Hell V

About half an hour later I pulled on my trusty old jeans and my old blue jacket. I thrust my ATM Card firmly into my wallet that was so ancient that I doubt that even the most accomplished of archaeologists would be able to tell what it was originally like. I had already decided where I’d go, the new Upmarket Mall that was fast becoming the talk of the town.

At college the girls would compare notes on the displays; at work the other faculty members were selling it to each other as the place where you could have a complete experience, the place was generating a lot of interest and it was high time that I satisfied my new found curiosity for all those things that I had so far considered shallow.

Another half hour and I stepped into the climate controlled environs of the Mall. Surreal. That was the only adjective that came to mind. An object of beauty spun from glass, concrete and sandstone, an apparition from Akrabah, One of Atlantis’ palaces risen up from the sea, a treasure trove of beauty and aesthetics that was meant to be worshipped. I was mesmerized by the sheer luxury of the sensation.

Even now when I look at it through the vision that I had then, I become that naïve kid with a newly acquired sensibility, a new recruit to the cult of consumerism, a person not yet gone but not quite there, I become like I did then a half remembered chimera, a shadow of thought and a consequence of circumstances.

If I could, I’d walk up to that waif catch him firmly by the shoulders and through him out of there. I’d beat him senseless, douse him with cold water, tie him to the back of a car and drive for miles, maybe even kill him. But I wouldn’t let him jump into the quagmire that he ultimately got into.

But what lies between us is the gulf of time. An immeasurable expanse that no one has ever crossed and no one ever will.

I entered the mall with more than my fair share of awe, I wanted to look at everything, drink it all in one go but I didn’t want to move further than the entrance because I was afraid of desecrating that temple of luxury. I would have stood there forever if the guard hadn’t told me in extremely condescending tones that I should get a move on.

Hell – IV

Sunday - The day I’d cherish. I’d enjoy the Luxury of a few extra hours of sleep. Then I’d spend an hour on the newspaper including the backlog of the past week. Cutting out stuff from the paper and putting it away carefully in scrapbooks. Occasionally finding an interesting scrap that I’d loved earlier and re – reading it. Finding some new flavor of chips at the corner grocery store and trying it out. Small things, the good things that are supposed to come in small packages, I’d been satisfied with it, recognizing in it the glimmerings of memory that would take on a life of their own when I’d cross over into that tiny patch of sunlight that is the right of every senile old man.

I woke up one fairly sunny Sunday morning with nothing on my mind. It was about 3 weeks since I’d accepted Loyana’s offer and I hadn’t heard from her since. I’d hear from her eventually but that was still some way off.

I walked out on to the tiny balcony that was my little safety spot. Open to the fresh air and yet enclosed on all sides by sturdy stone railings. It was ugly as sin but at least it was there and provided a safe place to get some air when there was a power cut (which was pretty frequent). In the weeks to come I’d curl up against the railings more often than not, trying to find something to hold on to as things unfolded with blinding speed.

The winter sunlight lay in small pools of gold on the cool marble floor, broken into fragments by the flame of the forest that grew in the small garden that was carefully tended by our landlady.

As I inhaled the smell that is essentially India – a scent of dust, sunlight, the sweat of daily wage workers, cow dung, open drains, floral scents, pollen grains, beedi smoke, winter sweets, hard candy coaxed out of jaggery and spiced with aniseed, peanuts roasted over a charcoal fire, camel hide baked by the harsh sun, and tea; spiced with ginger and spiked with gossip – an entire civilization contained within a single breath.

I filled my lungs with it, gulping down the purifying morning oxygen that lay beneath it all, trying to understand the restlessness that filled my being. For the first time I felt that the small things were not enough, not what I had envisaged. I wanted to go out; I wanted more than just the lazy solitude that had settled into my being. I wanted to explore life.

With only a tiny frission of wonder I stepped back inside and pulled off my nightshirt. I’d decided to go shopping. And why not, I had a lot of money left over. I might as well enjoy it while I could.

It is a widespread belief that in India an individual from the GIMC (Great Indian Middle Class) can exist on any amount of money, from 500 a month to 5, 00,000 a month. Every individual in the GIMC contracts or expands themselves to fit into the constraints imposed by their monthly income; they do this with a flexibility that puts contortionists to shame and defies the laws of physics.

I'd always been a part of the GIMC, variating between the various levels or rather going into a free fall from the creamy layered upper middle class to the bottom of the barrel, I’d inched along that bottom, toiling up the smooth walls attempting forever to carve out niches along the way; I had followed the rules faithfully. I’d now decided, without any conscious thought, that it was time to break a few.

Hell – III

To say that I slept fitfully would be a huge lie. I slept very well, quite literally as snug as a bug in a rug. I didn’t want to think about what tomorrow would bring, it’s the present that mattered.

The next few days were a blur, the mundane realities of banking - standing in queues, watching minutes turn into hours, finding infinite reserves of patience to deal with the sea of inertia and inactivity that plagues Government institutions like an incurable disease, waiting for what seemed to be an eternity for some kind of action, and then suddenly being confronted with a flurry of activity that ultimately ends in a huge noise of faded rubber stamps meeting paper.

Another few hours of apathy induced suffering and I had a scrap of paper in my hand that entitled me to put myself through another six months of alternating torture and stupor inducing monologues that would be the last word in monotony.

I had too much time to think but I chose to sink into a state of perpetual ennui briefly alleviated by paperbacks and my trusty old walkman. Belief in the power of procrastination was strong and my energy was at an all time low.

Perversely my body decided that it was just the time to throw a tantrum, years of junk food and comfort eating came back to haunt me and I ended up with a horrible infection that rendered me speechless and sniffling like a caricature dog. The desire to eat dwindled and soon I was losing weight without even trying. By the time I was well again I had dropped enough poundage to elicit favorable comments from peers and coworkers alike.

So much water under the bridge yet the calendar showed that barely a fortnight had passed. I looked at myself in the mirror and asked, “Who are you?” No answer. The new person that stared back was just as upset as I was and equally confused.

Hell - II

For a short while after that I was able to forget that I had made any kind of pact. After I left I walked all the way home, all the while feeling the weight of my messenger bag grow heavier by the second. Maybe it was my imagination or maybe it was for real but I remember getting tired with each step and feeling that I had let myself in for something that was wrong.

It would be a very long time indeed before I would think about things in the perspective of right and wrong, until then I would simply look at them with a detachment that would cease to amaze me after the first few times.

The night was bitterly cold. I kept walking through the streets that would take me far away from the coffee shop back to the small room that held the semblance of comfort and normality. Gradually an awareness of a faint ring brought me out of the reverie that I’d sunk into. My cell phone was ringing. I pulled it out of my bag where it usually stays, Rudra’s name was flashing on the display. I wanted to ignore it but then I finally decided to answer it.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

“I’m not sure they’re not worth even that much,” I said, “and why this sudden interest in my thoughts?”

“Well, they seem to be occupying your mind to the extent that you haven’t noticed that I’ve been following you for the past 5 minutes.”

I whipped around and almost smashed into him. He was actually following me on his bike.

“Hello to you too,” I said, “Why are you out at this time of the night and that too here?”

“Well mom I decided that I’d go for a spin and see if any one needed a ride home.”

“Well what do you know? Here I was hoping that some Good Samaritan would come along and put me out of my misery.”

“Hop on partner.”

Rudra revved up his bike and shot off the moment I settled myself behind him.

“If you don’t mind I’d like to get home in one piece,” I yelled, “and not have a stray dog lick my remains off the road.”

“Don’t worry,” He yelled back, “I’m driving within the speed limit.”

A little while later he pulled to a stop in front of my room. Since he didn’t make a move to drive off I stood there because I needed something to distract me from my melancholy mood.

“I’ll offer again, a penny for your thoughts.”

“I was just wondering how long it takes for a cheque to be encashed.”

“3 working days. Why?”

“Nothing much. I need to get a cheque encashed.”

“Well you go to the bank and then you fill up a slip…..,” he continued in the same vein with a straight face untill i began to laugh. After that we talked for a few more minutes before his cell rang and he had to go.

On that short note of happiness I turned around and walked inside.

Hell - I

I should have refused, probably torn up the cheque and walked out, maybe even told Loyana to sod off and never come near me again, maybe I should have had the sense and the foresight to realize what I was getting into, but I chose to enter hell because like Dr. Faust I believed that hell was a make believe world that man has always had the supreme power to control. I’m not sure why I reacted like I did; I just didn’t want to have to walk away from my dreams that held the promise of reality.

I didn’t know then what I was letting myself in for. If I had known would I have gone ahead and done it anyway? That’s a question that I ask myself often but don’t answer probably because the answer would not only surprise me, but also reveal a facet of my character that I’m not willing to confront, much less acknowledge.

Every day we learn something new about ourselves but then invariably we forget that piece of knowledge in the quest for survival. I’ve lived with the knowledge that I’m not the person who I thought I was ever since I accepted Loyana’s coffer. I learnt that day that I was willing to go to any length to protect my dreams from the dust heap that they seemed destined for and that I would be willing to redraw my boundaries as well.

It’s disconcerting to have to realize that the person whom you were is gone and the person that you are now is a stranger whom even you don’t know. It’s even more confusing when you think that the person that you are now is someone who might not want the dreams that the old you wanted, might want something more out of life and would probably have dreams that are different from those of the old you. It also means that duplicity and lies were to be a part of daily life, something that I would never have accepted in my earlier avatar but was ingrained as an inherent part of my being in the new life that I had chosen for myself.

I felt like an impostor in my own skin, a person who was familiar yet unknown, a distant memory and a new factuality, two banks of a river that are essentially one yet forever separated. I thought I knew who I was but what had I become? I am still looking for the right answers. The only thing that I know for certain is that my dreams came true but not in the way I thought they would. But since then my sense of identity has been my very own private hell.

At the Gateway to Hell Pt. II

I don’t remember what happened that day until the time that I met up with Loyana at the Coffee Bar. I’ve heard people say that when you look back at things then it’s the little details that you remember but I can’t remember anything of what I did that day. May be because the mundane routine of daily drudgery did not really leave an impression worth sustaining, or maybe it’s because I’ve come so far since then that now that part of my life seems like someone else was living it for me.

I divide my life into two water tight compartments, with labels that say – Before Loyana and After Loyana. Perhaps I should have labeled them as – Before the day I entered hell and after.

Loyana was on time as usual. Lush brown locks falling over the soft curves of her shoulders, a white silk shift that was shapeless yet emphasized every inch of the body that she’d acquired or been blessed with and her constant uniform of black slacks and heels. Her favorite black diamonds completed her successful attempt to create a vision of beauty both terrifying yet alluring. I had absolutely no idea what was going through her mind, but then knowing wasn’t going to do me much good.

“So, your’re late. As usual.” More of a statement than a reprimand.

I couldn’t contain my incredulity at the brazenness of the statement, “I don’t think that you mentioned any sort of time. I would have remembered if you had.”

“Let’s get down to business. I have a proposition for you. But whether you accept it or not you don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.” That was a promise that I did not keep.

“Does your proposition involve any kind of illegal activity?”

“It depends on what exactly you mean by illegal.”

“And how am I supposed to interpret that bit of information?”

“You’re not. You’re supposed to listen and make you’re choice.”

She picked up an exotic black silk rucksack that had been lying underneath her chair and put it on the table. With the air of a magician performing her favorite trick she pulled out a cheque and placed it on the table facing me. The amount that was mentioned on the cheque was much more than what I needed to cover the cost of my tuition.

Very softly Loyana outlined the deal. I would encash the cheque. Once the money was in my account I was to make myself available to the benefactor for what she termed as nights of unbridled passion and what I prefer to call as sex. Devoid of all kinds of trappings, in simple words I was expected to sell my body.

I didn’t say anything for the next ten minutes. When I did look up I, looked straight into the eyes of the devil who’d come to welcome me to hell. They were taunting me and yet were uncertain about what I would do. I realized than that I had no courage. No courage to see my dreams crumble into dust. To allow all my hard work to go to waste.

I did what even I didn’t expect I’d do. I picked up the cheque and said yes. When I looked at the devil again, it was looking at me with something that can only be described as surprise mixed with awe……..

At the Gateway to Hell Pt. I

I’d always thought of hell as a place where my worst nightmares would come true but then when I finally stood looking in at it I realized that your worst nightmares simply mislead you. They don’t prepare you for the reality that is much worse.

It had been nearly a fortnight and my dreams spun of gossamer and light had begun to acquire a darker tint. I began to feel the imminent despair that begins to creep into your soul the day that you realize that the race you have been running is now outrunning you. Being faced with a Hobson’s choice wasn’t new to me; it was the content that left a metallic taste in my mouth.

Slowly as the days wore on and the harshness of winter settled into the marrow of the trees, I began to envision endings that I’d kept locked away for a very long time. I dusted off the scraps of courage that I’d left lying around in the furthest recesses of my mind and gathered them to me like a miser grabs pennies to himself, bits of clarity and light that questioned the very necessity of existence and the folly of human life. Clarity that would be necessary for the courage to follow, the courage that I needed to break the cycle of despair that had become a reality of my life.

Loyana called the day I had begun to have my old nightmares again. The same ones that had the power to make me break out in cold sweat. Where the beatings never stopped and the ranting grew louder, where I’d look desperately for ways to escape and the only way out was death, where the darkness was the suffocating black that gave off the stench of fear, I’d fall through the abyss of memories intertwined with the tricks that my head played on me and woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing shrilly.

Warm relief washed over me in waves. I picked up the phone and never have I been so glad to hear Loyana’s voice either before or after.

“Hello desperado, how’s the treasure hunt going?”
“Not very well I’m afraid. All I’ve found is a couple of old boots and a rusted nail.”
“Well looks like I’ll have to bail you out.Pathetic attempt at humor by the way.”
“I don’t accept charity Loyana.”
“And I don’t offer it my dear friend. I have a legitimate business proposition for you if you’re interested. Meet me at the Coffee Shop when you get off work. Then we’ll talk. Bye”

The instrument felt stone cold in my palm. I put it down and got out of bed with more energy than I possessed. Somehow things were going to work out. I should have listened to the voice in my head that said, ”Oh really?”

Digression 2

When things start to go wrong then they really go wrong. What starts out as a minor problem snowballs into a huge issue and occupies your mind space to the extent that the phrase,” There’s an elephant in the room,” takes on a new meaning altogether.

It had been almost a week since I’d spoken to Loyana and she’d acknowledged my problem but it seemed more like seven seconds had ticked by faster than the grains of sand in an hourglass. Isn’t it strange the way time seems to move at a fast clip when ever you want it to move slowly and moves oh so slowly when you want it to slow down.

There haven’t been many occasions to ask god to make the moment last forever but in the blighted landscape of my life there are few patches of color that stand out in my memory and now I want to relive them forever. Snatches of memory that seem to have been plucked out of the swirling waters of the thought processes that occupy my mind and lie shimmering in the kind of completeness that only pearls and diamonds are able to achieve.

The day I saw my mother for the first time as a person, the moment when I stepped into the hospital to see her for the first and last time, the day I walked out of my father’s house sure that I would never be subjected to that kind of abuse again, the moment when I learnt that life was beginning to fall into place and that split second between the time that Loyana first walked in and settled cat like onto the table and she settled her gaze on me – that tiny millisecond of bliss, of knowing her as just an exquisitely beautiful creature and little else, those are the emotions that I want to relive again and again and again…….

The shortcut off step six.

Dante in his seminal work Inferno provided graphic descriptions of hell and the structure of that dreaded place where virtue’s twin would be punished for eternity once the lifespan of the individual was over. His vision was disputed in his lifetime and still provides fodder for intellectual discussion today.

That heaven and hell exist is indisputable, where and in what form is what matters the most and which no one to date has been able to answer. I called Loyana and in the process I opened up a short passage way that brought me to the gates of hell.

She didn’t waste any time on the usual banal pleasantries.

“You need money to make up your tuition,” she said.

“News travels fast,” I said.

“No, I happen to know that I ‘m your first and last resort, I understand you better than you know yourself.” I don’t think that she ever spoke a truer word in her entire life.

“So do you have any suggestions? I mean, twenty grand isn’t small change.”

“I’m aware of that. Let me see what I can dig up. Mean while you had better ask yourself just how badly you need the cash. I’ll try to call in a few favors. But, I’m warning you this is not going to be easy.”

“If it were easy do you think I’d be calling you?”

“Honey, you’d be calling me any which way. I’m your only hope.”

And so she was. It was better that she knew. I couldn’t place my trust in any one else. No one would understand. I’d tried telling some of my other friends. They hummed and hawed and mumbled something about Personal loans and Credit ratings before hanging up on me. I was desperate and the only straw at hand was Loyana.

I didn’t have to wait long. Short cuts usually take less time. Before I knew it I was standing at the gates of hell and the sight through the bars wasn’t pretty.

The Sixth Step

There days when you wake up thinking that today is going to be your lucky day. I woke up that day without any such premonitions. It would be another mind numbingly exhausting day. I’d walk through it safe in the knowledge that I would be able to deal with whatever life was going to throw my way and yet at the end of the day I’d be tired.

I’d sink onto the pile pf blankets and mattresses and let the warmth seep into my bones. Then with great difficulty I’d rouse myself and shock my senses into reaction with a splash of cold water. The mind numbing cold that tasted raw on the skin, the rush of blood, the body’s feeble attempts to keep warm – it would all jolt me into action.

I walked into the Institute thinking about the latest assignment, I’d managed to get good grades so far and I wanted it to continue. The swirling voices dipped and fell. The sensations my skin had felt were repeated on my ears. An ingratiating harshness that would leave its mark. I walked into the institute not bothering to realize that all my classmates were clustered around the notice board. I didn’t care much. Then out of the blue somebody stopped me and asked me to sign a petition.

It took my poor cold addled brain only a few seconds to fathom that the petition was in protest of the hike in tuition fees.

I stood there not knowing what to do. I didn’t have the money and I had absolutely no idea where I was going to get it from. I was already working in most of my free time and I didn’t study in the few hours that were left then I might as well give up right now.

The whole day passed by in that blur of indecision. The messages from my classmates that the decision had been deferred till the end of the month didn’t make it any less frightening. The basic fact was that I would have to find some cash and find it fast.

Any sane person would argue that I should get a raise or loan from my boss. Any one who knew my boss would know that it would be easier to rip the head off a stone gargoyle and ensure that it spouted real blood but getting cash out of my boss was one of the words that can be counted as a synonym for impossible. My boss doesn’t hate me, he abhors me. And I’m being charitable here.

Most of my life I’ve tried to live with dignity. Wherever possible I would try to put my value system into practice. And so far it hadn’t let me down. I’d lived my life believing that things get better only if you try. Although the initial shock had been a bit too much I wasn’t about to let go. It wouldn’t hurt though to be prepared for the worst that was yet to come.

I tossed and turned through the night wondering what exactly the bets course of action could be. I’d even envisaged going to my boss and explaining my predicament. I thought about asking for an advance on my salary and then paying it off but then all those scenarios crumbled in the face of what I knew would be his answer. Don’t get me wrong here. I wasn’t pessimistic, just realistic.

That was when I decided that it was time I called Loyana………

Digression

Stability. That burning dot in the darkness of the night, the firefly that would forever tantalize and never come to rest any where near. A butterfly on the breeze of time that had me in hot pursuit because I’d given up trying to stand still and let it alight on my palm.

I’d look at the people that would throng the bazaars on festive days and wonder what was it that I’d missed out on? The farcical quality of their daily ministrations would give me food for thought that would ultimately be lost undigested in the realm of the subconscious because more mundane matters would over take the conscious mind.

I’d wait at bus stops forever waiting for that bus that would take me home. Buses would come packed with people but the people I was waiting for would never be on them. I’d take the bus back eking out an existence that was as boring as it was uninspiring.

In the midst of all this I’d met Loyana a few times. She’d appear out of the blue and after bringing a crashing wave of freshness into my life she’d leave just as suddenly. It was the same every time and yet it was refreshing. We never crossed the line that separated love and friendship. She wanted to I didn’t. I knew It’d take me to a place where I wouldn’t be able to return from.

I’d made that mistake already and in the end it hadn’t been pretty. Suffice it to say that I’d never do it again. But there again I went wrong and gave Loyana another reason to push me on the path to hell.

The fifth step

The next few days passed by in a blur. The days got cooler and the nights grew longer. Warm blankets, wood smoke , the sharp bite of winter, the feel of light on your palm, the dance of the senses to the first rush of winter, cold cream, lotions and other sensations less pleasant, moth balls, old woolens, the feel of winter as it seeps through the window’s cracks and through the small chinks in that infinitesimally small gap between jamb and door, the trickle of the first splash of water in the mornings, everything came together to annihilate itself on the nearest paradox.
I’d gotten out my old jackets and found the time to air them, a miracle in itself that the insects couldn’t get to them and neither could the larvae. I’d begun to cough but that too was fast receding in the face of an onslaught of antibiotics, cough syrup and warm fluids that were little more than placebos but seemed to afford relief nonetheless.
I’d put Loyana, Rudra and everything else out of my mind, I had to because I’d wanted to get the whole thing out of my system. I cared more about my career than anything else. The degree was very important to me,. I’d lived for so long in a sense of Limbo that the yearning for stability was now so strong that everything else took a backseat in my life.

I’d eat, breathe and sleep with the sole aim of getting through the two years, what I believed would be the last two years of my life on the road and then I’d find it, the holy grail of stability that I wanted so much that it had moved beyond a quest to become a burning need for salvation.
In this entire process I realized that I am a very selfish individual, more so than Loyana and much more than Rudra or any one else. This was because I make no pretensions to altruism. I left that behind me when I put away my halo. I needn’t carry the burden of the world. It’ll get along without me.

The fourth step

Ironically it was Mrs. Rama who told me about Rudra. He had been an average student in his time but a really good person who would do just about any thing for anyone. He had majored in Marketing and after a stint in an MNC had decided to setup his own BPO.

Like every good person whose motivations are unclear, Rudra too hid a reservoir of pain within him. He had lost the love of his life to a freak accident and no one helped him and all he could do was watch as she died on the road. Rudra had decided then and there to make sure that he’d try his best to be a better human being. Like every good person Rudra had been molded by tragedy and pain into a fine human being who found a reason to live in others.

I remained unaffected by this revelation. Partly because the sorry idealism that lay beneath the reality of a man betrayed by fate was something that I could not relate to. Life had been cruel to me too but then I firmly believed that man remains in control of his own destiny, no matter how bad the circumstances.

And partly because I also believe that good is motivated more by an essential self centeredness of the person doing something good than in their feelings of altruism. I firmly believe that any one doing something that classifies as good does it out pure self interest. A person giving alms to a beggar does so not because the beggar is destitute but because by doing so he eases his own conscience.

I read a poem once that best captured the sentiment. Entitled “Somebody’s Mother,” the poem describes a bent old woman standing on the edge of a busy street wanting to get cross but unable to do so. A group of schoolboys passes by and only one of them stops and helps her across. When his friends ask him why did so, he says that she’s somebody’s mother and that person would be grateful to know that someone had helped his mother cross the road.

Notice that the expectation of gratitude and not basic human decency is the motivating factor behind the boy’s action. Each day innumerable do gooders cross our lives either directly or indirectly but how much of that goodness is actually rooted in altruism? Scratch the surface and you would be surprised to know that the number is very small. Even the most altruistic of people derive a sense of satisfaction from their altruism and that in itself is selfish.

Rudra was no exception. He spread goodness in an effort to ease his own pain. Not with the express intention of doing something good. He helped someone to ensure that a small measure of satisfaction would bring deliverance from the nightmares that plagued his sleep and relief from the demons that encircled his consciousness.

So I wasn’t that surprised when he stopped his car that night. He had to. In such acts lay his salvation, or so he believed.

The Third Step

The night air had grown cooler and Loyana had lapsed into her self imposed cocoon of silence. She drove at a reasonable speed keeping her eyes on the road. I let the cold night air wash over me. It felt like a drought of clean water sliding down your throat on a hot summer's day. The silence of the night broken only by the crunch of gravel against rubber. I started to feel sleepy and then suddenly out of no where I thought of those cold grey eyes and my spine tingled.
Why and how I couldn't say but I was pretty sure that I'd probably be seeing them again.
Loyana drove to the nearest bus stop and said, u'll be able to get home alright? I decided that it was safer to get off there and although I knew that I'd probably have to walk home I said I'd be fine. I got out of the car and then she simply drove away without so much as a by your leave.
I waited for a few minutes and then just as I was about to walk home I saw an expensive car come to a stop right in front of me and the window rolled down..........
"What are you doing here in the middle of the night? Don't you have exams in a few days? And who was that girl?" This barrage of questions served like a series of volleys in a wimbeldon game gave me the much needed time to think about precisely what to say. I needen't have bothered. Rudra wasn't interested. He just wanted to rile me. "Get in.You didn't think I'd let you walk home, did you?" Another rhetorical question that did NOT need an answer. Rudra wouldn't have let anyone walk home.
Rudra had entered my life in pretty much the same way. I was struggling to find a foothold in the Institute and he was one of those do gooders who are bound by an invisible umbilical cord to places they have spent good times in.
I was at the end of my rope having tried everything to get the Librarian to issue a couple of extra books, bribery, sweet talking, chocolates nothing seemed to melt the heart of that harridan. Then Rudra breezed in. All easy charm and refreshing coolness. The atmosphere took on the color of mellow wine and for some reason the Librarian softened.
"Still harassing good kids Mrs. Rama?" And in a few minutes I had half a dozen extra books and both of them were yakking away like long lost kindered souls who meet accidentally in a storm. I couldn't believe my luck. "Thanks." No response. I might as well have been talking to a deaf post for all the attention they gave me.
I slunk away before the spell wore off and Mrs. Rama realised that she had just broken a hallowed library rule.

I didn't know then who or what Rudra was. I didn't want to know. My little padded shell was enough. All I could think of was the assignment that had been handed out and the fact that now I could hand in a better effort than my peers and who knows, get an even better grade than my last assignment. I know. My life sucked. And yes, I was geek no.1.

The second step

The path to hell is paved with good intentions. Another truism that would soon come true. Loyana kept crying for what seemed like an eternity. The tears flooding her face and seeping through her clenched hands. When she finally looked up, the moonlight illuminated every curve of her beautiful cheekbones and lit up her eyes that had been washed clean.
This is the part where I'm supposed to say that I took her face into my hands and kissed away her tears. Sorry to say but that horrible hackneyed scene thats been done to death pretty explicitly by Mills and Boon and whose banalities even Jane Austen couldn't escape didn't happen. And probably because what should have happened didn't was the reason for the events that followed.

Like the moron that I am I offered her a tissue out of the packet that you'll find at all times in my messenger bag. She took it, tore it into shreds and chucked the remains onto the road. I had absolutely no idea what to do next.

"Lets get a cup of coffee," she said and turning the jeep around drove us back to the city. We went to a Barista outlet and it wasn't untill she'd injected a large dose of caffeine into her blood stream that she finally deigned to say something.
"I'm depressed." Pretty obvious. "I've finally realized that I fall in love with the most ridiculous morons that ever passed for males. Plus I have commitment issues." Um, I'm not a shrink lady. "I can't believe I'm telling you this." Well....., that makes two of us then.

She continued in the same vein for about an hour. My cynicism slowly gave way to a heightened sense of irritation and then finally to pity when she began to talk about her parents and their idiosyncrasies. Finally.A topic I could relate to.

She'd recently been subjected to a typical Indian bride viewing and she absolutely hated the whole idea. She trotted out all the familiar feminist arguments and then after another hour of parent bashing, ( they were in a hurry to get me married and now they say that I was the one in a hurry..........yeah right. Whatever. ), She finally realized that I looked like death warmed over and was all apologetic about it.

At this point even I was pretty freaked out. I mean who or rather what was this girl and what the hell was I doing in Barista past midnight? Me. Mr.responsible. I was always putting down plans by my classmates to bunk classes. I was supposed to be sanctimony personified, what was I doing here of all places? In any case I'd got a class at 7 a.m. and I needed at least five hours of sleep. I had no idea how I'd get home. That was when she turned her attention back top me and very casually said,"Come, I'll drop you home.........."

The destruction of a civilization and the distintegration of its memories begins with the moral degradation of its youth. Of all the ideas that Orhan Pamuk expounded in The New Life, this one seemed to have lodged itself in my brain. I looked around and found evidence that probably this was coming true at all levels.
Couples of all shapes and sizes populated the coffee shop that had slowly filled up with people as the night wore on. People who were there for the sake of being there, because its cool to have a boyfriend /girlfriend, because as a famous T-shirt slogan goes Virginity is simply a lack of opportunity. The girls were all dressed in similar looking outfits of tight skirts, heels and skimpy tops while the boys followed the Jeans, t-shirt, designer sneakers and gelled hair uniform that seems to have become a permanent fixture on the circuit.
I realized just how out of place I looked in my flat fronts and button down shirt. to be honest, I looked like a teetotaller in a bar asking for a bottle of Chardonnay. In short, I looked completely out of place. Loyana on the other hand looked like she owned the place. Maybe there is some truth in the belief that its not what you are but what you seem to be that counts.

Sometimes you tempt fate and at other times it beckons to you. I have no idea why but I stopped sweeping my eyes through the room and focused on another anomaly. A very well dressed man in a black frock coat and silk cravat who was sitting at a table populated by a few other equally well dressed individuals. They seemed out of place too but in a way that was quite different from the way I was. They looked like they belonged in a victorian parlour or at the very least in a private room in a luxury hotel. Definitely not in a coffee chain store.

He must have noticed something amiss because he slowly raised his head a fraction of an inch and looked around. It felt like a lion was surveying the landscape. His cold grey eyes appraised the room looking for the source of the disturbance. Something about the way his eyes swept over us both in frank appraisal before finally moving on made me very uncomfortable.

Abruptly loyana turned on her heel and began making her exit leaving me to simply shake my head at the indecipherable social code that seemed to have supplanted the good manners that I'd been taught as a kid. I picked up my bag and left all the while aware of something uncanny having taken place.

The first step.

Since with Loyana it was always about her and other people ceased to take on a personality, I was pretty taken aback by her sudden interest in me and my life. Why lie? I hate it when people ask me to talk about myself. That's because I find it really difficult to tell them anything but the truth and when I do, they find it extremely unpalatable. I decided to give her an edited version of the events that had brought me so far.

It all started in Jodhpur. The sun city of Rajasthan. A place charachterised by sandstone, heat and mirchibade. The last thing is a snack that consists of a HUGE green chili stuffed with mashed potatoes, coated in chickpea flour and fried in boiling oil. America gets fat on Big Macs, fries and coke; Jodhpur clogs its arteries with mirchibade stuffed between two slices of bread and lassi. Whatever works I guess.

My earliest memories comprise of sitting in a patch of sunlight in an expanse of red cemented coolness. I grew up thinking that the red color came from the blood of demons that populated my grandmother's stories. She'd tell us all those wonderful yarns that would leave us wanting more. There was a whole brood of us. Cousins by blood ties on our mothers' side and friends by default. I was the quiet one. I had to be.

I was born on a frosty January evening when the rain gods danced in the heavens with the ferocity of dragons fighting for their lives. The rain came down in torrents and the wind made every ghost story come alive. I'd fought my way out into the world a month early, my impatience manifesting itself in the need to see for myself what exactly was it that my mother warned me against every night before she fell asleep.
I was lucky I was a boy, if I'd been born the girl that my mother so desperately wanted then in all probability I wouldn't be here. I'd be part of the statistics that are quoted each year to gather funds for women's emanicipation in India. Another victim of accidental childbirth. Another unwanted child. Now that I look at it that might not have been so bad. At least, I'd be dead and hopefully at peace.

I was the boy who didn't speak much. The situation was so bad that my mother was afraid that I was dumb. Then finally the rain came to my rescue and the first drop falling on the dry dust of Jodhpur gave off a magic that brought words out of my mouth and my mother heaved a sigh of relief.

When I was about five years old I got on to an airplane that took me away from the wonders of the demon blood stained courtyard and into an equally dusty and dreary land of camels, oil and the smell of money that makes dreams come true for every person who sets foot there. Dubai. The land where the very pavements are paved with the gold of opportunity and the rising sun sets your spirits on fire, the fire to achieve what you'd set out to do.
My father had followed his dreams of a better life to the partnership that he had attained and now he was ready to become whole again. I led an idyllic existence while my mother slowly stifled her dreams and counted out the last few years of her life by immersing herself in the glistening luminiscence of embroidery material and the soft clicking of knitting needles that formed the background music to the gentle beat of time. While her home sparkled with the vitality of her life force the very life was being eaten from within.
A perfectionist to the core, She died with the quiet dignity that she had possesed and worn like a cherished heirloom till the end. Her death did not affect our lives. It was the eventuality of living without her presence that did us in. You never know what you've got untill you lose it. I learnt this the hard way like I did every thing else.

I told my dad not to get married, begged him but all he had to say was,"There are needs that every man has that only a woman can take care of." I was eight years old. Too young to know what he was talking about. But the day my body started to release the animal that every man carries within , I began to hate myself and my body, I hated the animal needs that arose in me and I hated most of all (although I would never acknowledge it to myself untill it was too late) was my father for being human. I hated him for being honest about things that I should never have been forced to acknowledge. I hated him for not being strong enough to love and for being weak in the flesh. I never told him I hated him. He made it plain that he couldn't care less soon enough. He got married within a few months and a few years later I was packed off to Jodhpur having put up with enough physical and mental abuse to last me a lifetime.

At this point Loyana stopped the jeep on the side of the road and began to cry. I told you that you'd find it unpalatable. She didn't listen but kept crying. Silently at first and then in a high pitched keening that told me that whatever it was had little to do with me and more to do with her.As usual.

My descent into hell - Pt. II

One day I walked out after work and I'd barely plugged in my ear phones when I heard a familiar voice asking, " Looking for a ride honey?" Needless to say I whirled round because :-
a) I wasn't used to cheesy pick up lines
b) I'm not that good looking that people mistake me for a Gigolo
c) I had this vague impression that I knew who that voice belonged to.
No prizes for guessing, It was loyana. After that day in the classroom I hadn't seen much of her. A glimpse of her hair as she walked by the library, a whiff of her scent in the corridors, her laughter ringing in the hallway, these were the only signs that showed that loyana existed apart from the jokes that she'd text out of the blue in the middle of the night.

And here she was in the flesh. in condescension to the weather she was wearing a lovely black shawl carelessly slung across her shoulders and vintage earrings. Seated in a sleek black jeep she looked beautiful but before I could say anything, she commanded,"Get in." Since it's severely impolite to not acquisce to a lady's demands, I did as i was told. My friends used to tell me that my chivalry would get me into trouble, And although I'd laughed at them often enough I didn't think that they'd ever be proved right. I was about to have my illusions cleared up.
I got in without any apprehensions, this was loyana after all. At best it would be an adventure into the unknown and at worst it would turn out to be a cheesy situation from a really bad B-grade novel. Either way it proved to be a noveau experience.
I tried asking her where she was coming from and where we were going, but then when i felt that my queries were dying under the wheels of the jeep having fallen on a wall of silence i decided to let her be. I settled back in the plush leather seat and let the cool night air wash over me. It was the beginning of winter and the nights weren't chilly yet. You could get by with wearing a light jacket and if you felt exceptionally brave you wouldn't need much more than a thick shirt.
I've always welcomed the winters. The first whiff of woodsmoke that takes me back to a bus ride on the winding road to Srinagar, the pushcart vendors hawking roasted peanuts and slabs of sticky jaggery based candy, fruit sellers with their trolleys loaded with apples and ofcourse the warm patches of sunshine that you can warm your fingers in, I enjoy winters much more than I'll ever enjoy summer.
That day was one of those treacherous intermittent days when autumn hasn't let go yet and winter is yet to take its rightful place on the seasonal throne. I wonder what was going through her mind and then I noticed that she was moving out of the city towards the forest.
Maybe she wanted to distract me or maybe she was bored. Whatever it was she said, " U never told me anything about yourself. There has to be soem thing interesting. Do tell."
And that was where I took my first step into hell.

My descent into hell

I went home that day thinking about things, my mind whirling through the possibilities that might be and that once existed. A susurrant insistence that everything is not as it seems and could even be completely different. I kept walking along the road barely aware of my surroundings. I looked up just in time to see Markeish waiting to talk to me. The expression on his face was enough to tell me that things weren't all right. "What now?" I thought, "Why can't he stop whining for god's sake!"

Markeish was my neighbor. He'd waltzed in one day when life wanted me to appreciate water more. I'd come home sweaty and dirty only to find that there wasn't any water in the taps and my landlady had gone to somebody's wedding. To top it all off the temperature was touching the forties ( in degrees celcius i might add) and there was exactly half a bottle of water in the refrigerator. Period.
In a heat enduced moment of insanity I ambled over to Markeish's house hoping against hope that maybe the landlady had left her spare key with them so that I'd be able to get in and turn on the water pump.

The short version is that although the creepy landlady did not possess a heart of gold, Markeish did. Markeish inspite of having a ton of faults was eminently lovable, with his puppy dog eyes and floppy brown hair that girls wanted to ruffle the moment they saw it. He was a nice guy. For about half an hour.

He managed to produce a spare water pump and some rubber tubing and put together a makeshift arrangement that solved my problems for the moment. Because no sooner had I managed to cool down that Markeish borrowed a couple of hundred off me. That was the beginning of a long and painful association that usually involved a bunch of white lies coupled with my extreme exhaustion and the desire to envelop myself in a cocoon of warmth that would eventually lead to my shelling out a "small loan" that would go straight on to the bad debts column. If I could wipe him off the list of people that I've ever known I'd do so post haste. But I can't.

The day I came back after listening to Loyana for the first time was also the day I refused to loan Markeish anything. Because I was at the end of my rope.

I'd just completed two years of being a teacher, mentor, guide and all round good guy and had nothing to show for it. Somewhere along the way, the satisfaction of teaching stopped making up for the lousy pay. I was twenty four years old with very little to say for myself. I'd achieved what I set out to achieve - being a good person but the truth was that my self respect and empathy were being misused. I'd been lied to, used, made out to be a moron - by just about every one you can name. I'd begun to feel unloved and unwanted.

My best friends from my college days were all married and here I was. No girl , no life, no sense of direction. A year into the job when the pay became truly lousy and the drudgery too much I decided to hand in my halo and wings and get myself a masters. The options covered many spectra but I finally settled on a masters in business administration.

I put in a year of preparations coupled with being a full time angel and after a lot of heartache and disappointments I finally landed in an okay kind of an institution that like everything else in the Indian hinterland boasts of a great past but a lousy present. Which one doesn't matter. Look around and you'll find them sprouting under every patch of shade. The best thing was that I could afford the cost of tuition for the first year.

Since my stepmother ( so I didn't mention her either, sue me!) wasn't very happy about parting with the greenbacks I had to get a job. By some horrible twist of fate I landed up in the same coaching centre that I'd gone to in my days as an MBA aspirant. To cut a long story short I was forced to reprise my role as angel in human clothing. The problem was that once you hand in your halo and the headaches stop you can't put it back on again. I was trying very hard and failing . Failing miserably. I wasn't fitting in anywhere. The halo was much too tight and the wings just didn't reattach. I'd forget to take off the halo when I'd get to class and leave it at home when I was supposed to be on angel duty. Teacher, student, teacher, student - the perpetual role reversals were getting on my nerves. I had double vision from being able to see the issue from both sides. I was sinking. And the fact that my pay was at its lowest ebb was not helping matters. I wanted out. i wanted somebody to talk to, to share my confusion, little did I know that I'd asked for too much....
They say that you should be very careful about what you wish for because you never know, it just might come true. I'd been wishing hard for some form of reprieve. The pressures were mounting. I was being forced to excel and I thought I'd die from the pressure. The constant whirl of life as it passed me by made me feel as if I was standing on a platform that was in the middle of nowhere and none of the trains would ever stop. Being caught in a sandstorm on a hot summer day held more appeal than being out in that miasma.
Then she walked and it felt like the soft patter of raindrops that tickles your skin. A rush of sensation and your blood sings in your veins. The light falls in to broken pools of gold on a winters day. That's what her presence brought but only in the beginning.
Later the raindrops turned to a hail of glass and the golden sun to hellfires. Like sailors of yore i had been led to believe in the beauty of the siren's call and when my life's ship crashed on the rocks of treachery I couldn't blame anyone.
I managed to juggle my varied roles for a while and then one day without warning, my life decided to come to a standstill.

Loyana's true lies Pt. 2

I'd been wanting to get a better antivirus software for my computer and some blank CDs. Okay so I also wanted to chat up the dude behind the counter as well. Sue me. I'm human. Any way the dude behind the counter was conversing with this person in a standard military issue jacket. Big deal. Every other macho idiot buys a fake military jacket. They think it's a babe magnet. Hell, I would have been hooked on this guy even if he wasn't wearing that jacket but then I've always had this thing for guys in uniform.............
So I did what any sensible girl faced with a tough choice like dude or uniform guy does. I accidentally - on - purpose dropped my CDs and the software package and tripped straight into Mr. Uniform's hands. And just for the record, they were pretty solid hands.
I looked up and that was it. He was hooked. They say in India," Hansi toh phansi." The girl equivalent is - trip into his arms and if he doesn't drop you once he's looked at you, girl you're good to go.
So we started going steady and I hope I'm going to be Mrs.uniform some day. Although i might convince him to change his last name, sounds a little middle class types don't you think?

And so we came to the end of her first true lie. The truth was that the guy who left her standing in the forest and Mr. uniform were one and the same guy. The lie was that she would never become Mrs. uniform. She'd end up as Mrs. NRI. The sad part? She knew it too.....

Loyana's true lies.

Loyana took great pleasure in mixing reality with fiction. She'd effortlessly put across her own version of the truth without thinking about the consequences. The first of her true lies started off with a comment by Cody that he'd spent most of his life in army schools. That was it.
She started off on her then boyfriend who was also an army school product. The way she talked about him you would have thought that she was madly in love with him. Probably she was, but then you never knew with her.

This was the story she spun out that day--

I met him for the first time when I needed help with my computer. I had just broken up with my toyboy of the moment. He wanted to "make love" to me and I didn't want to. He left me standing in the middle of a forest clearing. At midnight. 20 kilometers from home. I walked home that night thinking that I'd never get entangled with anyone ever again and just my luck that I fell in love the very next day.

I'd gone home on foot in the dead of the night and by 8 a.m my mom shook me awake. I'd asked her to and it was one of those few times that she did. Not out of motherly concern but because she had found an old photograph of me. No, the photograph was rather flattering because it was taken at twilight but it was the background that did me in..........

The end and the beginning Pt.II

Why am I so lonely? Hmmmmmmmm........ Good question. Put like that I realized for the first time in my life that despite being surrounded on all sides by people I was, I am lonely. Lonely for what? And whose absence am I lamenting? What was it about her that forced me to question myself and look for answers on a small shaft of sunlight falling into the room? I decided to give her my full attention and put away my virgin copy of Friends, Lovers, Chocolate and plunged headfirst into that fabulous aura.

She smiled then. Childlike, a little girl having got her way on first try. Very slowly she adjusted her sinews in an effort to contain her energy and then without any prevarication, she began to tell me the first of her stories that were more truth than fiction, more fire than there is water in the oceans and more darkness than there is light.

What would you expect from a poor little rich girl? Debauchery? parents with more money than sense giving in to every whim of a child who wore her heart on her sleeve, making every effort to give you evrything you want except love. What did I epect from her?
Truthfully I expected nothing from her. But she wanted to tell me, bind me to her soul with hoops of steel as a famous poet once exhorted his son to were he ever to find true friends.
She talked for hours. The light grew softer. Darkness began to fall. The classroom filled with anticipation slowing curdling to exasperation and then to a finality of knowledge that the wait is futile.
I sat there. Mesmerized by her story. I knew from the beginning that her ability to lie was a well developed faculty. I realized too late that she told me nothing but the truth....

The end and the beginning

I knew she'd get me into trouble. She had that indefinable quality that makes a man want to run in two opposing directions all at once and yet stay put long enough to watch the human time bomb self destruct. She took great pleasure in harming herself. She wasn't into physical violence. She preferred assaulting your mind.
She couldn't feel emotions. Even if she could, she'd learned to push them away from her into that aura of smoke and perfume that surrounded her at all times, the kind of earthy fragrance that is woodsmoke on a cold foggy morning in the hills and the heady scent of perfume in a nightclub, the sound of fragrance crashing with sweat and the silence that follows smoke devils dying in the cold night air.
She left as soon as she came and with the sense of having left behind a part of life that would remain with me for as long i live........
Before you jump to any conclusions, I didn't make the mistake of falling in love with her. It would be the only thing I was able to do for her and perhaps the only reason that she hurt me, clawed at me and did her level best to destroy me but then when she realised that there was some thing some where inside me that she would never be able to touch she left without a trace of bitterness, realising too late that more than she hurt me she had hurt herself.
I am not going to take the moral high ground and claim that she is responsible for what I've become today. I'm not going to claim that I am innocent. She gave me a choice and in trying to walk a tight rope between sanity and surreality, I fell and I'm still trying to find the fine dividing line.
Loyana. That's not her name. But for friendship's sake I will call her that. Don't try to look for her. She's long gone. Merging into an oblivion where even the devil refuses to tread for fear of awakening her.
She simply walked in one day. The way witches waylay lords in midstride. Simply walked in and plonked herself on the table. The soft sunlight of her T-shirt glowing against the backdrop of a pale blue wall, her slim frame outlined clearly, a molten river of chocolate and warm coffee cascading down her back, caressing every alphabet of her spine in a way that bordered on the obscene. The air charged with her aura gave you the impression that a instead of a human being a panther had walked in and settled on the table and was giving off the reek of benignity while enjoying the silent consternation that it' s presence was causing.
The table was a typical brown table that you find in class rooms across the country. Sitting there she didn't look like your typical attention seeking student. She looked like what she was. A woman who grew too fast in the mind and forced her body to catch up. A woman who would push herself and as the poem goes would toss all her earnings on one roll of the dice and if she'd lose, why she'd simply pick herself up and go at it again.
Loyana looked me straight in the eye and said,"Tell me, why are you so lonely?"
With that one question ," She gave me sadness and the gift of pain, a new moon madness and a love of rain."
She was, she is, the end and the beginning.