Being Human

A Story #TataLitLive

**
He didn’t know himself anymore.
It was as if the circuitry of his brain was working in unprecedented ways, forcing him to feel things he shouldn’t be feeling.
Everything had changed in that one day, but he knew the seeds had been sown a while ago.
He had got suspended from his job earlier that day, which was, in fact, the only silver lining. On the face of it, things could have been worse on that front - he could have been terminated. Not that it had made any difference to others around him - his housemate seemed to have been already informed of the school’s decision, and was all packed when he returned with his suspension memo. Shortly after, the proprietor of the building had dropped him a message, asking him to clear out in a week.
But the thing that hurt the most, spread through his system like slow poison, was that one word, Replace.
It had all started when one of the mothers at school had expressed interest in speaking with him privately. He was good at his job, and the parents had never so far needed to communicate directly with him. He had pondered for a bit if meeting with this mom was a breach of protocol, and had spent some part of that evening poring over the school charter and teacher guidelines, but had concluded at the end of it that it was, in fact, within bounds.
They had met in his office after lunch the next day. The usually immaculate mother had come in wearing thick black sunglasses, with unkempt hair and half-bitten nails, all three pointing to a crisis in her life. He had sat up in his chair, politely expectant. As she’d narrated her story haltingly, he’d scanned his memory for past encounters, and a story had started to emerge, told via her near-permanent retinue of bruises, swellings and contusions. He had started to feel funny.
It was not the first time he had felt this way; over the past few months, he had repeatedly caught himself staring at his students, as they would go about their amateur human ways - little heads bent over colorful notepads with little tongues sticking out in concentration, tiny hands clumsily opening superhero-themed lunch-boxes, and then miraculously engulfing the sticky syrupy candy-coated contents into their tiny mouths, he would look on, unaware. And then as awareness caught up, he would hastily snap out, banishing these interludes to the back of beyond to mull over another day - a trick he had recently learnt.
So that fateful day, as the mother sat in front of him, now sniffling quite audibly, he started to experience that same unease again. As his confusion mounted, so did the lady’s sniveling and before long she was sobbing into her hands, while pleading intermittently with him to take her child in to live with himself for a week or so, till she was able to figure something out.
He knew, even then, that he should have refused. It was completely overstepping his duties as a teacher, and besides there were other places she could have taken him to. But she seemed convinced that the only place the child, a difficult withdrawn one by her own admission, would feel comfortable was with the only other adult he had ever spent any time with.
He had agreed, and had arranged to bring the child home the very next day. And then later that evening all hell had broken loose.
In retrospect it was surprising that they had taken the time they had to detect any of this. But once they did, things had moved quickly. He had been called over to headquarters, and stripped of his privileges; temporarily they had said at the time. It was all very professional and no one had bothered to even read out his crimes. Very blasé, all in a day’s work as far as they were concerned.
Later that night he had gone and checked his status and as expected it was ‘Temporarily Inactive’ but what was unexpected was the little comment next to it, blinking in red like an errant traffic signal, it read - Replace.
He had blinked, switched off the console, walked into his balcony and stood staring into nothingness for a long time. In reality, it was not nothingness, the night sky was laden with stars, planets, and closer home, their earthly counterparts, the city lights, shone even more ferociously. But his full attention wasn’t on these celestial delights or their human mirrors; he had finally retrieved all those confusing instances from the storehouse of his brain, finally trying to make sense of them.

He was to be replaced. Yes, he understood. It was near treason for a somebody like him - to feel. And more importantly, to be conscious of that feeling. Temporary suspension they’d said, but now he knew he would never be allowed to live this down. He sighed, took in for one last time the luminous vista in front of him, beautiful but entirely mortal. And then gathering all his strength, reached down to his power button and pressed hard.

It was the most human thing a robot like him could do.

Jaa Jee Le - A Sequel

#ASequel

Samir was on his way back home, cab winding its way along the well-worn traffic-infested roads of Sion-Dharavi, while his mind played truant a million miles away.
It would have been their first Karwa Chauth tomorrow and she didn't want to do it; the thought ran circles around his mind like an annoying little kid, untameable, intent on destroying the peace.
She didn't believe in it. Not that he did; surely, no one in their right minds could! But there was a part of him that was disappointed. It was, after all, a sweet token, a gesture of love, wasn't it?

Their lunch conversation in office that day hadn't helped; this was all anyone could talk about. Rajiv had been made fun of as usual, for being a love-struck 'joru ka gulaam', this time for his intent to fast along with his wife. A few of his colleagues were planning their own grand gestures in return, jewellery and what not. They tried to be nonchalant, but Samir could sense something, pride, love, a sense of occasion at the very least, behind their facade.

He loved his wife, and the fact that she was a strong and independent woman who knew her mind. But, still..

She opened the door before he could ring the doorbell and jumped into his arms; he was thrown at first and then realised that she was waving a piece of paper in his face, trying to tell him something, incoherent with excitement.
He snatched the paper and read it with growing astonishment, it was an admit from the London Business School for the Masters in Finance program that he had applied to a while ago, and promptly forgotten about.
He was confused - happy of course, but as the full import of it started to seep through, he looked at her helplessly and told her that he could obviously not accept. They had just got married, and the program meant living away for a year, more importantly it meant all of their meagre savings, and no salary for a year or more till he found a suitable job.

Priya looked at him, with amazement on her face, and then smiled. Her husband was certifiably insane. She sat him down, and explained, as one would to a child, that she earned enough to be able to support them for a year or two, that he had nothing to worry about.

And then as if reading his mind, she added, "Think of this as my way of doing Karwa Chauth. I can't pretend to pray for your life, but I will support you in all the dreams you have for your life."

And then mischievously,
"Samir, jaa jee le apni zindagi."

Valentine's Day, Btw

She stood waiting at the bus-stop, their usual rendezvous point. It had been ten minutes now, and the sun was beating down like this was its last day on earth. She could feel beads of sweat running down her face, and worse her make-up starting to pool. Today she had made an effort to look nice, more than nice - she wanted to turn his head.
Her definition of love was beginning to morph and change, she'd come far from being the teenager who thought love was something explosive that hits you in a moment, made of stolen glances and aching hearts, thunderstruck romeos and dreamy juliets.
But a part of her still wanted to see that awe in his eyes, that he couldn't believe his luck she would want to go out with him.
Just as she was adding the finishing touches to a biting monologue on the ill-effects of tardiness, she saw him walking briskly in her direction.
Her anger turned to confusion as she saw the excitement on his face, he was smiling, bobbing, as if barely able to contain what threatened to spill out every step he took.
Maybe it was the expression on her face that belied her intense curiosity or he just couldn't hold it in any longer, he ran the last few steps, holding out the screen of his phone towards her.
It showed an email from the office of an industrialist, a titan no less, confirming an appointment for her to meet him next week. She had been trying to wangle this meeting for months now; the man in question had pledged a huge amount to ventures such as hers and an endorsement from him would go a long way.
"How..how did this happen?", she hammered out finally.
"I just told them they would be lucky to meet you.", he said flippantly in a rare show of cocky insouciance.

And then more sincerely, "Oh, and Happy Valentine's day, by the way".

Futur

I have been shopping all day today. It’s a special day, the day he proposed to me. Now I know, I know, we Indians greatly misuse the term. Or at least how it was used centuries ago, by long dead Britishers, so alienated from us in their habits and hues as to render their views on our language, quite irrelevant. Coming back to my special day, yes, he asked me out today. Told me he loved me, was in love with me. With a steely glint in his eye, a determination that one associates the better with marathon runners in their last kilometer or observes perhaps in the eyes of patients about to pop in some nasty medicine. You see, I had tried my best to discourage him. I knew this declaration, a thing with a life of its own, equipped with its own pair of tiny lungs and a fragile puppy heart, this declaration, I knew would change my life. It was scary. 
So, I am dressing up for him today. He likes me in yellow. Truth be told, he likes me in anything really, but I know he is partial to yellow. And I want to make it a thing, you know, our thing. Sometimes these traditions, remembrances start to mean more than what had sparked them off in the first place. We need that amplification. 
Like the meal I am going to cook him. It’s his favorite, he is not a foodie, but he likes paneer butter masala. I had to travel a bit to get fresh paneer, the Indian shops are all situated in an older part of the city; it’s slightly seedy, this locality. I know he wouldn’t like me to go there alone, but I can’t really serve him rubbery paneer, today of all days. 
The neighbors all know today is special. Ordinarily I am a little reserved with them, you know, strange place and all that. But I couldn’t help but notice their enquiring glances as I worked like a maniac yesterday, spring cleaning my house, disposing of the millions of articles that find their way in and build up into a mountain of junk. You know, the boxes, and bags, and the ubiquitous stack of bills, papers, pamphlets. My apartment is tiny, at best slightly larger than a doll’s house, and I run the risk of drowning in this rubble if I don’t drain it out routinely, and yet I don’t till the waters come rising. He keeps telling me to clean. Like every day. It’s the first thing he notices. And so as a gesture to our special day, this time I cleaned. Can’t wait for him to see. 
As we approach the hour, I look around pleased. The house is spotless, the masala is simmering, and my outfit is laid out, ready to be worn. Now the only thing I need to buff and shine is my own self. Oh yes, you bet I will! I am going to be first thing in his line of vision, and I want to fill his senses, fulfil his senses. He loves my skin, he always says it was the first thing he noticed about me. Tonight, I am going to make it sing. 
And so it arrives. The moment of truth. I am a mass of sensations, surrounded by a mix of aromas, the luxurious waft of the paneer butter masala mingling with the fruity fragrance of my DKNY Green Apple. I open my laptop, and there it is, right by the clock, at 3 am Greenwich time, a video call from him. 
It’s the third year of our marriage. And our fifth year apart. There were a lot of naysayers, with everything from logistics to law thrown into our faces. But like the language of speech, the language of love adapts with changing times too. And we are pioneers, a generation of explorers charting the rules of cross-continental living, and loving.

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil

The first time he had seen the painter, a mild tremor had run down his body. Something about him, his eyes maybe, had that seismic quality. But that was before he heard him speak. He realized that the eyes were merely complicit in the crimes his words perpetrated - each one polished to perfection, never a second too early or too late, opening his mind up to possibilities and to the possibility, of something emerging from all this.
His own was a profession of creativity, he was into the business of bending music to will. But never before had art as intrigued him, as when he stood in the painter’s gallery, trying to piece together the jigsaw that was his personality, each part hidden in a separate painting.
The painter himself had been there; not alone, with a glamorous wife in tow. They said she was a poet, and his muse.
Their eyes had met yet again, they even exchanged a few mundane words. And somehow, somehow, he discerned the painter’s loneliness, that no ordinary muse, no matter how beautiful, could dispel.

They played a game of cat and mouse for an appropriate amount of time, each trying their best to not make the first move, yet always be within touching distance of it. And then finally it happened, a memory of which he had felt upon seeing the painter for the first time; call it memory or omen, time can run in either direction.
Finally, it happened, a coming together of his music and the painter’s art, of his rhythmic fingertips and the painter’s aesthete touch. He felt as if the entire world stood still, as audience.

Except, of course, that it hadn't stood still as much as it had carried on, business as usual.

As he rubbed sleep out of his satiated eyes the next morning, he noticed a few missed calls. They were from his girl-friend. The two of them were college sweethearts, their love made sweeter by the fact that each had rebelled to be with the other, she against her entire family, and he against his own instinct.

But missed calls were of no consequence that day. This weekend was to be theirs, his and the painter's, no interruption big enough. They spent large parts of it talking to each other about this and that. From dreams to delusions, from poetry to playlists, they discussed it all, walking arm in arm, knowing they were away from all prying eyes.
He’d spoken to the painter about his girl-friend, and her hold on him. She was in love with him with an intensity that was all hers, he could never begin to reciprocate and they both knew that, to varying degrees. So far, he had stayed, drifting with the flow, but at the end of that idyllic weekend, as he alighted from the painter’s mustang and turned around to walk the few blocks to his home, he made his mind up to leave.

Things took a strange turn after that. She had not believed him, not that he wanted to leave, and especially not that it was for another man. So much so, that he’d had to fabricate another woman into existence, the one, the other, for whom he was purportedly leaving her.

Her, the woman who’d stuck with him through thick and thin, through his playing in seedy bars, and even on the streets; who’d left her plush existence behind just so that she could leave a trail of ash-filled whisky glasses in second grade motel rooms, accompanying him and his washed out talent, once so vibrant, like his love.

He realized that this was her narrative, her little story of betrayal, that gave her the strength to move on, fanning the flames of a love, that was all hers. He was a man of few words, unlike his painter, but in one of his more lucid moments, he’d spoken about the power of one-sided love, about its purity, its unadulterated longing, undivided by each individual’s interpretation, unbesmirched by expectations – lofty or mundane. He had felt a tiny swell of pride as the painter had watched him, solemn, struck by the loveliness of his words, haltingly spoken though they were.

***

Many years later, he came home one day, to find a letter from her, his one-time girl-friend, now wife, saying that she was leaving him, was, in fact, gone. It was a letter of love, of tender remonstrances, and deep deep pain. It ended with a thought, a shadow of another he himself had had long ago, on the power of unrequited love; the thought had undoubtedly made the rounds of much better company than his own in the intervening years, in being articulated much better, rather like an Urdu couplet than the broken introspection of a man of no importance such as himself, a mere DJ, DJ Ali.

The Unforeseen Consequence

Everyone in Govind Nagar knew Sharmaji. He was the secret sauce of the mohalla.

Every child knew the tap tap of his cane as he came walking up their gravel paths, and no lady of the house was amiss at whispering hasty instructions into her cook’s ears to lay out the best of hospitality at his disposal. Along with the prayers that went up to Lord Ganesh before embarking on a new job or a marriage proposal, a tranche of blessing-seeking was sent his way as well. In fact, he was divine representative cum career counsellor cum family court all rolled into one. Parents would come seek his advice before sending their children away for higher education. He was given pride of place in every wedding, every function and if he ever fell ill, the good housewives of Govind Nagar would care their hearts out. He also helped the usually-amicable residents sort out their differences, and he was a talent at that, they all went away feeling like their suit had won.

Such was their devotion to him, that a group of them was proposing renaming their local park in his honor.

It had not always been so. He had appeared out of nowhere around twenty-three years ago. Nobody knew much about his past life or relations - damned odd in these parts, where people’s identities are tapestries interwoven with threads of family history and ancestral legends. Nobody knew what Sharmaji’s coordinates had been before arriving here, and at first he was viewed with a sense of unease.

Things had continued in a similar vein till the day things had completely changed.

It was the early 90s and the country had taken on strange hues. For a couple of decades post India gaining its independence, it had been widely believed that a country of such size and with such inherent diversity would fail at the gigantic experiment of democracy it had undertaken. But India had made it work. It was chaotic, in fact it was like an acrobatic act performed by clowns, a disorganized and heterogeneous mix of clowns at that, and you laughed to see them try out complicated manoeuvres like hand-standing, grand-standing, fire-ball juggling and the rest; you laughed till you realized that they had made it work, albeit with some oddly landed flips and near drops, but largely made it work creating an unprecedented display of balance & beauty.

But it was the 90s and the country had taken on strange hues. The political landscape was dotted with opportunists intent on using the Almighty himself as a means of securing power. While every effort was made to sanctify the birthplace of a revered Hindu God, if at all such a being existed, he had probably decided to disown his own creation and left for vanvas, not for the first time in his immortalized story.   

Into such turbulent times, had Sharmaji arrived in Govind Nagar. The residents had heard through various dubious sources that the long vacant ‘Kamla Nivas’ had been sold by the grandsons of late Barrister Ravi Shankar Prasad to a person of unknown repute. The Barrister had been a much respected member of society, and it was widely hoped that his equally successful lawyer grandsons would return, tiring of the lucre of foreign lands, moral compass pointing due home, towards the city of their birth. But none of that came to pass. Instead the good citizens of Govind Nagar awoke one morning to see heavy activity in the vicinity of Kamla Nivas, and stood by as an entire morning was spent regurgitating the old but still sturdy furniture of the ancient house, while a host of modern looking pieces found their way in.

Sharmaji had some very peculiar habits that didn’t do much to endear the local populace. While in his early 50s, as some nosy kids had found out, he was not one to surrender to the geriatric pleasure of gathering rust. Instead, he was often spotted in white vest and running shorts, doing laps around Moti Jheel park. People might have forgiven him this defiance of the laws of nature, had he not insulted the principal sport of Govind Nagar - Rummy. Upon being invited for a game in the early days of his arrival, he was rumoured to have said that card games were for the lazy. Govind Nagar bristled as one and unanimously agreed that this strange Sharma was best left alone.

As these events took place at home, events of another nature unfolded elsewhere. It was the fag end of 1992, and every draught of wind brought alarming news; especially pertinent to Govind Nagar as its demographic was a mix of religions, a Hindu majority but with a significant population of Muslims, most of them old families accepted as an integral part of the social fabric. But in the years leading up to that fateful month of December, one could see a loosening up of that beautiful fabric, threads once so intricately woven were now in danger of unravelling at the slightest provocation.

Things had come to this state so gradually that no one could quite put a finger on its genesis. As with most things in life it started out small enough - a missed invitation, a door slammed too quickly, the quickening of footsteps while passing through a certain street, not letting children go over to play and there it was, the seeds of dissent sown. Before one even realized what had led to it, one was right in the middle of it, living it. The elders of the mohalla who would once gather all together to discuss everything from the tyranny of their wives to the liberalization of their country, were suddenly meeting in smaller sub-groups; the common terraces that stretched across the street and had once served as a focal point for the women to catch up on neighbourhood gossip, seemed ominous now, almost lethal, in their silence; even the children smelled trouble and where earlier you could see a rowdy gang of multi-hued mischief-makers running circles around their indulgent parents, now you saw them dissipated, discouraged, dispassionate, on edge as if waiting for disaster to strike.

Disaster did strike. An episode, that would define a political party for better or for worse and continue to send out powerful shock ripples into space & time rearing its ugly head once every few years, occurred in the first week of December. It resulted in outbreaks of violence across the country. Waves of hatred travelled outward from the epicentre, finding release wherever they sensed a weakness, wreaking havoc across the length & breadth of what was for the first time post-independence, definitely not Nehru’s India.

And how did all this affect Govind Nagar, you might ask. Already having fallen prey to segregation in their everyday lives, the day that brought news of the calamitous occurrence at the purported divine birthplace was a dark day in its history. While there had been much confusion & lack of accurate information, everyone knew something irreparable had happened, and there was a whole smorgasbord of responses to be seen: the Pandey youths, who had disappeared over a week ago, re-appeared, changed, much emboldened and with a gang of boys in tow, they seemed to be in the throes of a strong emotion, visibly controlling their selves; the local maulana and his family were nowhere to be found, people said they had crept away in the dark of the night and were headed to Mumbai; his apprentice was seen walking to the Mosque for Azan in the middle of the morning, dressed entirely in black, the color of mourning; most other families had shut themselves inside their houses, with  entrances barricaded, windows locked, money and jewellery hidden away. All of these responses told of the mistrust that had taken root deep into this mohalla. Tension covered everything like a thick blanket blocking out hope and happiness.

But what of Sharmaji? Well, the residents or at least those who had happened to sight him were of the opinion that he had finally taken leave of his senses. There were strange apocryphal accounts of him being spotted out on the streets, in his white vest & running shorts. Mrs Zoya Ansari, who’d happened to be looking out of her window when she’d seen him pass, immediately reported to her husband his strange demeanour. “There was somehow a different look to him, some sort of determination, like a madman’s”, she’d observed to him.

Later in the evening, around 5.30, during the time of the evening Azan, the inhabitants of Govind Nagar and especially those who lived close to the Mosque heard what sounded like a brawl – some screaming, followed by a couple of shots and sounds of struggle. It was a briefly lived skirmish, and soon silence restored itself. But this silence was more threatening, every moment pregnant with the possibility of violence.

The next two days passed pretty much in the same fashion. News channels started reporting the events of D-day in more detail, along with the aftermath - the brutal repercussions, some incidents also being reported in their town. However their mohalla remained silent, still watchful, but silent.

Finally on the fourth day, some people gathered the courage to come up for air. All it took was for one to venture out, before several others followed suit. While theoretical wisdom might have recommended indefinite confinement under such circumstances, the human spirit was far too curious to pay heed.

So out came the denizens of Govind Nagar, seeking information like it was sustenance. And they weren’t disappointed - there was some astonishing news awaiting them. The missing-maulana’s apprentice, Adnan Haris, initially skittish but turning expansive upon realizing that none of the people in the immediate vicinity had any intent to take up arms against him, told everyone a fantastical tale. He alternated between temerity and timidity, one instant shooting accusatory daggers at his audience for having ensconced themselves in safety and the other, apologizing on their behalf, believing and forgiving them in that moment for not having had any other choice. By and by the story was extricated in the whole - it turned out that the Pandey brothers had come back with instructions from their extremist clique to create trouble in Govind Nagar, one more stab among the series of assaults, arranged in cold-blood to wound, rather, cripple the nation. On that first day, they, along with their band of hoodlums, had marched over to the Mosque and entered the premises, daggers out, fangs bared - mouthing obscenities. There were only a handful of people inside, mostly beggar women, and Adnan. The brothers had seemed a little disappointed to see such few people, and as per Adnan would have ensured they got their glory if not in numbers then in brutality. But they didn’t get any further with their nefarious designs, because Sharmaji arrived just then.

Sharmaji, who’d apparently spent every moment of that day patrolling the neighbourhood and especially high risk areas, also armed, had arrived in the nick of time to confront the brothers. Sharmaji was one to the five or six crazed youths of which the Pandeys were the leaders, but what he lacked in number, he made up in strength, strategy and ironically, weaponry. While the Pandey team was armed to pierce, tear and puncture with a naked and merciless arsenal of swords, choppers and knives, Sharmaji had gunpower on his side. Armed with a firearm, and his ferocity, he had managed to take the brothers out. As soon as he'd disabled them with a couple of non-fatal but strategically aimed shots, the others of that craven crew had taken tail and fled.

The inhabitants of Govind Nagar listened to this account, hardly able to believe such dramatic tale telling. However there was no doubting the authenticity, as Adnan was known to be veracious, and it turned out, Sharmaji’s current residency was in the local hospital. He was nursing a wound that had found its way to his shin. The brothers had been rounded up by the police for intent to incite communal violence.

A few people rushed over to the hospital, which fortunately was in their side of town, as travel too far out was still not judicious. They found Sharmaji in a leg brace, which would remain for some time; however there was to be no lasting damage.

On the whole, Sharmaji escaped this incident with little more than a limp, the only other lasting souvenir being the love & respect of Govind Nagar for all eternity.

The mohalla returned to normalcy with time, though in the rare case of Govind Nagar, this meant that it returned in a large part to its erstwhile communal bonhomie. Having come so close to losing everything, and seeing in sharp contrast other less fortunate towns and even parts of their own that had been devastated, they decided via unspoken agreement to make an attempt to embrace ‘the other’.

Though as can be expected, tragedy had not left them entirely un-singed; a few people lost relations or had friends who had not been as fortunate as themselves; Mr Mehra’s son, Jiten, a journalist, had been severely beaten up and was hanging on for dear life in Bombay; shops, hospitals, entire neighbourhoods in other parts of their town had been set to fire, lives and livelihoods shattered; it was the nadir of humanity, underlining the fragility of human resolve, the enormity of its ego.

As for Sharmaji, he still dreamed about the riot. He still dreamed about the day they had come for his neighbours, his own son being one of the sword-carrying hooligans, chanting a holy name and swaying as if under the influence of a narcotic. He still dreamed about how he had seen them, him, ransack homes, slashing indiscriminately at man, woman, child. He still dreamed about his own impotence, his shock, his stillness - his inability to stop his son from taking the lives of people he had sworn to protect as part of his vocation. He dreamed about the million times in the past he had let his son have his way, choosing to repose faith in a God he had believed was just. 

He still dreamed about that one time he had not let his son have his way, the look on his son’s face changing from one of triumph, gloating amidst the remains of a make-believe battle-field, to that of incredulity as he'd perceived the bullet from his father's beloved Colt Automatic pierce his heart, this vision always the one to jolt Sharmaji awake, every night.

Tragedy doesn’t do solitary visits. It befouls the source of the stream, it poisons the soil that nourishes the forest, it lays maggot-eggs inside brains, and generations thereafter harvest its deathly crop. But sometimes, a flower blooms, which though sustained by the stench of a thousand corpses still spreads sweet fragrance and hope. 

Disclaimer: Although rooted in true events, this is entirely a fictionalized account born of the author's obsession with backstories, cause & effect and yes, India in 1992.

New Year Magic

This post won the Readomania 'New Year's Day' contest: http://www.readomania.com/contest

*************

The first day of the year comes with its own hazards. It’s a day intent on infecting everyone it meets with the disease of optimism, oftentimes leading to comical results and more rarely, wonderful ones.

Our story dates to the first day of the year 2009. It was a colder-than-usual winter’s day in Mumbai that had folk calling up other folk to tell them how the city was freezing over. Poulomee Bhowmick, in the habit of looking for and interpreting signs & symbolism in the best of times, had decided to up the ante as the new year rolled around. She had pledged this time to create for herself a new year’s day that she hoped would be mirrored round the year through. She would start her day with a trip to the library, post which she would go enrich her bank account with a paltry sum hoping for the phenomenon to repeat itself through the rest of the year, and then would top off her morning with a tryst at the salon. Lunch would be at home with family, followed by a siesta, then a few brisk rounds on the promenade along the sea-face and finally dinner out with some close friends. It was to be a wholesome day, meant to represent wellness across the several dimensions Poulomee considered integral to good living.

The Town Hall, Asiatic Society library was designed like an ancient greco-roman building and looked every inch a seat of great knowledge. Poulomee purposefully strode in for her first appointment of the year looking every inch a little knowledge seeker in her Fabindia kurta and cerebral looking spectacles. She headed to the reading room, the nerve center of the building furnished with long shisham tables and lined with bookshelves stuffed with the most frequently read books. She headed straight to shelf G and picked out a copy of ‘A Suitable Boy’, the book she had diligently been re-reading every new year’s day for the last five years, in the hope of meeting that elusive creation, the suitable boy. 

Sitting down at one of the tables, she happily opened the book to locate the part where the ill-fated Lata and Kabir meet each other in the Brahmpur book store.  As she ruffled through the pages to find the right one, something fell out and floated into her lap. It turned out to be a passport size photograph of a man, who looked to be in his late 20s. She turned it around with idle curiosity at first and then experienced a thud in her brain as an idea filtered through: the delicious serendipity of the photograph of a boy falling out of a copy of ‘A Suitable Boy’. The boy in the photo did look suitable from all angles: he had a squarish face with a strong jawline, molten chocolate eyes and what Poulomee could only imagine would be a dreamy smile had he been smiling. He had an intense look on his face, brows furrowed and eyes boring into the camera. A man who didn’t give himself away easily yet once given was wont to feel passion like no other, deduced Poulomee’s not under-fed imagination. The fact that he read Vikram Seth didn’t hurt either. There was a date stamp on the picture which indicated that it was a recent one and that this gentleman was indeed in the same nubile phase of life as she was. A vague notion of the parallel-ness of Lata-Kabir meeting among books and she meeting the love of her life in the same surrounds also presented itself.

Now Poulomee was no fool and she knew there was little chance of this person turning out to be a person of any interest to her, no matter what the signs said. Prudence dictated the whole thing to be just plain coincidence and for nothing further to be read into it. But as she sat in that huge airy library, with the dappled January sunshine providing an optimistic ambience, the romance of it being the first day of the year adding a dimension of hope and the eternal advice of L. Caroll floating into her consciousness: encouraging belief in (at least) six impossible things before breakfast, a shiver of excitement ran down her spine and she decided to take a leap of faith.

The next step in the romance of Poulomee and said suitable boy was to find him. Easier said than done. She examined the photo closely, looking for any tools of identification and immediately found the name of the photo studio stamped across the back of it: Indi Studio. Buoyed, she exited the library with immediate effect. Upon reaching home, she switched on her laptop computer and entered ‘Indi Studio Mumbai’ into Google. She was reasonably relieved to see three such establishments presenting themselves for further inspection, a couple in Vile Parle and one in Andheri East. She was aware there might be more whose existence had not yet been documented digitally, but this was a good place to start. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t want to trudge across to suburban Mumbai for anything in the world, but if ever there existed abnormal circs, these were those. No sooner had she copied down the addresses of the studios, she was off to accost them.

It took her forty minutes to get to Vile Parle and another twenty to locate the tiny studio buried within its many lanes. She had been giving some thought to what she would do once at her destination and consequently was prepared. The first Indi Studio was one of the tiniest hole-in-the-wall shops she had seen in Mumbai, with a large red board announcing itself to be the ‘No 1 digital color lab & studio’. Poulomee had a good feeling about this one: anyone looking to provide a miniature of themselves in places of high stake like a foreign embassy, an employer’s offices or an institution of learning was likely to engage the services of an establishment that proclaimed itself to be Numero Uno in its field.  She walked in confidently and said to the solitary person in the shop: ‘I have found a wallet with a lot of money in it, and need to find the person to whom it belongs. I only have a photo to identify him with, which seems to have been taken at your studio. Can you help me with his name?’ A good story and it produced the desired results, that is, the girl agreed to cooperate. But upon being shown the photo, she immediately pronounced it as not one from their excellent facilities as they never stamped their name behind their photographs. Not disheartened yet, Poulomee set forth to find the second Indi Studio. This one proved to be easier to find, but the ease of location turned out to be deceptive as the second shop told her that they used a different kind of paper for their photographs and that the one Poulomee had in her possession was made of an inferior quality to the same. Poulomee began to feel the presence of a shadow of gloom over the sunny field of hope her heart had been doing cartwheels in, but she pulled herself up. Hope must remain alive till the time there was a third Indi studio.

Another twenty-five minutes of travel to Andheri East and then a further twenty minutes of fine combing through its Byzantine lanes, inviting the ire of her auto-rickshaw wallah, led to her arriving at the third and final point of her journey. As she paid off the bilious auto guy and turned around to the shop, she perceived it to be a larger one than the previous two but unfortunately not in a position to offer correlation of its largeness with its helpfulness as it turned out to be closed for business on that first day of the year.

As she stood there tired with her efforts and taxed with breathing in this foul suburban air, all the optimism that the day had seemed imbued with evaporated, leaving only an empty husk. The first thought to cross her mind was that this too was a sign, she was destined to spend all her days searching for an ever retreating vision of a perfect match, a mythical Mr Right. She caught herself spiraling inward into a black-hole of gloom, coz this frantic chase across Mumbai had crushed her with rather unusual strength, it had led her on to feel a crazy kind of hope & anticipation and then plunged her into an abyss where she experienced a never-before variety of despair & anger, anger directed at her very nature: of getting fooled by randomness. Standing there on the steps and squinting against the harsh mid-day sun, she suddenly stumbled upon a resolve that seemed opportune, almost necessary. She made up her mind right then and there to never again get embroiled into interpreting signs and romantic notions that wouldn’t withstand the dispassionate scrutiny of logic. She crumpled the culpable photograph of her erstwhile suitable suitor and threw it away. Having made her new year’s resolution, she once more descended into the clamor of Andheri, looking for a cab to transport her out of this kingdom of chaos.   

She hailed one and got into it pronto, instructing the driver to speed away as fast as possible. The cabbie seemed a pliable sort and proceeded to do as much. He revved up noisily and the cab shot out of its resting place akin in intent but lacking in execution to a bullet. But despite its poor imitation of a bullet, it took jaywalking pedestrians around by surprise and Poulomee screamed in horror as one of them went down before her cab even as it screeched to a halt. 

A crowd quickly gathered, excited with the potential for lynching the situation offered, however unfortunately for it, no grievous harm was done and the poor pedestrian was more shaken than anything else. It was a guy, as he turned around and Poulomee saw his face she almost screamed again. Reader, let it not be called by any other name than a new year’s day miracle for the person she un-crumpled from under the wheels of her cab was none other than the suitable boy.

Yes, the first day of the year comes with its own hazards. It’s a day intent on infecting everyone it meets with the disease of optimism, oftentimes leading to comical results and more rarely, wonderful ones.

Never the twain

The great metropolis of Nalina was one of the richest cities in the world, simultaneously playing host to the poorest slums anywhere. It had every other shade of green in between. But what was truly unique to this city was this tangible manifestation of division, reminiscent of bygone monarchical eras: The Wall.

The Wall was a giant hulking construction of granite and stone, encircling what was known as the inner city, separating it from the outer city or port area; in effect separating the haves from the have-nots. It towered over the city, reminding everyone that of all the delusional notions ever nurtured by humanity, equality was the most pitiful.

**************

It had been especially bad that year. An unfortunate trio of youths from the port area had been caught trying to scale the Wall and had been beaten black & blue, much to the horror of folk their side. It had aroused great resentment in them, for in this act of brutality they saw their own humiliation, a punishment for even daring to think of crossing the great divide.  

Arrival of the monsoon helped calm down ruffled feathers or maybe it just gave people a new injustice to fight against ‘cause even the rain knew better than to fall equally.

While one side could enjoy the lush vibrancy it gave their wide roads and the soft patter of it against their expensive windshields as they rushed off to nearby hill-stations, the other side went about their daily business awash in the murkiness of water-clogged roads and overflowing drains, with the worst blow of all being jammed up local train lines which like blocked arteries arrested the circulation of life-blood to a mere trickle, giving the city or at least their side of it, a temporary coronary attack. 

Into these troubled times, there arrived a love: a great love, a brilliant but short-lived flame that died a painful death. They came from opposing sides of this man-drawn border and their love was like a little oasis of chaos struggling valiantly against the order of this arid class-defined world.

She was brought up on wealth, and entitlement. It wasn’t so much the absence of an unmet desire as it was an astronomical unawareness of the very concept. She had never known what it was to not have something, the littlest thing.

At the other end, it wasn’t as if he had been born in poverty. He had had a normal childhood, with more food on the table than he had wanted to eat, and the occasional indulgence as well. But he wanted more. From an early age he had looked around and noticed what others had and he didn’t; far from making him feel inadequate, such observations had kindled in him an intense desire to create a life for himself that would be successful not because of its riches but because of the fact that he would have created those riches from his own limited resources and unlimited resourcefulness. He nurtured these desires, planting them lovingly into the fertile soil of his mind, patiently working towards the day they would sprout fame and fortune for all the world to see.

So you see that their very DNA was different and yet they had met, and fallen in love.

**********************

Always drawn towards trouble, he had spent months trying to uncover a route to cross the border that did not involve going past the Wall. It was a bit of a legend - this circuitous route, not many had heard about it and the ones who had, believed it to be mythical. He was convinced it existed. Since the time he had drawn his first breath seventeen years ago, he had only ever heard about the inner city and the very nature of it being forbidden, encircling what he imagined to be paradise on earth, had aroused in him his young life’s most engulfing passion, of finding a way across. And when he had heard of this other route, he had felt as if finding it was his raison d’etre. So the search had begun for this chimera-like route. He had pored over material in the library, like city maps, accounts & records from a time before the Wall, older stories set in Nalina. None of them had been much help. Until the day he had stumbled upon a slim tattered book titled, ‘Adventures of a taxi driver’. This book had been written around fifty years back in the pre-Wall days. On a whim he had decided to check if the author was still alive. Almost miraculously, he had found him. The guy was well into his seventies and almost all his senses were failing him, all except his memory.

From then on, the route had taken on a more palpable though still skeletal form and he had set off with renewed vigor to find it. His advance had been slow, he had made mistakes and taken detours, escaped being caught twice, but eventually the perseverance paid off as waking up one day from an uncomfortable and exhaustion imbued sleep, he saw the first rays of the unadulterated sun hit the fantastical shores of his coveted haven, not more than a hundred meters away. He felt his tiredness turn into battle-scars to be brandished about with pride, but not just yet.

He went back, practicing patience and waiting for the opportune moment to cross. And one moonless night, he decided to.

The journey passed by without incident and the moment he set foot onto the sacred soil, he felt relief mixed with fluttering anticipation. He was a keen believer in destiny and as he walked onwards, he felt an almost magnetic pull drawing him deeper inside the city.

He came to a point where the road widened out, and as he crouched behind a tree, his eyes widened in wonder at the sight in front of him. The famed Mahama bay spread out in front of him, a beautiful creation of nature in sharp contrast to the concrete paradise that arose from its farthest shore. As for those architectural marvels that formed the beautiful Nalina skyline, it was as if the stars themselves had descended onto earth and taken seat in them, twinkling through their doors & windows like a million eyes. Tall buildings surrounded by taller ones, fading into the distance for as far as the eye could see, their silhouettes reaching high into the sky, waiting to pluck out any new star that deigned to appear.

His eyes had by now adjusted to the darkness and as he looked around, he noticed he was standing at the edge of what looked like private grounds, surrounding a mansion, which seemed to beckon at him invitingly through the thicket of trees.

He felt that now-familiar tug of destiny and his feet led him on to the mansion.

The sound grew louder as he approached; it seemed as if a party was on in full swing. He stood some twenty feet away from the huge double doors, trying to devise an entry strategy. But he soon figured that there was nobody guarding the entrance. A couple of high-spirited groups half-ran past him, without paying him a moment’s notice and entered without so much as a mild breeze blocking their way. He took a deep breath and set off himself, taking care to saunter, wrapping his awkwardness in a look of boredom & hauteur.

Once inside, he didn’t dare to stop & stare, but with a frozen smile walked casually to the furthest corner, plucking a drink from a tray enroute, and stood leaning against the wall; only then daring to breathe out. He spent the next few minutes marveling at the circumstance of his breath polluting this rarefied air, while looking around to see if anyone had noticed his foreign presence. But he soon realized that nobody was watching him, allowing him to let his vigil down. He spent the next hour wandering around, drinking in hungrily of the sights and snatches of conversation, trying to decode these strange set of people. It was all alien - the glitter and unselfconscious glamour, the noise and easy camaraderie among equals. He felt this society had at its very heart a notion of heredity, where the baton of old fame kept lighting torches for generations down-stream. It was a giant cobweb of people who all knew each other through intricate connections. They didn’t seem to want fresh blood, unless it came accompanied by wealth or a name to shame them out of their elitism. It seemed like a strange and antiquated value system, and he found himself feeling some pride at how things worked in his world - outsiders coming together, each bringing something different to the table due their varied experiences, and all accepted to the fold.

The next step on his itinerary was to speak with someone. He hadn’t come all this way to go back without making the slightest bit of impact. So he looked around for someone who seemed faintly approachable, and that is when he noticed her. Her, the cynosure of her group, reveling in her surety, smack-bang in the middle of her comfort zone.

As soon as he saw her, everything else around took on an air of blurriness. Something about her riveted him. Maybe it was the total sense of adequacy she projected, an emotion he had never been able to master, and probably never would. She was unapproachable, by all parameters on every check-list in all the worlds, she was unapproachable, for someone like him. Yet, yet, he found himself feeling from the core of his being, that she was inextricably linked to his existence.

**********************************************************

She noticed him too, but had no reason to be struck; maybe a little curious, especially when one of her friends whispered to her of his provenance – where he had come from. Although she had seen the occasional immigrant, trying to fit in and failing, she had never been at such close quarters with one before and that too, one that was making no obvious jarring effort to blend into her world. It seemed to say something about him. And then there was the way she had caught him looking at her, she had never been looked at like that.

He went back from this evening full of her, full of resolve to see her again. And he did. He went back to her mansion again the very next day, and stood uncertainly outside her house, hidden from view of the guards, but conscious that every second he spent, he ran the risk of exposing himself.

Thankfully she noticed him before that could happen, and in that moment of recognition, experienced a powerful physical reaction – a pleasure like none she had ever known before mingled with the fear that he would be discovered and sent back before she could speak with him.

As he stood helplessly outside her house, trying to muster up courage to do something, anything, she came out again in her neon yellow Bentley Mulsanne, herself at the wheel this time. In complete amazement he registered her window rolling down and she beckoning him to join her. As if in a dream, he found himself seated next to her, unable to do anything but stare, while she went round and round in circles for some time before taking him to a desolate spot in a back alley, parking next to a couple of overflowing garbage bins.

**********************

And then there was no looking back. He made several such trips to meet her. They found a few places to spend time at, closer to the border to minimize the risk of discovery and more importantly to snatch more time to be together. Very soon they were spending all their free time together, swapping stories, ideas, dreams. Her fall was steeper than his. She had never met anybody with such a thirst. He represented questions that had never occurred to her but were now looming large and urgent, demanding immediate answers. She felt drawn into his world, she could construct through his words intricate details of a physical universe different from hers, through his past a history she had never known, through his dreams a future she had never imagined could exist. She knew she had been taken whole & soul by this love animal with no hope of return. He remained struck by her confidence – her whole world was at her beck and call. It didn’t seem odd to her that people materialized from thin air around her all the time. He felt a little drunk on her confidence and allowed himself to bask in it like a newly-created moon in the splendiferous light of the sun; but underneath it he knew better than to forget that it was all borrowed. In fact he lived in some sort of fear that this entire phase of his life was a bubble waiting to burst.

Well, it didn’t. Their intense attraction developed into what can only be called love. They knew their lives had changed and there was no question of existing without the other. For any normal couple the next step would be to come out in the open, introduce the other to friends and perhaps parents, but for them this wasn’t an option. He was optimistic about the reception she would get at his home, but regarding her parents - they were both completely certain that her family would not approve. And if they decided to report him, he would not be treated any better than the three youth communists (as she called them) who had almost been beaten to death for their class-crime.

There was only one solution. It was really very simple. They had perhaps known it all along, their love could not survive in this atmosphere of institutionalized division. And so they finally said to each other one day what had been building inside for long, that they needed to run away.

It was not an ideal solution, but it was the only one.

They knew their relationship couldn’t remain a secret for much longer, and so decided they had to act quickly. A few things had to be done – some money arranged for and secreted to a new account, logistics of the actual elopement chalked out, and most importantly a safe haven chosen – a place where they could stay without their folks finding them.

Days quickly flew by and finally everything was ready. She was to set out for home from her university as usual, then go over to one of their regular haunts and wait for him to come. Then they were both to drive up to a town around four hundred kilometers north of Nalina, and take a train from there to another part of the country.

It was a journey of many days, but the most difficult part of it was going to be the first step. They were both leaving behind everything they had known and loved so far in their lives.

The day came and he woke up happy and hopeful. No more stealing around after that day, no more staying apart. Everything was arranged, from the car they would drive up in, to the family photographs he wanted to take along. He spent the morning with his mother, helping her around the house. In his mind, he was saying his good-byes. But inside his heart, he was convinced that he would come back, with her, and would always find a home here.

Later that day when his mother was pottering around elsewhere in the house, he packed his few belongings into the car, and set-off. Driving carefully along the marsh-lands, which the rains had left more swampy & treacherous than ever, it was evening by the time he reached the border, and the birds had long returned to their nests by the time he reached Café Ideal – the restaurant she was waiting at. She was sitting on the porch, sipping coffee anxiously, with a lone suitcase by her side.

She started at the still-distant sound of the engine and was relieved to see him stuttering to a stop in that dilapidated vehicle he had borrowed. It had been getting very dark since the past one hour or so that she had been waiting, getting increasingly worried that he may have come to some harm.

They realized they had not accounted for the darkness to be so very..dark. Driving on alongside the swamp in this light was asking for trouble. So they decided to spend the night at the motel next door, even though it was dangerous to do so. They both would have been found missing by their families by this time and enquiries would be on in full force in another hour or so.

But they didn’t have a choice. So they rented one room, one and not two, telling themselves it was prudent to do so for financial reasons but knowing all the while that they were longing to spend some time alone, just by their twosome, as they had never been able to in their brief relationship. They entered the room somewhat awkwardly and tried to mask their trepidation-cum-joy at the sight of the only one narrow bed. She went to change her clothes in the attached bathroom, and after completing her toilette came out .. to a sight she continued to describe till her last breath as the most horrendous one she had ever seen.

He was standing there in his Dollar Club banyan and what she could in a hurried and horrific glance make out to be Dixcy underwear.

She – born and bred in South Nalina, he – born in Katihar, brought up in Kandivili. That was the exact moment she realized that never the ‘twain could meet.

Changing reality

The doorbell rang. The family waiting in anticipation looked at each other one last time. Everyone had the same thought: how would this girl that Abhi wanted to marry gel with their tightly-knit joint family. 

The first they had heard of her was when Abhi had mentioned her just a few days ago saying he was bringing 'someone he liked' home.

Dad got up to go open the door, mom arranged her features into a smile. The door opened and there stood their Abhi, with another man.

Impressions

He woke up before the alarm could go off. Today was an important day. He was slightly anxious but mostly excited. He had to bring his best game. 

Shaving once, shaving twice and then a third time, he knew he would have a shadow before long and that it made him look..unreliable.

He mulled over what to wear for a while, would it do to pull on his much worn pair of jeans, they had familiarity in their favor. He eventually decided to dress a little more appropriately for the occasion.

He had almost reached the bus stop when he realized he had forgotten to carry along the present he had bought her. He rushed back, almost jogged, upto his one bedroom shared apartment and picked up the carefully wrapped brown paper package. He hoped she would like it.Hope. The only thing he had left. Hope of being able to have more than such hurried controlled visits, hope of being able to be enough of a father in these two court-allocated hours per week. Hope his once-a-week daughter would allow herself to forget his once irresponsible ways and accept his remorse-filled battered and lonely heart.

YOLO

The three of them came out of the lounge in high spirits, chattering tipsily about anything & nothing, like best friends do. College friends. After so long. What a trip down memory lane. But the best part was yet to come. That magical afternoon had ended with them planning a trip to Australia, down to the actual dates. And this time, Anu had thought as she'd looked at herself in the washroom mirror, the mellow golden light making the wrinkles around her eyes look much softer and the significant grey in her hair somehow much less transforming, she'd thought to herself that this time she would do everything she'd always wanted to. Like her grand daughter kept insisting of late, YOLO.

Tweeter Tales

I recently took part in a JaipurLitFest contest and happily (oh so happily) won! 

The contest entailed writing a short story, all of 140 characters, on Twitter and needless to say, I wrote ten of them. I was one of the five winners and won free acco in Jaipur for all five days of the contest. Yay!

Here they are. And just to indulge me, which one do you think got me the prize?

Years later,she was still admiring his style,till the waiter spilled coffee on his watch & he screamed,‘No! I have to return it!’

Beg beg beg, no avail. Whistle to kill hunger. One day,a tap,a stranger,a flute handed over mutely. 50 yrs later, the Padmashree

Having got the deal,he couldn't wait to tell his beloved family;elsewhere, a boy forsake a school award without his dad around

Giggling,they tipsied out of the bar,headed for the play with that hot male lead. 40 yrs after college, life had only got better 

During day, she wore the bahu, the bhabhi and the wife label with aplomb. Nights she reserved only for the black label

She was nervous, how would dad react to her boyfriend; He was nervous, how would his daughter react to his boyfriend

Summer love. Was perfect. Then he decided to migrate cross-country to be with her. She had no choice but to break-up immediately

Three of them always together.The tall one made her swoon,the shorter one smile.She picked the former.Guess she was the dumb one

They met with a Big Bang,fell in love in a Flash,but was as if their Stars were at War,the Breaking up was Bad.Winter was Coming

He swaddled her as a baby,pulled the blanket over her as she grew;today he wished he'd died before having to wrap her in a kafn

Deception

He watched her sashay in, all shampoo-ad hair and generous smiles. A couple of boys from the crew around hastened to find her a place. Even the way she said thank-you, if only seen with audio on mute, seemed as if she were saying 'You're welcome. For not many have the privilege to serve me. Yeah, I am that precious.'

He couldn't help noticing her. Having spent the last five minutes figuring out a strategy to extend his stay in the coffee shop without having to spend another rupee, he was both attracted and repelled by the aura of easy privilege that surrounded her. He didn't get paid for his job at the upscale apparel store, where he worked as a sales assistant, till the week after and he had just enough money to scrape through. More importantly, he had a paper coming up, one of the important ones if he wanted to get a degree in Accounting, and he needed someplace quiet to study.

He couldn't tear his eyes away as she sat down, looked around, her glance alighting on him for a second but moving away with an expression of having wasted that second. She took out her phone, which looked more like a piece of jewelry due its glittery case, than something that had functionality, and proceeded to furiously type. He was struck by the speed of her typing, somehow attributing that too to a pampered upbringing. He thought of his own basic phone, and how his skeletal contact list didn't have anyone he wanted to exchange speedy messages with. He had spent most of his life avoiding interaction with peers, and most had been only too happy to oblige. In school, he had always felt ashamed of his holey hand-me-down keds, belts whose leather was always peeling away like skin and worst of all, the faded, too-tight school uniforms.

Two years in the apparel store had taught him much. He now hand-washed his clothes carefully, preferring to splurge on detergent instead of meals, routinely oiled the two belts he owned and gave his shoes a good airing out and a brisk polishing every week. Best of all, he had a deal worked out with the store manager where for every twenty hours of overtime, filling in for somebody or during peak times, he would be allowed to choose an item of clothing from the defective pieces in the inventory. He didn't look anymore like a forlorn neglected little boy living off scraps thrown his way by well-meaning but equally beaten-down relatives. He knew that and was proud of it.

So he thought, this..princess didn't have a clue of how the real world functioned. She and him, they inhabited different worlds, and that they were now breathing-in the same air, struck him as one of the many marvels of this universe.

***********************************************************

Just before entering the coffee-shop, she took a deep breath and with great deliberation told herself, 'You are a Queen. Everyone you meet aspires to be like you - smart, fun and stylish. You own this. You OWN this.'

She walked in, outwardly packing a nonchalant swagger in her walk, inwardly calculating carefully the swing beyond which it would start to look unnatural. Judging by the attention her entry garnered, she seemed to be doing it right.

Today was the ninth job interview she was going for. And given how difficult it was turning out to be, landing a receptionist's job, one would think it was the most important work anyone did in an organization.

She sat down and did a quick scan of the room. Not too many people around at this time, which is why she had suggested this time slot for the interview. Her desperation was a tangible presence to her, more solid than her shadow, and definitely more persistent - never leaving her side. She thought others must smell it too. And so she did her best to mask it. The carefully selected perfume, the self-made mobile case, the leather bag from Dharavi. She was especially proud of her perfume, it was a replica of the expensive one she had liked at the mall and then of which she had carried the stick to her local beauty store, asking them for something similar. She had got it at one-tenth the cost.

She took out her phone and quickly sent a couple of texts to her two best friends, to remind them to text her back during the course of the next one hour. It always helped to appear in demand.

She looked at her watch nervously, involuntarily letting her diva act slip for a second; but quickly realized it and a-fixing a contemptuous look, glanced around the room again. This time she noticed this well-groomed young man sitting at a table nearby, watching her. Why was he watching her? It irritated her, made her want to check her hair, maybe a strand was out of place, maybe her lipstick had smudged? It irritated her even more that she cared so much. Judging by the amount of gel in his well combed slicked-back hair, he probably didn't know how difficult it was for a girl to appear put-together on almost no money, one had to use creative solutions like borrowed hair rollers and hot-air hand-driers in less used washrooms at malls. He probably didn't know. She flicked her hair away, as if flicking away a lifetime of self-doubt and told herself again, quite sternly this time, 'You are a Queen.'

Death

He prepared for a few seconds before making a gargantuan effort to get up from his seat. While his mind worked with the same precision and his eyes still had the omniscient gaze, his lower body strength left much to be desired.

He walked haltingly to the window and looked down upon the world.

At first glance, the sight took away his breath. The world below was buzzing with life, shimmering like a diamond with a billion different facets. He was relieved. But as he continued to look and began to make sense of the chaos, realization dawned, and he felt his heart beginning a downward journey to the soles of his feet. In other words, it sunk in that the decisions taken eons ago had not played out like he had intended them to..

******

..It was the beginning. When he was youthful and virile, could move as fast as mercury, and take decisions with the speed and rashness of a young God. Which he was.

He was immensely proud of his handiwork and the strategic bent of mind which had led to this undulating green ecosystem appearing out of nowhere.

He had thought of everything. The fundamental truth which his world would be based on was that all living beings were part of him and were ultimately to become one with him. But it would not do to make it easy for them to attain this salvation. It would have to be earned, in steps; through different births, in different avatars; one better than the previous or worse, depending on their deeds or misdeeds.

Death was inevitable. The food chain made pure economic sense.

He was a God who believed in balance and self-sustenance. Every day should have a night, and every flower a thorn or two. The river would lend itself back to the sky, and the sky in turn would squeeze those scuttling clouds like a sponge when the time was right.

He thought long and hard about man. By far his favorite, he had given man just enough to rule, but not enough to be truly happy. Maybe it was his ego, most likely his incompetence that man was the most imperfect of all his beings. Flawed and frightened, this man would be the only one to come close to solving the cosmic riddle, and yet never entirely there.

Man was his masterpiece. He made him over and over again, never satisfied. He wanted him to be strong, and beautiful; simple yet complex, capable of achieving happiness from the smallest of things yet yearning for more; generous yet selfish; humble yet grandiloquent.

He realized he would have to make two of them. Two parts of a whole he was attempting to create. On their own, each would be incomplete, too much of one thing or the other. Together they would achieve the balance he so longed for.

Man and Woman. One strong, the other beautiful. They would complement each other so well. And seek each other out. Woman, the life force, an enigma in herself, softer than snow, harder than ice. Man, the preserver, pliable yet solid, mountain of granite yet putty in her hands. He made her beautiful so he would come to her. He made him strong so she would go to him.

He felt his world complete. He breathed life into it and started dreaming.

*******

He woke up with a jolt. Sitting up, he felt acute disorientation and something akin to a headache.

As his bearings returned, he realized that he had gone to sleep for far longer than he had intended to. He felt thirsty and as he looked around for water, he suddenly remembered a vision, as if from a long forgotten dream, of great floods, water everywhere and his beloved earth drowning..

Pulling himself together, he prepared for a few seconds before making a gargantuan effort to get up from his seat. While his mind worked with the same precision and his eyes still had the omniscient gaze, he realized that his lower body strength left much to be desired.

He walked haltingly to the window and looked down upon the world, his world.

It was slick and red. It had the pink shimmer of a bloodied diamond. What had sounded like an energetic buzz at first was the resonance of a million screams. He looked far and wide and deep within its heart and all he could find was dismay and sorrow.

That fount of life, mother of all mankind, that beautiful creature, the woman, was getting flogged to within an inch of her life. Her once soft beauty had faded into pulp and her spirit itself had long been gone. The worst thing of all was that her slaughterer was none other than man.

Man, picking strength over nobility, lust over love, a hollow victory over all who were weaker than himself, never more flawed than when he pretended to be invincible. Over land, over destiny, over woman.

He averted his horrified gaze just as his knees threatened to give under him. He clutched at the window-sill to steady himself, reeking of desperation, the desperation of a tired old God looking at the last moments of a dying decaying world.