Vicky strode out of the office, paused for a few
seconds on the sidewalk, ripped off his tie and stuffed it into his attaché.
Then he turned right and headed up the street. It wasn’t a busy street. A few
houses, a few shops, a few nondescript offices that only the employees who work
there, go into. The only item of attraction on the street was the Indraprastha
cinema hall. In its prime, the theatre drew people like moths to a flame. These
days, it was obvious that it had seen better days. Dark red paan-juice littered
the severely dilapidated entrance, made redder by the scarlet neon lighting
screaming “Indraprastha” and “Entry”. The interiors were no better, riddled
with flea-infested seats and smelling strongly of urine. New films were rarely
screened any more, and the owners tended to rely on old faded prints of Deewar
and Sholay to bring in nostalgic crowds who had nothing better to do in the
evenings.
Opposite the theatre was a petrol pump which did
little business because of the lack of traffic on that street. Adjoining the
pump was a line of stalls selling assorted goods from toothpaste to cigarettes
to slightly mouldy-looking
fruit. One of those stalls belonged to Tau. Tau sold egg rolls and vegetable
chops, and did brisk business among the cinema-goers. He was an old man,
creases running to and fro all over his huge pockmarked battlefield of a face.
No one knew exactly how old he was and by looking at him, you couldn’t tell if
he was sixty or ninety. His hands were swift, his food good and his prices were
low. Ergo, he was popular.
When Vicky strode over to his stand, Tau greeted him
with a grunt, and brought out a stool for him to sit on. The other
stall-keepers raised their hands in greeting to him too. He was obviously a
regular. Vicky sat down on the stool, dropped his attaché behind him, and
lit a cigarette.
“Busy day, huh?” he asked Tau.
“Yeah more people than usual. Indraprastha is showing
a new Shah Rukh film today,” replied Tau.
“Seems like you should start praying to him then.
More profits for you,” Vicky remarked dryly. Tau snorted derisively in reply.
Tau’s stand had been Vicky’s regular haunt for quite
a few years, his little oasis of idle talk and companionship. His parents had
been dead for quite some years, and he had no siblings, or any other close
family. He lived in an apartment building two miles away from his office, in
an extremely dingy, very cheap area near the docks. The apartment adjacent to
his was occupied by an extremely dysfunctional family; crying and quarrels were
the regular aural menu. Not surprisingly, Vicky chose to go home late, late
enough to ensure that the sweet family next door was sound asleep or dead
drunk. This, however, freed up his evening with nothing to do. Most of his
friends at the office were married, and hurried home as soon as they could, and
even after fifteen years in the city, he had not really got the hang of going
to nightclubs and pubs to socialize. He had discovered Tau’s stand two
years before. He liked the food, and he liked talking with Tau and the other
stall-keepers. Sometimes he went to Indraprastha too. He liked sleeping in the
flickering shade of Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor trading insults on the
big screen in front of him. It was very soothing.
"Balram came here in the afternoon, smoked a
bit, and told me about the municipality's recent plans," Tau said quietly.
Balram was his nephew, who worked as a peon in the central municipal office.
"They are probably going to close up the stalls around here, a new mall's
supposed to be coming up in the area. The company who has bought the plot
doesn't want us around. We'll probably be out of here by the end of
spring."
Vicky was stunned. "Where will you go?"
"Probably back to my village," Tau said,
with a smile. "You should start looking for some other place to spend your
evenings. You young people. I had a lot of friends when I was younger. Never
had a problem about spending my evenings....." and he went on about how
TVs and whatnot had populated Vicky's generation with loners. Vicky was not
listening. He blew out rings of smoke, and thought....
*********************
To avoid public spectacle, all the stall-keepers
vacated their usual places well before the end of spring. Vicky felt like he
had lost an anchor. He had not realised
that he was so dependent on their companionship. It is only in the absence of
things or people we like, that they attain a legendary status in our mind. We
ascribe imaginary attributes to it, thus magnifying its pull over us and
deepening our misery. It is fascinating how the human mind, otherwise
chock-full of instincts of self-preservation, is so hopelessly kamikaze and
naive in matters of the heart. There is no defense mechanism against missing
someone. In the days after Tau's departure, Tau's food seemed the best in the
world, his stand a place of unmatched quiet companionship and Tau himself
seemed the most humane and sincere person Vicky had ever met.
He started going home early, and became somewhat
habituated with the periodic yelling emitting from the adjoining flat.
Sometimes, he walked around different streets, looking at the storefronts and
the passers-by. But he was bored. One day, walking down one of the busiest
streets in the city, he heard someone call him.
"Vicky, hey, over here!" It was Vicky's
colleague Sanjay. Sanjay was about five years junior to him, but his
educational qualifications were far better, and when he was transferred to
Vicky's office, Sanjay held a higher designation than Vicky. Sanjay was
well-liked in the office, and was popular with the old and young alike. Sanjay
and Vicky weren't friends, but they knew each other well and nursed no grudge
against each other.
"Hey, Sanjay!"
"I usually never see you around here. Do you
come to this lounge often? I've never seen you there, and I come here all the
time," said Sanjay.
"Lounge?" asked Vicky, and looked around to
see that he had stopped right in front of the entrance to a popular lounge-pub
called Piranha. Vicky had never visited it, had in fact seen no reason to.
"Uh, no... I was just walking by."
"Are you going somewhere important?" asked
Sanjay. Vicky wondered if he should reply in the affirmative, and walk away
quietly muttering one excuse or another. But why bother? He might as well
accompany Sanjay into the lounge, and have a few drinks or something. "Uh,
no, not really. I'm just taking a walk"
"Come with me, then. I'll introduce you to my
friends."
They went in. The lounge was beautifully furnished
with semi-private alcoves fitted with comfortable sofas and round glass tables.
The lighting was tastefully muted, and the decor in beige and brown was
appealing. Huge abstract art pieces and the usual standard pictures of Jim
Morrison, Che Guevara and Jimi Hendrix stared down from the walls. Waiters in
waistcoats carried trays of drinks and food to the customers, who were all
mostly in their late teens to early thirties.
Sanjay steered Vicky to a table where four of
Sanjay's friends were reclining on sofas. They raised their hands in greeting
to Sanjay, and Vicky was introduced to them, and was offered a cigarette.
“Is this a Marlboro?” he asked, turning the stick of
nicotine around his fingers.
“Yeah,” answered Sanjay.
“Hmmm, this is the first time I’m actually going to
smoke one of these things,” said Vicky, lighting the cig and taking a long,
deep puff. He looked around the room, basking in the quiet glow of the shaded
lamps, listening to the rivulets of conversation flowing past his ears. This
was nice. He could get used to this. This crowd which reeked of all that was
fashionable. No more cups of tea at Tau’s stall for him.
But he wasn’t quite a member of this set, was he? He
could understand little of what Sanjay and his friends were talking about.
Something about someone he didn’t know. He tapped the Marlboro over the ashtray
some more. He was quickly getting bored. And then he started thinking. Soon
they would include him in their conversation. What would he, what could he talk
about? Was it likely that they would share some tastes or interests? It didn’t
seem so. These were obviously young, rich professionals, the jet-set crowd, the
smiling poster-boys of India Shining. Would he really fit in with them? This
was a stratum of society he was not familiar with.
Oh God, then they would ask him where he lived, and
he would have to lie (unconvincingly) or tell the truth (shamefully). Or maybe…
he thought, as a new more ghastly explanation came to mind, maybe he was to be
their clown for this evening, Maybe this was a regular occurrence. Maybe they
brought in bumpkins every now and then and made fun of them. He could hear the
muffled laughs already. He could hear the wheels of their minds whirring, as
they thought up a plan to torment him. Maybe that’s what they were talking
about. Oh God, oh God, why had he come in? Didn’t he know that the moment he
tried to become ‘one of them’, he would encounter devastating embarrassment? He
would have to creep out of this place with his tail between his legs.
Vicky felt the room becoming increasingly
uncomfortable. The decor, which he had found striking when he had entered, now
felt tasteless and dull. The beer in his hand smelled like rotten eggs. All the
customers seemed to be radiating their contempt towards him, for destroying the
ambience with his banal self. His clothes seemed inadequate to the place. Every
snigger, laugh or chuckle in the room seemed to be directed towards him. Eyes
seemed to be turning quickly towards him. When this situation became
intolerable, Vicky muttered an excuse about visiting a sick aunt, and almost
ran out of the place, without stopping to hear the protestations from Sanjay
and his gang.
Outside in the stuffy evening air, he took large deep
breaths, and cooled his frayed nerves somewhat. He bought a cigarette (a simple
Gold Flake this time) from a shop nearby, and was reminded of Tau. He felt a
mixture of nostalgia and disgust. He brushed the thought away. In the darkening
light, he lit his cigarette. It burst to life, glowing bright as a firefly as
he took a deep soothing pull, held in the smoke, and blew it out through his
nose.
