, he composed sonnets in her name and slipped them under her door in the early hours of the morning. After weeks of expectant waiting, when nothing happened, he and Kaushik figured the girl was probably too airheaded to appreciate the magic of his words. And they returned to their novels and their alcohol.

Ritika, it emerged one day, had succumbed to the charms of another man, a senior. Kaushik took the news with great equanimity and immediately set about finding all he could about this man. He was a hopeless alcoholic, Kaushik found, and evidently had a knack for growling absurd Death Metal songs. Nobody on campus, even those of his own batch, liked him. When the news of his conquest spread, they liked him even less. It won’t last, was the general opinion. In three years’ time, the two would marry each other.

With time, Kaushik grew out of her and a strange thing happened. He found he could now speak to her. They spoke a few times during the final months in Lucknow, sometimes face to face and sometimes in a chat window, and Kaushik found he enjoyed these occasions with a faint hint of wistfulness, even as they were underway. He recognized the transient nature of these conversations and that they would probably die away slowly once they left Lucknow. He still liked the sight of her.

They did chat once or twice after Kaushik, and she too, had settled in Mumbai. They did not have occasion to meet. She remained on his Gtalk list and he looked for her name each time he logged in, for no purpose other than to simply register her presence, until he grew out of that too and she became just another name.

The Earning of Respect

The summonses from the Director’s office weren’t ever entirely unexpected and yet, when they did arrive, those summoned put up shocked countenances nonetheless. One or two burst into tears even, genuine, for although they were aware exactly how it would all play out in the end, there was always the lurking fear that this could be that occasion when Neo chooses the other door. They would then spend the rest of the evening plotting how best forgiveness could be asked for when they were presented before the Director next morning. Those that had cried earlier were usually chosen as the spokespersons; sympathy was most likely to be won by the soft and the unmanly.

It happened every year. The sophomores, basking in their newfound seniority, sat atop the hostel wall, their legs wafting cockily below them, and watched the stream of new arrivals enter the hostel, a parent or two in tow. Some of the parents, usually fathers, greeted them cheerily and asked after the amenities their progeny would have at their disposal in the hostel. These fathers were then duly offered lengthy insights that eventually ended at the tea & snack joint round the corner. ‘We’ll take good care of your son, uncle, you don’t worry at all’, they were told. The new students continued to trickle in for a while and by the time the last of the parents abandoned their child to the vagaries of Dhule, more than a month had passed by. That was when the clarion call was sounded and the newbies were asked to gather on the hostel’s roof for a round of introductions.

The rules were simple and scant. The seniors, sophomores and beyond, would need to be addressed as Sir. Only formals could be worn. At all times, including in bed. Formals would include socks and boots too, except in bed, where the boots could be taken off. In a senior’s presence, their gazes could not meander above the third button of their own shirts. They would complete the seniors’ projects and assignments for them and do whatever else was asked of them at any point. The rest of the night was spent in various festivities; the newly inducted kids, generally unclothed, catered to their Sirs many requests, most of which were of a distinctly, although only mildly, homoerotic nature. One of the favourites over the years was getting one of the kids to pick up a pen or pencil from the floor with his buttocks, exposed of course, without using his limbs. Nobody had ever actually found success in doing so, which was the point, since nonperformance led to more severe punishment.

This continued for a couple of months, each night. On weekends, when everybody was more drunk than usual, several groups convened in one or the other seniors’ private apartments, outside the hostel and therefore, outside the immediate reaches of the warden. Kaushik too, not drunk but eager to pay it forward, having earned his badge the previous year, was among them. And pay it forward, he certainly did. He hadn’t read The Marquis De Sade then, but when he did, he was confident that the great man would have approved.

In time, the inevitable happened. One of the kids wept and whimpered into a phone and the voice carried through miles of metal and fiber to his shocked parents, who, in turn, wept and whimpered into the ears of the college authorities. The boy, one of Kaushik and his group’s victims, was called to the Director’s office. He named as many people as he knew the names of. And thus, the Director’s summonses. Kaushik’s name, it was found, had not been announced. He grinned from ear to ear and explained to the others that it would all be fine.

It began as it always did. The Director raged and fumed and spoke to their parents. He informed them that their sons were being rusticated, a somewhat inappropriate term to use since it could hardly get more rustic than Dhule. Some of the accused, a markedly larger number than the previous day’s, began to weep openly. ‘Won’t happen again, won’t happen again’, they sobbed. The Director remained firm, for he was supposed to on the first day, and asked them to leave his office and pack their suitcases. They needn’t attend lectures, he added.

That evening, the mood in the hostel was sombre. A first year kid even whistled his way to the toilet. Towards midnight, the hostel warden asked the beleaguered gentlemen to his office. There, he informed them that he was ashamed of them and such a thing had been unheard of in his regime before this. A little later, he asked the accuser to be brought to him and when he did, he asked the rest to apologize. They did as they were told. The warden’s voice softened. He told them he would talk to the Director the next morning and see if something could be done to save their careers. They thanked him profusely.

The Director acceded on the third day. They were all called to his office again. He too did not wish to see such bright careers brought to premature ends, he said, but they could not completely escape punishment. And so, the best way, he continued, would be for them to be paid back in the same vein. They were all made to stand just inside the entrance to the college for the entire day, in the heat, without shirts and with their arms raised above them.

What embarrassed them was how filthy their undershirts were. The girls passed by them, wrinkling their noses and giggling to each other. A few, with commendable oversight, had omitted wearing an undershirt and shaved their underarms and were, therefore, decidedly less embarrassed. Their friends, on their way to the lecture halls and back, waved to them and cracked jokes. Kaushik cracked a joke or two too and they glared at him so hard, he asked them if they wanted something to drink. They said yes. A few minutes later, Kaushik and a few others, returned with packets of wafers, aerated soft drinks and mineral water. The professors and other staff allowed them to finish most of it before asking them to stop the nonsense and take the punishment seriously.

In a couple of hours, when they couldn’t keep their arms aloft any longer and the heat wet their pants with sweat, the Director called them again. They fell at his feet, exhausted, and asked for mercy. The Director launched into another half hour monologue, which they all nodded thoughtfully through. By evening, all was well again.

Later that night, the first year students were summoned to the hostel roof again and the essential concepts of solidarity and unity were explained to them. They wouldn’t be ragged anymore, they were promised, but in return, they would have to continue to wear formals and address the seniors as Sir.

By the end of the semester, the only rule that remained, and would remain through the next three years, was the form of address.

Rishikesh

Kaushik’s eyes opened and saw darkness. The eyelids opened and shut with trepidation several times since, when they opened, the retina they housed weren’t used to capturing a somewhat similar image to what they’d been seeing with the shutters down. Still dark. From somewhere close, came the sound of snoring. He felt damp and realized he was still wearing his jacket, which combined with two blankets and alcohol, had made him sweat. He also realized he needed, urgently, to relieve his bowels. He sighed, sat up and fumbled under the bed, first for the glasses and then for the mobile phone. The phone’s screen, once it lit up, informed him it was three in the morning and cast a ghostly halo around the tent. Kaushik spotted two bodies on the other two beds – Ashish and Raakesh – although he couldn’t be sure which was who. He stepped out of the tent and immediately a chill breeze blew into his face and he stepped back inside.

His backpack lay by his bedside, upon which a woolen cap and gloves had been carelessly tossed. He put them on and stepped out again.

It was a brilliant moonlit night and Kaushik was staggered to find how clearly he could see. The white sand stretched out ahead of him and he could see exactly where it met the water. The Ganges, blusterous and white foamed, hurtled down towards Haridwar, eager to complete the remaining distance to the plains, barely twenty kilometers, as soon as it could. On the other side of the river, the Himalayas loomed dramatically, the summits hidden by a luminescent sheet of white clouds that, miraculously, seemed immobile in the gusty breeze. Overhead however, unguarded by the mountains, the clouds scurried off, also in the direction of Haridwar, and Kaushik glimpsed a sky filled with stars. Looking directly up made him sway a little. The effects of the alcohol had evidently not worn off completely. He didn’t detect a headache though, a good sign.

The makeshift toilets were about fifty meters from the tents. He walked lazily in that direction; his slippers sunk into the soft sand and threw up miniature volcanoes each time they came back up again. He passed by the bonfire they’d lit earlier that evening; the embers were dull grey with patches of simmering deep red. Thin tendrils of smoke still rose from them and hung a few feet above. Kaushik stopped for a moment and flapped his arms through the smoke. He chuckled.

When he’d reached the first of the toilet doors, he looked back at the line of tents, about a dozen of them, milky white against the thick dark cluster of trees in the background. Apart from them, he had spotted only one other group that evening. He decided he would return with his camera after he’d relieved himself. The toilets had no roofs and no taps. One plastic mug, half broken, was placed inside each. Outside, a solitary cistern stood; its dark wet surface glistened in the moonlight. He picked up two mugs from adjacent toilets and fetched water, freezing, from the cistern, although, going by the smell inside the toilets, he was convinced that carrying the extra mug, which he intended to flush the toilet with, was a futile exercise. Squatting inside the toilet, he stared up, partly to savour the view he was afforded and party to escape the stench. He inhaled in short sharp bursts and exhaled deeply. The sheet of clouds above and the walls of the toilet below hid from view most of actual peaks.

He returned to his tent a quarter of an hour later, his buttocks and palms numb from being exposed to the water. He thought of the camera and then abandoned the idea. He slid back under the blankets and did not budge until the morning after.

Two years later, when he was reading of the Dharma Bums’ climb up the Matterhorn Peak, his mind threw up that image of the barely visible mountains from inside the toilet. It made him reminisce, fondly, of the bonfire of that night and the white water rafting of next morning and of Raakesh and Ashish and Lucknow. It was the three’s only trip together. And yet, for Kaushik, the defining image of it was of the mountains at three in the morning, and he suspected it would endure through his life, entwined as it was now, with The Dharma Bums.

Lunchmen

At one every afternoon, Kaushik picked his phone up and began calling his fellow lunchmen – about half a dozen of them - located variously around the office campus. Once this was done, he took the elevator down to ground level where the Food Court was and found himself an unoccupied table, where he and his friends would congregate for the day. Kaushik enjoyed lunchtimes, happy for the break and the conversation after the monotony of reading, for three straight hours, Roger Ebert reviews and essays from The Economist.

The Food Court was a huge open space with round black wooden tables spread around it. There were five counters, each run by a different caterer, that served the same food, except one which served sandwiches and pasta that smelled of unventilated cellars. Over time, Kaushik had picked his favourite amongst the other four and stuck to it ever since. By the time the food he ordered was ready, Ashish usually arrived. Ashish, since he lived with his parents, brought home-cooked food in a black oblong Tiffin box. The rest – some of them friends from IIM Lucknow, the others colleagues whom they minded least – trickled in, in ones and twos; by half past one the congregation was complete.

The conversation usually revolved around neutral subjects. Cricket, the weather, politics, work. Most preferred cricket, since they followed it closely, with the exception of Ashish who, therefore, did his best to turn the conversation to politics. When they spoke of work, it was usually about one of the bosses; their favourite was a stocky old man with a permanently bemused expression, who addressed everyone, including in emails, as ‘Guys’. The expression wasn’t without reason; it was widely believed that he indeed had absolutely no clue what happened around him. Stories of him abound – of how, even as he signed proposals, he recommended that they not be taken forward, how he contended that their reporting systems should somehow capture and track competition data and how he, the bloody nincompoop, had a wife of the MILF variety. Sometimes, they spotted him approach their table and immediately made as if they were done and were about to leave.

Discussions on films and literature were usually avoided; Ashish and Kaushik were aware their fellow lunchmen weren’t terribly interested. They did utter the occasional wisecrack though, like when the only female amongst them, a pretty little girl with a shrill voice, had informed that she would be migrating to Ho Chi Minh City in a month’s time, for her husband had been transferred there, and Kaushik had said how she would love the smell of napalm in the mornings. Or when one of them had had his overtures turned down by a girl, a co-worker, and Ashish had declared he could smell bitter almonds. On these occasions, while the two of them laughed uncontrollably, the rest looked at them with expressions that resembled that favourite boss of theirs. They spent close to an hour at the table, continuing to occupy it long after their plates were empty and other groups began to circle around like eagles. Eventually, when someone mustered the courage to ask them if they were done, they shrugged and got up.

Afterwards, while most of them returned to their desks, Ashish and Kaushik did not. Instead, they made their way to the Visitors’ waiting area, empty at that hour, and lounged there for another half an hour. They exchanged notes – interesting articles they’d come across during the course of the day on issues that they would like to further delve into. Invariably, the conversation degenerated, at some point, into a cribbing session on what the fuck they were doing in this place and how they would happily relieve themselves of an upper and lower limb each to get out of there. There were long periods of silences in these conversations, during which neither of them could think of anything worthwhile to talk about but found simply sitting there more worthwhile than going back to their desks. It would be past three by the time they would wearily make their way back, promising each other to read more on that interesting issue and discuss it when they met in the evening. Once in a while, Kaushik would have a meeting he’d have to attend and he’d go straight to it, unprepared but convinced he’d breeze through it without the least trouble.

Waiting

Ritankar entered, his tattered lopsided backpack hung on one shoulder, and found Kaushik and Ashish already there, sitting at the table right next to the parapet - the best table in Café Harbour View. Two beer bottles, emptied, and three mugs, two of them with foam at the edges, stood on it. The Sun wouldn’t be up for another eight hours.

“Should we order more beer?” Ashish asked Ritankar and signaled to the waiter without waiting for an answer. Ritankar hung his backpack on his chair’s backrest and lit a cigarette.

“I am feeling hungry,” he said, “order some starters too.”

Like most Saturday evenings, the place was full. They were not playing music today.

“How did you manage this table?” Ritankar asked.

“We arrived early” Ashish said. Kaushik chuckled.

“How early?”

“Around 4, I think.” Ashish glanced at Kaushik to check if he’d approximated correctly. Kaushik shrugged. “Yeah, thereabouts, I think.”

“Since 4! And in all this time, only two bottles?”

“No, this is the third pair actually. That reminds me, I’ve to take a leak.” Ashish got up, stabilized himself vertically for a few moments, during which he pretended to check his pockets, and then made his way, quickly, to the restroom.

Kaushik watched him thoughtfully. “We’re a little drunk.” He announced, before adding, “Suresh will join us later.”

The beers arrived.

“Should we wait for Ashish to return?” Ritankar said.

“No need. We’ve raised half a dozen toasts already.”

The starters, French fries and Fish fingers, arrived ten minutes later, Ashish, a few minutes after that.

“Long time.” Kaushik said.

Ashish picked a French Fry, thought about it and then put it back. He rubbed both hands on his jeans a few times and then picked it up again.

“One thing leads to another…” He said.

A group, two couples, sitting on the next table, opposite Ashish and behind Ritankar and Kaushik, called for their bill. Immediately, another set, two couples again, surrounded the table, breathing down the departing party’s necks. They had been standing at the entrance to the café for nearly an hour. Kaushik and Ashish had noticed them mainly because of the dark skinny girl with long curly hair.

“She’s attractive, isn’t she?” Ashish had said, “In an unusual sort of way.”

“In a Arundhati Roy sort of way.” Kaushik had commented. They had pondered over this between sips of beer.

“Yes, I can see why you say that. Puts me off a little bit, though. With all that nonsense she spews these days…”

“Yeah, but if this girl were to ask, I wouldn’t turn her down.”

“Fat chance! Well, neither would I.”

Kaushik turned and looked over his shoulder to check how the members of the group had placed themselves. “Your Ms. Roy’s sitting with her back to us.” He said to Ashish, “Not very keen on either of us, evidently.”

Ritankar’s cell phone started to ring. He prepared to say Hello even as he pressed the requisite button to accept the call, allowing the word time to burst through the accentuated stammer that ‘H’ and ‘R’ bring. The call was from home. He spoke in monosyllables till his parents realized it was not a good time and ended the conversation. He sighed and lit another cigarette. Kaushik gestured to him to pass the pack and lit one too.

“The other day,” Kaushik began, “I had some work and had to wait in office for a little longer than usual. Was past eight by the time I could leave and when I reached the train station, none of the usual suspects were there, obviously. Different bunch of people altogether, usual suspects of the 8:30 train probably” Kaushik drew in from the cigarette and exhaled it in the direction of the ocean. “Anyway,” he continued, “when the train arrived, we waited for everyone to get down since it was the last stop and train would return back from there. When I got in - I think I was the first to – I saw these two men, old-ish, still sitting patiently. One of them had a maroon briefcase on his lap and I started to wonder, you know. These things make me a little fidgety these days. And then a third man, older than the other two, dressed completely in white, grand white sideburns, he came in and joined them.”

Kaushik paused again for another puff in-blow out routine, stealing a couple of sips from his mug.

“Does this story have an end?” Ashish asked, continuing to look past Kaushik at the curly haired girl’s back. Kaushik ignored the dig.

“Now this new old man, must be nearly sixty five-seventy, took out two packs of cards from his pockets. And the three began to play rummy. They played for ten odd minutes – the train waits at the station for that long – and just as the train started to move slowly, the original two quickly gathered up their stuff and leapt off it. I don’t think they could finish the last hand. The old man patiently gathered the cards and put it back in his pocket. He then brought out a writing pad from his bag – he was carrying one – and started to jot down some stuff on it. I leaned closer to see. One entire side was covered with Rummy scores. He was scribbling, at the bottom of the other side, what I presume were that day’s scores.”

Kaushik dropped the cigarette, now a stub, onto the floor and crushed it with his left boot. He then looked away towards the ocean to indicate that the story was done and that he would not let explanations and interpretations come in the way of subtlety.

“They must’ve been doing this for years! Ten minutes each day.” Ritankar said.

“Would make a nice little short film.” Ashish said.

“Yeah, it would. You know, it reminded me of this lovely film I saw some time back – Babi Leto. Czech, I think. Or maybe Hungarian, I am not sure. I think it’s the best film about old age, I’ve seen.” Kaushik said.

“Better than Wild Strawberries?” Ritankar said; there was a slight edge, remnant of a forcibly repressed incredulity, in his voice.

“Dude, that is a Bergman film.”

“Are you guys feeling hungry?” Ritankar asked.

“I am OK; won’t mind another round of starters though.” Kaushik said.

More starters were ordered. They stared at the darkness of the ocean for a while

“There is one other film I thought was really wonderful in this portrayal of old age thing,” began Kaushik again, “I can’t recall the name. From the seventies, I think. It was by some female director…she made this other movie about a lesbian relationship – it had the woman from Short film about love in it…”

“Yes, yes! I know what you are talking about…Karoly Makk, the director’s name. And he is not female.” Said Ritankar.

“What did you think Kaushik?” Ashish grinned, “You were hoping to trump Ritankar?”

Kaushik laughed, “Oh no, never!” He turned to Ritankar, “You remember the name of the film I was talking about? The one with the old woman?”

“I think it is Szerelem.”

“Ah yes, that is the one.”

It was now past midnight and the crowd had thinned somewhat. The waiter appeared with the next set of starters. “Sir, last order.” He informed. They looked at each other, shrugged, shook their heads and decided they were done for the day.

They stood up and walked around the terrace while the waiter cleared their table. It was that time of the night when they realized, all at once, that half the weekend was gone and by the time they would wake up next day, half of the rest would be gone too. Then they would simply dawdle around for a few hours till it was time for Ashish and Ritankar to return to their respective apartments. And that would be that. The weekend was actually ending there, right then.

“Oh, we forgot to tell you,” Ashish said to Ritankar after the waiter finished and they returned to the table, “Kaushik and I will now be working alternate Saturdays. New company policy.”

“What the fuck?”

“Damn man! The day I quit that place, I hope it is raining so I can take my shirt off and do the Shawshank thing.” chuckled Ashish.

"Hey, I just remembered, Suresh never turned up, did he!" said Ritankar.

Kaushik nodded and picked up a cigarette, “Lets have one more smoke and then we can leave.”

The Virtuous Lonely

Kaushik shook his head again. “I am not sure, you’ll all get drunk and what will I do? Sit and watch?”

Lecture sessions for the 5^th semester had ended. There were 15 days to go before exams began and Kaushik, like the previous 4 occasions, planned to spend them at home in Ahmedabad. He’d always maintained that being home afforded him the time and peace to prepare better for his exams, away from friends who wanted to study together and those that wanted to be together but not study. He’d already booked seats on a bus to Ahmedabad. And now, his friends were asking him to stay on for another day.

The idea of Bhang had been floated a few days back by one of them. The rest had latched onto it immediately. “I know where to get it!” one of them had said. And thus it was agreed that on the day classes ended, they would spend the evening drinking bhang-infested milk.

Kaushik and six of his closest friends had decided to move out of the college hostel at the beginning of that year. It was like a custom there – when one reached the third year, one moved out, unable to restrict the revelry and debauchery to the confines of the hostel’s regulations. Since Kaushik and his friends didn’t partake in these activities, that he then considered vile, it was not actually necessary for them to move out. However, they had decided to do so anyway, hoping to get away from the noise and filth. They had found themselves a nice place fairly close to the college campus, a two-storeyed tenement with spacious rooms and presentable toilets. It had a small neglected compound around it where grass and mushrooms grew wildly. They often played cricket there with stringent restrictions on how fast a ball could be delivered and how hard and in what directions it could be hit.

“Come on Kaushik, it is just one extra day! You can always transfer your bus tickets to tomorrow. None of us has ever had Bhang before this; we don’t know what’ll happen! One sober guy in the group could be important!”

Kaushik had declared he would like to be excused from this particular adventure at the outset. They had tried convincing him for a while.

“It’s not getting drunk Kaushik, it is Bhang! Lord Shiva’s own drink!”

“It has nothing to do with Bhang and Lord Shiva, I just don’t enjoy getting inebriated!”

Since it was clear after a while that Kaushik wouldn’t budge, they asked him to just stay and be with them instead. This too, Kaushik was now trying to avoid.

Eventually though, he gave in.

“OK. I’ll stay. But mind you, don’t force me to have any of that stuff.”

For the first hour, nothing happened. They all drank full glasses of Bhang while Kaushik watched. Nothing happened. They looked quizzically at each other and wondered what was wrong.

“Is there more?”

“Yes. But shouldn’t we wait for a little longer? I’ve heard the effects take time to kick in.”

“One hour! Can’t take that long, can it?”

“Yeah probably not.”

They drank another glass. Nothing.

“Let’s go sit on the terrace for a while. The night air might help.”

The terrace was actually the roof of the house, bordered by a knee-high parapet, open where a rusty iron ladder formed the entrance from below. They sat in a circle in the center of the terrace, after one of them pointed out the perils of sitting on the parapet if the Bhang did indeed take effect. Kaushik alone sat there, away from the rest, humming to himself.

The alleys around the house were deserted. Tenement such as theirs lined these alleys and he could see lights in some of them. The others were completely dark and Kaushik surmised their inhabitants were already asleep. It was only 10 in the evening; Dhule slept early. The temple, of which they now had a direct view unlike from the college hostel, was empty too. Its bells chimed occasionally and feebly, swaying in the erratic wind. He heard laughter and turned to his friends.

Two of them sat face to face now, encircled by the rest. They were babbling.

“You go”, one of them said.

“No, you go first.”

“No, you go!”

“No! No! No! You first!”

Between each sentence they laughed in high pitched voices, the rest of them joining in. Kaushik was certain they’d forgotten by this time what it was that they had to go for.

“We’ve got to go downstairs guys,” Kaushik told them, “You don’t look too good.”

They protested but eventually gave in. By the time they climbed down, they couldn’t control their laughter anymore. Nobody spoke. They just looked at each other and broke into hysterical laughter.

Five minutes later, one of them vomited. He hadn’t had time to realize what was happening and vomited on himself and on the mattress on which he sat. The vomit, Kaushik noted, was strange and green like herbal paste, only thinner and smellier.

“Listen, you go to sleep. I’ll get you to your room,” Kaushik said, pulling the boy to his feet, “We’ll see about the mess later.”

Two hours on, everyone except Kaushik had vomited. The same green substance. The whole place was submerged in it. Some of them had attempted to get to the toilet but had failed halfway. For a long time, one of them, Sunil, had appeared in control. He had even helped Kaushik drag the others to bed. When the first two had vomited, Kaushik had suggested they should abandon the room for the night and clean up the mess in the morning. After three more had gone down in corridors and in other rooms where they’d tried to force themselves to sleep, Kaushik sighed. “We’ll have to clean some of this up tonight.” He told Sunil.

So the two got a broom and a bucket out and began cleaning. An hour later, the floors were wet and slippery but clean except at the edges where the walls met them. The wash basin, into which someone of them had emptied his stomach, was choked and there was nothing that could be done about it. The rooms still stank like hell but they had no fresheners to spray. They would just have to live with it.

“That’s all we can do, I guess.” Sunil said.

“Yes, when the others wake up in the morning, they’ll have to clear some of their own mess.”

That was when Sunil vomited too. He graciously sprinted to the basin to do so, only marginally compounding a problem they weren’t going to solve right then anyway. He collapsed onto his bed after that and didn’t budge until later afternoon the next day.

Kaushik went back to the terrace, unable to get used to the stench. The breeze was chillier now. He climbed down, found himself a blanket, and climbed back up again. He wondered what would have happened if he’d drunk that stuff too. He was aware it couldn’t have been much worse than what it already was but he was glad he hadn’t. Years later, long after that horrible smell remained only hazily in his memory, he tried recounting the episode to others and found it strange that he did not remember any conversation. They’d blathered on for half the night and he’d retained no memory of it. When he spoke to some of those present there that day, he found they remembered far more, inebriated, than he did, sober.

He spent the rest of night on the terrace, without thought, staring at nothing and sleeping fitfully, and only climbed down next day when the Sun was high and strong enough to prickle his skin. He found he was still the only one awake.

Prithvi

“I’ve decided,” Kaushik announced between sips of Suleimaani Chaai, “to write a novel.” Ritankar nodded thoughtfully. “Oh man! Look at that babe entering!” exclaimed Ashish. They turned and looked.

Suleimaani Chaai was one of the many delights for which they frequented The Prithvi Café. It is black tea with very little sugar and is served, with a piece of sliced lemon and a few Pudina leaves floating inside, in short translucent glasses similar to those that can be found in every tea stall anywhere in India. The choice of glass is intentional – it is much appreciated for its earthiness by the liberals and intellectuals who haunt the Café in faded kurtas and jeans and a dirty half-torn bag slung on one shoulder. The Pudina leaves keep sticking to one’s lips when one sips from the glass and have to be peeled off with one’s fingers. The Chaai tastes magnificent.

Then there are the women. A lot of them come dressed in faded kurtas and jeans too, but they look enchanting since, unlike the men, they don’t carry three-day beards. On weekends, uber-rich businessmen bring their families to watch plays being performed in Prithvi Theatre, which is housed in the same premises. These families usually include a young daughter or two with perfect bodies, dressed in latest chic. Fifteen minutes before a performance, they all form a queue outside the entrance to the theatre since there are no seat numbers on tickets and therefore the best spots have to be fought for. The young boys at the café eye the queue with relish.

In the beginning, the theatre was the main attraction for Kaushik, Ritankar and Ashish. This was in their first months in Mumbai, when they were only starting to discover the pleasures of the city. Theatre performances were rare in the cities they’d been brought up and studied in and watching a play in the dark, intimate environs of Prithvi’s small amphitheatre - the proximity of the performers and their voices, pure and unfiltered by electronics - exhilarated them. After the performances, they’d spend time at the café gushing over what they’d witnessed., Soon, they exhausted Prithvi’s regular catalogue - a rather limited one, and found they would now have to wait for the occasional new production to arrive. They continued spending time at the café anyway, in love with the stone tables and benches, the yellow lights of bulbs, with enormous colourfully embroidered plastic shades over them, hanging from an iron frame, and occasional glimpses of stars and the moon through the branches of the coconut tree that loomed above.

In the last days before Kaushik quit his first job, he started coming to Prithvi in the afternoons on weekdays, slinking out of office for a few hours. In daylight, the place looked different -vulnerable in its now visible layers of old, fragrant dust and dried leaves on the floor and tables, more inviting. Most tables remained empty and the ones taken, were by theatre groups planning and rehearsing their stories and characters.

“Yes, you must.” Ritankar said.

“I must what?” asked Kaushik.

“Write that novel.”

“Oh. I’d forgotten where we were amidst all that distraction.”

“You can tell us the basic plot or something?” continued Ritankar.

“Oh I don’t know. I’ll just write the kind of stuff that I’ve written in the past – those mood pieces, you know. And I’ll see if they can be loosely bunched together into some sort of a theme…nothing concrete, really.”

“Hmm”

“And maybe I’ll call it something vague like ‘Closing the Barn Door’ or something, so it sounds symbolic and important.”

“I was just reading the other day,” Ashish butted in, “Berlusconi seems to be at it again.”

In Lucknow, as their final year neared its end and they became increasingly convinced that a successful 30 year career was not up their alley, Kaushik, Ashish and Raakesh came up with the idea of writing a novel together. “Each one writes on paragraph and then lets the next guy carry it from there. Nobody will have any clue where the thing will end, should be an interesting experiment.” Ashish had said. Kaushik and Raakesh had agreed. It fell upon Kaushik to start and he did so, choosing to write an opening paragraph so open that it hardly mattered what the next one would be. The next one was never written.

A year later, when Ritankar and Kaushik had just bought a handheld camera to take to Europe, Ashish suggested they make a short film. “It’ll be in first person, the protagonist and cinematographer will be the same.” The story was of a guy exiting an apartment and then walking for a while, taking a bus or a train – (“might be difficult, we’ll need permissions for those”) – and somewhere during all this, realizing he’s left something behind. So he’ll hurry back to that apartment again and we’ll find he’s actually committed a murder and has returned to remove some evidence he’d overlooked earlier. It had sounded like a pretty interesting idea, at least something to shoot and practice with. They’d worked on details with great interest for the rest of the day at the end of which they had a dozen ideas and nothing on paper. They’d decided to develop on the idea individually through the week and meet again next weekend. That was the end of that.

Since then, Kaushik had figured he was better off thinking and writing on his own and that he didn’t much care for what Ashish thought of his ideas or he of Ashish’s.

“Aha! What has Berlusconi done now?” said Kaushik, waving to the waiter to get them more Chaai and readying himself for an interesting conversation.

Strands

“It’s good,” Ashish said in his whispery adolescent voice, “but I think there’s a little bit of unnecessary metaphor mongering in certain places”

“Really? Like where?” asked Ritankar.

“Oh, you know, there are sections where you can see it could’ve been written in a more straightforward manner, but it isn’t.”

Ritankar looked at Kaushik, caught and held his gaze, noticing his lips begin to curl slightly. Kaushik let his eyes twinkle – he had found about a year ago that he could will them to, while he debated in his head whether or not he should pursue the subject further. Eventually, he decided against it and looked away instead. Ritankar, who always looked to Ashish and Kaushik to provide requisite humour at the appropriate moments, since witticisms and rejoinders did not come as readily to him as the other two - a problem further aggravated by the slight stammer he carried, shrugged and lit another cigarette.

Ashish made comments such as this fairly often, their vagueness reeking of puerility and desperate wannabeism (a term Raakesh and Kaushik used as a generalization for all those they did not enjoy the company of; verb: to wannabe, adjective: wannabeesque). Most times, however, it turned out he had sound logic to back himself, although not reasoned out completely and, therefore, he found it difficult to explain them with clarity. When they were only getting to know each other, Ritankar and Kaushik were put off by it. In time, however, they came to accept it, even appreciate it, for it allowed them to think and figure out stuff on their own.

On this occasion, they were discussing ‘The Road’ and, unlike other times, they thought Ashish was speaking shit.

“The bottle’s empty. I’ll get the next one.” Kaushik said, rising from the couch and walking to the refrigerator.

It was past midnight and Kaushik’s apartment had been and looked like it had been through a lot in the past few hours. Two enormous mattresses covered most of the main area; this is where they would doze off when they would be unable to keep their eyes open any longer. Packets of biscuit and assorted snacks lounged on the floor after they’d been pushed off the dining table by newer entrants. The kitchen sink was choked with dirty plates and bits of uneaten food which they hadn’t bothered to clear before shoving the plates in. In the other room, the aged loudspeakers sang The National’s latest album. The yellow light of the bulb, diffused by the smoked glass over it, fell softly over the scene and invested in it a romance that morning would take away.

Kaushik wrestled with the wine bottle for a few moments before handing it to Ashish.

“I can’t do this. You go.”

“Feel like watching a film?” Ashish asked with clenched teeth, as he wrenched at the cork; only half of it came off, torn cleanly from the rest which still sat prettily inside the bottle’s neck.

“Damn! This is some shit wine, this!”

“What do we do about it now?” Ritankar said.

“It happened to me once,” Kaushik said, “and I pushed that little piece into the bottle. It was fine after that, although the piece kept floating up and choking the bottle so the wine flowed out like whiskey. And it tasted a little more of wood than intended, perhaps.”

“Might come in handy in the future, this information,” Ashish commented, “when we have wine that tastes of wood in some restaurant and they tell us it is because they allowed it to breathe in special oak barrels or some shit like that, we can get all worked up and ask if they dropped the cork inside.”

Ritankar started to laugh in his hiccupy little way, his palms journeying to cover his mouth. Kaushik grinned and pointed towards both, “Bloody Amateurs!” he said in his best British accent.

“So, what about the film? We watching one?” Ashish said.

Ritankar shrugged. He shrugged a lot. Kaushik pondered for a second or two before answering in the negative. “Let’s just talk. If we start watching a movie, we’ll fall asleep,” he said.

“OK.”

They sipped their wines pensively.

“You know, I watched this movie recently, I forget the name…” Kaushik began. “…was made by that chap Moodysson – the one who made that film we watched the other day, Tilsammans…”

“Fucking Amal?” Ritankar prompted.

“No, not that. I saw that one ages ago.”

“You saw Lilya 4ever?” Ritankar said, his eyes widening.

“Ah, yes. Lilya 4ever. Wonderful movie.”

“That’s an awesome film dude! I saw it when I was in Chennai! I think I cried when it ended”, Ritankar said.

Kaushik glanced at Ashish and found him raise an eyebrow.

“Well, I don’t think I did anything as dramatic as that,” Kushal said, “but yes, it is a brilliant film.”

The Nationals ran out at this point and were replaced by The Twilight Sad. Kaushik had discovered them during the week – a Scottish band that played a queer concoction of folk and rock and sounded, almost willfully, Scottish unlike, say, Arab Strap.

Aand so you make it yerr own, they sang

But this wherre yerr arrms can’t go…

And a little later,

So wherre arre yerr maannerrs…

"It's an awesome accent, this!" Ashish said.

Kaushik chuckled. "Yeah, but at least you can pick up what's being said. With the Irish..."

"That reminds me," said Ritankar, "I finally managed to watch The Wind That Shakes The Barley."

"Ah. Isn't it a magnificent film!"

"Yes, it is brilliant."

Now that they were on the subject, Kaushik recounted the episode of the Irishman in Ventimiglia again. Ritankar nodded and Ashish listened with polite interest. It was an unsaid pact between the three. They had all, at some point, gone back to narrating the same stories from their short times in Europe over and over, and the others had smiled and exclaimed as if it were the first time, following it up with a repeat of one of their own stories.

Ashish told them about the time he was on a train from Venice to some place in Southern Italy and had to share the cabin with a young couple, newly married, travelling with the man’s parents. They graciously allowed him to sit although they could’ve refused for they had made reservations and Ashish had not. They also introduced themselves and showed great interest when Ashish told them he was from India. Their English was horrendous. The conversation remained warm and monosyllabic, driven forward more by nods and smiles than actual words. When it was time to sleep, the girl snuggled close against her man and gestured to Ashish to lie down in the space she spared. And so Ashish spent the night there, cramped but happy that his back frequently brushed against hers and that he had another story to carry home.

And then Ritankar started with the story of the gregarious woman, keeper of a makeshift general store inside a caravan, outside the station of Milazzo.

“Her husband looked like a real Mafiosi, man!” Kaushik said, when Ritankar finished, “Pony tail, wide forehead, sleeveless black tees and tattoos all over his bare arms.”

“He probably was one” Ashish said.

“Yeah, probably.”

And they talked of the Cosa Nostra and the ‘Ndrangheta and The Godfather.

“Bonasera, Bonasera,” wheezed Kaushik as he scratched his chin with the back of his hand and then gestured with them expansively, “What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully”

Brando’s dialogue was thus reproduced faithfully and without context. But so were any number of them on most Saturday nights. They continued on, discussing the extraordinary sense of drama the Italians possessed, as if they wished their lives could resemble their operas.

“All I need is a small cottage somewhere on the Italian coast, east or west doesn’t matter.” Ashish said, “And I am willing to spend the rest of my life there, idling.”

“I wouldn’t mind Spain either, if it comes to that, although I’ve never been there.” Kaushik said.

By 4 AM, they had begun to doze in fits and starts, trying to keep the conversation going, but finding it increasingly difficult. The Twilight Sad had finished too; the world was unnaturally quiet.

They fell asleep, promising each other that they’d wake up early and go to Café Ideal, fully aware that they wouldn’t.