One look at Surya and you will find a decent looking, small stature person, wearing rimmed spectacles, Square face, with a resolute
chin. His hair is all dishevelled after a
15 mile ride in an Auto Rickshaw from Atapur
to Punjagutta Chowk. So, rather
than a professional , he looks more like
a guy who has been fired ,he has a small
bulge in his belly, not uncommon for professionals in his company, with all
those daily allowances.
He looks likes the hundreds other backpack carrying, formal wearing
professionals roaming here and there hailing autos, running after buses and cabs, calling an end to another miserable day at work.
It’s all new for him, because at his previous location he
was the only guy in the above mentioned attire.
Initially he was not very happy with the transfer, but it
took only one Veg-Biryani at the Paradise to convince him otherwise, apart from
the politeness and cooperative nature of the people (except the Auto –Rickshaw
Walla’s).
Surprising , well yes, attribute it to the one odd stroke of
luck in this life or his own
accurate self –assessment, he has chosen
for himself quite a less trodden path for Engineers.
Not that he had planned for this.
His work if we start to explain going by his own admission has no end or start.
One day you may find him inspecting the toilets for
cleanliness like a Municipal Inspector, the next preparing joint inspection
reports with some hot shot technical guy. He is also required to resolve the
Disputes between the customer and the car dealer as if he some ombudsman .Even
after this much of process and paper work he is expected to have astute
diagnostic skills so that he should be able to identify the vehicle trouble
by just hearing its noise.
Other than this he has to resolve the HR problems of the
workshop employees. He for them is a star , a standard against which they
measure everything. But in reality he is just a half baked engineer, who has
just learned to survive the college life with a sharp tongue and XEROX notes.
Out of the blue, his face begins to lose colour, as if
something had stung him and he was trying to brave it.
But the pain was too obvious; the hardening of jaw muscles were
the indicators of the effort it was taking him not scream his heart out.
Then he decided to do what he has been too afraid to do from
the last 3 months.
One ring, two rings, third ring…..and it begins
“Hi, how are you?”
“I am good. But I can’t hear you properly. Where are you,
there is so much noise in the background, are you outside?”
“Yes, I am waiting for an Auto near a crossing”
“Firstly you never call for like ages and when you call it’s
always from these crowded places only? We can talk when you reach home”
“No, wait.(He takes a deep breath)It’s like when I am
surrounded by a sea of people , my heart starts to ache for one person I want
to see more than anyone on this earth.”
“Thanks. I could never figure you out completely”.
“So, how’s life?”
“Dead”
“Hey don’t say like that, I told you na, no one dies for
anyone, life goes on”
Well mine’s stalled, “When is the D-DAY?”
Silence for 3 minutes
“13th”
He
grinds his teeth, breathes fire.....
Even in this din and noise this sentence of her puts a vacuum
in between Surya and world, for a second he is unable to even feel anything
.His body goes numb. He mentally curses himself for calling her. He always gets
these anxiety attacks by calling her. You never learn son of a bitch.
There is a surge of anger inside him, a feeling he never experienced before, its like the rage the Lord Shiva must have felt when Sati had jumped in
the fire before opening that 3rd eye.
“Are you there?”, she asks.
“Yes, I am good, take care, and got to go”
On the Brink of tears “Ok bye, I will call you
later”
“Please don’t”
“Bye”. Just in time so that he doesn't hear her crying
She immediately rushes towards the bathroom, with her hand
on her mouth to muffle the sobs, she wails and cries. Those muffled cries which
nobody but he can understand, why this had to happen?? Why?
Why God gives you such blessings and then takes them away as
quickly as they come?
But then she stands up, looks up in the mirror;the red eyes,
the swollen lips. She washes her face again and again. Takes a deep breath and tries
to relax. Her cousins are waiting outside for her to select the saris and jewellery for them.
She puts on a fake smile and rushes outside.
Surya is 1500 KMs away from her in an unknown city.
He just stares in to the gravel beneath his feet and thinks,
what would it take to get her back in my life?
He is brought back to this world by the shouts of an auto Walla.
Auto wallah is a lanky man in his early twenties, wearing a
cap; with as much of holes as the cheese in Tom n jerry. His longish face which
ends in a small extended chin like the beard of Pharohs that could have been considered handsome had he dressed a bit
better, not that striking, but enough to get yourself a GF.
“Aein bhaiyaan kaha ko jayenga??”
“East Maredpally,
near Chenoy nursing home” but hell will do okay.
“100 rupayian lagenga”
Surya, who was too tired to haggle, got in without a word of
protest.
He always enjoyed travelling alone; he could just stare at
the moving mass of men and vehicles
And let his mind think
about the questions which are eating him up from inside.
What he wants? Why is he always unhappy? Why? Why??
It was raining and traffic was as usual moving like an
overfed serpent
“Aye bhaiyan, Mai
iddrech hun,English me kaisa bolna ka” in typical Hyderabadi style.
“I am here” ,smiles.
“ Matlab?”
“I am here in
Begumpet.”
“Theek theek(okay,okay) Aye aam heer,acha”
“Tumhari girl friend puchti h kya?” Chuckling (Does your
girl-friend asks this from you?)
“Han Bhaiyan,bahut hi-fi h wo, saali pata nai kiddreech se
padi h”
“hahahaha”
It brought back happy memories of the time he was trying to
teach the nuances of Kashmiri language to Nanu in the college park, ….aaah that
park…..that park had a small dirty pond at the centre, full of toads and every
time they walked around that pond a toad would jump in front of them and Nanu
used to cling to him, her eyes shut and shrieking, and for that moment he used
to feel gratitude not only the toads but their whole phylum.
For that touch used to make his day.
He never knew it, but Nanu used to dissect toads by a single
slash of her blade in her Under-grad lab, she was braver than he was in all
respects. But then she just never bothered to tell him.
But the honking of an over eager biker brought him out of
his reverie back to this cruel, wet and static reality that he is not going to spend
the rest of life with her, that he will not be able to even see her for the
rest of her life after D- DAY, that he has to learn to live without her, day
after day after day.
This thought shook him from the core and he sulked back in
his seat, looking like a man who has weathered too many storms.
From a small drizzle it has begun raining, which makes
traffic even more difficult to move. So, the bored Auto walla again prods him
into a conversation.
AW: So, what do you sir? In typical Hyderabadi.
Surya: I am the guy who comes to your rescue when you get
cheated at a car workshop.
AW: Oh, I thought you are a computer person…
To be continued….some later day………….
PS: Go ahead and make that “call”.
It’s a piece of fiction.
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