A cup of tea

It was a quaint old neighbourhood, tucked away from the cacophony of zooming cars and crisscrossed highways. The houses bore a weathered look; their faces streaked with betel laden spittoon, their corners crumbling, and their ledges in desperate need of paint. The street lamps stood there, rusty, like old men; the light of their eyes dimming with age. Tiny cobwebs dangled from the edges of the wiry lattice patterns, unperturbed.  The meandering cobbled road was riddled with potholes, pockets of muddy rainwater dotting the otherwise parched surface. A few men were buying cigarettes from the rickety old shack in the distance, lighting their fresh rolls of tobacco from the burning end of a piece of coir suspended from the jagged edge of a lone nail. They inhaled the smoke deep into their lungs, releasing fuzzy rings of their daily woes into the air; lopsided ovals of smoke that collapsed into nothingness.

Sam stood there in front of his favourite coffee shop. Oriental Coffee House, estd 1958. It was one of those places that he had discovered during one of his nightly sleepless strolls down the road. At a glance, the place had nothing much to offer. Modest square tables coupled with wooden straightback chairs were lined up one behind the other. Identical covers were fashioned out of cheap red and white checked cotton. The only signs of embellishment were tiny porcelain vases with plastic flowers in them that graced the centre of each table; flowers that never wilted, flowers that were never thirsty, flowers that always remained the same shade of magenta. It seemed like the entire room was lifted straight out of a whole sale market at an enviable rebate. Sam wondered how this place could still keep up with the new army of coffee shops that had taken over the city like a plague, with their pricey flavoured beverages and stale two-day old croissants wrapped in fragrant cellophane. But considering it continued to stand there, surviving the repeated blows of half a century of globalization, Oriental Coffee House was surely doing something right. 

Sam looked at his watch. It was quarter past four. Meera was supposed to be there fifteen minutes before. Is she coming? Has she lost her way? Sam took out that precious scrap of napkin from his wallet. He decided to call her. Again. He looked around for a phone booth, but there was none in close sight. The age of pocket phones had driven the familiar standing phone booths into extinction. Sam grew impatient. He didn’t want to be stood up. It would be too much of an assault to his fragile bulbous ego. He looked into the coffee shop and asked if he could make a call. Two rupees a minute, he was informed curtly. He was willing to pay ten. The phone looked like a relic from a different era; big, black, with a rotating dial and a cradle that let out a muffled jingle every time you placed the weighty receiver on it. He wondered if it had been used post-Independence. He dialed the numbers nervously and waited, rehearsing his lines in his mind. The trail of rings was cut short by a gruff voice. It was a man.

“Hello?”

Sam slammed down the phone, his heart racing. Who would that be? Her husband? He remembered Meera wearing an alternating set of traditional red and white bangles when he first met her at the nightclub; the kind that puts women in glass boxes, cordoned off from the wishful eyes of lonesome men. What am I doing here? This is wrong. Sam felt terribly uncomfortable. His collar felt like a crushing noose, tightening its hold on him, till the veins in his neck stood out; throbbing, struggling to break free. The world around him, as he knew it, was all too real. It had no room for childish fantasies. He decided to walk.

“There you are!”

A familiar voice called out from behind him. He turned around to see Meera, standing there, hands folded, with exasperation clouding her face.

“This is the best you could come up with?! I was walking in circles for an hour trying to locate this godforsaken joint.”

Sam was too taken aback to say anything. He had played out this encounter in his mind a million times before, but it hardly ever involved battling a volley of accusations. He looked at the decrepit coffee shop and thought it had been a mistake all along.

“Sorry. Can we go in?” Sam continued apologetically.

Meera smiled her impish smile. “Yes please.”

She walked in with an air of confidence. It felt like she had been here a million times before. Sam followed her to a table by the window. He noticed a damp spot on the wall not so far away. He muttered under his breath and averted his eyes quickly.

“Nice place”, she said, looking around. Two men in soiled lungis, sitting with their feet up at the next table stared at her, their eyes transfixed.

“You’re kidding right?” Sam had never been so embarrassed before in his life.

“Not at all. I like quaint places. Thank heavens you didn’t pick a place teeming with adolescent high-school kids”, she laughed.

It wasn’t all a mistake after all, Sam thought. He felt like he did know her a little. Two steaming cups of ginger laced tea and piping hot samosas made it to their table in response to a mere hand gesture. Sam loved having tea served in earthen cups. The salty texture of burnt red clay fused with the scent of aromatic tea leaves made it priceless. He paused for a second to observe Meera digging into the samosas hungrily like a child, talking with food in her mouth. She was beautiful. She was real.

“So what are we doing here exactly?” asked Meera, casual as ever.

“Umm. I don’t know really. Having tea I guess?”

Meera looked up. Her eyes glinted. “Stating the obvious is not going to help you mister. What I mean is why did you call me last night? After so many days?”

“I wish I knew the answer to that. I felt like talking to someone.”

“And what made you think that I would be such a pleasure to talk to? Not to mention, being up at that ungodly hour?”

“But you were, right? That’s what matters. So, if I may ask, why were you up so late?” Sam asked, his confidence trickling in.

“Well. Let’s just say I have trouble sleeping like you do. Can we keep it at that?”

Sam got distracted by her hand. There were a couple of fading laceration marks below her wrist. The diamond on her finger caught the light of the setting sun. It sparkled. He lost the thread of the conversation.

“What?!”

She moved her hands from the table. “Never mind. Can we go for a walk now? The two men at the next table need a break”, she whispered smiling.

Sam laughed. They paid at the counter and walked out. “Where are we going?” Sam wasn’t expecting this in the least.

“I’ll take you to a special place. You’ll see.”

They walked along the cobbled pavement, guessing the trees along the way. They talked about their lives, in little veiled packets. They talked about how 80’s music still made them sing out loud in the shower. They talked about how they both loved the monsoon. And just like that, the sun bid adieu and rain clouds spilled all over.

Strangers

Sam heard a din somewhere in the darkness. It sounded like the clanging of metal, one heavy and the other sonorous. It started off as a faint rhythmic vibration, almost undetectable, like the distant chime of an old grandfather clock; slow and regular. Then it grew louder, with every passing minute, pounding against his eardrum relentlessly, like caged waves dying to break free. He covered his ears to block the noise out. He could feel his pulses hammering against his temples, threatening to crack open his skull. He couldn't bear the assault anymore and in a moment of acute restlessness, he forced his eyes open.

The room looked unfamiliar. Everything in it was a blinding shade of white. The walls, the rows of bedspreads, the flooring, the curtains – all white. It seemed like an endless snowy desert; cold and austere. He looked at the clock. It was six in the morning. There were boys of different sizes; all wearing blue striped pajamas, with toothbrushes in hand, lining up outside what seemed like a common washroom. Some had their eyes closed while they leaned on the boy in front of them, refusing to let morning disrupt their lingering dreams of the previous night. Some had bundles of soiled laundry in hand, their disinterest showing, while others were busy complaining about the futility of compulsory morning assembly. While Sam sat on his bed watching this curious group of adolescent boys trying to figure out where he was, it all came back to him.

It was around noon the day before when his father had dropped him off before the towering iron gates of an old building with a bag of clothes, money in an envelope, and some empty words of advice. Sam read the sign above. Glenwood Boarding School, Kurseong. His father seemed to be in a hurry that day, avoiding eye contact and constantly reading his watch. He told him he would come and meet him often, but Sam knew he was lying. After he left, Sam stood there staring at his receding back till he was no more than a moving speck in the distance. He wanted to run to his father and plead with him, making earnest promises of future good behavior such that he reconsiders the punishment. But he didn't. He turned around and walked through the gate, a pile of nerves, not knowing what this new chapter had in store for him.

Sam was greeted by the principal Mr. Bentley, as he entered the school. He was a tall man, not more than forty, with an amusing sing-song voice. He talked to him as if they met everyday, often ruffling his hair as they spoke. Sam was thirteen and he couldn't remember the last time someone did that to him. He felt like a kid and strangely, he liked it. After going over certain rules of the school that were mandatory for everyone to follow, he escorted Sam to his room. Sam wondered what his room would look like. Maybe it had no windows. Maybe it was in the basement, with a leaky ceiling, infested with tiny crawling tarantulas. All he wanted was a room with a door that he could bolt, such that he could drown out the crowd and write in his journal when he wanted to. And just as Sam was sorting out the various scenarios in his head, Mr. Bentley stopped in front of a wooden door bolted from the outside. He forced the creaky latch open and led him into the room.

Out of all the hundred odd possibilities that he had imagined, Sam did not expect what he saw around him. It was a long rectangular space with about twenty-five beds lined up, each one exactly two feet apart from the other. Everything he happened to lay eyes on was white. The window panes were wiped clean, and the Christian arches supporting them reminded him of the quaint chapel in his old school. The room had a curious musty odour, one that smelled of age and history. The beds did not look like anyone had slept in them for a decade. The sheets had been neatly tucked in. The pillows were in place. The only creases that one could see were from the iron. He wondered if he was to sleep all by himself in this gigantic room. As if he had read his thoughts, Mr. Bentley confirmed that he’d be sharing his room with twenty-three other students, some older and some younger than him. This special arrangement was in keeping with the spirit of fostering a sense of brotherhood between students of all ages. Sam had always had his own room. He had no idea what it was like to share a space with others, his every move under constant disguised scrutiny. He felt constricted just by the thought of it. Mr. Bentley handed him the schedule for the week and took his leave.

Sam looked at the paper and imagined what his life was going to be from then on. His day would start at six, with breakfast at half-past seven and classes from eight through four in the evening, with an hour long lunch break thrown in between. There were stipulated hours in the week for physical training and sports and even music. Dinner was at seven and they were expected to retire for the night by ten. Sam did not hate the schedule all that much except for the fact that he had to wake up that early. He was a heavy sleeper and waking up in the morning always proved to be an insurmountable challenge for him. However, considering that twenty-three other students would accompany him in that daily struggle made it seem possible. Sam heard the clock down the hall strike two. He realized that he was late for lunch. Since he felt too sick to have anything in the morning he felt rather famished and intermittent gurgling noises screamed of an empty stomach. He opened his duffel bag and took out a cucumber sandwich that his maid had packed for him in the morning. He chomped on it hungrily. It tasted like cardboard.

…………………

It was almost nine at night when his roommates started streaming in gradually. They were mostly involved in animated conversation regarding various events of the day. There were stories about a certain Mrs. Rosemary who tumbled down the stairs rather unceremoniously before a class of giggling second graders. The older students were busy discussing the game of cricket during lunch break, where the bastard umpire ‘Pastry’ was shamelessly siding with his best friend’s team. Sam didn't know his way around the school yet. So except for a wordless dinner downstairs in the hall, he was holed up in his room for the most part.

The boys mostly acted like he didn't exist. Some were glancing at him from time to time, and having decided that he was not worthy of attention, instantly reverted back to more amusing topics of conversation. Some didn't even bother to look at him or say hello. He could as well have been a piece of dried lime dangling from the ceiling. But Sam was used to being invisible. He was too busy scribbling in his journal, struggling to enunciate his multiple addled emotions.

‘Are you new?’

Sam looked up from his journal, startled. A young boy was standing at the foot of his bed, staring at him with wide-eyed amazement.

‘Yes’, he said curtly.

‘What’s your name?’ asked the boy.

‘I’m Sam. And you?’

‘I’m Chintan Neelamraju. My friends call me Chinoo. I like the latter better.’

‘Good to know.’

‘How old are you?’ he asked, in a rather business like tone, with hands on his hips.

Sam couldn't suppress a smile. The whole idea of a precocious kid asking him his age, like he was his grandfather, seemed rather amusing.

‘What’s so funny?’ said Chinoo frowning.

‘Nothing. I’m thirteen. And you?’

‘I’m eight. I’ll turn nine in two weeks. Did you know? The boy who slept in the bed next to you was also thirteen.’

Sam turned to look at the adjacent bed. It was empty. He wondered where the other thirteen year old was. They could be friends in the future, he thought.

‘I haven’t seen him all day. Where is he?’ Sam asked curiously.

‘Oh he’s not here anymore,’ the boy said, shrugging his shoulders.

‘So then? Did he change schools?’

‘No. Apparently he killed himself. Anyway, the Dean will be on his rounds soon. I should better go to sleep. Nice meeting you Sam. You’ll like it here.’

The boy retreated to the far end of the room yawning, blissfully unaware of what he had said. And in that moment, Sam wanted to be anything but thirteen. They said it brought bad luck. He couldn't look at that bed anymore. He turned on his side, closed his eyes shut and let out a silent prayer. 

A bolt of lightening (Part 1)

Mrin didn’t like going to clubs. They were too dark, too loud. And she never nearly knew enough people to feel at home. The few times she went there, she would sit in a corner and nurse her drink through the night. She didn’t mind going to movies and dinners and even parties at friend’s houses. But clubs she just didn’t like.

But yet that night she found herself at one of the most happening clubs in the city. She wasn’t with her friends. They had given up on her ever coming with them and stopped asking, knowing she would say no. She was with one of the few people she could never say no to. She could never say no to her step-sister. So when Meera came in one evening and asked her to get ready, she wordlessly got up to do so, not even asking where they were to go. As she walked out of the hall towards her room to change, Meera’s voice floated towards her. “Wear something glittering,” she said, “We are going to the new club that has opened downtown.”

An hour later they were zooming down the road in Meera’s bimmer. Part of that hour was some of the most antagonizing minutes Mrin has ever felt as she stood in front of her closet and pulled down outfit after outfit that she thought could be worn to a club. But yet nothing seemed to be appropriate. They were either too plain or too glitzy or too ill fitting. And she didn’t want to walk into the most happening address in town behind Meera looking anything but presentable. With anyone else, it wouldn’t have mattered. She would have slunk in, if at all, and no one would have noticed. But with Meera it was different. She knew the moment Meera walked through that door, every eye in the room would turn to look at her, however dark the interiors. And she did not want to embarrass Meera. So after 15 minutes of reaching no conclusion, she looked up to see Meera at the door smiling her laconic, amused smile. Meera crossed the room to sit next to her on her bed and pulled out a metallic dress. And after an hour, they pulled away from the house in Meera’s new car. Meera didn’t mention but Mrin knew it was a gift to Meera from her husband. She had overheard a conversation at home. But just sitting in the luxurious interiors improved Mrin’s confidence significantly.

The new club was everything that Mrin had thought it would be - large, grand, loud and scary. Once inside they took a corner seat Meera had booked in advance and ordered themselves drinks. And then she pulled Mrin onto the dance floor. A lot of people on the dance floor seemed to know Meera from previous meetings and it wasn’t long before they were all dancing together. But after about an hour she looked around to find Meera gone. Panic stricken, she surveyed the dance floor, their table, the other tables and finally the bar. Relief flooded back in. Meera was standing there talking to a man whose features she couldn’t make out in the dark. All Mrin could figure out was that she didn’t know him. But she didn’t know most of Meera’s friends. That’s when she met Vidyut. And soon forgot about Meera.

As she tried to see Meera, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Whipping around, she saw a guy stand in front of her, tapping her shoulder. “I think you dropped these,” he had to lean in close to be heard above the music. He held out a single dangler which must have dropped off from Mrin’s ears as she danced. Her hand shot up to feel her ears. “Thank you,” she held her hand out. Smiling slightly, he leaned across and with deft fingers slipped the earring back into her bare ear. “I am Vidyut,” he whispered into her ears. “Mrinalini,” she offered him her outstretched hand. With his lopsided grin, he took her hand. “Dance?” She could make out the deep and mesmerizing eyes even in the dark. Smiling slightly, she shrugged her shoulder to mean a yes. He held onto her hand and led her back onto the floor.

Mrin didn’t realize how long they danced together. Sometimes they danced forming big groups with people around her who she didn’t know. Other times other men asked her to dance with them. But mostly it was Vidyut and her, swaying to the music. She actually felt irritated when she felt a tap on her shoulders, breaking her trance. She didn’t want to be disturbed, was afraid she would find out it was a dream if disturbed. “We need to go home,” Meera whispered into her ears. Mrin wanted to stay longer, almost asked her step sister if she can come back later. But Meera’s disturbed eyes silenced her. Quietly she turned around to say bye to Vidyut but in that split second he seemed to have melted into the crowd. Mrin followed Meera to the door of the club. She turned one last time to see if she could spot Vidyut on the dance floor. For a second she thought she caught a sight of his curly head swaying jauntily with the music but it was gone before she could be sure. Dejected at not being able to say bye, she walked out behind Meera.

The Phonebook

It was one of those nights.

Sam was lying in bed, tossing and turning, for hours, staring at the ticking clock every five minutes. The second hand completed its usual cycles but the minutes somehow didn't seem to pass. He lay on his side, clutching his pillow and shutting his eyes tight, in the effort to sleep; the intensity of it coaxing a tear out the corner of his eye. He rolled on his bed continually from one side to the other, grabbing a sheet once in a while and throwing it over his head to block the lingering light he imagined, seeping through the fabric. But the darkness was not impervious enough. The light always seemed to find its way through a rogue hole hidden amidst the mesh of woven threads; undetected. Increasing frustration at his failed attempts at sleep made him feel warm. He flung the sheet onto the floor and let out an impatient sigh. He stared at the ceiling thinking about what he could do to outlast this wretched drawn out night. He felt awfully lethargic to work. He didn't have a captivating book to lose himself in. He was in no mood to watch television as the only entertainment it had to offer at that unearthly hour was steamy late night movies. He could call someone, he thought. But who would be unfortunate enough to be awake then? More importantly, who would he call? Not one name came to mind. He felt empty at having drawn a blank and decided to dig up his old phonebook from amongst the mess he called his desk. Even if he wasn't successful, that meaningless night would still have some purpose.

After hours of rummaging through stacks of paper and scattered stationery, he chanced upon a leather bound note book peeking from the darkest recess of one of his drawers. He instantly recognized its matted cover. It was his phonebook. He felt an odd childish sense of achievement. He remembered the day his father handed it to him. It was the day he was leaving for boarding school in Darjeeling. He was all of thirteen then, fragile and scared. His father had said to him, in his most dispassionate business-like tone, “Son, this is for emergencies only.” At that time, he couldn't imagine any other use for it. Since then the pages had gotten filled with a million names, some with faces and some without. He opened the book to find a few words strewn across the front page in neat, carefully formed letters: “This book belongs to Samarth Khanna. Class VII.”  There was a boyish pastel scribble of a dinghy next to it. He couldn't remember the last time he had thought of one of those. He turned the yellow tattered pages and breathed them in. The scent was oddly familiar. It smelled of a time when the air was clean and the world less complicated; a smell somewhere lost in translation.

He came across a few familiar names. Rishi, his best friend for almost two decades. Where was he now? He tried hard to remember what he looked like when he last saw him fifteen years ago. It was a blur. The only thing that did remain after all these years were some cruel words and nasty name calling. They did not last. Should I call him? For a moment he was naive enough to think he still had the same number. Then he thought about all the years in between when he did not stop to think of Rishi even once. He had moved on like there had never been any them. A few pages into the book, and he came across a bunch of names. Malini. Tara. Fatima. Ruhi. Names of women he had met, some young and some old. Women who ceased to have faces after all these years. Women who never lasted more than a few nights of urgent lovemaking. They came and went, like pigeons on a terrace, hardly leaving a trace.

Sam gave up his search and slammed the phonebook shut. While he sat there facing the barren wall in front of him, a drunken night at Labyrinth came to mind. The night he had met Meera. He couldn't forget that face; those deep kohl smeared eyes, the mop of unruly hair, the mocking unbridled laughter. He had gone back each night after they first met, hoping she would be there, lost in a trance somewhere in the crowd. But she never showed up. After a week of disappointment, he had stopped going, convinced that Meera was just a figment of his imagination; an illusion conjured up by dimly lit hallways and hours of inebriation. He had thought of calling her a few times but his ego had come in the way.

He looked at the clock. It was three in the morning. He took out his wallet and after shuffling through stashes of business cards, pulled out a familiar dried up scrap of tissue that he had been avoiding so far. He unfolded it carefully, afraid that it might crumble into dust like some precious ancient piece of parchment. He dialed the digits on it, half expecting the number to not exist. A ring suggested that it was real and that was enough reassurance for him that night. He decided to hang up but something stopped him. There was a familiar voice at the other end.

“Hello?”

Sam almost jumped out of his skin, as if he had heard a ghost. What was she doing up at this hour? His heart was beating uncontrollably. He couldn't speak, his throat parched.

“Who the hell is this?!” she said indignantly.

Sam cleared his throat. “Meera?”

“Yes! But who are you? Do you know what time it is?! What do you want?”

Sam didn't know the answer to that. What did he want? Does she even remember him? He was being stupid.

“This is Sam.”

“Sam?! Sam who? I don’t know any Sam. Do you want me to call the police?” she threatened.

Sam mustered some courage and continued. “We met at Labyrinth. You gave me your number.”

Meera was silent for a moment. Sam was convinced that she thought he was a stalker. He wanted to hang up. As if somehow having read his thoughts, she started laughing that instant. That loud resonating laugh. Sam didn't feel insulted like the last time he heard it. In fact  he felt a strange sense of relief. It meant that she remembered.

“So Mr. Sam from the nightclub, considering you ran away the last time we met, I thought I’d scared you. Is a phone call at 3 AM your idea of revenge?” she continued in that infectious strain of humour.  

“Not really. I couldn't sleep.”

“So you want me to sing to you? Just so you know, my songs work better as wake up calls.” Sam found her self-depreciation charming. He tried to think of a reason for waking her in the middle of the night.

“Can we meet for coffee tomorrow? If you don’t mind that is.”

“Umm. I actually do mind.” she replied almost instantly.

Sam didn't know what to say. It was a mistake, he thought. But he wanted to know why.

“I think coffee is too elitist. Now, tea I cannot refuse.”

Sam laughed. He couldn't remember the last time someone made him do that. They decided to meet the next day at a cafe two blocks away. “See you tomorrow then. Goodnight,” he said. 

“I think you meant good morning.”

She hung up. Sam could hear her smiling when she did. It was in fact morning. The first mellow rays streamed in through the window as he looked out. He pulled the covers over his head and slept like he never had. 

Rain

It just wouldn’t stop pouring that day. 

Sam was sitting on his bed, looking out the window, all dressed up, ready to go to his best friend Rishi’s birthday party. He was waiting excitedly in anticipation all week; the cake, the candles, the gifts wrapped in printed glaze, the piñata filled with goodies, the pointy party hats that kept slipping off the tiny joyful heads. He wished he was invited to someone’s birthday party every single day, such that life would be one endless game of hide and seek, giggling with friends and dancing in circles. He looked down at the street below, but could see no gravel. It seemed like a meandering river of muck flowing by the houses, eroding the corners and laboriously sweeping away all the tattered bags of plastic that people had dumped by the roadside with élan. Men with trousers rolled up to their knees, balancing overstuffed grocery bags in both hands, waded through swirling pools of rainwater, cautiously, feeling every patch of ground with their toes in the effort to avoid being sucked into gaping manholes. Lonely slippers made their way past a sea of bobbing black umbrellas, aimlessly searching for their barefoot owners. A bedraggled crow landed on the window sill for shelter. It was shivering. Sam’s heart went out to that poor wet scavenger. He held out his hand to the bird in a gesture to usher it into his room. Frightened by this inexplicable movement, it flapped its dripping wings and flew away, turning its head and cawing querulously. Sam wondered why the bird was so cautious. He had only intended to help the homeless creature. He sighed and instead focused his attention on a Carpenter ant, crawling its way up a water filled crevice on one side, slipping back every time, but refusing to accept defeat.

Sam heard his mother step into the room. He thought it was time to leave for Rishi’s house. With excitement brimming in his voice he asked, “Ma, are we leaving now?” “I don’t think we can Sam. It’s raining too heavily.”  Sam didn’t understand how something as beautiful as the rain could be a reason for not attending his friend’s birthday celebrations. He stared at his mother blankly. “Sam, have you seen the state of the road below? It’s flooded and your father told me that the traffic situation today would make it impossible to go anywhere. I’m sorry honey, but we just cannot go today. I’ll give Rishi’s mother a call and tell her that we can’t make it.” Sam kept staring at his mother. He couldn’t believe how she could just walk in and say no to something he was looking forward to for days – all in that cold impassive voice. Tears welled up in his ten year old eyes, until all he could see of his mother was a quivering blurry outline. Fat saline drops began rolling down his flushed cheeks. It felt like he couldn’t breathe anymore. He turned his face away.

Sam’s mother tried her best to explain the situation to him. But Sam was but a child, and what made perfect sense to her meant nothing to him. She tried bribing him with future promises of chocolates after school and brand new boxes of crayons. But the tears of disappointment just wouldn’t stop. They kept rolling down his face, one after the other, and made a little pool of their own in the hollow of his knees. It broke his mother’s heart. She finally relented and said she’d try and convince his father to drive them there. Sam leant forward and hugged his mom with one hand, crossing his fingers with the other.

An hour later Sam found himself bundled up at the back of his father’s car. He was humming a jolly tune. You couldn’t tell that it was the same kid who was bawling his heart out not so long ago. He paid no attention to his father, cursing the roads ahead and his mother for forcing such a ridiculous decision on him because of a crying child. “Kids cry, Anu. There’s a reason why they’re called kids.” She didn’t say a word. She merely looked back at Sam and seeing his radiant face knew that she had made the right choice. “I love you pumpkin,” she said. Sam was busy drawing boats on the frosty screen. “I know,” he said distractedly. ..

Everything happened in a flash. Sam found himself lying by the curb, his new yellow shirt, now soiled with all the muck. He saw a few men run towards him. They were asking him a ton of questions. “Are you hurt?” “Can you feel your legs?” “Where do you live?” He knew the answer to all those questions, but the obvious now baffled him. He looked beyond to see a silver car in the distance. His father’s car. People were flocking towards it from all sides, like bees to honey. He spotted his father amidst the crowd. He was holding his kerchief to his head. It turned red in a second. Was that blood? He couldn’t understand how he had landed on the road, robbed off the comfort of the backseat. He remembered a brilliant and unexpected flash of light, a grinding vibration that shook his bones and a clanging of shattering glass. Where’s Ma?

The hospital was a weird place. Everything in there was an unblemished white and it smelt distinctly of moth balls. People were sitting in straight back chairs, hard and uncomfortable, catching up on their night’s sleep. The overshadowing stubble on their faces said they hadn’t had a bath in days. Sam loved his things to be clean. He wrinkled his nose slightly at the sight of the waiting visitors. He looked up at his dad. He had a band of gauze round his head, its corner still red. His face looked gaunter than ever. It felt like he was holding the hand of a stranger; cold, firm and sweaty. He wanted to ask him where his mother was, why she hadn’t come to him yet to tell him how things will all be okay. But he held back. His father told him to sit down and wait for him and not wander off anywhere. He said he had some work to do. Sam obliged willingly. Those were the first words he heard from his dad in three days. Somewhere behind all that fatigue, he could hear a familiar voice. He smiled a shallow smile.

He sat there for what seemed like eons. He was getting bored staring at the white plaster walls. Impatience made him tap his fingers on the chair handle; a pattern he reinvented every few minutes just to break the monotone. He saw a lady in the distance all dressed in white. She had a trapezoid hat perched at an angle on her head, which made it look bigger than it actually was. It gave her a strange alien-like look. He couldn’t see even a strand of hair sticking out from underneath. They were all in place; neatly pinned, tucked under the hat. She was strutting down the corridor, an unwelcome air of arrogance about her. Sam imagined her with a red pom-pom perched on her lofty nose. She’d make the perfect clown, he thought. He let out an audible giggle. The haggard man sleeping next to him grunted in disapproval.

Sam saw his dad walking towards him. He was excited at the prospect of going home and finally escaping this dreary monotone. He still couldn’t see his mom though. “Where’s Ma?” he finally asked him. “Let’s go home,” he said. His father hardly looked at him, his hand still cold and sweaty…

                                                      .................                                                                    

It just wouldn’t stop pouring that day. Sam was at home with his dad, alone. It had been six months since the accident, the day he last saw his mother. They hadn’t spoken about it since. Not one word. In fact, he could almost count the number of words his dad said to him in the past months. Those that did escape him were either functional or meant as a reprimand. He remembered how the house resonated with laughter once, when dinners were filled with animated conversation about the mundane. Now it’s only about food, often cold and wanting salt. He hadn’t made paper boats since that fateful day, but today he wanted to. He rushed upstairs to his room, tore out a ruled page from his notebook in one swift motion and folded it neatly, sharpening the edges with his fingers. His boat looked perfect. In fact it was his first perfect boat that required no help. He filled up a tub in the bathroom and let it sail, as if nothing had happened. An unexpected tear escaped him and spilled into the tub; the ripples rocking the boat slightly, egging it on. The tears kept coming. An endless stream. A final release. I love you too mom, he said.

The boat went on in circles.

Dark... darker...

They say drugs are a poor man's escape from poverty and a rich man's escape from abundance. For Mrin it was an escape too, from her nightmares. 

The nightmares started when she had barely turned a teenager. They were always different and yet every night she would wake up with the same terror. She would wake up wanting to scream her lungs out and thrash around in her bed. But she never could. It was as if a hand would choke her mouth and hold her down. Not that if she did shout anyone would hear, unless she was very very loud. Because by the time she was 10, she had moved on to a room on the roof. Her mother had given birth to twins and they needed her spacious  room. 

The drugs started when she was 17. Her step sister, Meera, was on the roof at 2 am one night, smoking. Mrin had seen her smoke on countless occasions over the last many years when she would wake up with a start in the middle of the night shivering after a nightmare. The glowing stick being held by her silhouette framed against the street light brought her a sense of comfort. But it was a few months after she had turned 17 that she finally gathered the courage and walked out to meet her. Her sister looked back at her, her beautiful brown eyes glinting with reflected light from the street lamp. She offered Mrin the rolled paper wordlessly. Mrin knew it was wrong to smoke but she still accepted it falteringly.
Her step sister was her biggest idol in the house. The beautiful face, the grace, the confidence - she could turn heads whenever she walked into a room. And for a particularly awkward teenager, Meera was the perfect person to be. As Mrin took her first drag, she burst out coughing, tears rushing to her eyes. Meera dissolved into peels of laughter.The thought of embarrassing herself in front of Meera drove Mrin to take a second, deeper drag. The coughing got worse. Determined to show Meera she was an adult, Mrin kept taking puff after puff till she could take it no more, her throat burning as if on fire, her eyes watering and her head feeling light and dizzy. She flung it down on the floor and ran inside her room crying. Slamming the door behind her, she threw herself face down on the bed, sobbing helplessly. Through the open window and her tear stained eyes she noticed Meera reach down and pick up the little roll of paper, dust the end and put it back in her mouth. She didn't know then that she had had her first experience with weed.

Determined to not let Meera think of her as a weak cry baby, next day she went and procured 2 cigarettes. It wasn't easy. But she took money out of her lunch allowance and then got off the bus 2 stops before her tuition class. Then she walked to the nearest Paan shop and asked for cigarettes in her most adult voice. She even wore a Salwar Kameez to look older and more mature. He looked her up and down but then gave her the cigarettes wordlessly. That night she puffed away gallantly through the burning throat and the watering eyes. A week later when she woke up to find Meera smoking outside, Mrin confidently strode outside and asked for the smoke. It tasted different, but she was not going to let that be a hurdle. Meera started laughing, only this time it didn't seem to Mrin like she was mocking. Mrin too ventured a smile and handed back the roll of paper. Why was her head feeling so light though, she thought. 

That night the nightmares didn't come back. She slept peacefully for the first time in years. Since that night  many years ago when she had woken up because there was someone in her room. She could feel his presence and smell the familiar cologne. She could then feel his hand covering her mouth so she wouldn't shout, her body pinned under his shoulder. The rest she had successfully blotted out. All that remained from that night were the nightmares and that overwhelming smell of cologne.

Digits on paper

This corner of the bar was especially dark, and Sam liked it that way. At the other end he could see people striking up animated conversations with others they were meeting for the first time and probably would never meet again; their words slurred, their eyelids drooping, their breath laced with the heavy scent of alcohol. It’s strange how that coveted sparkly drink in your glass breaks down the invisible shackles that you struggle to cope with every day, broadening the boundaries and stretching the range of possibilities that life supposedly has to offer. It makes you smile at things that you wouldn’t have found funny otherwise. It makes the world seem like an ever changing kaleidoscope of neon lights, weaving impossible patterns in the air that eludes the rational sober eye. And most importantly it makes you forget and there is nothing more comforting than oblivion.

But Sam found it hard to forget. He remembered every little thing in excruciating detail, like it happened only yesterday. There were those initial nights at Labyrinth when alcohol did the trick for him; where amidst the cacophony of deafening beats and pulsating hearts, he managed to forget. He often found himself curled up at some desolate corner of the pub, sleeping, till someone took notice and woke him up, only to clean up last night’s drunken human mess. But those days were long gone and no amount of tequila seemed to work anymore. He tried taking sleeping pills, lying on his bed for hours, waiting with wide open eyes for that elusive thing called sleep till the first rays of morning seeped in through the window. He just couldn’t sleep. All he needed to do was to forget; forget who he was, forget who life made him to be, forget all those people that sucked meaning out of Samarth and left behind an empty hollow shell of a man called Sam. He was tired of waiting and the sagging circles beneath his eyes told the same story.

He turned to look at the million people dancing twenty feet away. The faces in the crowd never engaged him. They were all the same, like broken peanut shells, wrinkled and ochre. Grazing across the sea of bobbing heads, his restless eyes stopped for a moment. There was a girl in the middle of the crowd, a distinct dark face amidst the blur, dancing with abandon. She hardly had any makeup on which made her seem inexplicably real; her beauty almost arresting, unconventional. Her hair spilled over her face in a bundle of curls, disentangling with every other beat to reveal a long gradual neckline. Her limbs were slender, one embellished with what seemed like gaudy clanging wedding bangles, and the other nude. Bare. Her eyes were shut the whole time while her head swayed aimlessly from side to side. Maybe she was catching up on her sleep. Maybe she was waiting to forget too.

It was a strange place to be for a newlywed, especially dancing alone in the middle of the night. Sam was curious. His best guess was that her husband was boring and fat, unaware of his wife’s clandestine nightly adventures. She must be one of those spoilt bored rich kids whose life revolved around the sole concept of fun, he thought. Maybe she was bored of her husband already, looking for the scent of some new nameless man in the dark corners of the pub. He knew he judged her, and he didn’t care not to. He noticed she was walking towards him now, her kohl smeared eyes transfixed, as if she read his mind. He was embarrassed and quickly averted his eyes. He hadn’t realized that he was staring at her for that long. He felt a tiny dint of shame.

‘Is this seat taken?’ she asked.

He looked up at her. ‘Are you talking to me?’

She laughed. ‘You were staring at me for a really long time. So yes, I am talking to you’.

He sensed a tone of condescension in her voice. He felt nervous and for him, it was a first. He felt uncomfortable.

‘The seat doesn’t have my name on it. It’s a free world. Be my guest.’ He tried to be smart with her.

‘You have a way with words I see,’ she smiled, the disdain intact. ‘I’m Meera, by the way.’ She extended her hand out in a gesture of peace.

‘I’m Sam,’ he replied curtly, making no effort at reciprocation. Truth be told, he wanted to run away. He felt restless, annoyed at having to make unnecessary conversation. All he wanted to do was to enjoy a quiet evening amidst all the noise, like every other day. He was a slave of routine and hated change of any sort. And exchanging words with strangers was his last priority. Sam was popular among women, more for his success and physique than anything else, and he treated them like mundane wayside trash. But there was something about this girl that made his mind race and his heart pound till it threatened to explode his very being to bits. He was not accustomed to being talked down to, especially by women. He was a chauvinist and he took an unnatural pride in it.

‘So what was the point in staring at me for so long, if you had no intention of talking or returning a friendly gesture?’ She sounded a little bruised.

‘Well I wasn’t staring at you. Everything’s not about you. Please.’ He was looking down the whole time.

Meera laughed. It was a loud resonating laugh. She jerked her head back, and her silver dangling earrings twinkled for a fleeting moment. ‘Well, aren’t you a bit too old to be sulking like a kid? You were staring at me and you got caught. The world will continue to go on like it never happened. Get over it will you?’ she continued in a jocular thread. She curled a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Her earrings quivered earnestly.

God she’s beautiful, Sam thought to himself. And suddenly, he felt his blood rush to his face. He tried distracting himself by playing with his watch but he couldn’t help but steal a glance at Meera. He noticed she had changed her posture. She was now sitting with her head rested on her elbow, her eyes on him, steady and unblinking. ‘How does that feel now sir?’ she giggled. Sam couldn’t take it anymore. ‘Please excuse me for a moment.’ He hurried towards the restroom. He banged the door behind him, panting. It felt like he could still hear her laughing. Her loud resonating laugh. He covered his ears and knelt on the floor. He shut his eyes tight…

                                                  .......................

He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting there on the bathroom floor. But now he felt calmer. He felt his confidence rushing back. He laughed at his asinine behavior. It was ridiculous. He strutted back to the bar, head held high, determined to make it right this time. But Meera had left by then. He felt oddly dejected. But he noticed something on her seat. It was a scrap of tissue with ten neatly formed digits on it; running across it like an undulating wave with a newfound destination. He felt an upsurge of relief. He folded the soggy piece of tissue and tucked it safely in his wallet, ensconced between his many credit cards. He decided he would call her. One day.