And the memory remains...

Ashutosh had come to Kausani 6 years back. He had done a course in travel and tourism from Calcutta University, had come to Delhi, and found himself a well paying job in Kutub Enclave. He worked there for 3 years before he found everything confusing. That's when he left Delhi, took a train to Kathgodam, and went back packing for 2 weeks, till he reached here. He emailed his resignation to his manager on the 3rd day of his stay here. Next, he started looking for accommodation in the villages nearby, till he found a room in a village near Pinnath. It had an attached bath and the landlord provided him with two buckets of hot water every morning. He found himself a job at Negi Tours and Travels, one of the many local tourism offices. He worked there 6 days a week, from 9 AM to 6 PM. He had to talk to the foreign tourists and make arrangements as per their requirements. They paid him 2000 rupees a month and the owner was his landlord's cousin, so the rent of 500 rupees was paid by Mr. Negi, the owner of the shop. Ashutosh had never asked for a raise or a promotion and was considered an asset by Mr. Negi. Everyday Ashutosh left his home at 6 in the morning, Walked to Bagheshwari bridge, had a cup of chai at Raju's tea stall, waited for the sun to rise and then sat at the nearby bench and read one of his books till Mr. Negi's car picked him up on the way to the office.

That morning, Ashutosh reached earlier than usual, the dogs followed him to the tea stall, where he bought them biscuits. Raju bhaiji's "Ram Ram sinha saheb" was as refreshing as his chai. He ordered for a chai and lit his filter less Charminar. Three drags later he realized that his sore throat was getting worse and he made a mental note to get himself checked at the local clinic during his lunch break.

Shobha had been standing at the bridge for some time when she heard the cough from the tea stall. It reminded her of the one person she wished was here with her. The last she had heard of him was that he had gone absconding from office while she had gone to visit her sister in Bokaro. She used to call him a '60 year old' because of his constant cough. She looked back to see who was coughing but, she couldn't see any faces in the fog. She was surprised to feel Ranveer's cold hand on her's. "Isn't it a beautifull morning love". She nodded. "You're angry about the phone call, aren't you? Well, they had been trying to call me since last evening, they can't trace a particular folder on the common drive. It was important baby". "Where is Tinni?", Shobha asked. They both looked back and realized that Tinni was talking to somebody at the tea stall. "I'll get her", she said and walked towards the stall.

As she reached the stall, she heard the cough again and felt a shiver run through her spine. She couldn't have been wrong twice. "So Tinni, where are you from?", she stopped on her track when she heard his voice. He had his back turned towards her. He followed Tinni's glance, and their eyes met. He had lost a lot of weight and mustn't have shaved for months. His hair was shoulder length, but his hairline was receding. The silent 'hi' was accompanied by the familiar upward nod of his head, followed by the smile. She had put on a little weight, but the youthfulness of her face was gone. She wasn't smiling, he noticed the little movement going down her throat. She was as strong as ever. "How have you been?" she asked, he said, "She looks a lot like you", at the same time. That made her smile. The familiarity suddenly disappeared from his face and he said, "Your daughter wanted to know if they sold chewing gums here". Shobha realized Ranveer was standing behind her. "I hope she hasn't been bothering you", he said with a smile. Ashutosh realized that he was a handsome man, her type of a guy. He smiled back, " not at all, she is a darling. Why don't you guys join me for a cup of chai? The best you will find around here". "Not today, maybe tomorrow morning, our taxi would arrive any time at the hotel", Ranveer replied before Shobha could respond.

They walked back towards the hotel, as they walked, both Shobha and Tinni looked back, almost together. Tinni waved at him, Shobha just glanced. Their similarity goes beyond just looks, he thought.

He remembered their conversations, about marriage and family after he had moved into her flat in Sector 62 in December the year they met. It was the coldest December, Delhi had ever seen, but for them, it was the warmest they had ever felt. It was her uncle's flat. They lived there for almost a year, he had to move out every time someone came to visit her from home. He would stay with his friends whenever Shobha's parents were in Delhi. She always wanted a son and he wanted a daughter. It was in August next year when they realized they had drifted apart. She asked for time out, he had agreed. They had stayed close, missed each other, met up, but things never got back to what it was, the way they had expected it to. After a while, it became official, they both started seeing other people. but, he always felt restless and called her up whenever he could find a reason.

It hadn't been very different for her. She had expected him to say 'no' when she had asked for time out, it was her way of saying she needed more attention. She was hurt and wanted to get over him, she socialised with others, trying to forget him all the time. She was asked out by many, and every date she went out on, made her miss him a little more. She told him spiced up stories of these encounters, to make him feel jealous, but he seemed to have moved on. Later that year, she went to stay with her sister for a month before her sister's delivery, wasn't in touch with him for the period. When she came back, he had vanished, nobody knew where he was. Six months later, she met Ranveer, he was in the Army like her dad. He was a handsome man and charming too. Her parents approved of this match, they liked him too. They were married by the end of the year. Tinni was born a year later. The bundle of energy and love had kept her busy, she thought she had forgotten all about him.

Ranveer had booked a cab to take them to Almora and then Binsar. They would come back at night, and leave the next morning for Ranikhet. It was a beautiful day and Tinni was super excited. Shobha played the Jim Morrison playlist on her iPod and found it difficult to hold off the tears. She remembered the times, he would sing 'Break on through' in the middle of the night for no apparent reasons. "The Jim Morrison Euphoria", he called it. All those and many more memories seemed to go perfectly with 'the lizard king' singing in the background. She couldn't wait to go back to Kausani. She had to see him one more time, speak to him, ask him what he's been up to, find out whether he was married. He must have been, it's been a long time, and he couldn't live without women for long. Was his wife pretty, she would like to meet his wife? "Mamma, why are you crying?", Tinni brought her back to the present. "I'm not beta, I think something must have gone into my eye". "Driver saab, gaadi roko", Ranveer said, "why don't you wash your eye sweetheart". "I'm fine Ranveer. Aap chalaate raho", she said to the driver. They reached Almora in four hours, had lunch there and moved on to Binsar. It took them an hour to reach Binsar.

Once the ancient capital of the Chand Raj kings who ruled in the 7th and 8th centuries, Binsar is a beautiful place. There is solitude, and that's what she needed right now. There is no village or hutments there, it’s just a forest reserve at 2400 mts above sea level. From where they stood, they could see all the major Himalayan peaks, like Nandadevi, Kedarnath and Nandakot. They were all snow capped and seemed very close. The driver was showing them each of those peaks, it was informative, but she just wanted him to shut up, she wanted the whole world to shut up. She suddenly realized what had happened. He must have come here, fallen in love with the peace and stayed over. Oh! How they had planned to run away to Ladakh and live there in tent when he had told her about the beauty of the place. If only she had let him execute those plans, she wouldn't have been where she was in life. Tinni wanted to go on top of a tower that was erected there for tourists to get a complete view of the Kumaon region. It looked dangerously high and she knew she couldn't climb up that high. She asked Ranveer to go along with the driver and Tinni. She realized, Tinni wouldn't have been there if she had run away to Ladakh. Tinni had kept her going all this while and was her life, nothing was more important than her and nothing would be. She looked up to see how far Tinni and Ranveer had climbed. She felt dizzy when she realized the height they were at. He would have teased her about her Vertigo, saying it was just another one of her 'grand statements'. She smiled to that thought.

The drive back seemed longer, both Tinni and Ranveer had gone off to sleep. The IPod had got discharged and it was getting too dark to read. She just looked out of the window and lost herself to her memories. She would go down to the bridge again the next morning. What was the worst that could happen? He would say he is married and has children, he loved his wife and children a lot and was very happy with life. She could live with that, she always wanted him to be happy, wasn't that what love is about?

They got back to the hotel, she wasn't hungry. Ranveer ordered food for himself and Tinni to the room. They went to bed early. The cab would come at 7 in the morning and they would leave for Ranikhet, stay there for three days. She was thinking of what she would tell him when they met. Whether to tell him how miserable she was with her marriage or just tell him how lucky she was to have a husband like Ranveer and a daughter like Tinni. The Tinni bit she knew was more than true, but if she told him the truth about her marriage and he responded by saying he was happy with his, it wouldn't sound nice. She decided she would ask him to stop smoking, his cough had gotten worse. She felt a foot nudging against hers. "I'm tired and you'll wake Tinni up, you need some sleep too" she whispered to Ranveer. "Always a spoilsport", he turned away from her. She put her hand around Tinni and tried to sleep, she had to get up early.

It was foggier than the previous morning. She was waiting on the bridge, waiting to hear the cough before she could move towards the chai wala. In fact she waited for him to walk up to her, and was looking out towards the river, but all her senses were concentrating on any movement behind her. She looked at the watch, it was 6:30, Ranveer would have got up and would come down any time soon. She turned around and looked at the tea stall. She couldn't see anything through the fog. She walked over to the other side of the bridge, went to the stall and asked the chaiwala for a cup of tea. She looked around and realized he wasn't there. Thinking she was looking for a place to sit, Raju offered her a seat. "First time to this place?", he asked. She nodded her head. "How do you like it here", he continued. "It's a beautiful place", she wanted to ask him about Ashutosh, but didn't know how to start and Ranveer would come any moment, she would never get this opportunity again. "How do you know Ashubabu, thought I heard you both speak yesterday", that one took her by surprise. "We were colleagues, while he was in Delhi, how long has he been here?". Raju made a clicking sound with his tongue, " sad, what happened to him, he has been here for god knows how long, and he has had that cough of his, ever since he came here". She found herself out of breath, just stared at the chai wala, waiting for him to finish what he was saying. "I had asked him to see a doctor but, he never listened. He had been coughing blood for some time now, yesterday he had gone to work from here, and there he had coughing fit. They say he choked to death, he was good man". She turned away from Raju, the tears blurred her vision, she didn't realise that the approaching figure was that of her husband.

Tears..

Her crying pulled a string somewhere, unable to place it. She sounded confused, wanted to say something she couldn’t, may be because of the people around. Her inability to express herself made her cry more than the pain. I know how that feels. Consoling a crying person, that’s something I always find very difficult to handle. Most often we give a reason for crying but it’s just a reason. We cry to express pain, physical or mental, but often it’s a pain, we’d rather not talk about, makes us feel vulnerable. So, we give a reason that to us makes us look reasonably less weak. She was laughing with me one moment and then she was crying, I think it was the disbelief in my voice. That probably hurt more than the pain. Its scares me when someone calls out my name while crying, makes me feel guilty, like I was dying, letting her live by herself or I was living, letting her die by herself. Don’t know which would be worse for a person. I don’t remember crying at a death. I was either surprised or ashamed or angry, or all of these, but I never cried. I’m not immune to crying though, I do cry.

Saturday

There’s this little puppy squeaking painfully downstairs on the road. I heard a similar cry yesterday. One of them had got crushed by a car it was sleeping under. There are a bunch of them downstairs, hardly a week old. Last night I returned quite late, parked the car outside my home, but couldn’t make myself turn off the engine. Going up to an empty house wasn’t such an appealing idea after all. I sat there, lit a cigarette, wondering where to go from there. There was sleep in my eyes. There was this lone pup, playing in the middle of the lane, heard the music from my car, walked over for a little investigation. He found the smoke from my cigarette both fascinating and irritating at the same time. The rag he had been playing with, seemed to have called out to him, so he lost interest in me and ran back to his non-living playmate. It was a gloomy afternoon today; my landlord woke me up so he could show my flat to a prospective buyer. I found it gloomier inside, walked up to the terrace, sat on the last step, with a cup of coffee and my book. I couldn’t read for too long. I hadn’t noticed the way the leaves and flowers in my mum’s garden dance with the breeze, before. I was tempted to get the camera to make a video, but resisted, I didn’t want to miss the show they were putting up for me. The cat from downstairs walked up for its regular ‘marking its territory’ walk. Wasn’t too pleased to see me sitting where he likes to pee. It ignored me for a while, pretending to look everywhere but at me. Then it looked, constricted its pupils with disapproval, started walking back downstairs, disappointed that it's disapproval didn’t have an effect on me. I lit a cigarette and went back to the book, and then back to staring at the plants and the surroundings. I felt peace and then I heard the puppy squeaking downstairs.

Blabber

Two people who have recently been making me think - Tagore and Morrison.
Two very different people with very different ways they expressed themselves. They were both immensely artictic individuals, who potrayed how they felt in ways that make you identify your thoughts.

Tagore expresses how he feels by stating them as they are, while Morrison dismisses his feelings and thus stating how he feels. At times I think, how it would be, if Tagore could have written and Morrison had sung them. Tagore explored emotions that Morrison trashed, they both were highly emotional men, who were driven to music and poetry by their sorrows.

Every line Tagore wrote, you can identify with them even today, you may deny it, but you will feel them at some point or the other. Morrison denied the very same feelings, like an escapist.

Inertia is very boring but addictive, it makes you want to run away from your current situation, but you find yourself so comfortable the way you are, you don't want to move an inch. This way you keep doing the same things, but hate it all the same. When I think of what i could have been doing instead of what I'm doing, it all sounds so exciting. But, I keep making excuses for why I can't budge from where I am.


I wish I could sing, I have so much to sing about, so much there is in my head, running in every direction, I can spend the rest of my life singing about it. I'm bored to death thinking of the thousand things I do that will mean nothing to me 6 months later. Nobody in the world really means anything to me, nothing means anything any longer. I'm just living a life I've got used to living. Isn't that what every creature does? Even if I spent the rest of my life looking after sick people, how will it ever make any difference to me? Will I not repent not being able to live the life of a nomad who has nothing to worry about? Or may be even nomads worry about losing their way. The world is wide, there is no end to it, it is round, whichever way i go, it leads to another place, another piece of land or water, these are the only two alternatives, isn't there? So, what am I so scared of? Why do I think so much before every step I take. I don't think I was ever so scared of taking a step, when I was a child. They say we fear the unknown, but my fear increases the more I know. So, knowledge leads to fear, then why learn? To be fearless I need to unlearn, how do I unlearn? Life, they say is the best teacher, so to stop learning, I need to kill that teacher, but I don't want to end my life to stop learning. I want to end the fear, fear lies in my head, I need to numb my head to stop fearing. We have evolved to fear, fear everything and anything, plants, animals, nature,other humans, ourselves, and when we had nothing else left to fear, we created God, and we started fearing His wrath. How imaginative can we get!!

High on energy but a bad day at work, great combination! I wasn't really bogged by the work load, Was still cribbing about too much work. Was enjoying the work, Was in fact able to complete everything on time, even after taking on more work then required, but one bad result, resulting from my over enthusiasm to do more in less time. That's what comes off doing a lot of work mechanically, without thinking, you realise later, what you did, cannot be undone. I shall repent, but not fear the consequences. I did what I did, hence I deserve what punishment comes off it. Take it, apologise for the mistake and ensure I don't do it again. That's my resolve. There are a few instances in life when we realise we are growing old, maturing, learning from mistakes. This is one of those moments for me. I could have come home, drank over it, but i choose to be brave and face consequences like a brave man. Think I'll give myself a pat on my back for this thought. Don't know if I will always look at my follies this way.

Tide is turning, for better or for worse, only future will tell. but, I see myself change every moment, handle things differently, my priorities seem to be changing. Earlier, I wanted to do things 'cause they were cool, now I want to do them because I want to. I have begun to identify fear and am learning to eradicate it from my life. I am learning to deal with loneliness, insecurities, restlessness, perceptions, about things and people, and other things that exist because we want them to. I realise that most things that I convince myself about, comes from a fear of something or the other. I attribute most of my mistakes to other people's perceptions, but that is because I am scared of being wrong. Well, what is wrong in being wrong? Why make excuses for myself or anybody? And, making a mistake is not excusable because everybody makes them or because we learn from them. We will have to own up to our mistakes and short comings, and face consequences for them. Forget mistakes, we have to face consequences for everything that happens to us. What if I was born blind, will my blaming it on fate or my parents, allow me to see? It won't, I will have to face consequences, I will have to handle my blindness. I could start using my instincts and other organs to survive or I could blame my fate and wait for people to sympathise and take care of me. I choose to do what I want to and face consequences accordingly. I have always believed that nothng in my life has altered it for anything bad. I could have been doing worse off than I am. So why fear what could happen in the future? May be I fear facing people with a blemish on me, well, what could be worse than making a mistake and not owning up to it? At least that way people will trust me to own up to my mistakes, otherwise, even when I am not wrong, they might doubt me to be wrong.


I realise that I always need confirmation for what I do, from people I think are better than me. Every time I do something new, I walk up to people, ask them for their thoughts on it, awaiting confirmation or approval. This again, I guess, stems from a constant fear of being wrong. Who needs confirmation? Why are we living in constant fear? We don't even know fear of what. Being wrong? Being an anamoly? Being different? Not being a part of the crowd? Not fitting in? Not being considered cool? WHAT IS IT?? Isn't the crowd formed by different individuals, entities? Then why fear? If we were all supposed to be the same, why do we have different names, jobs and everything that is different about each of us? Haven't we individually made it so far, from being helpless creatures that couldn't talk, couldn't move, couldn't shit without somebody else's help, to creatures that can stand on two strong feet and live off other beings? Haven't each of us made it to the top of the food chain? What else can we ask for, we have survived this far, how much further do we want to go? I'm sure we will reach whatever height we want. It's only a matter of time. The law of evolution proves it. We will only get better over time. And then we will perish when time comes, and that is inevitable so let's not bother about it till the time comes.


There are times when I want someone to be with me, close to me, but then I realise, when they were close, it wasn't so great, and that's probably because they know I want them close. So, I decide to stay away and never let them know, I'd like them around. Funny thing, when you are with someone, you want to get away, and when she isn't nearby, you want her to be.

Page from a diary. . .

17th January, Saturday.

No sleep last night. A friend had come over. Watched 'Snatch' and 'Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye'. Neetu Chandra's 'Sonal', reminded me of her the entire time. Especially the latter half of the movie. 'Khana khaya' was exactly like her. Oh she's a darling and I think I'm dead. I so want her all the time. And I love the feeling. But, she makes me feel inadequate when she's not around. I so want to be self sufficient, I feel defeated. Something is wrong. They say, 'when you are in love, you enjoy the loneliness'. But, I'm suffering. She's like heroine, I need my dose. And she kept asking me not to get addicted, she knew this was coming.



18th, Sunday.

Not too eventful. Went to a concert in the evening. Was ok. Performance by Mohit Chauhan, from Silk Route and, Neeraj Shreedhar of Bombay Vikings. Went to work. She called at night. Didn't know what to say. Was not sure what she wanted. I'm not sure what i want. May be , I just want to see her happy.

The Oscar txts

0732 hrs : 1 oscar down 4 'sdm'! Adapted screenplay!

0746 hrs : U shud hv watched! Hugh jackman compering!

0805 hrs : Btw 2nd oscar 4 cinematography!

0903 hrs : 3rd oscar 4 sound mixing! Sorry, missed ur call..

0906 hrs : Yay! V r on a roll! 4th 1 4 editing!

0925 hrs : Ar rahman wins his 1st n sdm's 5th oscar!

0931 hrs : Jay ho! 2nd 4 rahman n 6th 4 sdm!!

0936 hrs : Frida frm sdm is presenting an award!

0952 hrs : Danny Boyle best director! 7th 4 sdm!

1024 hrs : Icing on the cake n d 8th oscar!! best picture.. Truly jai ho!!



* All times in IST
** sdm - Slumdog Millionaire

The Promised Wednesday. .

It’s yet another Wednesday,
but the one you said, you would wait for, never came.
Or may be it did, and it went away too.
But I just kept waiting . .


Didn’t realize when it went past me,
yet to be woken by reality.
The Thursday before was a storm come true,
and the kiss on Friday,
promised of a greater tempest on the way. . .


Seaside happened and alcohol poured,
they mixed together and burnt it all. . .

And it's yet another Wednesday,
And I'm still here. .