Z & Me

I'm writing this in a spur of the moment.

Yesterday Z came; he has called it off with A. He broke his cell phone as well. Interestingly, now I know a sizeable number of people who broke their cell phones along with their relationships. What is the relation between a cell phone and a relationship? I think cell phone is overused during a relationship and that's why people break it when they part off. As if resigning to the fact that unless they get a new partner, their cell phone will not be of much use.


I haven't thrown my cell till now. I may have dropped it unknowingly but never thrown it or even thought about that. At most I have switched it off for some days. Well my case is totally different; I mean I'm not rich. The cell phone I have is going to be now 3 years old and somehow or the other I never was able to buy another one. Like always Z was reluctant to talk about it initially and then he vent it out. So….

Z - I haven't done anything wrong. I mean she was with sitting with some one in the middle of the night. How can I take that? Can you take that?

D - (Undergoing a soul search) Hmmm….I mean I don't know.

Z - What!!? You don't know.

D - I mean Yes, you're right. But you could have been more understanding and besides you were not going to marry her, right?

Z - So what? I mean. I wasn't there in that relationship just for sex. I have enough. I am 24 yaar. I'm looking for peace. You tell me, I could have also done the same then?

D - But what about that girl? With whom you recently had this fling.

Z - That was a one-off case and I was sorry about it. You know what D, I am a middle class Indian. I may be a hypocrite but then I've some values. I'm not like these metro-class babalogs who have this no problem attitude.

D - (Playing with the cig.) Haan, I think you're right. So what should I do?

Z - You? Where are 'you' in the picture?

D - (Realising my mistake) I mean, what you want me to say?

Z - (Now fuming) Nothing. I care a damn if you adhere to what I stand for. I think I've done right. It's not about 'ego'. Before it also happened.

D - what?

Z - Are yaar, this guy. He liked her and she refused but she still use to go out with him and talk to him.

D - But you can't dictate someone's' life

Z - Fuck You. I was not dictating anything; she should've the brains. I mean how can you put your faith on a guy who has already expressed his feelings for you. Tell me if I would've gone with N…you know about her. I don't become even friendly with her. Yaar, thts why I said I am a middle class bloke. I cannot take that shit that my girfriend being friendly with her ex or some one who has got other feelings for her.

D - Is about feeling insecure? That means the relationship never had any strength.

Z - How much you deny that but Yes. Also I don't think except Chinkis and babalogs anyone will take that shit? It's annonying and if you really love, forget about love, if you even are 1% emotional you won't take that. Tu bata, what would you've done?

D - I? (Lighting that cigarette)…I may have done the same after all I'm also a middle class Indian.


-----------------We both laughed and then had a chicken for dinner, played pool, cursed all the girls in our lives, decided to become entrepreneurs one day, to marry a girl which our parents will choose and then renounce this world soon after. So all this decision making took 20 B&H lights with which we excercised our lungs. Early morning when he went off to sleep, I came out, lighted another cigarette and thought - Is it much better to stay unsuccessful? I looked at my phone….it was there, as if sleeping soundly. -------------------

Number

Finally the winters are here. It rained last night. Not much I guess, because by the time the first drop fell down I was fast asleep. It was around five in the morning. Before I slept, I realised that a mosquito has bitten me. I went through the whole process of reassuring myself that the mosquito that bit me would not have that Dengue virus. I laughed upon that thought as well. Comparing it to having unprotected sex with a prostitute and then hoping not to catch AIDS…hah. Then I thought that what all I have to go through if I become another name in that long list of – dengueised. I’ll take leave, stay at home, take lot of fluids, and pop parecetamols down my throat. Or will I get admitted to a hospital. I know in government hospital nurses aren’t beautiful though some interns are. But for them I will be a case study. This thought disturbed me more and I sincerely prayed that I should not suffer from this dengue fever. I still don’t know, I haven’t yet started feeling body pain, nor yet fever has set in. I’m still scared!!!


I managed to wake at 11 a.m. It takes me 15 minutes to walk up to my bus stand. Actually it depends. If I buy a tea, half-chai and a smoke, it takes me 20 minutes. Then I think that I have managed to prolong my life for five minutes, which compensates the 11 minutes I lose. So in total I lose six minutes. I was never good with maths. While travelling in the bus, you see lot of faces, will not call them fellow human beings because once their stop comes, they get lost in the constantly swelling numbers of my country. The Population index at AIIMS is majestic, if your buswallah makes you wait, you can actually see the numbers moving. For you they are numbers, but in some families it will be a moment to celebrate or some will rue their fate. I don’t know…I will keep it to simply numbers.


Delhi looks majestic in this season. I want to explore her more. But time has chained me. Delhi is mostly responsible for this, how can she be so cruel to her lovers? Don’t she know, how painful is that, she needs to figure it out or perhaps it doesn’t matter. But she won’t and why should she? It is your problem. She has defied time before and is still doing it. One day while going towards Khan Market, I saw a Parsi Cemetery; I haven’t explored that angle of Delhi yet – The graveyards. Perhaps, one day I will. Also there is one behind my office. I don’t know how old it is. But it sometimes comes in my dreams. I’ll not visit it anymore. It reminds me of past, a past which spells out unsuccessfulness of my Delhi. Mauled through the hands of a stranger. A known stranger.


After writing all this, I feel a bit happy. I know this is momentary. I’ll not hide from the truth. I have to go in that graveyard. That stranger doesn’t matter now. The population index will keep on ticking and my math will always remain poor. Only uncertainty is Dengue, may be the noise and pollution from crackers will get us rid of that. And at last I’m also another number – How Unsuccessful?

Re-invention

It has been quite some time that I’ve written something. The use of active and passive has de-sensitised me. I want to be an insomniac, completely immersed in work but there is nothing to do. The weather has started changing, I can feel it in the air. I don’t know but suddenly it seems that I’ve not spent some time with myself, the way I use to do and that is why there are cobwebs in my head, like the way they are there in my room.

Ideas - These days all I think about is generating ideas, I am thirsty as well. Can a thirsty mind think of ideas? I don’t know, I cannot think of any. I don’t feel like writing anymore. Words have started hating me. I need a break, a long one where I am all alone as I used to be, with no one to care for, no one to think about not even me. I am like in a web, it is painful not because I feel it more because I become the source of that pain.

Sometimes you need to re-invent yourself, like Gandhi, Nehru, Rajiv, Sonia & many more like them did. They became leaders. I will also become one just that when they did so they lost someone. I am afraid of losing but as they say - “ The End or Just the beginning.” Perhaps I need to reinvent Unsuccessfullness.......