Dedicated to....

The hymn

THE UNTOLD STORY

“Those few evenings were different from what i live now. It has been 3 years since the NOSTALGIA incident. Many things changed gradually after that. Life took different turns n very slowly but continuously changed things. Still sometimes I remember  that scintillating evening and weave a web of lies, may be, the thread of which is the fact that somewhere, somehow, we still are close. We still are enthused by each other’s lives, we still expect each other  to show up on phone once in a day atleast... after living in this spurious reverie for sometime, I switch on the lights , open my reluctant eyes and try get out of the shadows of mind. Sometimes I....”

“Holy mother of Jesus!!! Will you shut up for a second!” I exclaimed, of course not out of affection. Actually I was trying to prepare for a college presentation (about which sometimes I get serious).

Actually....

Kshitij called me this morning-“ Dude, I am coming to your home, may I ?”

Me “Sorry boss but i am a bit busy, got a presentation tomorrow to fail at”

Kshitij-“ ok, coming in 15mins”

Me “don’t u get my drift? I gotta prepare!! Please bless me today by your absence”

Kshitij “actually i am in a mood of cursing you today”

Me “actually i am not at home right now...”(an ancient excuse)

Kshitij “too late for excuses budd...open the damn gate, i am standing right outside it.”

Oh good grief!! Here he comes... I ran to the gate n said some words of blessing n let him in.

Me “so why didn’t you tell me earlier that you were already there”?

Kshitij” I was politely trying to earn your consent but apparently I didn’t succeed.”

I was furiously thinking for some good excuse to get rid off him when he suddenly said..

“Dude, I wanna share something with you” and he started his sharing thing with the above mentioned first para followed by my hopeless reaction in the second.

Kshitij “wait you merciless animal! Atleast here me out completely.”

His last word appeared quite disastrous. It was a cloudy morning with continual chilly winds. I took him to the terrace(no, not because I intended to throw him down from there if he crossed my tolerance threshold, but because the weather was good, though the former crossed my mind once.) seated ourselves,  continuously repeating in my mind that humans have tremendous capacity to tolerate anything, they can walk on fire, pierce through sword unharmed, and he is just kshitij, ahh..trifling matter.. All I have to do is listen him out.

Below is a short account of what he said and an enrapturing proof of my astonishing tolerating power. I don’t know what he said was real or he just made it up. Though i personally think the latter to be true.

Kshitij “so where I was....”

Me “sometimes I get serious n blah blah stuff..” (I really don’t know why i helped him remember what he was blurting out, of course i abused myself for this blunder .)

Kshitij “ya right, thats what I was saying, ya actually see, sometimes I feel my life to be very mechanised, i mean it has become very different from what it used to be.

You know, people say big big things like distance cant make anyone apart n all...I say all these are nothing but crap!its not real. People do fall apart when distance separates them. Ofcourse why woudnt they be. Its all physics in real life as well, force of attraction between two charges decreases inversely as the square of the distance separating them,  you know”

Me “so you and her are the two charges separated by some distance and the force of attraction is reducing...”

Kshitij “what! Nooo...I was talking about charges, what are u talking about?”

Me: charges, of course. Pure physics(sometimes he really forgets what point he was trying to make for which he introduced physics.)

Kshitij: ya...so when two charges are separated by a dielectric medium, do you know what happens...?

Me: dude please, let me remind you literally because you are not in a state of getting a hint, you  were talking about yourself and Rishika, so please come to the point, share what u wanna share n CUT THE CRAP OUT!”

Kshitij:  oh ya...now i remember actually... see budd, things are not going good. Do u know after we met the first time n then the second and accidental meeting third time, and a belated meeting the fourth time, that was it....we met so less times..

Me: I don’t think u met her very few times..four times meeting with  a girl(initially stranger)  is not less..plus she atleast met you graciously n not kicked your butt for your whimsical character. Thank Jesus for that.

Kshitij: i didn’t ask for ur opinion, so shut ur mouth n listen.. I already told you the first time we met, it was so magical...

Me: why magical?

Kshitij” come on! One human being is meeting another human being...isnt it magical!!?

Me: when you meet me, do u find it magical, you douche!

Kshitij: no I don’t find it so because it is magical when I meet someone who is human n not a wild untamed beast like you...

Me: ok go ahead with your story.

Kshitij: you know when we met the second time, i think it was 7^th of july 11. You must be expecting the weather to be very pleasant, it then being the month of july, but it was not! It was a harsh sunny day when in the morning of 7^th july, came her call.

Rishika: hello kshitij, me n vertika are at PVR, you were saying you would like to meet me, so why not today? We planned to watch the movie “transformers” but all tickets were booked so now we are free. Could you come now?

I really didn’t know what should i say.(Though i wanted to bless the ticket seller for selling all the tickets n providing this opportunity... )I promised to play cricket with you that morning. For a few moments, i thought about ‘you and me playing cricket’ n about ‘me n rishika spending some time together.’ Then I thought what the hell! Its like - deciding between margosa leaf and chocolate ice-cream, which one to eat..

I said: ok rishika, I am coming but you people have to wait for some time, may be about an hour or so...

Rishika said: ok fine..we can wait. But you wanna meet na?

I said: “ya  sure. Coming to you at the speed of light”.ya, I know , saying that i violated the basic physics principle as nothing can travel as fast as light because if a particle of mass m attains a velocity v=c, then its mass is given by-

m=m’/{1-(v^2/c^2)}^1/2. So if v=c then mass of particle =1/0 that is infinite ...and also..

Me: dude dude!! The topic.. come to the point, u were telling me something about your boring meetings with her, remember? Please don’t kill me technologically as well...

Kshitij: you don’t understand, physics is everywhere. Anyway, that time i had to get ready to meet her, more mentally than physically. Suddenly i remembered, baba ramdev saying, whenever you are in stress  try relaxing yourself by deep breathing...so i started breathing deeply but my mother saw me doing this. She exclaimed: kshitij! What happened ? are you alright...trouble in breathing, haa?

I said: no its just ramu effect..anyway, see i gotta go to civil lines(new York of the east) now. I knew my mother’s next questions would begin with “W” family, like why? With whom? Where in civil lines?etc etc

So i quickly had to think of one such statement that could satisfy every possible question arising at the horizon of my mother’s curious n worried mind. I thought deeply n quickly came up with a reply,I said: mother, I am going to buy a very important book.

As expected, all “W” related questions vanished from her mind instantly. There is a thing about Indian families. If somehow you can convince your parents that you are doing it for the sake of your studies, no matter what you do, you will never be charged with any blame. Even if you say to your mother-  mom please may I go and murder manmohan singh because he is framing such policies that is making life of us students difficult, he is the reason for my low political science marks, your mom would say- sure beta go ahead if it suits ur studies n ya be sure to finish him up completely. And don’t underestimate him beta by his looks, he can be a ferocious beast. Anyway...

So finally i was granted the permission. Next problem came up with my dress. Mom gave almost all my shirts n trousers for ironing at a nearby shop.  The only thing wearable was a white t-shirt n a rugged jeans. Still I was happy with that. Sometimes its better not to have a choice.

I asked one of my friend to accompany me but he denied. I thought to myself, ah..this time I gotta be damn confident.  I dressed up quickly, took out the helmet but wait....there was no bike!!

I shouted: mom...where is the bike?

Mom: your father took it this morning. He had to visit one of his friends.

I said: but thats not fair, I too have friends, I also might want the bike. You people don’t understand. They are waiting..

Mom: just don’t eat my head, go by public transportation.

Wait a minute...what did u just say? “ they are waiting” who are “they”

I immediately regretted my last statement. I said: oh books books....books are waiting, you know I am so into books that sometimes I personify them...haha..you know..hehe(I was trying to be as cute as possible). Ok bye bye, gotta go now.

Mom: ok go..but take care. If some unknown uncle gives you toffee or chocolate, don’t eat them,ok?

(my mother still thinks me to be a 5 year old.)

Me n rishika decided to finally meet at the same restaurant we met the first time. Though rishika was interested in a more public place like Mc donalds n all, but I hated them, those are very chaotic. Finally I think vertika might have convinced her to go to the same old restaurant. Cheers to vertika!

I landed in front of the restaurant n went inside. It was morning so very few people were there. I entered the ground floor but saw no one around. I searched for them quite a time there when a waiter came n said- sir, may be they are in the upper floor.

He was quite intuitive i guess...anyway, I went up n saw two girls stitting adjacently. I saw rishika, she looked beautiful. She was talking to vertika so innocently, with smiles n expressions,  I paused for a moment to witness that adorable sight. Finally I decided to confront them. I began by apologizing for my late arrival. Believe me its always safe n better to apologize  at first in such situations, saves you from their delayed sarcasm.

Then we chatted(yes, the word chatted is grammatically right) for some time, we ate pizza, as I didn’t know what else would they like, i ordered another pizza :P(I am really bad at dealing with girls). Things were going fine n good for some time. I thought so finally everything is going good..phew..! but sometimes later there came an awkward moment for me. Actually I have the bad habit of shaking my legs while sitting, continuously. So I was rightfully doing this duty when unintentionally I landed a sort of kick on rishika’s leg. She immediately exclaimed!(unlike the movie scenes). In India, even if you glance at a girl, its considered heinous, so in contrast to this, you can imagine what the kick stuff under the table could mean(even though not deliberate). Vertika was somehow suppressing her laughter. She might have thought I intentionally did this. May be rishika also thought so. I was in such an embarrassing position that all I said was ‘sorry’. Hope they realized that it was unintentional..

Finally she realized that much of the time has been spent but I thought it to be few minutes, but when looked at my watch....i was like: what!! 2 hours??!! Are you kidding me! Relativity theory is really true i guess.

Anyway,  It was time for us to leave. So we finally bade each other good byes n departed.

Me: ok kshitij...nice story now please leave...

Kshitij: come on dude! Atleast listen to our last meeting. It was really a short one. It wont take long I promise.

Me: ok, but please it should be very concise.

N then again he began his babblings...

Kshitij: the last time we met was Christmas day of 2012. We didn’t meet for almost two years till that day. After enjoying the whole day with friends, me n rishika planned to meet at PVR. When I was at PVR, she was in Mc donalds, when she came to pvr, I was at a restaurant, dining. Ya it was quite late. The time was approximately 8pm. We were continuously messaging each other about the vague prospect of meeting. We both were with group of friends so it was obviously difficult for us to come to the same conclusion. Especially my group was unconvincing. We were all having dinner when suddenly i don’t know why but it struck me that might be this is our last meeting. May be I wont be able to see her again. Instantly a background music started playing in that restaurant, it was a hindi song the lyrics of which is worth mentioning. It was an old song-‘ shayad iss janam me mulaakaat ho na ho...’ the first line was objectionable so i clipped it off. :P

Oh I am such a goody goody boy!

I was very much struck by this song, though I hardly get influenced by songs n all. But may be the situation was resonating with the song. I left my meal in the middle n immediately went to meet her.

Actually she was waiting for a long time...so I was almost running n finally reached the front part of mc-donalds. I saw them waiting outside for me. I saw rishika making some gestures to vertika clearly indicating her mood was not at its best. Obviously I was the immediate cause for it. Somehow i showed up. I really don’t remember a single word I said to her as it was a two minute meeting n nothing much was exchanged between us.

Man! She still looked pretty. It was almost after two years I was looking at her in person.

Before leaving I was trying to capture her picture in my mind as i was having a strong feeling that this meeting is the final one. I was trying to capture her innocent face, her fragile smile n delicate movements, her dark big twinkling eyes, i silently wished that moment could stay a bit longer but it didn’t... it was all over. Yes, it was over in few minutes...The girl with whom I talked so much in my happiness or despair, good times or bad times, day or night, no longer I shall be able to see her again...sometimes I wish to reverse the time but that idiot Einstein died before inventing the time machine!

That was literally the end of our transitory meeting...

Six months after that incident, I went to Varanasi for giving an exam, I was strolling by the ghats  one night , when suddenly a young man came to me n said: sir, may i have your few minutes?

The man was looking polite but poor. I said ya what you wanna say?

He said: see, the thing is, instead of asking you directly for money, i would ask you for a word.

You pick up any word n i will write a poem with the word inside it. If you like it, if it adds something to your life, you pay me whatever you like..

I liked his way n specially when he said- if it adds something to your life.

I was thinking about a word...suddenly i said..ok the word is- ‘Brook’. Can you write it in English? He knew English n immediately agreed. May be this is the way he earned his daily livelihood.

He told me to wait for some time. I saw him taking out a page n a pen. He then took out a cigarette, lighted it n put it in his mouth sideways. He looked deep into the ganges flowing in front of us n began writing. In the dim light I could clearly see his eyes getting wet n in a few moments a pair of tear drops rolled down his cheeks. I thought he is out of his mind n started walking away when suddenly he said- sir, here is your poem.. looking straight into my eyes, with a deep n serious look, he handed me a piece of paper.

I really didn’t know what made him so sad n serious... i asked him about it but he said nothing. Then i tried reading it. I could barely understand his handwriting so requested him to read. With sorrowful n confident voice he began...

It was an enrapturing piece of work..words were flowing like music, conveying the surfaced as well as deeply buried meaning...

The only thing that I would like to share is, there was a reference to a bird... well, that was enough for me to think of someone...

I consider that poem too precious to tell you right now.

Me: thanks a lot kshitij....finally you saved me from listening to one of your boring poems..

Kshitij: it was not mine actually.. it was his. But it was a touching one. I will recite it someday to you when you are prepared for its tranquillity...

Kshitij turned serious n went home all of a sudden...

N really, after that, they never met again. She, the same year went to some other state doing MBBS n Kshitij carried on with his preparation for cracking some job to earn his living..

This is how practical life works, I guess...

                                 -Kaavya