A four letter word called 'Love'

Yhaawn!! ….

One more Yawn!!...
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Its about 2 am in the night..and India seems to have lost all ability to break the 8th wicket partnership against England….

Okay its over now…no more yawns.

Yup as I was saying, that four letter word….

Now don’t panic. I am not going to bore you with another of my love lost monologues today....

Rather I am going to tell you a story, well three of them actually. Stories of normal people, of the kind me and you encounter everyday but never realize that they also have a story to tell, a story which can move us and make us think.

The first two stories are inspired by real life stories, of people I have known. But the real thrill is in the third and final story. Thrill because it’s so unbelievable and chilling, but again as they say- life is stranger than fiction.

But it will be some days before I can dole out that story to you, so let’s start with the first one now…….



The first story

It was about a little before noon, on the third day and I was enquiring my sales staff about the important towns and villages nearby which I can visit on the east of the town and interview some people. I asked one of them, a pretty simple looking young woman hardly in her mid twenties, who claimed to be from that area, to write down the names of all the places in Tamil, to make it easy for my driver.

And as she was busy jotting it down, outcomes my franchise and we start with our normal talk. The discussion had hardly lasted 5 minutes when she comes back and hands over the list to me. I in turn handed it over to my franchise, asking him to review it and he starts reading out the names, loud enough, until he stops and starts laughing, even louder.

Mr. Pratik, you see this village? He points out a name from the list to me and says ‘ This is her hometown, her village.’

I looked at her, with a fake smile on my face – ‘Oh ..That’s great’

Until he starts again- ‘But don’t go there and tell her name, or else they would hang you upside down on a tree.’

For a few seconds I continued with my dumb smile, with a raised eyebrow, expecting it’s some kind of a joke.

But it wasn’t. And this is why?

‘He started again- and you know why Mr. Pratik?

Because she did love marriage, ran away from her home and married a guy outside her community, the first time ever in that village………..

And has never been back there again.

And you know whom did she marry?

You see that gentleman over there, the salesman in that front counter.’

*******

I could have said yes, looked up at him and given him some change. But I didn’t, I chose not to react, rather concentrating on lighting my cigarette and ignoring his existence as the auto stopped in yet another traffic jam.

It was one of those mornings, when you are just angry on life in general and pissed off at every creature who dares to come in your way. When you feel like you had a gun in your hand to shoot at every idiot who commits the cardinal sin of not doing his job as you would have wanted him to do and even worse comes right in your way when he was the last one you want to be alive on this earth.

I had missed my company vehicle, waited 20 minutes for an auto (and for those who know Bangalore and its auto drivers know what I mean?) and was gradually mentally preparing myself for spending an hour, travelling in a stinking public bus, listening to full volume, high pitched Kannada movies. A bus which has four television sets fixed in it and which spends more time waiting for passengers every 2 km than travelling, and a bus which will only take me half the way, from where I will have to take another bus to reach my destination.

It was about then that the auto had stopped in yet another traffic jam and out of nowhere he comes in: hardly in his first decade of existence, ugly and dirty, shabbily dressed, with coarse hair and a flowing nose. His sister was still performing her acrobatics on the road, hardly a metre away, among the stationary cars and bikes and autos.

He mumbled something to me, but I looked away. He tried to tap me on my knees, but I waved him away with my hand, as if he was just another filthy insect, dirtying my trousers by touching it; and kept looking at the other way with vent and cursing Bangalore’s traffic snarls.

Red lights turned yellow and his sister who looked bigger than him started running from one vehicle to another, begging for money.

As the traffic started moving, they moved to the side, onto the footpath.

He was crying, howling with anger, the kind of anger which comes from helplessness as he saw his sister approaching him and jumped next to a tree trunk and hid his head beneath his knees. His sister jumped next to him, shouting and started punching on his back.

It could not have been for more than a few seconds, that I caught this happening- pretty much unwillingly. But as I was leaving them behind in the auto, I felt a twitch in me and for a second lamented my act, perhaps I should have helped him, listened to his prayers and given him some change.

Maybe it would have helped him buy just one tenth of a meal or probably some cheap drugs for his bastard father, but it would have bought me the mental satisfaction.

The false satisfaction which comes from the belief that I have done my part, the satisfaction which you get by massaging your ego that you have done something great today by helping a needy person.

Maybe he would have still cried out of hunger, helplessness and inability to protect himself, maybe his sister would still have got raped on the dark streets of Bangalore and produced another generation of sufferers like him or maybe he would have never made it into youth and perished somewhere in the streets, unwanted and uncared….but I would have forgotten him in my false sense of glory, perhaps…….Had I acted differently that moment.

.....

I had dreamt about this day so many times in the past one year that I have lost count of it. Dreamt with hope when that was the only thing which I could hold on to; when reason gave its thumbs down to me and when life had a question mark on its face and pointed its finger at me, threatening to pull its brake. There was nothing I could have done then, except to hold on to hope and count my days and dream of the day when all this would end.

It all kept coming back, each and every strain of all the emotions which had fired in me in the past one year on the way, in the elevator, in the lobby, the final burst of hyper heartbeats, the silent prayers and finally it all went away as soon as it had come. Within a second it was all over.

At times it’s hard to digest that something for which you’ve been waiting for so long passed through you so quickly. I knew I was sinking in as I kept looking at it, repeating the words in my mind, over and over again.

It’s a great feeling to live the moments you had wished for, wished from the deepest roots of your very existence and wished for long. The elevator had a small picture, tucked away on the top, a picture of the mother goddess, which normally wouldn’t make much sense to most of us coz we keep seeing it everywhere? But in that moment I just closed my eyes and said a silent thank.

There’s something between I and rain. We share a love hate relationship of our own, and it’s hard to gauge- only she knows when she will come and throw her bucket full at me.

Thankfully, she was happy today, drenching me only with her mug full and clicking my pictures all the way- and why not? After all she’s been witness to it all, right from the day it started..