NOT Another Girl Story

 Sitting in the shatabdi doing nothing jst observing the gurl sitting opp me who is hot as hell. Now, for a change I thought I’ll notice these guys instead of the shrieking obvious. Now, for all those guys whose minds that have started racing should not believe that I, after 22 years of my life am coming out of closet or even remotely close. Sitting in the middle of these two gentlemen pretending that they don’t give a shit, the gurl is behaving jst like a girl of her hotness level should, ignoring and non acknowledging anything.  Its really funny to notice them. I’ll call the man sitting on the window as Man 1, nd the man sitting on the aisle as Man 2.

 Man 1 looks to be a perfect case of a middle class background who now has enough money to travel in shatabdi but  not without bragging in his town. He is unshaven, wishing against it, but trying to present himself with as much class as he can muster. I love small town guys they always try for everything they can set eyes on without bothering what all is ever humanly possible for them. He has been shifting uneasily for god knows how long now, nd I really feel for him. He is trapped in his tight jeans with his protruding features which he has been trying and adjusting for a while now. Rest of the tym he has been fidgeting with his golden watch which was probably given to him on his engagement. He has also gone to the bathroom three times now and I jst saw him coming to the seat and then suddenly return again as he saw the girl busy preparing her tea. I guess he didn’t want to disturb the her. There he comes again, standing beside the seat for what seemed like ages before the gurl finally notices him and continues with what she was doing. Man 1 realizes that she has not recognized him, ramming his small-town-now-big ego and exclaims ‘Madam, axe-cuse me’.

Man 2 is wearing a pajama kurta and has this journalist feel about him. He has decided in the mourne -ing that he shall be Mr. Cool-Handles this big firm guy. His phone has rung six tyms now with each conversation becoming more and more  fierce. The sentences I could make out were “mujhe ab aapko samajhna bhi nahi hai” … nd others like “Not 3, Not 5, But I want 3, u getting this?” He has asked these attendants all sorts of Qs like “Ye AC kyun kam kar diya hai?”…. “Yaar breakfast kab laoge”….. “Tundla chala gaya kya”… I mean hw the hell does it affect you ki tunda gaya ki nahi….. He has been hogging the charger point for a while now, nd as I requested for sm tym on it, he said that he jst needs it for 10 mins more. His ten minutes have come and gone but his screen cracked mobile is still charging away to glory. I smhw hate him more than Man 1.

But its all amazing and you can learn loads from it.  With a man juggling with different shades of his personalities and being uncomfortable as hell but still in some twisted way thinking that others wud luv it. Being someone you are not is a thing we all do everyday, in different ways and in different measures. It stems from a natural desire of being liked, appreciated, recognized and loved by all. And sometimes we end up acting stupidly when this liking, recognizing, loving goes really out of our reach. It creates this illusion that you think u have achieved, when you are even further away than where you had started. So it makes you believe that all of us are living in our own minuscule world (M-world) whose rules, actions, facts are decided by our own irrespective of how far they are from normalcy or reality. This minuscule world is different for everyone and when these worlds start combining in sm way, we experience relationships. Without the overlapping of these M worlds no matter how hard we try in our own M world we are not able to develop this connection with this person. Man 1 and Man 2 are no different from Man 3 or 4… but jst may be trying to expand their M worlds, may be a bit too much, but are still beautiful in so many different ways. 

The man who wrote the temperature

As I was introduced to everyone for the first time in the production plant I was taken to the Tunnel dryer area (referred to as ‘TD area’) As I shook hands with everyone there was this guy who was busy scribbling something. He looked up and saw me, he got up quickly and scampered to me and said ‘Sahab, Namaste, vo main temperature likh raha tha isiliye aapko dekha nahi’. The introducer meanwhile rambled on about the importance of controlled temperature in the TD which was apparently a big deal. I asked him, ‘kinte saal se ho yahan’. He beamed at me and proudly said ‘Sahab, 26 saal se main hi temperature likh raha hoon’, sounding as if he what he did was indeed the most important job in the whole world. I did not spare a second thought for this man then.

     As I became a regular in the plant, I saw him every day, his eyes always lit up when he saw me. He would always come to me and tell me about the problems he had in the TD the previous day and how he had solved it. I knew he was looking for recognition of his hard work and wanted to be in the good books of his boss (in this case me) as I too on some level did the same thing with my superiors. I sometimes wondered, what a waste of life, imagine the whole life spent just writing the temperatures. But he did this seemingly monotonous job for 26 years with full conviction and enthusiasm. This was his life, his identity, his earnings, his specialization, his purpose.

   Now, one fine day as I was sitting in the office I got to know that the TD had some problem and had to be shut down. I went to the TD area and automatically asked about him in a mood to tell him off about his carelessness. I was given a meek response by this person ‘Sahab, aapko pata nahi ? uska to kal accident ho gaya tha, aur aaj subah uska dehant ho gaya’ I felt like I was suddenly drenched in cold water. I looked around for a familiar face in the TD area and quickly realized that he was the only person I knew in the area and then saw the TD which was shut down apparently missing him too. The TD could not work without him for one day and there was everyone who had hardly noticed that he was no more. I felt this strange connection between me and the TD. I called a few people about what had happened, nobody seemed to have known and sadly nobody even bothered. I went to his house for the last rights, I saw his body, his face badly battered but with a mysterious smile, half expecting him to suddenly wake up and tell me ‘sahab, sorry main TD ka temperature control nahi kar paaya, kyunki saala ek truck ne mujhe kuchal diya tha’ I instantly came out his house where some people were busy discussing the score of the match they had to miss whilst they were here. I felt the selfishness of the world which was so brutal, so alarming that I felt cheated. All these people, I thought, wore a mask of goodness everyday but were inherently self centered to the core.

      We had a condolence meeting the next day. I could feel the unrest among the people who had to be here after their working hours. This is it, I thought, this is the world where you live in where nobody is bothered about anybody but them and the world was as fake as it could get. As I returned to my section through the TD area I saw some people assembling something on the TD which I found out was a small instrument that would beep when the temperature would be out of the defined limits. This is all what he did, I thought. The world did not even stop for a day to replace him and that too with a 1000 bucks gadget. His 26 years of work, all along, could have been done by this instrument. His life being so worthless in one way and so worthwhile in the other. I mentally saluted this man, this man who wrote the temperature.   

Photo...

I saw the photo. She looked all wet with her hair carelessly over her face, the sea surreptitiously trying to reach out to her and take her with it but she, like always being oblivious to the shrieking calls of the universe. The sea, as it came towards her turned a dirty shade of brown, but I don’t blame it as I don’t blame the people who behave in a similar manner, who may not be as honest.

      If I said she looked beautiful it would be an iniquity and a sacrilege but somebody once said “Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.”

   She kept the photo so that everybody could see it, I couldn’t understand why, when people don’t see what I see, when people don’t feel what I feel, when people don’t care what I do, when people don’t respect what I do when she walks so graciously on the sea coast.