This happened, or that, or this!!!

It’s our first date. I dressed up. I even bought you a bunch of lilies, the ones you like. I went an extra mile figuratively to find out your preference from your friend who doesn’t like me, and an extra mile physically because I could not find them anywhere closer. I even put some gel in my hair and carefully hid my receding hairline. I shaved again and got in my recently serviced car. Before knocking on your door, I once again looked at myself in rear view mirror, pressed my hair and checked if something was stuck in my teeth. I took a deep breath and knocked on your door. Every passing second felt like hours. And then you opened the door, clad in yellow, looking all perfect as you ever were. I didn’t think you had to go through all the trouble I had to, for looking this amazing. At the most maybe you just washed your face and got into this off the rack dress which fits you like it was custom tailored. I was so nervous around you. Dinner was usual. Table pre-booked, waiter tipped generously, no eating off other’s plate, hold the fork in left hand and all other etiquette. I parked the car few blocks before your home and walked with you. We didn’t talk. We just kissed good night.

When I was walking back, it struck me, why did I have to impress you? What was special about the night? Every guy does it. Well, maybe not every guy; every guy who has means and has a willing girl to impress. Why did this impress you? Didn’t you know it’s going to be like this? Why did you want this so much? It is not as if you would spend your entire life with a version of me that impresses you. It would mostly be routine, mundane life wherein I will eat out of a bowl most Saturday nights sitting on the couch and watching some stupid TV channel oblivious of your presence. The same presence which makes me forget everything today. The night looks so amazing today, as if there is an added fragrance to the flowers, or maybe added brightness to the moon. You are gone inside, but I kept standing there, hoping that you would come to the window. I felt your hands still holding mine and taste of your lips still lingering on. I could still hear your laughter, or the way you said my name.

What’s the point? Maybe I dressed up a little too gaudy for you. I got lilies when your friend actually said daisies; or she said lilies knowing that you like daisies. After all, she didn’t like me. I drove an extra mile to save some money. What could I have done? The vendor was overcharging me. The gel came down my forehead along with the sweat. I was nervous, I said that already. I cut myself while shaving and forgot to remove part of the tissue that I used to soak the blood. My car smelled like garlic and onions, because that’s what I sell for a living. I could not locate the leaf in my teeth because the rear view mirror was broken. Every passing second felt like hours because I had to pee so badly. There was no reason for pre booking the table at McDonalds; there was no need to tip the waiter because there wasn’t any and there was no need to use the fork either. We ran out of gas so you offered to walk. We couldn’t talk since it was raining. There is an added fragrance to flowers after rain stopped and so is the brightness more since the clouds disappeared. You never came to the window, because there wasn’t any. Your hands were sweaty, I still feel what it was like to hold them. I can still feel the taste of your lips because they tasted like the fish burger you had. Your laughter gives me nightmares and so does your inability to pronounce my name properly given that you lisp.

Why did you marry me?

You saw me standing on your door and waiting impatiently for you to open the door. You liked lilies after all. I could only get these lilies next town and you knew that I drove extra to get these for you. I was wiping my forehead and you knew I was nervous around you. Tissue on my face and leaf in my teeth, you thought it was cute that I was clumsy. You love garlic and onion smell, who could have thought? Your parent never took you to McDonalds, fearing you would never fit in that dress. You thought that I didn’t care whether you will get fat. I wanted to walk with you in the rain so I pretended that we ran out of gas. Really? Oh my girl, you are so sweet and innocent. You saw me standing there in front of your door hoping that there was a window you would see me from. You saw me looking at my hands feeling your touch. You saw me lick my lips and thought I liked taste of yours.

God is so kind. 

The man on the other side...

Sipping slowly from a cup of tea, thinking about nothing in particular and having nothing to do; here I was, sitting in this diner, looking at the rain pouring down. It was the rain in the first place, which pulled me to this town, so far from home and so far from family. I have always felt a connection with these droplets drizzling down and colouring everything a shade or two darker. This was my favourite place. The owner shared my passion for the rains and always played the songs I wanted to hear. In the background, was playing “Rhythm of the rain” by The Cascades. The day could not have started better.

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
Telling me just what a fool I've been
I wish that it would go and let me cry in vain
And let me be alone again

Oh, listen to the falling rain
Pitter patter, pitter patter
Oh, oh, oh, listen to the falling rain
Pitter patter, pitter patter

 

If there was one thing, other than the rain, which pulled to me to this town was that I was absolutely certain nobody knew me there. I was not running from someone or something. Rather I wanted to be in a place I didn’t need to think about running from. It was not easy, disappearing overnight, leaving no trail of where I went. Sometimes I think about the people I left behind, but that is a matter of past now. It seems like another life now. Now this was my home, my work and my life. Sitting in this corner and judging the world from here even though and because nobody cared about my opinions.

I was about to finish my third cup of tea since morning and had started writing a story on my laptop when I noticed the man across the diner on the other corner. There was something peculiar about his face, something very familiar. It was a smirk, a smirk I had only seen on one other face. Mine! I was told that I always had this on my face whenever I was on the verge of stumbling upon an idea to write a story. I was told so many times that I decided to see for myself, and I sat hours before a mirror while trying to write a story and finally I saw it. That’s why I remember it so clearly. There was no mistake. There was more that I had not noticed in first look. He was working on a laptop identical to mine, had a hairstyle same as mine and wore glasses with same frame as that of mine. In front of him on the table besides his laptop were three empty cups of tea.

I was getting curious now. I wanted to look at him closely. So I walked upto the other end of the diner and picked up newspaper from a table near his. He did not notice me at all. Almost everything was identical and still he was not me. He wore the same watch from the same brand, had a birthmark at the same place on his hand as that of mine and he looked outside the window at the rain every thirty seconds just like I do. I walked back to my seat. I could not concentrate on the story I was writing now. I made thumping sound on my table with my hand so that he looks at me, but he did not seem to notice. After a while, I grew impatient and decided to talk to him. I looked into my laptop and shut it down and got up to walk towards him. He wasn’t there anymore. I ran outside trying to figure out where he went. He could not have walked away so quickly. I stood in the rain trying to absorb what just happened with me.

So many days have passed since then, but I am not able to forget that incidence. I come to this diner everyday but he did not come back. I enquired about him in nearby places. This is a small town where everybody knows everybody. Any new visitor cannot go unnoticed, but this one had just vanished in this air. I gave up the search eventually figuring that it would be a coincidence that the man was wearing the same things and had same mannerisms as that of mine, in absence of an alternative logical explanation.

There was no rain one day. So I did not feel like going outside. Sometimes you become so comfortable with a place that staying indoors feel odd. After all this was a place I only used for sleeping. The rain was back next day and so was I, at the diner. After I had my second cup of tea, I noticed that there was a person sitting on a table near mine and was looking at me continuously. When I looked at him and smiled, he gathered courage and approached me. He asked me whether I was a journalist. I said I was a suspense writer. He said that then what he was going to tell me next would excite me a lot. I was all ears expecting some old story I had already heard.

“I have noticed you many times sitting here engrossed in your work. You would not have noticed but even I come here daily at this time. There are only two seats with windows in this Diner and both are always occupied. Yesterday you did not come, so it was a good opportunity for me to sit here. I was enjoying my regular mug of beer enjoying the view outside and then I saw him. He was sitting across the diner on the other seat with the window. At first I only noticed his baldness pattern which was same as mine but then I saw his moustache, his poncho and the bag in which he was carrying the carpentry tools. They were all same as that of mine. I saw him up and close. It was as if somebody had made a bad copy of me. Everything about him reminded me of myself but his face. There was something different about his face. I wanted to talk to him but he just disappeared. I asked my mother whether I had a twin brother, but it turns out I don’t. What do you make of this, Mr Suspense Writer” he said. I did not blink my eyes even for a moment or at least I don’t remember if I did.

Now was the time to talk to the owner of the Diner once again. It was too much of a coincidence and the writer in me was crying for an explanation. The owner was a respectable gentleman. He requested me not to spread such rumours or people will stop coming there. I know he was right. “I will not tell anyone but if this is true, then people will notice anyways one day. Have you thought about it?” I asked him. He said he does not know anything about this man. I tried to calm him down and asked him whether he started this diner. He said his father did. His father was alive and went for a walk everyday and so next morning I was out walking and waiting for him. He was a sweet gentleman and opened up quickly. He told me how his father had a modest beginning and opened a small sweet shop on this street. As a kid he knew everyone in the town and everyone treated like his own. He used to pass time in other shops everyday and especially in the one adjacent to theirs. “Which one?” I asked. “Ohh, it is part of our diner now. We bought the place after the owner died.” He said.

“I used to sit in that one for hours looking at myself” he said. I asked “looking at you in what?” “There was a large mirror on the wall, as large as the wall itself. I used to get lost in it. It amazed me to see how mirrors make a place look so large. But it was broken when we bought the place and diner was opened.” He said.

“How did the owner die?” I asked.

“He had a heart attack. He was sitting in a chair in the corner when we found out he was dead. His eyes were open and it seemed that he was looking at himself in the mirror.” he said.

A life lived again

“Only some minutes more” he thought.  When he came here first, he observed that people had a strange habit of looking at the sky every now and then. He had spent only ten days when he started to look at the sky. He was one of them now; eyes looking at the scorching sun, a prayer on lips and a growing anger chewing through the senses. But this was not the first time he was angry, over time he had learnt to smile. Exactly like his father who always smiled to hide the pain and the venom building inside him.

He was there, when his father won the title of Rustam-e-hind, the great wrestler of India. The whole village went to railway station and carried his father home. There were continuous celebrations for a week in his honour. He had never seen his father happier. The thing about movies is that they end at the highest point in a person’s life, but real life is much different. One has to live and spend each minute of his life. To live a heroes life, is the most sought after, but he watched his father longing for that attention, that honour every minute of his life. His father used to look at the newspaper clippings for hours. The people, who earlier cajoled his father for hearing his story, now avoided him for they got bored of his self-praise.  He watched his father grew weaker everyday without a reason to live till one day when he found him dead in bed clutching the trophy to his chest.

After his father’s death, he moved to this village, where no ghost of his father’s fame followed him, where he is free to look like an idiot staring at the sky. It had been a month post monsoon and there was no sign of clouds. But the rain God was hard to please, the priests chanted:

“O Indra, Dancer, Much-invoked! as thy great power is unsurpassed,
So be thy bounty to the worshipper unchecked.
Most Mighty, most heroic One, for mighty bounty fill thee full.
Though strong, strengthen thyself to win wealth, Maghavan!
O Thunderer, never have our prayers gone forth to any God but thee:
So help us, Maghavan, with thine assistance now.
For, Dancer, verily I find none else for bounty, saving thee,
For splendid wealth and power, thou Lover of the Song.” ¹

Rain God was not pleased. “He is only pleased with true devotion. These, money minded fraud, priests are not good for swaying the God” they said.

His father often came home drunk. In his half asleep state, he always used to mutter “Don’t live a hero’s life.”

He saw Rain God in his dreams today, or was it his father in a God’s attire. “Help these people” the God said. “But you always told me not to become a hero” he questioned. The God smiled and said “No! I told you not to live a hero’s life.” He was fully awake now. He knew what was to be done. He walked up to the temple and sat in prayer. At first people did not notice, but when he sat unmoved for hours, people started gathering around him. They understood that he was praying for the rain. Finally they had a true devotee. He sat unmoved for days. Men watched him in amazement and women with tears at his devotion. No one was watching the sky any longer.

He had to be a hero, like his father. But unlike his father, he had to die a hero’s death; a death, which will make him immortal for years to come.

Finally the Rain God was pleased. The sky was filled with dark clouds. “Some minutes more” he thought. When first lightning struck, he knew it was time. He was walking towards a light and then absolute dark.

“You did what I could not, my son” his father said with a trophy in his hand.

He opened his eyes. He had passed out. Somebody held his head in arms and helped him drink some water. He realised that he was not dead. People picked him on their shoulders. They danced around him. He was a hero.

“I have failed you father” He said.

¹ Rig Veda, Book 8, Hymn XXIV Indra