...and she fell in love with me.



Seems like, booze has choked my psyche…or am I that dumb???
What genus of title I have inscribed…am I out of my wits???
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Believe me, I am not tipsy…rather I am a teetotal.
Actually, skimming the last few lines of my pal’s blog has catapulted me to the reminiscences of ‘July 2k8’…last year.
The catastrophe read,

“As my forelimb was fractured, I wasn’t able to clutch my bag properly. Holding it loosely, I sauntered out of the Health Center…a voice from the rare said,” May I help you.”I turned around just to discover a ravishing brunet giggling at me…I too greeted her with a grin. Then she came up to me and insisted to help me out of the mess I was in. Then she accompanied me to the canteen. Though she was unknown …but seemed to be family. While we strode together we talked of life…and then, she fell in love with me.”

Don’t you feel ill at ease to trust this???
Can a girl be besotted with a lad at the first encounter???
I too would have doubted the integrity of the statement if such an episode hadn’t betided with me.
It all cooked up on a Saturday morning in July 2008…
In the dearth of any edibles, I was making a beeline to the canteen. I was famished, enough to gobble just anything.
I saw a nubile, a sensual voluptuous dame with auburn hair, though a bit dusky, just a few paces away. She was rushing towards ‘my hostel’.
To your notice, ‘my hostel’ is an abode to a minimum of 400 boys…some drunks, some punks and others GMAT.
‘A girl going to a boy’s hostel’…I sensed the Pandora’s Box.
I panicked and blurted out, “where are you going?”
All my appetite had now sunk and I waited voraciously for her answer…
In a mellow voice, posed a bit meticulously, she said,” I got to meet my friend who stays in this hostel, I have come from Kolkata.”
“Don’t you twig that girls aren’t permitted in a boy’s hostel?”
She said,” But I don’t have any other option, I lost my phone in the wagon.”
“Tell me his name and branch and I will scout him out for you!”
“It’s so nice of you…???...may I know your name please?”
“Definitely…its Malik…you tell me his name and ease at canteen…I’ll send him to you.”
She acquainted me with the info…
I said, “By the way…what should I tell him??Who has popped up to meet him??”
In a very mellifluous syrupy voice she said, “Avantika”
I trudged back to the hostel only to learn that he did retreat back home a day before.
I insipidly commuted to the canteen, the second time that day. I surmised that the boy might be his paramour. But how can a beau avoid telling his lady-love about his jaunt??
I reached the canteen…she sat there gulping large slugs of a soft drink. I waved her hi and made the most brazen statement of the day as I was just too weary, I said, “Actually he’s out of the town.”
Now, I could sense globs of tears streaming down her cheeks. I could not help myself from appeasing her. I offered her chocolates, confectionary and then finally a hand of friendship. The last one though ceased her tears.
She sat narrating her story. The biggest stun of the day was that he wasn’t her beau. Then why did she come down so far??(Was she crazy??)
We talked about life…love…friendship and not to mention, her train which was scheduled may be 3 hours from then.
May be after a long hour of our tete-e-tete…we decided to leave the place. I forked out bucks to pay the bill. Then I realized that she eats a lot 
She exhorted that we go to some good place. It was drizzling though; I carried out the diktat in order to break through the impasse...
In all this while, she embraced my hand many times that I became immune to the feel of a girl’s touch.
We sat on a bench juxtaposed to the strand of a lake. The expressions of her face had changed and now she looked unruffled.
The drizzle doused both of us a bit, but she now looked more delectable. Hair straggled on her face made her look salacious. I was now quite accustomed to her impertinent ways of talking. She was a bit finicky but I had started liking her a bit. Maybe I was smitten by her beauty. Though I never felt anything emotional for her but she definitely earned plaudit from my ‘boyish’ aesthetic sense. She sometimes sounded to be crazy.
Now it had started to downpour and I scoured for a refuge for us. But there was none.
But she seemed to be cherishing the ‘drench game’. I cajoled her to get to some concealed place but she rebuffed.
I turned around and started to move. She clasped my hand…this time it didn’t seem the same as before. I turned towards her and noticed that she was crying. She broke into my arms and whispered, “I love you.”
A gamut of expressions busted out on my face…
For a while I was catapulted to stupor. I surmised that it was sham.
But it was true…she really said that.
Now the Spartans in my head went on a battle to decide my fate.
The ‘Devil’ somewhere prodded to accept the proposition keeping in view her carnal appeal and a perk to consummate at a later stage.
It even nudged me to get a Johnny ;-)
The counterpart enthused that may be she was out of her wits as she was depressed and all she said was just too whimsical.
As I have not grown out of the ‘Hindu mythological sanskars’…though I was game for a while, but I finally agreed to go with the later.
It was time for the train, so I escorted her to the railway station. I didn’t say anything. We talked through eyes. May be she too understood that she made a faux pas. She left.
Sometimes her long forgotten memory lurks in my mind.
I just want to discover if she is in asylum or she wasn’t mad even then.
I just hope her being well…somewhere…somehow.

...and i had to sling my hook


Clapped in irons, I nestled on the bed of my penitentiary, reading a novel…the last few lines read,” life and death are sisters. Quietus is not the end; it’s just the matrix of another existence.” Not a chunk of fright on my countenance. I am not dreaded, even when breathing the airs that smell my eternal rest. Someone strides into the scene…
Someone strange...
Someone donned in a police uniform...
Someone who would usher me to the gallows...
Someone who says,” It’s time!”
And I gaze at him, smirking.
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The next moment, I broke out of my sleep. Still groggy, I looked into the clock. It read 15 past 2 am.
At seven, I had to board my train, a train to my karmabhumi, a train to realization of my nightmare.
In this drowsy stupor, I sauntered to my parent’s bedroom. I gazed into their faces. They radiated silence…rest…
Then, I trudged to the terrace with a bottle of chilled water that I had grabbed out of the somberly luminous fridge.
It was raining. Glinting globs of water drizzled down, dousing me, trickling down my face, wetting my hair.
I looked down the boulevard, deserted, with just a road side pup who hollered as if trying to hail some guardian.
I never did love my parents, but today they mattered me the most, their doting caress was all I cried out for…just as the pup did.
The street never looked as delectable as it looked today…
I stepped back, drenched, but this downpour didn’t flush away the surging sentiments.
It was almost 4am…just a few hours left for my train.
The feeling was grotesque, but I couldn’t help it…
I wanted to stay…I love them.
But…sometimes in life you don’t have to choose…
I had to leave…
Love sometimes weakens us but is the biggest strength.
May be…the fear to lose, makes us realize how important something is to us...
To accomplish a dream, we have to abandon something…
May be, it was the advent of a new voyage…
Now I realize the gist of my nightmare…
Now I understand the reason behind the smirk…
‘Quietus is not the end; it is the matrix of another existence.’

Alive…I am…

Last few days down the line have been quite a humdrum life.

My clime…my people…my home…every bit today is a nuance of yesterday. But the diurnal living has always been the same…that’s why they call it ‘routine’.

But ‘the humdrum thing’ has loosened up a tad. Now, it’s no longer a peril.

Rewinding the memory cassette by a month is sufficed to get me goose bumps and to douse my temples with the blobs of sweat rolling down.

Speculate what ‘the humdrum thing’ was…

It was a life, no cut above that of a railway TTE.

If not the fling is to be alleged, may be the catastrophe should bear all the blotches.

It tees-off there, when I was gearing up to get to my training place.

“Got to know something…the place is a honeymoon spot”, we morons gabbed akin things.

Next few days were ‘railgadi-railgadi’ type.

Don’t worry…I will elucidate the ‘railgadi…’term. It is a spell when you are either at some unkempt railway station or a head among the disheveled commuters.

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Next few days were ‘railgadi-railgadi’ type.

Have I aped the previous statement???

Heaven’s sake!

How can I do that?

…may be you are not sure of my wits, but I earnestly believe that I have a working model of what they call ‘brain’. Asunder, reciting the same line oft-times like ‘INDIA TV’ is not my cup of tea. Albeit, I am oblivion of my possessing ‘THE GAJANI thing’ which could make me forget what waters I was splashing. But for now, I assure you of no such blunder.

Does it imprint you with the same question as it engraves somewhere in my head??

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Where does the training interlude escape if it is back-to-back ‘railgadi…’?

Actually, the day we landed at the training place, the day training was wrapped up. They were so generous that they kicked our asses the same day promising to dole out the certificates with just a week of effort at the end.

We were gleeful. Life had never been such a hunky dory before. All that was coveted was accomplished in a jiffy.

But was it the time to binge???

With Indian railways unfailingly inundated with passengers, you can’t even fantasize getting a reservation just a day before.

It wasn’t stupendous to know that neither the place had a railway station nor had any cyber cafes.

So, what next??

For the next two hours, I was busy banging my dad’s head to get me some ticket, somehow, some nexus.

Phones kept buzzing…

Finally he got a connection.

Job was half doneJ

Wait…

It was really half doneL

Ticket was just up to half way (12 hours) and then (next 12 hours) I had to see how to come. On foot, not permitted!

The second phase…being the ‘next 12 hours’ one is what that makes me so white.

I snapped up a general ticket as the very first step towards aggravations.

I lugged on the general wagon stepping a pace closer to quietus.

All my foolhardiness was now up and all that happened had no part played by me.

1^st scene:

I, standing at the door and my stance suggesting as if I am to be clicked for ‘wills lifestyle’.

It’s really open and airy out there. But it isn’t some legacy that you could cherish all time. The Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ theory applies here too. A few pushes and you are rammed among the heads hustling inside, the heads of hunks, drunks, punks and the women who holler hard enough to be heard in the whole wagon. Not to mention, the same I was subjected to.

But I never expected that I could e such a ‘kamjhor kadi’.

A few shoves and I was in the toilet sated on the wash-basin that too shared with a punk.

To uber exasperation, some man used the toilet to pee saying ‘don’t be so timid, I do have the same as yours’.

But to some relief, the punk had knocked the window off, so it was airy now.

I am sated of these rail journeys now…

But, you know what the best part is…I AM ALIVE! THAT TOO IN ONE PIECE!