A blind date

1. Her Story

She didn’t hear the taps. She let a sigh of relief out as she felt the wind blow in her face through the window. In a city like Mumbai, one learns to value everything. The bus was weighed down by a mass of people thrice as much as it was designed to carry. Heavier still, felt the air – damp, laden with moisture. The evening, surrendering more to the dust than to the dusk, made the air even more intolerable. In summer evenings like these, the city atmosphere always made her feel as if she was trapped in a loving, yet smothering hug at all times. This was a metaphor she had come up with the first time she spent an evening in a BEST bus. A hug - not much different than life itself, she had thought, - is good only if it ends.

In such a situation, a waft of air – even one so weak that a strand of hair is much too heavy for it to move – is valuable. She did not enjoy being in this city. She sometimes felt that this city was so overpopulated because the people here were too busy to spare time to die. Yet, it was better than being at home. She liked the freedom. She had come here under the pretext of finding a living for herself, but the truth was that she could no longer stand the pressures at home.

Although the bus was bursting at the seams as usual, she almost liked this journey back to her rented apartment. Never having to face the problem of finding a place to sit, the crowd did not matter so much to her. She made sure she had the window seat because she liked to notice how the odours changed as the bus moved from one place to another. It made her feel almost like she was watching a movie. She always found it very easy to get lost in her thoughts on these hour-long journeys.

And so, she was too busy with the air, the smells and the thoughts to notice the vaguely familiar tapping sounds. She was shaken out of her reverie when she realized someone had flumped down next to her.

“Hey! Watch it!” She said. She was always wary of people around this big city. She had been warned many times, by many relatives and well wishers in her town when she left for Mumbai. If she were to believe all that they said, Mumbai was probably one big brothel.

“I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just trying to get to my usual seat. I don’t think I found it. I can move if you want me to..” His voice was different. She noticed it immediately. She realized it was a genuine mistake.

“Its alright. You didn’t hurt me. You don’t have to get up for such a small thing.” She smiled.

“I always tend to be a little clumsy you know. Its so difficult to manage myself in this horrible crowd.” He was still apologetic in his tone. She felt like she had to let him know he was off the hook.

“Oh I know. If I had to fight for a seat like others, I’d probably never leave my apartment!” A simple joke should do it, she thought.

“Yeah. I know what you mean. Its good they have consideration for ladies.” The simplicity. That was what was different, she thought. There was simplicity in his voice. People’s voices, she had come to believe, express who they are. She thought of voices as strings. The more fibre and twists the string had, the more complicated the person was, to her. In that sense, this voice sounded like a single strand, more like a wire than like a string. It was straight and it was simple.

“Oh. I hadn’t realized I was sitting in the ladies’…”

“Ticket?”, a thick rope, frayed and withered on the ends, cut her in the middle of her sentence.

“Andheri” said the newcomer. She turned to the window while the conductor exchanged the ticket for the money.

“You’re from Khandesh, aren’t you?” He ventured a guess.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I have an ear for accents. You don’t have much of it, but there’s a faint hint. I’m from there too, but I’ve never been there. I was born and brought up right here in Bombay.”

“Oh. That is incredible. I have been here for just a few months and I already dislike the city. I wonder how you could spend so many years here.”

“I know what you mean. Bombay is an acquired taste. It’s like a medicine that’s good for you. You take it, and hate it for the first time. You know you cannot do without it and so, you close your nose and take it the second time. A few of these trials and slowly, you realize that you don’t notice the smell that much. Before you know it, you find every other place in the world boring.”

“That’s quite a claim. I don’t think I’ll ever settle into such a place. It is so difficult to just go someplace here. Especially for someone like me”

“Oh, well, a human being’s capability for suffering is as underestimated as is his capability of forming habits.” He professed, “Before you even realize, you will be so used to the pushes and pulls and crowd that you wont mind them at all. Bombay to me is like this one big friend that’s always present everywhere, no matter where you go. The best part is, the friend hardly talks. It allows me to just be with myself” She was enjoying this. It wasn’t very often that she would have normal, casual conversations like these.

“Mmm, you’re quite the talker. Did you just make that up? I’m Suhasini, by the way.”

“I’m Vishal.” He introduced himself. After a pause, he continued, “ And no, not really. Its just something I was writing for my article. I write for Powai times. It’s a local magazine which talks about things that go on around Powai.”

“That’s very nice. What do you write?”

“Oh this and that. Its mostly my thoughts. I have this habit of recording my thoughts. I even carry a recorder around with me for that purpose. Now the recorder has become a teacher to me over time. What is a better way to learn than from one’s own experiences? So all I do is put some of these together into an article.”

“That’s interesting.” She hoped he wouldn’t find it rude that she did not express more interest. The written word was not her cup of tea.

“What do you do?”

“I’m an assistant to the tailor in the Shoppers Stop at Mulund. You know the one in Nirmal?”

“Oh ya, I know. I go there sometimes. Next time I’m around, I’ll pop in!”

“Please do. There’s not much to do there anyway. I just took this to sustain myself, you know. It pays really well for the measly amount of work I do.”

“Oh don’t say that. Tailors are metaphors of God. They say God is a weaver who weaves our lives. Its from a very nice Marathi song I’d once heard.”

“That’s a nice thought! You make it sound so important to be a tailor. Well, honestly, I don’t hate my job that much. I always did want to be a fashion designer. Its sad how fate meddles with your life and rudely awakens you to the fact that nothing in your life is under your control.”

“His ways are mysterious. I’ve had my share of problems in life as well, but I’ve come to understand that whatever happens, happens for the best. Had it not been for the best, He would not let it happen.”

“I suppose I’m sitting next to the reincarnation of Buddha himself!”

“Oh! Pardon me. I did not mean to pour out this heavy drivel on you,” He chuckled out of embarrassment.

“Please. I didn’t mean it that way. I was just making fun.” Sensitive, she thought. She wondered why, though. He talked quite sensibly, a quality she’d come to regard as a rarity in the men of her age. If a person was that sensible, he would definitely not be unnecessarily sensitive towards small things as these. May be he had a reason to have an inferiority complex. May be there was something wrong with him – something that she could not see, of course.

Shut up, she said to herself. She had started to read into it too much. She really despised this aspect of her thoughts. She always branched out from one thought into another until a tiny seed would grow into an unwieldy, sprawling, dense tree that blocked out all the light of sensibility and left just the cold shadow of doubt. She realized that because of this useless chain of thought, she’d fallen silent. He too, had not spoken anything. She cursed herself for that. How was she going to pick up the conversation again?



2. His story

He could hear two teenage boys excitedly chatting about the new Bruce Willis movie. The most uninteresting and irrelevant of topics start to seem really intriguing when one is cooped up in a BEST bus, he thought, because he actually found the talk entertaining. He even almost had an opinion when one of the teenagers proclaimed with the authority of an Oscar awards juror that Bruce Willis needs to branch out into genres other than mindless action. The juror’s friend turned out to be an experienced director because he was sure that Willis was not capable of any other genre, and that he’d found his niche which he should stick to. Apparently, the director had worked with Mr. Willis on several occasions.

The bus screeched to a halt and the Hollywood dignitaries alighted. Disappointedly, he started to search for something else to feed on. Entertainment is like a drug. The more entertained one becomes, the more one wants. Normally, he would be alright just sitting by himself, thinking to himself and talking into his recorder. He’d spent a lifetime like that and it was perfectly entertaining. Now, though, he’d spent ten minutes talking to an interesting lady. It was a normal conversation, with exchange of thoughts and opinions, he thought. This was something he’d assumed he wasn’t capable of. He’d learnt to make these assumptions about himself.

He regretted having let himself out of control like that. He should not have started pouring that quick drying cement of his philosophy all over the conversation. Now it’s sealed and he cannot dig it back up. But his mind had tasted true entertainment and it could no longer pacify itself with just talking into a mechanical device. It was going through withdrawal.

May be he should talk to her again, suggested his little innocent self. No, of course not, Mr. Cynic Self replied. After all, just because he found that conversation so interesting, it does not mean she did as well. She probably was bored to death by it and was only putting up with him, like others do out of pity of some kind. But this did not feel like any other conversations he had all his life, squeaked Innocent. Mr. C guffawed that suggestion away and reminded Innocent of what had happened just a few minutes ago. Did you not offer your hand to shake after you introduced yourself? Innocent did not answer. He remembered it as clearly as Mr C did. He had to retreat his hand because she did not offer hers. May be she was one of those girls who come from a very reserved cultures and do not allow physical contact with the opposite gender. May be she was shy. Had she been offended, she’d not have continued the conversation, right? It was Mr. C’s turn to be silent. Innocent won. But he still wondered how he could make up for subjecting her to his professor-like talk.

“I’m not much of a talker, actually,” He said, finally, “I normally don’t talk to people as much, let alone strangers. To be honest, I have always thought that was what enabled me to write so much. So I really don’t know what I should be saying when; what with all the lack of practice,” He chuckled again.

“Really? I thought you were quite the smooth talker. You should talk more, then. I find it interesting, and I’m sure so will anybody else. But then, perhaps I’ll rob you of your daily bread,” She chuckled now.

A laugh was good. He was confident again. “Well, then perhaps I’ll make a living out of talking instead of writing. Its what those kids on the radio get paid for, isn’t it? How hard could it be? All you have to do is talk into a microphone and play the songs you like. I could do plenty of both.”

“Oh, you like music?”

“Yes. That is one of the things I could not live without. If I’m not thinking or writing, I’m mostly listening to music.”

“That’s great. I too, love music. What kind of songs do you listen to?”
“Actually, It depends on what kind of mood I am in. There are times when I listen to Jagjit Singh. Ah, the purity in his voice itself is intoxicating. Then there are times when I lose myself in old, old Marathi songs. They make me nostalgic. My mother always used to listen to these songs so I grew up listening to them. How about you? What do you like to listen to?”

“I like classical music the most. I listen to it a lot. I also listen to some new hindi singers you know. There’s some really good talent coming up these days. I like KayKay, Euphoria, and all those singers. I don’t listen a lot to English music though. I cannot connect with the language itself.”

“Ya I can understand. Sometimes I wonder, what would the next generation be like. As far as I am concerned, just listening to music has shaped a part of me. These days, kids listen to just these loud bollywood songs and that screeching, metallic, noise with screams and throaty shouts that they call punk or heavy metal or something. I think these kids will grow up to be some kinds of mutated hybrid creatures who have no identity”

“Yeah. I really despise that throaty stuff. I actually never knew there were such songs and that people were so crazy about them. This friend of mine at work told me that her boyfriend was a death-metal fan. I found that so ridiculous, I started laughing. I asked her, how could someone be a fan of death? She explained to me, that death-metal was a kind of music in which the singer generally comes on stage half naked and covered in makeup, and he shouts and screams and curses into the mic. As if that explanation made it better. To make it worse, she told people die in such concerts! They actually hit each other to encourage that singer to shout more, and in those fights, people die!”

“Mosh pits, they’re called. Bombay is actually filled with death metal fans. I heard a child died in that concert that happened last Feb. I really felt sad, you know. What would that child have seen in this world? How disoriented would it be to have ended up where he did?”

“Yeah. Hey, you really seem quite concerned about the future of children. I really wonder why that is.” She teased.

He went red in his ears. He’d not talked to a girl this long before, let alone being teased by one. “No, no. come on. I’m not even married.”

“Ok. Girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie. Who am I going to tell?”
“I’m serious.”
“Heart broken, then?”
He giggled at the suggestion. “No”
“You’ve never been in love?”
“No”
“You’re a writer. You write about life, and you’re telling me you have never been in love?”
“No. Why is that so surprising? I thought it was obvious.”
“Why would that be obvious to me?”

He was confused by her once more. He was about to explain when the bus screeched to a halt again. It screamed in agony as its tires ground against the cruel tar under the load of people. At each stop, people kept getting off and yet, the bus never seemed to become emptier. It was like being inside a water balloon.

“Chakala!” Shouted a thick, baritone voice. He noticed for the first time that the conductor had been shouting out names of stops. It was incredible how the person who spent the longest time in the bus, worked the hardest, and had to meet, without exception, every person on the bus, became the most ignored entity on the bus so easily.

“I’m not built for that life, you know. Some people are meant to be in love, have a family, live a full life. Every so often, some people are created who just aren’t part of that game. They are born to sit on the benches, watch the others play and write about it for the next day’s newspaper. That’s what I’m doing. He wants me to be the world’s reporter and I take pride in that job.”

“Oh enough with that He nonsense. Have you met that He? Have you ever had one real experience where you can honestly, surely say that yes, this was magic. This was completely impossible under any circumstance, given any conditions and yet, it has happened to me and so, I must say, He exists. Give me one example.”

He fell silent.

“I can safely guess that you have never even tried. People keep telling you love happens, you cant help falling in love, and all that bollywood hotchpotch. If you’re going to close the doors to yourself so tight, how is love going to just happen? Love is not some undying force in the world that forces its way into the lives of people like spring and showers them with colourful flowers.”

“Yes, I know. But wooing girls is not my forte.”

“You don’t always have to woo a girl. Love isn’t a reward. It’s just a way of feeling towards someone else. You spend some time with someone, you like that person, and sometimes, that person slowly grows on you. It’s just normal to feel like that because everyone is built differently. So, it is not so often that one finds a person who is more compatible than anybody else one has ever met. Once you feel like that, you spend even more time and after a while, you fall in love. It’s as simple as that.”

“Well, you sure have turned love into a science”

“I haven’t. It is a science. Biology, in fact. Love is just the nature’s way to make sure you propagate your genes, after all.”

“How romantic. They should use that in those cheesy songs in movies.” He was surprised at his own sarcasm. He normally did not let his negative feelings out so easily. Always the amiable, friendly guy – that was him.

“Don’t shove that shield in my face. Tell me if I’m wrong, or just say I’m right.”

“It’s not that simple. Life is not algebra. You don’t put two and two together to get four. Had it been that simple, there would have been no sorrow. There probably wouldn’t even have been human beings, just your amoeba and paramecia. Sometimes there are forces in life you cannot fight and if you want to keep yourself happy, you have to build a wall for yourself against those forces”

“Metaphors may work in your articles, Vishal. They don’t work with me.”

“I don’t know why it’s not clear to you. Well, see. I know I am not perfect. I know I am not the dream guy that girls go ga-ga over. I have accepted I can never even come close to that. People don’t talk normally to someone like me. I’m different, and I have always been different. All my life, I have been.. well, I have had shortcomings. I have learnt to live with those and understand that there are some limitations which are best left alone. There is no use challenging them.”

“How can you know you cannot break those limits if you never challenge them? What is the worst that could happen if you do try to break through? You’ll fail but you wont end up any worse than what you are right now. I have fallacies of my own as well. I’ll be honest with you. I have never talked so freely to anybody for a long, long time. I used to be a normal person but one day changed everything in my life. I became what I am today. I know how it is to be normal and now people have decided for me that I cannot get it back. Very few people have I met in my life after that day, who have given me normalcy. For that too, I’ve had to wade through pity first. But I know I can be normal. On the inside, I’m still the same. If I’m still the same, why should others care for anything else?”

“Do you think I did not try to challenge those limits? I’m not some coward who sits calmly taking the high ground, claiming life is over just because I am too lazy to get up and do something about it. I have tried enough. But I cannot keep behaving like a child, asking for what I cannot get. I have learnt to grow up and realized that I can be happy despite some limitations. Now, I am. Whats wrong with that?”
“You and I, we’re similar. We both have had to fight. I don’t know what your fight is and I don’t demand you tell me. It’s your fight. But I know you’re fighting without knowing why you should. You know others spend a lifetime without having to fight for anything at all. Now if you too are going to lay down your arms and be happy with defeat, then you’re worse than the enemy.”

He could feel his temples throbbing. He had spent a long time reaching the calmness in life that he had now. He felt furious that this girl thought she could just come along and uproot a lifetime of his doing. He decided he was not going to merit her with an answer. This had gone on long enough.



3. Her Story

She felt furious. She did not understand how he could be so calm about his life. She did not know what his story was, but for reasons beyond her grasp, she felt a strange connection with him. That connection made her feel irritated with his unperturbed outlook to life. For a long time, she had been in turmoil. Every day of her life, she would sit and think about that day, and how it had changed her. She even tried to run away from it and had come to Mumbai. Of course, it didn’t help. After going through so much trouble, she found it very disturbing to find someone who seemed to share her plight but was completely peaceful. She felt envious of that peace.

She realized a tiny part of her was jealous. For that, she knew she owed him an apology.

“Look, I’m sorry. I did not mean to be so harsh. Its just that I simply don’t understand how you can be so calm. Perhaps, you have given up too early in life. You seem like a young chap. You have a lifetime ahead of you. How can you retire right now? How does it make sense to give up so early? If not for winning, you could at least fight because you have a lot of time with nothing else to do.”

“Andheri, andheri!” The thick rope lashed out once more.

She realized he’d become alert. She recollected that he got off there. She felt a pang that she could not explain.

“I’m doing what I like. I have learnt to make myself happy. You wanted to be a fashion designer. You now work in a dark corner of a shop, altering dresses and shortening pants. May be I’m not the one who gave up.” His voice was steady. The wire, though, seemed bent.

He got up as the bus halted. Without a goodbye, he was gone.



4. His story

As he carefully alighted the bus, he could not help but feel hurt. He felt old demons wake up again in his heart and it burnt unbearably. He felt angry, and insulted. He wanted to lash out at that girl. Suhasini, my foot, he thought. He did not understand how she thought she had the right to say such things. Girls have their own arrogance, he thought. These girls think they can say anything they want to guys because guys will always worship girls.

Deep down though, he knew that was not the truth. he knew why he was angry. He wasn’t angry with her. He was angry with himself. He was angry with God, he was angry with fate and he was angry with his past. He looked back at the years that had gone by and he saw nothing but a long, winding trail of lonely footprints.

He thought of the girl who used to work at the magazine. He thought how she used to try and talk to him. He had always seen pity in her voice and he’d always kept himself away from her. He had always believed that she would lead him down a road filled with misery and disappointment. He knew now that he had been wrong.
He felt a new life being born into himself. The calmness in him had ended but it did not feel so bad. He realized the calmness was not out of peace, it was out of inactivity. What he felt now was not turmoil, like it used to be before; he felt vibrant.

His eyes felt wet. He transferred his stick to the left hand and used his right one to slide a finger under his dark glasses and wipe his eyes.



5. Her story

“Last stop, madame. Bus is going to the depot now.” The frayed rope seemed as if it would break now.

As she got up from her seat, she did not fail to realize how she’d remembered that he would get off at Andheri but forgotten that she too, had to get off here. Shaken as she was, she still felt this was peculiar.

She was a fighter. She took pride in her decisions. She had always been someone who would shape her own life because she would not trust anybody else with it. Fate had tried to play several games with her and had also beat her at one but she always found solace in the fact that nothing would make her quit the game.

Now she was broken. She felt as if she’d woken up from a dream to find out she’d slept through most of her years. She felt hurt by his words.
May be I’m not the one who gave up.

The words singed her brain, charred her heart. She was mildly surprised to find how a stranger could have said something that hurt her so deeply. She did not know why he had made such an impact on her, but she could feel something shift within her soul. She thought of her old drawings she’d done as a teenager. Everyone was sure she had talent. She knew she could no longer do things like that, but she knew that it did not mean she could do nothing at all. She pulled her phone out.

“Hi Rajesh. Ya. … Ya I know. … Listen Rajesh, I have taken a decision. I quit. I don’t want to work there anymore. … No its nothing like that. … Please. Ya, I’ll come and finish it. I’ll give you my letter then. … Yes, you too. Bye”

She was already crying. She suddenly became conscious of everyone around her because of that. For the first time since that fateful day, she was glad for the dark glasses on her face.