On The Subway (Part 3)

October 23, 2003

“Does this look ok?”, she asked. He didn’t hear her. His mind was preoccupied with something else. “I said”, she raised her pitch, “Does this look OK?”. But he was lost. As he turned, a projectile sandle met his forehead. . The train of thoughts which was about to change tracks had met with an accident.

“You never pay attention to what I say”, she complained.

“Who are you, by the way?”, he chuckled.

Another projectile sandle approached him. This time he was attentive enough to dodge it over his head.

“You look great. Can we go now?”, he said.

“You are good for nothing”, she said and went in to change. Five minutes later, she was back in a new dress. Before she could open her mouth, a voice reached her ears.

“You look phenomenal, out of this world. Can we go now?”, it was him, standing on the window sill, muttering those words with his back turned towards her.

She stamped her feet and went in again.

“How do I make her understand that she looks phenomenal in everything? How do I tell her that a diamond – whether engraved in a ring, shielded in a museum, pendant on a necklace, or unpolished at a jeweller’s store – was still a diamond – precious, beyond measure”, he heard her footsteps again.

“You look mindblowing. Can we go now?”, he pleaded, as he turned around and caught glimpse of a man in a dense turban, with thick moustaches and a flowing beard. His drink almost fell out of his hands.

“Does this look OK?”, he heard the childlike voice from behind the hairy tangle.

“Oh my God”, he burst into laughter, beating his fists onto the wall. Then he fell over, rolling on the floor, a fresh burst of giggle deluding him everytime he looked up at her in the disguise. The moustache, beard and turban clad princess began to laugh too.

Sanity returned by the time they took their seats in the car. As he was turning the keys, he said, his voice gruff, “You know what?”

“What?”, she questioned, her eyes turned towards him.

“You are the only girl who has ever made me laugh”, he pressed the accelerator and they were on the road.

September 30, 2003

1 PM – his watch read. Funnily enough, it had been reading the same for the last eleven times he had seen it in the last sixty seconds. “Where is she?”, he thought to himself.

As he was about to turn his wrist for the twelfth time, the sight of a black limousine caught his glance. He followed its track as the vehicle slowed down and parked itself in front of him. The door opened, and there she was.

“Hi”, he muttered, not knowing what else to say, and lent his right hand forward to shake, not knowing what else to do.

“What a fool? I’m meeting him after so long and he can’t even hug me”, she thought to herself as they shook hands.

“So, where do you want to go?”, he queried.

“Should we eat something first?”, she asked, knowing that he wouldn’t have had breakfast. He had only woken up by her call an hour ago and knowing him, she knew he would rather go hungry than be late.

“Ok, let us go to this Italian restaurant – The Tavern”, he motioned towards the north with his hands.

“No Italian, Only Indian – South Indian”, she argued.

“You’ve come all the way to New York to eat Indian food?”, he was baffled.

“No, I’ve come all the way to New York to meet an Indian man”, she smiled.

On The Subway (Part 2)

October 19, 2003

“It is in moments such as these”, he whispered, “that I feel the loneliest”. As he stood with his hands stretched on the terrace hedge, the expanse of Manhattan was lit before him. The glittering lights of the concrete jungle were mesmerizing.

“How can you feel alone in the most happening city of the world – the city where even loneliness doesn’t feel alone?”, she questioned, taking a sip from the glass.

“It’s not the din outside that defines internal peace”, he turned his back to the city of dreams, “A good package can’t make a gift out of garbage”

“Why do you feel alone, when you have me?”, she put her hands into his.

His eyes welled. “All this time, you have always lived with the belief that I was there for you. And you never take credit for being there, for me”, he said.

“Ssshhh”, she whispered. He went quiet, as he always did.

October 05, 2003

“Sir, your phone is ringing”, the housekeeper shouted at the top of his voice. He woke up with a start, and heard the familiar ringtone.

“Hello”, he mumbled, his throat still dry.

“I need to talk to you”, her voice was unmistakable.

“Then what are you doing right now?”, he managed to force in his banal sense of humor even while in sleep.

“Shut up. When are you coming here?”, she demanded.

“Will be there next week”, he answered, as the line got disconnected.

He stood up and went up to the window. It was raining outside. The spattering of water on the window sill was the only sound audible. He closed his eyes to think about her. Dating a princess was not easy. And her behaving like she wasn’t one, didn’t help.

“Sometimes, I fondly recollect the days when I possessed something called ego”, he thought to himself.

On The Subway (Part 1)

October 12, 2003

“Okay, so the first place we go is…”, he stuttered in the middle of the sentence.

“The Tavern”, she completed the blank, as always.

The name brought a smile to his face. As they climbed their way into open air, the bright sunshine hit them in the eye. He placed his hand on her forehead to shield them from the sun. Apparently, no chivalry was too much chivalry for him.

They began to walk on the kerb. She noticed the troves of men and women walking beside them, past them, with them. She loved New York for this. You never felt alone in this city. A strange pulsating spirit seemed to run through the veins of this city at any given moment. Walking, which she had hated as a chore back home, had come alive as a pleasure in this city of walkers. And walking beside him was a pleasure greater still.

She tightened her grip on his arms as they were about to cross the street. She knew it was not necessary. New York was no Delhi – When the white man on the pedestal lit up, pedestrians could walk with all the élan in the world. And the country’s notoriously large lawsuit claims had infused a perpetual fear of any walking object, in the minds of automobile drivers.

But this gesture was a signal – she needed him, and she wanted him to know it. And he did.

October 12, 2003

“Stand clear of the closing doors, please”, the announcement echoed in his ears as he saw the door-halves approaching each other in perfect unison and meeting with an ever so gentle thud. The train began to move.

As he pressed his face against his palms, he could feel the moisture that had welled up in his eyes. He wiped it with his shirt sleeve and began to look around sheepishly. The compartment was unusually empty for this hour of the day. “Loneliness stalks you everywhere”, he thought to himself.

The sound of sniffles interrupted his train of thought. He lifted his head to decipher the source of the sound. It was originating from a lady at the other end of the compartment. A man seated beside her was mumbling something to himself, apparently in great anger. He strained his ears to listen to what he was saying.

“One man’s agony is another man’s pleasure” – he had learnt one of the fundamental dictums of human psychology, during his graduation class on Human Behavior. The realization that he wasn’t the only soul bereft of joy on this planet was sadistic, but pacifying. The propensity of New Yorkers to wash their dirty linen in public provided ample opportunities for this decadent activity.

“Nothing remains the same. Everything changes. Nothing’s forever”, the words came out intermittently between the sniffles.

“True”, he thought to himself, as he ran his fingers into his pockets and felt the cold metal inside.

The girl in the rain (Part 6)

Scene 16

“You don’t understand. I’m not used to this”, her voice was getting ballistic now.

“I don’t understand what you want me to understand. How does it really matter?”, even he was beginning to lose his temper now.

“Does nothing get into your head? I have been shouting my head off for the last half an hour. My friends dislike me”, she was exasperated.

“Wait a second. How can your friends dislike you? Isn’t there an apparent contradiction in what you are saying? The people you are talking about are just jealous of your success. And frankly, my dear, you shouldn’t give a damn”, he twisted the last line into his baritone voice, and smiled.

“Everything is a joke for you. You have never understood me. And never will”, her voice was calmer now.

This sounded the alarm bells. He was more somber now,” I’m sorry. We are different people. We think about things differently. But our friendship has been so tightly knit for 15 years, because of that, not despite that. I know you are perturbed because some people are not happy that you achieved something they did not. But that doesn’t take away from your achievement. You are the one who achieved it. They may or may not like it. But why do you care about them? Just remember the reaction your parents gave when you told the news to them. Or your brother. Or your sister. Isn’t that worth so much more than what the others feel?”

A long silence followed. “Those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter”, he lowered his voice as the waiter placed the bill on the table.

“But how can you not care about people’s opinion?”, she pleaded.

“I do care. But the one person whose opinion I care about is sitting right across this table, spoiling a nice hot cup of coffee by not drinking it”, he smiled.

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.

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Her mind returned to the present time. So much had transpired since this meeting. She remembered the fortuitous phone call that she had received the next night. The words from the call still rang loud in her mind - “Hello? It seems your friend has met with an accident…”

Scene 17

“Mummy, where is Dad?”, cried the little girl from the doorstep.

“He’s gone out for some work”, a feminine voice reverberated from inside the house.

The girl looked down on the floor, and her doll lying on it, split into two. The sight drove her to tears. She picked up the pieces, embraced it to her chest and began to weep. The sound of her sniffles was interrupted by the screeching sound of friction. She lifted her head and saw the boy. Her crying rose by another decibel level at the sight of the culprit who had led to the massacre of her beloved toy. She had tripped over the steps while running to escape from the interfering fool’s intrusion, and fallen over the doll, splitting it into two. As the scene played back in her mind, she was repulsed even more by the ignominious creature and the hideous sound his shoes were making against the ground, as he inched closer.

“Oh. I’m so sorry”, he uttered, peering over her shoulder, catching a glance of the broken toy.

“Get lost”, she shouted, throwing her doll back onto the floor, and ran back inside to seek medical attention for her bruised elbow.

Having cried her heart out after the burning sensation of the antiseptic had played its part, the little girl’s concern for her treasured toy returned. As her mother was placing the first aid box back, she ran towards the doorstep. She couldn’t believe what she saw. The doll was in one piece. It was a miracle. She picked it up, and embraced it, an innocent smile adorning her face. As she turned to go back, her eyes fell on the boy who was sitting at the neighboring house’s doorstep, rubbing his fingers against each other in an attempt to take the adhesive off.

Scene 18

“What did you say?”, I urged, despite her having spoken the words with crystal clarity.

“It means you should not care about the approval or disapproval of others. If you always carry the fear of disapproval from the other person in your mind, you would never be able to be yourself, whether the other person is a man or a woman. Why do you care what I think about you? In all likelihood, we are never going to meet again in life. So, for these few hours of interaction, why be what you are not? Why just not be what you are?”, she asserted, weighing each word.

As the strange girl took another sip off the glass, I was finding it hard to digest the beamers she had hurled at me. Word after word had hit me. After two minutes of embarrassing silence, I finally found some sanity returning to my sense of speech.

“May be you are right. But all this is so logical. Why has no one told this to me earlier? Or why hasn’t it occurred to me by myself”, I expressed my bewilderment.

“Its uncommon to be common, difficult to be simple. And sometimes, we need someone to walk into our lives, and shrug us off from our slumber, to flesh out what matters for us and what does not”, her voice went into a low pitch.

I was again at a loss of words. A long lull followed. The blaring of a car’s horn came to my rescue. Some sound is better than no sound. I turned my head and saw my friend Nitin waving at me from his car. Whatever was blocking the roads had apparently been taken care off. I was a little disappointed at a sight at which I should have been pleasantly relieved. Nonetheless, it was time for me to go.

“My friend is here. I should leave now”, I loathingly asserted, getting back on my feet.

“Great. Nice meeting you, Hiten. All the best”, she had finally managed to remember the name.

I walked up to the car. As Nitin took hold of my bag and went back to place it in the car’s rear, I turned my head to catch a final glance of the great teacher who had shaken me from within. She had taught me something so simple, yet so profound. I found her wiping her tears again. I shouted ,”Can we drop you somewhere?”

“No, thanks for the offer. The rain has stopped. And your friend's arrival shows the routes are open again. I can walk now”, she said, evidently making tremendous effort to stall her tears to raise her voice.

“Where exactly are you going?”, I queried.

“To meet a friend. He died today after three years of coma”, she turned her back towards me and began to walk.

Thanks for bearing with me for almost a month, and having reached this far. In case you hate the story, or like it, appreciate it or want to trash it, compliment it or criticize it, please leave your comments. The author would be highly obliged. :)