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.