The morning after

Jairaj Singh

What comes usually after an office party is a hangover. It’s purely scientific to say this because you would least expect to have one. After all, anyone in their right sense would want to be at their best at a congregation that easily likes to confuse the lightweights among the heavyweights in the environs of a dimly-lit watering hole.
However, drinking for journalists tends to be one cheerful late-evening exercise that occasionally brings about ambiguity, incoherence and mindless happiness to an otherwise world that’s filled with trite sentences, bogus reports and unfortunate complexities of human nature. It is among those stern faces, of pragmatic nature and bitter smiles, to who you raise your first drink to and accept, for a fair moment or so, that you share a common ground.
The morning after the office party you realize you’re late for work. In one of those bitter moments of a working professional’s life, you also grasp how life can quickly revert to being boring after a long night of serendipity, adventure and debauchery. All this while you lie in bed clutching your head in despair when all the reserved energies in you have been drained the night before focusing on the ceramic texture of pots that deserve a good scrub.
When you finally make it to work, your sobering thoughts and your aching head offers an unconditional compromise that all events of recent undoing must be resolved in order to resume work like an ordinary day.
Fortunately, the conversation between the receptionist and the guard isn’t as off-putting, as you might expect it to be, but mildly uplifting, as they stand next to the medicine box. They muse over the increasing requests of Disprin and hand you on when they look at you.
Inside, the same partly-milky, partly-watery coffee that your colleagues had so often fashionably raised objections to, today have sent out scouts of peons with trays of plastic cups to get their morning fix. They are lined in front the coffee-machine table, sniggering at the irony of how expensive alcohol too give hangovers.
You casually avoid the glares of those who sit on their respective places and look naturally cheerful, well-nourished and well-slept. Somewhere in those eyes you feel a sense of contempt and disapproval being sentenced upon you.
And you, in your little ways, scorn their attitude in your haggard gait as you walk towards your cubicle to meet those familiar faces who will not only piece all your memories of folly together but will also wager how the last evening unfolded. It is of that you precisely dread.
Meanwhile, somewhere inside of you, you feel your brains are squirming, which are sending help signals in the forms of terrible quakes and icy shivers down your spine. For a brief moment, there is even clarity, and you almost make that promise to never drink again.
You rearrange and clear your desk a little, sorting piles of press releases from event invitations, to pages of layout printouts to the occasional postcard to the editor. Somewhere in the distance, you see the head of your editor bobbling from one cubicle to another, towards your direction.
Now, while on any other day you would have casually waved to him, talked to him at length about the stories you planned to do, and then lightly added to the list the ones you hadn’t been able to do. Today you pray you successfully avoid him.
This premonition comes to you with some vivid images that are less colorful, and which are accompanied by resonating Bollywood beats from last night. Your unanimous decision of having turned to whisky after downing four vodkas straight, in the course of a few stray minutes, surfaces on your conscience and creates conflict.
So you counter this conflict, in your mind and say, what was there to regret? After all, you had only played a sport to everyone’s amusement and frolic when they pulled you on to the dance floor, while the drink in your hand danced in the glass.
You feel a noose of compromise tightening around the neck of your moral system. You feel bad and then a lamp in the shape of an imp lights inside of you. You start to remember the smiling faces of a group of girls in office, who you never had the nerve before to talk or even mildly remark about the weather, dancing with you.
You also remember spinning around them – the way you had always wanted to spin – when someone had entered the magical circle and tapped you on your shoulder. But you were too lost in an outrageous tragic dance move that the remnants of your drink splattered against that man’s favorite blue shirt.
Yes, that man, your editor. You sheepishly remember you had seemed apologetic at first but then on an impulsive frog-moment you rushed to a dark corner hoping he might not have seen you. How could your judgment be so impaired?
As you slip further back in your chair, with feeble thoughts and momentary flashes of sadness reflected on your face. Two colleagues, Priya and Sonia, of the features team, you wouldn’t want to meet today or too often, invite themselves to review with you the rating of this year’s office party with the one last year. They forget you’re a few months old.
As you sit there listening to them, you remember how excited they had been about the party. So much so, that they had finished their pages so early that they had an hour for themselves inside the women’s loo to lift their faces, change out of their day clothes and plan in detail how late they could make the night, before the party.
Two minutes into, what seems to be a conversation of three, you wake up to realize that they aren’t talking about you. In fact they are talking about all those things that had happened while someone was helping you reach the loo of the lounge bar, after you had puked near the sofas, where everyone had left their bags.
In slow hushed voices Priya and Sonia talk about Ms Mehta, the sly quiet one, who had capitalized the most the previous evening. Allegedly she had made some extreme and suggestive hints, as she had helped the editor clean his shirt, by asking him if he went to the gym. Your editor, according to their sources, even sanctioned her leave.
By which time, Mr Sachdev and Gaurav, your local city correspondents, grinning like hyenas, pull their respective chairs to this small circle of your conversation.
‘I think she’s sleeping with him,’ chips in Mr Sachdev, speaking the unthinkable, taking a sip from the coffee.
Parul in order to change conversation points out that the dress Preeti Sharma, the fashion reporter, was wearing last evening was more revealing than necessary. To which Sonia adds quietly, ‘There’s more to her than meet’s the eye. She was only an intern a month ago.’
Then the conversation swiftly drifts to the music last night and how trashy the DJ Donny was but there is nothing like dancing to old Bollywood numbers. But the conversation is cut short by Gaurav who confesses that he saw Mrs Goyal from the desk leave with Mr Nanda from the sports section. It seems highly suspicious because Mrs Goyal lives in Rohini and Mr Nanda drives a white Maruti car to Patparganj.
‘They definitely have something going on,’ adds Mr Sachdev insightfully again. You look up again to see your editor laughing at his own jokes a few cubicles away. Meanwhile the mood of the conversation lifts and falls like waves in the sea, while your head feels as though it’s stuck in sand.
You bitterly realize how valid you felt your points were about the fate of journalism, while you chased beers with the editor-in-chief.
Meanwhile, Sonia turns to Mr Sachdev and asks him point blank, ‘You too were having a bloody good time Sanjay. You too were seen dancing close to that bubbly education reporter Priya?’ To which he gushes and smiles, but shakes his head to say no. ‘I am old, I have done my years in disco bars.’
Then you hear the hollow voice you the fear the most. It’s your editor. ‘Don’t you have any work today?’ he shouts well naturedly, while settling his eyes only at you. While everyone scatters around or turns to face the computers, he walks right up to you.
‘So, how are you feeling today?’ he asks, in a way a bully would ask after punching you in the stomach. You nod, smile and then end up not caring. Make plans in your head to join a magazine and never work in a newspaper office again.
‘I saw you had a hell of a time last evening.’ You are dead sure this is a trap. ‘You ruined my favorite shirt you know.’ You think you know he’s going to ask you to pay for it. ‘But that’s all right,’ he says, with a crooked smile. ‘I had actually come over to tell you that your internship ends next week, but if you like you can stick around.’ He then turns to walk to his office but stops.
‘You guys really don’t know how to drink and have a good time. Nor do any of these guys,’ he points his hand around. Somewhere deep inside of you a hundred men wish to die.

It was a Long Walk

This is what I remember of her. This diary entry is about her, her royal nose, her childlike demeanour and some mental notes.

X
.

"I don't know where this is coming from! Why can't you stop digging into the past?"

"You have always been like this! You have not changed at all!"

I walked to the phone booth. I was short on money, and I needed to make an urgent call home. I dug into my pockets to get a few coins out. Outside, the two people kept their voices loud enough for me to hear.

This isolated, broken down booth was the only thing left besides the architecture as heritage in this town.

"I can't be held responsible for things that you think are wrong, but clearly aren't so!"

I dialled.

The phone kept ringing. After four rings, a young womanly voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Kirti?"

We spoke for a few minutes.

After I hung up, I stared outside the booth. The young couple was still fighting, and I stood there, looking around.

The paint had chipped off from many places, and the glass was yellowed and patchy.

"I can't just go on like this!"

"Obviously! Look for the easy way out!"

I decided to stay on for a while, but then decided against it.

I walked towards the end of the lane. The book shop was nearby, and I always paused there to gaze at a few authors like I found them loitering in stacks, under each other's weight.

Just when I was about to turn from the bend, I looked back, instinctively to see if the couple was still there. I couldn't see them, and for a moment I was tempted to go back and see if everything was okay.

Within a minute I was back at the phone booth, looking for them. It was a foolish thing to do, but I had had a very difficult morning that day, and my nerves were rankled. I saw the girl stepping out of the adjacent lane, crying.

She looked at me once, and looked again. She must have thought this funny man likes to be in the booth. After a few seconds, I stepped back and started walking in the opposite direction.

The conversation I had over the phone was still in my ears and my head began to hurt. I had no money, no job, and I was losing someone very important to me. I tried to piece together the conversation again to possibly interpret it again before a voice behind me jerked me out of my trance.

"Hello..?"

I stopped and turned around to see the girl, standing behind me, her eyes red, her nose a cute cherry red.

"Helluh" I said awkwardly, as my throat gave away.

Her gaze kept shifting on the road, as if she was about to confess something.

I tried to read her face, and just before I could say something, she blurted, "Can you sit with me for sometime?"

I am probably the only stranger that day to have been witness to their fight, and obviously, she needed someone to talk to, to pour her heart.

"Sure, no problem. Except, that I am broke right now and I cannot be in a coffee shop, and as you could have seen, I was calling someone from the booth," I said. I immediately regretted it.

"Yes, I saw. But, it's okay. I need to sit."

As we walked quietly to a coffee shop close by, I sensed an easy calm around me. The day was clear, there was a slight breeze, which had gone unnoticed in the tumult that had occurred.

We sat in the open verandah outside the café, it was quiet. Her nose had sobered down or so it seemed to me it had peaked out. It was long and round at the end, giving off a bored smugness to the world.

She gave an irritated look, and I stopped and looked away.

I adjusted myself in the chair again. She kept silent for few minutes, possibly trying to disentangle her emotions, which seemed to have hobbled off in a hurry, outside of her control, the result of it all being me, a stranger sitting next to her. Or, so I imagined.


She apologised for her behaviour and spoke about how awfully low she felt after the altercation in the lane. She didn't mention much about what happened, neither did I ask. I simply watched her speak, her hands move, her eyes slow and heavy with confusion and sadness.

She bought me coffee and soon after asked me if I wanted to leave. I was jolted out of my reverie again. I hurriedly said that it was unnecessary to apologise and feel guilty.

That moment, her cell phone rang. Someone obviously wanted her somewhere else, and she immediately got up to leave.

We didn't even wish each other adieu. She gestured thank you from a distance before calling out to a taxi. I smiled and dug my hands into my pockets to hear the jingle of a few coins.

A Life Less Ordinary

The June sun was furious. Its ruthlessness was evident on the light and dark skin tones of boys and girls waiting for the University-special. At the bus stop outside Patel Nagar market, Sushant Banerjee preferred to roll his eyeballs around some neatly waxed legs, his eyes admiring their sheen, his heart craving to feel their softness. Personally, Sushant disapproved of clothes that revealed one’s body parts, but the voyeur in him couldn't resist to take a look. He himself was happy in his regular refuge of a full-sleeved shirt and trousers, a gift from last year’s Durga Puja. This was but a part of the act he put up as a Mathematics lecturer at the prestigious Lord Stevens College.

Fair enough for his secret indulgences, his life, he believed, was everything except extraordinary. And even as he turned 30 today, little had changed in his world, despite his mind embarking on an Odyssean journey to the past. A cherub-like face had always betrayed his potential to assert his manhood, so he thought. But being thirty was a landmark. In his mind, Sushant kept convincing himself, "Today is just another day." He had spent many birthdays trying to solve tough problems --- both in mathematics and his life. He owed loyalty to the subject as it saved him from realising several truths. And he found peace in this imposed ignorance. Be it the screams coming from the adjoining room, his mother’s tears that fell on the pages of his books when she taught him or the urgency to pay the school fee, no factor was factor enough to intervene in his love affair with Mathematics. On his fifteenth birthday, the mother insisted on a small celebration at school. Sushant, however, was reluctant. He loathed the idea of selling old newspapers to buy toffees for classmates who did not even care to speak to him. But his resistance wasn’t strong enough.

Later that evening, as Sushant rejoiced the last Kismi in his toffee packet, he felt jubilant. He looked at his unshaven chest in the mirror and felt the freshness of adolescence. The joys of boyhood, he grinned. The narcissistic indulgence would have continued for a while had the mother not called. "Baba modey daariye aache. Niye aashte paarbe, shona? Aamaar shorir khaaraap laagje." (Father is standing across the street. Would you get him here, dear? I am feeling sick). Sushant evidently had no choice. He hated helping an intoxicated father find way to their house. On several sleepless nights, he had seen his mother waiting till midnight for his father. Sushant wanted to contribute to that little gesture of care, but couldn’t. He didn’t seek any reason for the detachment, just felt it. Fifteen years later, things were different. The ageing father had surrendered to what he believed was cruel fate, and Sushant took over as the breadwinner of the family.

Lost in the memories of a joyless childhood, Sushant noticed the U-special making its way to the bus stop. As he stepped in to see bright young faces and all-sized figures draped in branded apparels, the excitement of turning 30 took a backseat and the anxiety of a lecture with Maths Hons second year took over. Sushant perspired once again. For a reason unknown to him, he had forgotten to prepare the third chapter of Mechanics. The over-enthusiastic second year students were known to be the inquisitive lot---the kind that often left the teachers breathless in their quest for knowledge.

To deal with the unpleasant challenge that these students posed, a lecturer needed a sound strategy. A STRATEGY rather than a teaching skill. As the U-Special reached Maurice Nagar bus stop, he climbed down. Making his way to 39 A, he nodded many times as a young group of girls and boys wished him. "Being wished good morning is much better than being wished Happy Birthday," he thought, his mind refusing to accept that he liked being wished on his birthday. As the mathematician entered the classroom, his probing eyes scrutinised each and every student. "I'm planning to take a surprise test today on Mechanics Chapter 2. I hope all of you are ready," he announced, with a grin so wide that it exposed the last tooth of his lower jaw. "What the f*** !" Sushant's hatred was matched by an irreverent student. Though the Mechanics teacher pretended to ignore the comment, he knew it was Charles Eapen, the rebel who was also the class representative. As the CR, Charles had asked the class to contribute Rs 100 each to buy a Reebok t-shirt for their ‘favourite’ teacher. But surprise tests have a way of bringing out the worst in students, and Charles was no different. With the ‘burden’ of  conducting a surprise test, Sushant Banerjee can very well do without a Reebok tee, he thought.

Fifty-five minutes passed when the bell rang and Sushant snatched the papers from his students' desks. Will these papers be checked? This was a question in each student’s mind. Sushant’s sloth had the answer. As he entered the staff room with a pile of papers, the entire department greeted him. And such was the excitement that he feared an impending demand for a party. "What if they ask me to order a cake? 500 taka joley jaabe! (Rs 500 will go down the drain)," he mumbled. Sushant’s miserly ways, however, were no secret to his colleagues. A gentle handshake and chapter was closed for a year.

The clock struck 2.55 pm as Sushant’s last lecture got over. He wouldn't have to feed to anyone's culinary fancy. As he boarded the U-special once again, the 30-year-old 'man' felt the tiredness his work brought to him. His sister, a journalist at Bharat Times, worked almost 14 hours every day. Sometimes he couldn't thank his stars enough that he chose lecturership. He may not have become a permanent faculty yet, but the eighth year, according to the family astrologer, was lucky one. A smile lightened an otherwise pale face at the thought as the bus stopped.

Hoping to take a quick bath, Sushant rang the doorbell, only to be informed by the mother that there was no water in the tap. In the absence of a shower, a sleep would do some amount of good, he thought. A dreamless sleep was not unusual to Sushant. He had spent many nights seeing nothing but darkness. "Please get aata and cheeni baba," mother woke him up from what was a deep slumber. The frown on his face was true to the anger he felt at being woken up at 7 in the evening. But the mother’s knowledge of his slothful ways only helped her remain calm on such occasions.

Seven to nine pm was a time that Sushant dedicated to Mathematics. As he saw the clock striking seven, hunger took precedence over Mechanics. Mother was quick enough to lay the table with a glint in her eyes that gave her an assurance of being complimented for her culinary skills. As Sushant made himself comfortable in an old wooden chair, his disapproval of the elaborate dinner was evident."Pomfret? Do you know how much it costs? Rs 400 a kilo," screamed Sushant, aghast to see a seemingly sumptuous but expensive meal laid out at the table. On occasions like these, Sushant couldn't help but brand his mother a spendthrift.  “Kintu onek din pore baanalaam,” (But I cooked it after long) was her explanation for cooking her son's favourite dish on his thirtieth birthday. When he threatened not to eat, the helpless mother offered an assurance that the money was spent from her own savings. Sitting next to Sushant was the speechless father, who often blamed himself for Sushant's irreverence towards his wife and himself. He had conditioned himself into believing that the son loved them despite the irreverence that his agitation and miserly ways exhibited. Silence, on such occasions, was the father's defence against an arrogant yet lovable son. Finally, Sushant decided to sleep hungry on the special day to prove that he was by no means to be taken lightly.


The lazy alarm was the first sound Sushant heard every morning. As he woke up, he found an unusually silent mother preparing lunch and tea for him. Fresh from last night’s hurt, the mother laid down the breakfast. Sushant’s apologetic gaze towards his mother defeated its purpose as she chose to look at everything except her beloved child’s eyes, the child for whom she had decided to stay in the marriage. They sat quietly, finishing the last crumbs of bread on their plates. “Durga! Durga!” the mother mumbled as she picked Sushant’s bag and offered it to him. Leaving for the bus stop, Sushant felt compelled to look at the verandah of his two-bedroom flat. This was an indulgence that had transformed into a habit with time. Like always, the mother stood there, her vision blurred by the tears that gathered in her eyes. The tears complained and mourned a rejection that she felt first from her husband and now her son. Several minutes of guilt passed. At the bus stop, new pairs of glistening legs had replaced the guilt the mathematician felt till about few minutes back. As the U-special stood in front of the dusty lanes, Sushant was, as usual, the last one to climb up. "Today is just another day," he assured himself.

Ends

A night to remember

It had stopped raining by the time Rahul Seth stepped out of the movie theatre. He felt a cool damp wind caress his face. These had been brutally warm summer days in New Delhi. It wasn’t the heat but the humidity that knifed through him. His clothes were perpetually drenched and clung to him like ghosts resting on Peepal trees in his grandmother’s tales.
The humidity that morning had crushed his clothes and his ego as he walked into work, wearing that silly blue tie, wiping his face with a handkerchief, creased and crusty with salt after numerous attempts at mopping his forehead and polishing the sides of his nose. His boss had called him over to his office. He told him he was fired. While Rahul was clearing his desk, someone called him ‘Mister Knuckles’ playfully and he punched his face, and the guards carried him out.
He could only grapple with one thing at a time; it was the way his mother had cried when he called to tell her he had lost his job.
The darkness of the night hung like a wet quivering blanket in the sky. Dark clouds shifted above. They rumbled like some stomach growls, and the city lights flung red copper dust at its bosom.
Rahul lit a cigarette and meditated unknowingly on three people sitting on the steps of a coffee house smoking cigarettes across from him. They were talking loudly about marriage and commitment.
A man in his mid-twenties with crew cut hair, sat between two girls. He seemed effeminate, for some reason, his stooped back lurching forward, his locked knees and the way he would throw up his hands up or meet his wrists at his chin and spread his hands against his cheeks. His laugh troubled Rahul.
The dusky girl, on the man’s left, wore thick-rimmed spectacles, sported a maroon kurta and was loudest among the three. She was overweight, dark and her arms were chubby. Her friend, who crossed her legs as she arched her back, was slim and awkward with short brown hair. She wore a sleeveless shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans, and smiled nervously.
It was eleven. Some shops were pulling their shutters down. The common folk, the uncles and aunties, the mummies and daddies, were slipping out with shopping bags and packaged foods. The entrances of nightclubs were filling in with unshaven men and scantily clad women. Noisy Bollywood numbers and catchy thumping beats were slowly lifting the veil of pretense of the night.
The entire market complex seemed as if it was undergoing a silent makeover. It was as though the moment was caught between two acts of a play with a swiftness and subtlety that even those who shifted the props had no idea of what they were preparing to see.
Three street urchins carried a wooden box, filled with shoe polish and brushes, and settled beneath a tree and began to sniff a dirty cloth and share a cigarette. A dog started to howl. Somewhere in the parking lot a car alarm went off. The parking attendants were laughing and drinking beer. A tall girl in a short dress with long legs stopped, peeked into her bag, pulled out a lipstick, and then walked on. Two men in coats and ties talked about morning meetings and a deal gone wrong.
Rahul felt stress accumulating in his forehead. One street urchin stood up with fire in his eyes and threw stones at his compatriots. The other two got up and started to chase him shrieking in a child-like frenzy with peals of laughter.
At eleven-thirty, Rahul wondered why he hadn’t gone home, to the flat, his parents owned, where he lived just a walk from the market. Why was he still sitting on the steps of the theatre hall? His mouth was dry, and he could feel a fresh coat of sweat precipitating on his forehead. The humidity in the air had stirred up again. Who was he waiting for, he asked himself.
‘No one,’ said the girl on the steps of the coffee house, the one with the thick rimmed spectacles. ‘No one understands me when I tell my parents I don’t want to get married. But they keep insisting. What’s more, every Sunday, I find some boy with his parents sitting in our living room for tea, waiting to see me. I can’t take it anymore.’
‘Don’t worry, silly, I’m sure you’ll find someone,’ the man said stroking her arm.
‘Oh, it’s killing me. What is it with guys and slim girls? My parents tell me that if I lost fifteen pounds I would get married in a month. My mother gets so carried away at times. Then she gets after my case to be on such-and-such a diet because it worked so well with so-and-so’s daughter that she got married last year…. ‘They want me to starve,’ she added quietly.
‘Maybe you should take it easy on those dark temptations,’ the other girl said, ‘the melted chocolate syrup on brownies with ice cream tend to get heavy you know…’
‘Chocolate helps me release stress,’ exclaimed the man. ‘Let’s go inside.’
Rahul got up and started to walk along the rain-drenched lane that looped in and around the market complex. He felt miserable.
The marketplace in the past had been a refuge for him. Tonight it seemed to distract him more. Each year a new seedy nightclub would open and some young school kid would bunk a class and be wooed by peers and then prepare to be debauched; new fashion brands would set overrated and expensive trends; the McDonald’s that once seemed a treat now smelled of phenyl and offered tasteless food; young girls from smaller towns dabbed in cheap make-up would strut about releasing the sexual frustrations of the night for a handful of rupees – attracting the filth of the city to accumulate.
The film Rahul had watched sank him further in his mind. It was about a teenage boy who murders his girlfriend. The story unfolds in the wake of the murder, when the boy’s teacher in the prison tries to understand his senseless crime and the families of the victim and the boy cope with the aftermath.
Rahul had had a hectic week at work.
He slowly gulped the sadness in his throat. He wanted a release – maybe he got it now. He consoled himself and felt almost glad he had lost his job. How long did they expect him to make those countless calls and convince people to switch their bank accounts or consider their loans?
He felt his twenty-three-year-old weight double with each step he took. He shifted his gaze from one person to another in search of an answer, a cure, a meaning to yank him out of the misery of his mind.
He felt alone. He had 600 friends on Facebook, and yet had no one to call or exchange casual details of his life. He felt invariably awkward whenever he would speak to any of them. He felt that while some of them pretended to have caught some nuance of life that his sensibilities couldn’t reach, others around him seemed to speak in a rhythm of platitudes.
Why had he felt so ridiculous and odd all his life; why couldn’t he articulate those facile impressions of luxury cars, cell phone models, and actresses that others so easily could go on and about? It seemed so pointless. It wasn’t that he didn’t have an opinion. He most certainly did. He just felt misplaced and different to most people around him. Perhaps it was because he understood the absurd irony of life.
Rahul decided to step into the Shenanigans, a dimly-lit bar, for a drink.
At the entrance, he was stopped by a bouncer, who wasn’t really muscular but had bruises on his face and the build of a pot-bellied hulk.
‘No stag entry,’ he said and crossed his arms.
Two girls slipped in front of Rahul and smiled at the bouncer. The man returned the smile, exposing the scar on his upper lip, stamped their wrists, and let them enter.
‘What about them?’ Rahul asked.
‘They are girls. Now will you please step aside,’ the man growled.
‘Look I have friends upstairs,’ Rahul said.
By this time a motley crowd had gathered behind him and the bouncer, half with a whim and, perhaps, half a need to take a leak, signaled him to get inside. ‘If I catch you fooling around,’ he said, ‘I will throw you out.’ Rahul didn’t bother with a reply.
He walked up the narrow stairs and felt the ethereal flow of sweat fumes, booze, and cigarette smoke wrap around him. It sent him into a trance. He could hear the music grow louder with each step. He felt nauseated and yearned for a rum and coke as he drew closer to the floor. That would set him right.
He passed two girls smoking and overheard one of them talking about a pervert who was drunk and had wandered into the women’s loo several times in the course of the night. ‘Poor bastard,’ Rahul thought. Against the backdrop of yellow light, he saw their eyes, the sweat on the backs of their necks, the strings of beads around their necks and the thick solemn cloud of smoke suspended above them.
When he stepped inside, the band on stage was in the midst of a song. The vocalist wore yellow shades, had long straight hair and was grinding his groin against the mike and growling the word ‘hate’.
A pamphlet nailed on the red wall announced that Supersonic Sandman were in session. The band appeared to have a following from the sizeable crowd that stood in front of the stage, moving their heads jerkily but wearing mainly stoned expressions. The performance lacked the integrity of a gig. The drummer and the bass guitarist sounded off, the vocalist sounded shrill and the lead guitarist was constantly signaling to the console to increase the volume, while the acoustic guitarist played goofy.
Rahul reached the bar and ordered a large rum and coke.
‘Man, these guys suck tonight,’ he heard someone exclaim close to his ear.
He turned around to see it was a girl with black hair tied in a ponytail and a short skirt that exposed her thighs.
‘Are they supposed to be good?’ Rahul asked taking a large sip of his rum and watching the drink rise above the glass.
‘Oh totally,’ she said.
Rahul finished his rum in two large sips and asked for another.
‘I hope these guys don’t play another set,’ she said as she swigged her beer and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. ‘I want to dance. Interested?’
‘Sure. I’ll join you in a moment,’ Rahul said.
At that precise moment, the band called for a break. The crowd didn’t seem to care and moved towards the bar. Someone helped a drunk who had fallen. He got up, attempted to find support and took a chair with him as he fell again.
Rahul released his grasp on the drink and staggered towards the toilet. There was a fight taking place. A man had been spotted in the women’s toilet and had made a pass at a girl. Some guy, possibly the boyfriend, took offence. But, by the time, Rahul had closed the door behind him, a scuffle had broken loose.
Inside, when he switched on the light, he saw a cockroach scamper from underneath the washbasin and hide behind the pot. He lifted the toilet seat and saw the most jaundiced-looking piss, and on the seat-lid it read: ‘fuck you’.
He turned around to the washbasin and began to wash his face. Outside he could hear abuse being hurled at one’s mother, sister and, and possibly the entire ancestry. He heard thumps of someone being pounded against the door could. A girl screamed a few seconds later, and angry shouts started to erupt.
The Old Monk rum inside of him began to settle. The cold water splashed on his face was helping him recover his composure. He looked into the mirror and saw his eyes had turned blood red. He saw two heavy bags under them that contained at least three months’ worth of unsettled sleep and a lack of character.
When he stepped outside, the bar had resumed its business and the scuffle had been cleared. The bouncer was around and looked at him straight in the eye to measure some guilt. The band seemed to have cleared away their instruments and equipment, and the DJ had taken over the console. ‘Mustang Sally,’ screamed Buddy Guy from the Ahuja speakers. Rahul felt an impulse to scream the lyrics but decided against it. He felt an odd chill in the draft of an air conditioner.
He saw the girl grinding her bum against a wooden pillar that stood in the middle of the dance floor. There were four men dancing ludicrously around her but she seemed to take no notice of him.
He headed to the bar instead, downed another drink and ordered another. After he had consumed three in a flash, he found and downed vodka that sat unattended on the bar. The strange delight of alcohol and its subsequent effects quelled his mind. He floated in the moment like a rubber dinghy in a swimming pool. His mind flickered light into his eyes. He smiled an odd grin.
By the time he reached the dance floor, George Thorogood’s Bad to the Bone was booming from a hammering wooden box a few inches above his head from where he stood. He jauntily approached the girl.
‘What took you so long,’ she hissed in his ears.
‘Rum and tired bones,’ he said not looking into her eyes.
They danced sluggishly close each other; his awkward steps didn’t compare to her graceful movements. When he moved closer he felt the warmth of her body. She was definitely three steps a better dancer than him, but nothing seemed to slow him down either. The room spun with each turn he took, and he stepped closer to her.
There were not only people on the floor. A large group of men danced in a corner, the stench of their armpits conspired against the cologne fumes of the crowd, as they slowly inched towards a stray group of coquettish girls who danced with closed eyes and pouted lips and didn’t seem to mind company.
The song switched to This Town by Frank Sinatra, shifting the tone of the night. Rahul felt an odd sensation of excitement heighten the seductiveness in his mind as he thrust his pelvis into hers, which she accepted and turned around and wiggled for more. He was not dancing in any coherent manner but was merely following every whim of his body, jerking all moveable components, with a look that could’ve frightened him if it was being recorded.
He brought his mouth closer to be met by hers. She had the wildest eyes and a look that weakened his feet and wobbled his knees. He bit her lower lip lightly, as he looked into her glazed morning eyes.
She bit his lower lip. He felt better, he noted. Happiness of the vaguest sort ran through his veins and short circuited in his mind.
‘You don’t understand’ she said.
‘I don’t understand what,’ he whispered.
‘I’m not that kind of a girl,’ she softly said.
She spun around and walked briskly across the floor and lost among the crowd. He waited for her to return. In a matter of a few stretched out seconds he knew she wouldn’t. He couldn’t justify why she had left or what had set her off. He felt a blow to his stomach that began to swell in pain. His eyes started to water. A feverish heat of mortification took him over and the bar began to spin. Every light danced around him. Somewhere inside of him, he could hear a moan.
When he dragged himself out of the building, later that night, falling from one set of steps to another, he remembered his job. Outside it had begun to rain.

The Idea of Love

Love or the idea of love brought them together. He, a young boy, who dreamt of everything except her; She, a young girl, who dreamt of nothing except him. A destiny more cruel than evil itself had conspired their meeting, and when they did He spoke of many nights he spent thinking about how he would rise and shine, the nights that were only his, the nights she wasn't allowed to be part of. She, on the other hand, was living the joy his innocent laughter and uncaring love brought to her. A young girl She was still, yet felt like a woman. That he had become a part of her was a myth He endorsed and she readily surrendered.

They met often. Often enough to keep the pretence of 'love' alive in each other. And when they did, her eyes beamed with a joy that seldom greeted her eyes. His had guilt. She wanted him to look at Her, feel Her breath against His chest, feel the fear she had nurtured ever since the tight of their hands loosened. He couldn't feel. His gift of detachment became her curse of a lifetime. She knew that she had come close to losing Him. "Why?" was a question that haunted her. She hoped to have a part of him, but hopes she knew were as fragile as dreams. He had sold his soul to the strangers en route to nothingness. Now it was her turn...

... She spent nights, her eyes, filled with tears, mourned the loss of self that she felt. He loved this lowness in her. It gave him strength. Yet she liked to be joyous and giggled at times, even though he had stolen the happiness in that laughter. But she was an actress par excellence. Sometimes, curled in her mother's arms, she lied about Him, lied about the happiness that the mother had seen in her eyes long back. He and She learned to live with the lies and a fatal denial that they were consuming each other.

Intoxicated by their newfound ugliness, pain became an obscenity they celebrated each time they met. He, in the satisfaction that She was deprived of his affection. She, in her aspiration to become what she had been to him once.  Hurt was not an emotion they felt any longer, it was passe.
Their inherent monstrosity benumbed them. Out of love, they preyed on each other. They were half human half beasts, but performed the act of togetherness to perfection till the very end. In this lifelessness, they lived or pretended to live unhappily ever after.

Ends

Mr and Mrs Seth

Mr and Mrs Seth

Mr Seth woke up this morning with his head spinning furiously. He had to almost tap his head thrice to get Rumpelstiltskin to stop creating such a ruckus and consider normal things like paying him rent for a change. It was also quite remarkable of Mr Seth to note that it was as though at any minute his brains were about to pop out like an eccentric toaster taken a recent unfounded dislike of the living room upholstery. For him dreams were like merry-go-rounds and sleep an unconditional submission to a carnival land where drinking tea on the sidewalk was highly unadvisable.

Mrs Seth took one look at Mr Seth and shook her head in disapproval. Mr Seth, meanwhile, had crawled out of bed and was caressing his stomach with his hands in order to clear the final belch of the morning, looking quite the other way.
‘What time is it?’ he asked without realizing the slightest hint of redundancy of his question or for that matter turning around. Mrs Seth muttered, ‘seven’, as she rubbed her pale green eyes without casting a single look at the tireless clock that had stayed put on the mantelpiece in their bedroom for more than half a century. She had also been accustomed to the art of time-telling to her husband, who, for the last 20 years, had been repeatedly asking the same precise question at the same precise moment.

‘I’m late then, I suppose,’ he said as he slipped his feet into a pair of blue bathroom slippers. This would have been a clue, but to Mrs Seth it was one of those things old people said to one another, besides she had a long time ago given up the will to read between the lines. She felt it was as pointless as watching television or for that matter knitting.

‘What are you late for?’ she asked as flipped open the Times of India, to the editorial section, an old trivial pursuit of hers to find an opinion that would set the precedent of her day and sprinkle meaning and reason to the canvas of her evening society conversations. An act she had refrained from for a week.
‘I have some writing to do,’ said Mr Seth knitting his brows and avoiding all possibilities of an eye contact.

It was a peculiar moment indeed. And by having said this, it only began to mildly fracture the 20 year old plaster of monotony that the Seths of Mumbai had sustained. There was also an opportunity to split open a vacuum that could suck both of them irrespective of either Mr or Mrs Seth’s sense of immorality or intention. But all this Mr Seth gravely grasped as soon as his words left him.

He felt weak and wobbly as he peeked towards his wife searching for a reaction. He couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she looked after all those years. That despite having been together for long, it was as though he was looking at a stranger in his bed. Those deepening lines on her face somehow traced the map of his life. That he had lost and regained love so many times, the word itself had no meaning for him.

It was one of those days. He had to make up his mind.

It had been a week since the general election results were announced. Mrs Seth had been keeping a bit glum about it, and even though the party she had supported won the consecutive term, the film star candidate of her constituency, had lost, in fact, quite poorly. For most people these were arbitrary facts extremely reflective of the whimsical nature of politics. For Mrs Seth, however, in a fit of declaration she pronounced his win quite confidently over a card game among her kitty party friends.

With age she had commanded a certain dignity and respect among her peers but now the chip in her pride seemed to shatter her glass impression of life. Her stature, she feared, would be reduced to nothing in front of those ever-grudging eyes of her neighbour Mrs Khanna, known to be quite cheeky at times, among others.
Perhaps it’s another fair reason to why her usual dose of anti-depressants had doubled over the course of week. Thus contributing and heightening the effect of her staggering inefficiency in paying close attention to what her husband meant when he said ‘he was going to write’ this morning.

She had practically stayed indoors all week, drinking an Australian white wine, smoking Classics ultra-mild cigarette dangled from one corner of her delicate lips – and now that she had mourned enough, she wanted to arm herself with an insight, hopefully not all had been lost.

It was around at ten, when Mrs Seth heard from the voices on the street what she had assumed was her husband. She was in the kitchen, helping herself to another cup of lemon tea, while listening to old Hindi songs on the radio.

‘Arvind?’

‘Arvind are you there?’

A tide of sadness overwhelmed her, she didn’t know whether it was having used her husband’s first name after twenty years that unsettled her or the fact that he didn’t respond. But it was her hands that gave her away at first. They began to tremble and knot. She felt frail, lonely and cold as she closed her eyes and opened them softly. It took her a couple of minutes to somewhat compose herself, enough to light a cigarette and yet not quite know what to do.

She crept softly up to Mr Seth’s study door, left half-open – the way it had always been. It was the smallest room in the apartment, but it was also the nicest, and perhaps the coolest. And as she entered, she felt as though she was lost in some corridor of time. Of course, it had been twenty years since she had been in this room. The smell of her husband’s aftershave, books, perfumed candles and cigarette smoke caught her in some ephemeral rapture.

The window was open but she decided against rushing to it. She could hear voices of a large congregation below, more clearly somewhat now. She couldn’t bear to see the mess on the street or the faces of people looking up to her.

Something brushed passed her legs. She looked below to see that it was her cat, Margarita, sauntering in with careful steps. Something caught her eye. It was a book, an open book with Mr Smith’s spectacles behind. She slid her hand against the polished oak table that her father had gifted them when they moved in the house. She looked closer to the page, it had a quotation.

‘He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
-- Albert Camus

The doorbell rings. The whistle of the kettle blows.