Of Love, Life and Travels

My laptop is a treasury of incomplete mediocrity: essays, passages and pages worth stalled thoughts/ideas. A few samples.
An excerpt from what once was touted (in my head, of course) as my most definitive work (:P):

“What are you saying, man?” Arjun asked, shaking his head from side to side.
I stayed silent. Sometimes, when I am silent, and the night is still—the trees, the sky, the birds, the insects all noiseless—and the vehicles don’t lumber up the sleepy highway, I hear the hills sing their song. There are no words, just a hushed tune, almost like a lullaby, but not quite.
“You came back all the way to find out about that girl? That maid in the Guest-House?” he asked, still shaking his head.
The spell was broken—the song ended even before it began.
I kicked a stone down the valley, into the dark, a little irritated. I heard a couple of soft thumps, of the stone bouncing down the slope, before a muffled thwack told me it had hit green. With my hands on my hips, I said:
“Look, there are things that you won’t understand”
He took a big swig of his beer (Maharani), and still shaking his head said sarcastically:
“Like what? You are in love with her or something? That it took you seven years to understand it?”
“Something like that” I lied.
“What? You’re joking right?” he asked.
I stayed silent again. My limbs felt loose, my head felt a little light—Maharani might be desi, but it hits you pretty hard. I concentrated hard on the silence, but I knew that was not how it worked: the hills didn’t sing on request, they sang when you least expected it.
“Oye!” he said, and hit me playfully on my head, “You’re lying right? Or you’re plain drunk?”
“I am so not drunk” I said, and took a wild swipe at him, but he dodged it unconvincingly and I added: “And I am not lying”
He threw his bottle down the valley, and ran. And I ran after him, shouting, my beer-bottle in hand: the world was a blurry haze; a full moon shone brightly, flanked by big grey clouds; the mountain-air had a distinct biting cold about it; and tears streamed down my eyes. I laughed and shouted and ran. He laughed too, and like kids left loose in a park, we ran atop the hills and into the town, puffing and panting, but forever laughing …

****

From Twilight 2.0 (yes, it was meant to be continued, but never got down to writing it)
(Oh, a brief introduction: the central character gets addicted to these hallucinatory fruits that he finds in the forest. Visions that follow)

In minutes, I feel strangely content, tranquil. Though substantially darker, everything seems to have acquired a halo about it: the trees, though still unimaginably gargantuan, are a flashing green; the flowers, amongst whom I lie, are no longer soft and pretty, but brutally colourful—even more violent than what they seemed at that first initial sight; the river flows slower, though I am sure it cannot; and the setting Sun is a suspended unreal blood-red bob on the horizon; the horizon is devoid of colour, so empty that it makes the world look as bright as a thousand splendid suns; and everywhere I turn and see, I see her—myself, for in a sense she is I—clad in the simple white sari that she wore so dignifiedly when she walked away, smiling benignly. My heart melts, my eyes shed tears of joy, and my mind, yet, is calm. If this is what being in love is, then I won’t ever get tired of it. I shut my eyes, and she is there. I do not know when I pass onto my dreams and see her there.

Happy new year.

The Automaniac

It was late-evening, the light was fading. The sky was a grim grey-brown, as it had been all day. It being Sunday, there was little traffic on the road—cars and bikes zoomed past him, the odd bus trundled by; few autos chugged past noisily, but they were mostly taken and did not stop despite his repeated signaling; a bullock-cart, full of fresh manure, passed him, leaving a trail of obnoxious smell behind; He walked around in circles, getting increasingly impatient, muttering to himself to stay calm. And then, he finally saw an auto that was passenger-less: he jumped down the pavement, onto the road, in its path and swung his hands frantically. It stopped.

“Where to, sir?” the auto-wallah asked, grinning. And the man noticed he had no incisors.

The man hesitated, before he said:

“To the Market. Er... How much?”

The auto-wallah gave a demented, tooth-less grin yet again, and declared:

“Sir, you will give me fifty rupees”

That was nearly twice what he thought it would cost, but he simply got in quietly.

With a single hard tug at the lever, the engine spluttered and coughed into action. The rush of the wind stung so hard that the man hugged his jacket and drew his bag closer to him. He noticed there were three decorated rear-view mirrors, one on either side of the windshield, and one on top, just below the picture of the Goddess. In every mirror, all he saw was different bits of the face of the auto-wallah: the mirror above showed his forehead, mostly dominated by a bright-orange tilak, and a portion of his curly, messed-up hair; the mirror on the right showed one side of his two-day stubble and one red, kohl-lined eye; the other side, showed the other half of his face, a black birthmark on his cheek, lips more grey than pink. In the mental picture he made of the face, putting together the pieces in every mirror, the auto-wallah looked like a lunatic.
“Do you like my auto sir?” the auto-wallah asked suddenly.

“Um?” he said, looking at the mirror on top, at the red-eyes that were trained on him.

“Auto .. Like? You?” the auto-wallah asked again.

“Its nice” he said, pretending to look around.

The auto-wallah let out a shriek of laughter and abruptly sobered down and asked in a soft, toneless voice:

“Only nice?”

“Very nice, sir. I meant very nice” he said hastily.

And thanks to one of the rear-view mirrors, he saw one side of him smile.

They were still twenty minutes away. He just didn’t like the way the journey was going, but he held his calm.

They stopped at a signal. A bus tanked next to them with a loud hiss, and a gust of welcome hot air blew from its exhaust; the buzz of still running-engines all around irritated him; a beggar-boy, carrying his little sister went from one tinted window to another-- finally one opened and sent a jet of red-paan that the boy did well to dodge. Presently the boy came up to him: he looked away and refused. The auto-wallah gave the boy a ten-rupee not and said menacingly, looking at him through the mirror:

“Sir, don’t you have to give this boy ten rupees, too?”

The man briefly considered abandoning the auto and bolting, thinking this was the devil that had, perhaps, come to give him some sort of a warning.

But he simply took-out a ten-rupee note from his wallet and gave it to the boy.

The light turned green and they were away, again.

“Can you sing, sir?” the auto-wallah asked.

“Um .. Me?” he asked and instinctively, held on to his bag even more tightly.

“Yes, sir”

“No, I cant”

“Eh?”

“I can’t” he said a little loudly, trying to make himself heard over the din of the auto.

“I am not deaf, sir” the auto-wallah said sternly.

“Sorry” he muttered.

And they both stayed silent, before the man noticed the reflection in the mirror lighten as it broke into a smile. He relaxed slightly. The auto-wallah said:

“I’ll teach you a song, sir. Sing after me”

“Um .. Ok” he said meekly.

And the auto-wallah broke into a joyous cacophony: it spoke of the greatness of the country, of the mountains and the rivers, of the Gods and the Kings, of diversity, of unity, of tolerance and kindness and of course, of love. With every line he repeated, the man grew tenser. Sweat beads formed behind his ears and rolled down his cheek; his eyes grew steely and dark much in contrast to the auto-wallah, whose blood-shot eyes moistened with feeling and he looked like a sad, mad man.

When he finally reached the Market, the man nearly jumped off the auto. His hands shivered as he fumbled with his wallet, before dishing out a hundred-rupee note and said “Keep the change”. The Auto-wallah gave him one last tooth-less maniacal grin of gratefulness. He ran, as fast as he could, in the direction opposite to that of the Auto. And then he heard it and he stopped and relief flooded him. He smiled, slid his hands into his pockets, whistled a soft love-song and walked on. In a few hours he’d watch it all on TV, reporters scrambling to get a shot of the debris of the Auto that carried the bomb (his bomb in his bag!) that rocked the Market and shocked the nation ..