Freaksihly Faithful : Chapter 7 - Fire and Ice

This is a first. I've deleted what used to be Part 3 of this Chapter (it was a filler anyway) and replaced it with what i originally planned as Part 4. This one is the longest yet, but i really could keep it short. it's an important turning point...

Part 3

That piece of writing had had a cathartic effect on me. Although Karan’s response to it at the time when he read it seemed somewhat mild (apparently Akruti had returned to Pune from her hometown only that day, and Karan had interrupted a ‘Welcome Back’ session to see me), it served to lessen the considerable surge of emotions that I was being consumed by at the time, however temporarily. Soon after seeing Karan, I left for Bangalore to take part in a Debate Competition, and for the next few days, all thoughts of Ruksana were replaced by Propositions, Rebuttals, Points of Information, Definitions, and also a surprise Birthday party for me thrown in. I boarded the bus back to Pune in considerably good spirits, refreshed by an all-round excellent experience.

 

November 15, 2005. The bus pulled into the final stop at Swargate, Pune. I had little on the agenda, since classes for the day had already ended in college (which I considered irrelevant in any case), and the closest thing I had to a plan was to call Karan, although considering how occupied he was with Akruti those days, I didn’t have much hope of spending much time with him. Nevertheless, I dialed his number, and hailed him with my usual greeting every time I called him – his name.

 

“Karan Singh!”

 

His pause was uncharacteristic. When he did speak, his voice was heavy, though not from sleep.

 

“Da… What’s up man? How are you?”

 

“I’m good, dude. Just got back from Bangalore. Thought I’d check up on you.”

“Oh, you just got back, is it? Nice… nice… How was the trip?”

 

His words were measured, distant. The attitude was one of forced politeness, not friendly familiarity. The conclusion seemed obvious - something was wrong. I decided to probe a little.

 

“Dude, where are you now?”

 

“Huh? Um… I’m… home.”

 

Home?

 

“As in at Akruti’s?”

 

“No dude. My place.”

 

Home! What the heck was he doing back there? His roommate Dilawar had often asked me as to the whereabouts of Karan ever since he started seeing Akruti. It seemed he had pretty much moved in with her. He hadn’t really been home in ages. I might’ve let it go, but for his unusually distant demeanour in the conversation. 

 

“How come you’re home? Gone to pay the rent or something?”

 

“No, Da… It’s over.”

 

My eyes widened as I heard those words. A faint whiff of the potential significance of those words swirled in my head. It was enough for me to know that whatever else was to be said, could not be said over the phone. I acted reflexively.

 

“I’ll be right there!”

 

I rushed home, dumped my bag in my room, and without even washing up a bit (which, considering I had spent the previous 15 hours in a bus from Bangalore, was a necessity) I grabbed the keys to my bike and zoomed off to the Great Punjab Restaurant, where Karan and I had decided to meet.

 

I found him sitting on the pavement outside the Great Punjab, looking haggard and disheveled. I parked the bike and walked up to him, as he stood up to greet me with a very forced smile and a weak handshake. I could see in his eyes that he was glad to see me, but there were far more alarming messages to be read in those eyes. Neither of us had eaten anything, so we decided to have lunch in the Great Punjab.

 

We sat at a table and lit our smokes. He was trying to make light conversation, but it was pointless. Eventually, I geared myself up and asked the question.

 

“What happened?”

 

He looked at me with an air of abject resignation. He opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated, every sign of utter helpless confusion pouring forth from the widening of his eyes, the furrowing of his brow and the slight, quick shaking of his head. When the words did emerge, they came in a tremor.

 

“We broke up, dude. Guess it wasn’t working out.”

 

The shock on my face went unnoticed by Karan. I studied his face for further signs of emotion, but they were vague, and he seemed to be struggling to keep them under control. His eyes avoided mine for the most part, his voice was tentative, and he seemed to be talking more to himself than to me, as he tried to come to terms with the issue.

 

“We’ve been having some pretty bad fights lately. Her ex-boyfriend was in town recently and was staying over at her place. I discovered that there was something between them still. I could feel it, dude. I asked her a couple of nights back if she still liked him, but she rubbished the idea. Last night we were having another big fight, and I asked her about why we fight so much. She said that she felt suffocated in the relationship, Da. That I love her too much, that there is nothing but love in the relationship. That she can’t handle it. I fed the fish too much, she said. I couldn’t believe it! I went home last night, not able to figure out what the fuck to do! This morning I went to her place again to sort things out. But I couldn’t, Da. She said that she needed a break, and told me again how I loved her too much! I didn’t know what to do. I just said that I couldn’t stay anymore. And she said that she wasn’t asking me to. That was it!”

 

It sounded strange, too random. There appeared to be no real reason, beyond the vague reference to Akruti’s ex-boyfriend, behind this break-up. Of course, this was a difficult time for Karan, and he might not have been thinking straight. I felt it better to just listen. He seemed to need a sympathetic ear more than advice at the time.

 

After a few minutes of silence, he decided to lighten the air a bit.

 

“Screw it dude,” he said, “let’s eat something.”

 

As if in cue, a waiter walked up with the menu. Karan knew that waiter, and had often chatted with him on many occasions when we’d dined at the Great Punjab. It was one of Karan’s favourite haunts, and he always took people there. So the next line from the waiter, inappropriate though it was under the circumstances, came as no surprise.

 

“Sir, Didi is not with you today?”

 

I glared at the waiter, infuriated at this impertinence. Karan simply smiled haplessly, and almost in a whisper said that she will not be joining him. Fortunately the waiter did not decide to pursue the topic further, and we ate our lunches in silence.

 

Once we were done with lunch, Karan asked me to come over to his place for a while. That was just as well, as I did not intend to leave him alone in the state he was in. We rode over to his place on my bike, and entered the house, which was empty, all his flat mates being in their respective colleges at the time. He switched on the computer in his room to put on a playlist of songs, and sat smoking, not saying a word. I’ve never been much for small-talk, so I puffed away quietly at my cigarette, turning over all that Karan had told me just a while back.

 

Suddenly Karan looked at me and said, “Dude, can you please play a video for me on the comp?”

 

He named a video of a Jagjit Singh song, and guided me to the video file buried somewhere in his hard drive. I hadn’t heard the song before, and didn’t really think much about his sudden request, thinking it best to do pretty much whatever he wanted for a little while. The video came on, and all I really remember of that video was that there was a lot of rain, a pair of lovers and Jagjit Singh singing a sorrowful ghazal.

 

I sat next to Karan on the floor mattress. He head had been hanging throughout, his eyes facing the floor, staring at nothing. But as the strains of Jagjits Singh’s voice carried through the song, the music tinged with deep melancholy, the effect was far from lost on Karan. Right then I saw through the veil of confusion over his face, and his real feelings were beginning to trickle through. He was huddled up on that mattress, a tremble in his lips getting progressively more pronounced as he kept swallowing frequently, the wrinkles on his forehead deepening gradually. He presented a painful sight, a man trying desperately to hold the boy within in control, holding on to threads of a rapidly weakening resolve, willing himself not to break. But the collapse of the wall was needed, the swelling tide could be held back only so long.

 

There was nothing for it. I reached out and put my hand reassuringly on his shoulder. Immediately his resolve cracked, he buried his head on my shoulder and all attempts at maintaining control were washed away in the inevitable flood of tears. For the first time in my life, I saw a young man break down completely, utterly defeated by circumstances that he could not understand, shattered into submission through his racking sobs. For more than half an hour he cried, until his body could take no more and he nearly passed out from sheer exhaustion. And the whole time I remained quiet, dumbfounded at the sheer pain my best friend was in. I could offer no words of consolation, no hollow reassurances like ‘It’s gonna be ok’ and the like. When he was finally done, he lay on his bed for some time, while I sat at the computer, doing little more than rotating the mouse and staring at the cursor move in circles on the screen.

 

Eventually he woke up, and washed his face for a good long while. It was late in the evening, and I had to get home, since I’d not been home in over 5 days. We went out for a smoke and a bite to eat, and he spoke with a lot less difficulty, the emotional purging having clearly lightened his spirits considerably.

 

But his ordeal seemed to have one more leg to be traversed. As I was about to leave, he asked me to give him a lift to Scorpio’s, near Akruti’s place. I looked at him as if he was crazy, but he said that he had to take care of things. With many a misgiving I dropped him outside the gate of the housing society where Akruti stayed.

 

I rode away quietly, never realizing that a part of Karan had just died, and from its ashes there was something rising, something that even Karan would come to somewhat regret in later years.

 

We liked to call it ‘The Pac-Man’… 

Freakishly Faithful - Chapter 5 : Flicker to Flame

Part 3

Our days in Anzarle were typically spent with early morning walks on the beach, a late morning dip in the sea followed by a refreshing and invigorating bath at the water-pump next to the well in the courtyard of the beach house, an afternoon siesta and trips to places of interest in the evenings. We especially liked to sit on a cliff high above the beach, a place we’d call the ‘Sunset Point’ and gaze at the setting sun, the myriad hues of the evening sky drifting in layers from crimson richness to ethereal blackness. We’d sit there in silence, each engaged in deep contemplation on God-knows-what, with the strong, salty sea-breeze providing a haunting score to our thoughts. As the end of our trip drew nearer, our conversations began to be tinged with melancholy at the thought that this perfect escape from the routine of our lives had to be so short-lived. But with the Rotaract year ahead, and with our new found camaraderie, we rejoiced at the thought that a new phase in our lives was due to begin, one we would engage in together.

I had carried my guitar with me on this trip. Seema and Nishita had both seen me play at Aarambh, and of course, Ruksana had been a part of the Orchestra. I figured that it would come in handy if we ever got bored. I had been working on a song for some time, trying to base it on my feelings about Maya and about life post our breakup. I’d gotten the first four lines down earlier, and the music of the song was more or less ready. But, the song being in Hindi, I was having trouble coming up with the lyrics (us Bongs are known for our Hindi deficiencies).

One afternoon the girls asked me to play something on my guitar. I dished out my favourite Euphoria numbers, and once I’d gotten them swinging, I decided to try my song on them. I played the song, singing the first 4 lines and humming the rest. They liked the sound of it. I explained that it’s a song on loving and losing, and that I was having trouble finishing it. Ruksana, in her playful manner, joked that maybe it would help if I thought about that girl I’d fallen for in school. I smiled away her little dig; by now the others new well enough that I’d had such feelings for Ruksana back in school. But the idea bore some merit. So when the girls went in for their afternoon nap, I sat with my guitar in hand, closed my eyes, and went back to someday in July 1998. And the course of my thoughts went something like this:-

‘A daily ritual, observed religiously for years and years, seemed unfamiliar today. The usual precursors to the ritual were present well enough: the strange, contradictory combination of a monotonous, yet crest and trough like speech of the science teacher (who, in this particular case, only ever sounded fun while describing vectors, because she'd always say in her south Indian accent, "Vector Oh Yay" indicating vector OA), the weary sighs of my co-sufferers, the occasional, yet increasingly frequent yawns and the equally occasional, yet equally increasingly frequent churns of empty stomachs. The glances at my wristwatch were reflexive, intuitive even. Over a decade of expectation unfailingly made an imagined dopplerised bell ring in my head, even before the actual one echoed through the air, a clarion call of salvation for the hungry and bored. Lunch recess was here, as it had been all these years, again. But what was wrong? What was the dampener of the joyous gasp at freedom?

I saw it as the others began walking out of the class. What was this? Who were these people? What the hell were they wearing? Don't they look at themselves in the mirror in those, those hideous shades??? How can they bear to... My thoughts trailed off as I looked down at myself; peach shirt, ugly brown trousers, the letters VB embroidered onto the breast pocket, brown socks, tan shoes!! Not leather, but plastic, all-bloody-weather!!! Where was my white shirt, the white trousers, the white socks, the black shoes?? The navy blue tie with the Marian insignia pinned thereon?? What happened to the paint on the walls?? Shit, what happened to the walls??!!

Oh yeah, right... This isn't my school... No, wait a minute, this is my school, it just isn't my… No, no, no... Right, I got it! This is my school, now! It's not these people or the walls that are strange… Here, I'm the stranger…

That's what it was, wasn't it? It was yet another lunch break, but it wasn't a familiar lunch break. I wasn't going to charge down the marble staircase into the senior assembly hall, and start munching on the usual rolls from my tiffin box while chatting with Manik and Adnan, or showing my face to Drumeel so that I could be in one of the teams for the usual lunch-time football match. Nope, today I was going to climb down a narrow flight of stairs onto what is known as a 'Quadrangle' and walk onto a playground with two football goal-posts at either end and a most detestable, incredulity inspiring, enthusiasm rogering, scorn raising, and, to put it in plain English, completely fucked up "no playing in the lunch break" rule!!!!! Yup, this was my unknown, unfamiliar reality. No wonder it didn't feel right.

New school, new guy, day 2. It was the first time I'd put on the school uniform, And the sight of all the brown clothing (and red hair bands on the chicks… Goddamit, chicks!!!! [I was in a non-co-ed school before this. This is not an exclamation of joy, but one of agony {feels freaky to be stared at but so many unknown women because you're the new guy}]) made me feel weird as hell! Having been in one school for the better part of my academic life had made me thoroughly institutionalised. I wasn't quite used to being stared and pointed at like a circus freak!! But it was a position I'd resigned myself to accept. I mean what the heck, makes it easier to get to know people when they're curious enough to come to you as if you were a museum piece or something. Although it gets a little fucked up when they talk to you like you're dyslexic.

I grabbed my tiffin box and walked down the stairs after most of my class-mates had already gone. I did what I usually did when I had to eat lunch without Manik and Adnan around, by walking on the “play”ground, munching on the rolls. Once again, in my mind, I cursed my present situation. What the fuck kind of school banned playing on the playground??? Who the hell were these weird kids eating their lunches, sitting on the playground!!!!!! From post to post, sitting on mats in circles of various sizes, groups of students eating lunch, chatting away like they were in a goddamned banquet hall. Bloody hell, this was a football ground for Christ's sake!!

And then it happened... It was the single, most inexplicable thing... It was a voice, I know it was a voice... But there was something ethereal to it, like nothing I'd heard before... If you can imagine yourself to be an emaciated skeleton with your skin clinging onto the bones, and dehydrated to the point where your liver and kidneys begin to push against your body, and in that state you hear the gentle gush of a waterfall into a brook marking the entrance to Shangri la, you might understand what I felt in the few moments that it took me to turn around and face the source of the sound. The vision was blinding… No, actually that's not what it was. There was an implosion of light, 120 degrees of visible area suddenly contracted into one concentrated space, and in that space there was only her... Nothing else existed, nothing else got through. It was only that space, only her, her eyes, her face, her smile, and her voice... A voice that made every part of me quiver (perhaps, I fear, too visibly), yet one that numbed me to a point where the sound seemed distant, hauntingly enchanting, like the strains of the Siren's lute. Her smile was a constant through her speech, and her pearly white teeth flashed at me every now and then, teasing me like some infernal will-o'-the-wisp. "Hi, I'm Ruksana. You must be the new boy..." That and the rest of her words flowed out of her lips like the most symmetrically tantalising poetry! There was no question of resistance, no time to put up a guard… The cherub with the bow flitted around me, laughing joyfully as he shot arrow after arrow at me, piercing into my heart as incessantly and determinedly as a deranged battering ram.

For once, for the first time, and unquestionably at the first sight, I was in love...’

I opened my eyes with a start. It had been years since I had thought of that moment, and all of a sudden something that had lain asleep deep within me stirred ever so slightly. I knew I had to disregard it, and the guitar in my mind gently reminded me of the object of the reminiscences. I began playing my song, and after I’d finished the first four lines, the words just came to me –

“Woh pehli baar jab tumne mujhse baatein kit hi,
Aisa laga ki aasmaan se Pari aa giri thi,
Un gehri aankhon mein ek sharaarat si dikhi thi,
Woh sunehri muskaan dekh meri sansein tham gayi thi…”

Freakishly Faithful - Chapter 4 : From Dawn to Dusk

Part 3

February 15, 2005. It was Ruksana’s birthday. Two days ago, on February 13, it had been Maya’s birthday. Two women whom I have loved tenderly, passionately, in whose memories I have revelled, in whose company I have lost and found myself, in whose essence I have felt the meaning of love. Perhaps it is ironic that a day of love finds itself between their birthdays, neither one seeming any less important than the other, the day before and the day after. Some might call it poetic, and some might say I’m just a sucker for romanticism, either way, Valentine’s Day was a day full of emotion for me. And this time, the Day brought cruel tidings for another.

Karan had asked me to be there next to him, while Mo told him about Akruti’s condition. I felt distinctly awkward, and I knew I had no business being there. I didn’t know Mo, and my idea of Akruti had been limited to Karan’s sporadic reminiscences. I, therefore, chose to shut out whatever was being said by Mo to Karan, and endeavoured to pass the time in happy thoughts of Maya, and to a lesser extent, Ruksana (my break up with Maya had only happened 2 months earlier). But the mood was sombre, and there was a suggestion of a crisis in Karan’s body language as he spoke to Mo. Time was beginning to drag itself, and my position was becoming a very difficult one. At last Karan stood up and said, “Please tell her to stop being… like that. Call me once you reach over there, okay?” His words were somewhat broken and he was quite visibly shaken up.

We said our goodbyes to Mo and headed for the Great Punjab restaurant down the street. Karan walked in a daze, his eyes fixed on the pavement as if the road would show him the meaning of it all. We sat down at a table in the restaurant, and I ordered a Coke for him, his favoured beverage. The waiter placed the bottle before him, but Karan made no move to pour himself a glass. I poured one for him, and as I pushed the glass to him, I said, “Dude…”

Karan looked up at me, and I saw in his eyes a torrent of heretofore alien emotions. There was fear, there was pain, there was doubt, but more than anything else, there seemed to be despair. “She called me yesterday, Da,” he mumbled, “on Valentine’s Day. She asked me why hadn’t I called. She asked me if I was with her, with MJ. She… she asked me if I still cared.”

I caught a drift of hysteria in his words. His whole aspect suggested something vaguely horrible. His charming, carefree demeanour was dissolving into a morass of confusion and terror before my very eyes. This was a Karan Singh few would ever get to see.

“She said she hates me, Da,” he continued, “hates me for having loved her. For having dreamed of her. For holding her hand, for the flowers last year. She hates me because Mo and Rose keep talking about me, and she hates me because she keeps talking about me to Mo and Rose. But why, Da? Why does she need me now? I asked so many times, she always turned me down. There were times I felt like I was a clown doing a juggling act on a unicycle just to make her smile, but she hardly seemed to care. And now, this? Why now, Da? After I’ve finally begun to leave her behind, after I’ve become so interested in MJ, why now?”

The answer seemed obvious. “Because you’ve become so interested in MJ,” I replied.

He looked at me with that pained expression. “She’s cut herself, Da,” he cried, “she’s been pulling off pieces of flesh on her arm with nail clippers. She’s nearly slit her wrist!”
This was bad. The matter seemed on the verge of getting out of hand. For the first time in my life, I felt confronted with a problem whose solution gave away no hint at itself. All I could say was, “Holy shit!”

“What should I do, Da?” he said, “What the fuck should I do?”

But I could say nothing. The woman sounded crazy, but now wasn’t the time to venture a psychoanalysis. I said in a dry voice, “I don’t know man. Maybe you should tell someone in her family about this.”

But he wasn’t going to do that. I knew it, he knew it. It might have been the intelligent thing to do, but it might mean he would lose her forever. Even if he felt he might never have her, he still wanted to hang on to some sense of hope. He closed his eyes, and in a few minutes his face hardened, his lips setting into a thin line. When his eyes opened, there was a look of painful resolve. For the first time he noticed the glass of Coke in front of him. His fingers slowly curled around and gripped the glass, and as he took a swig of the drink, it appeared that his mind had found an instant of sanity. As he set the glass down, he looked at me and said, “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do, but she needs me…” And with that he stood up and walked away.