Long year in Mauritius, back in Chennai

I used to live in the same house. It harbors so many memories from the time I used to spend my time thinking about inventions. I had people who liked me and supported me. Took care of me.

We went on a wonderful trip to the mountains. We were all jammed together in a tiny vehicle which wound round and round up the hill. I cannot believe I am still thinking about Him.

We rode horses. I had never ridden one before.

It’s funny how everything is so different in such a short span of time. 

It seemed like it could have been this way forever, until I expected the unexpected. 

Giving up everything and starting again. 

I didn’t care. I had done it with my life so many times before, I would do it. I would do it for Him, despite the doubts, despite the fear. 

I would go wherever He went. 

Sometimes I felt so transparent. I let them see every emotion of mine. I cried sometimes even. 

I couldn’t even hide my feelings. 

He understood what I was going through. 

There is no language that one needs when the hearts are talking. 

They couldn’t care less though. They were ruthless. They were so cold. 

There was some problem and I was being pulled into being part of their problem.

I had never cared about it since I got to stay with Him. Things could only move forward. 

I was in the most beautiful place on planet earth, the sun shining, the gardens blooming and the people smiling. 

I was never so happy to be isolated from the rest of the world. 

But it turns out, as these stories always do, there is always a catch when you feel happy for no reason. 

It usually means that happiness is going to be taken away from you real soon. 

And so the time flied away as I fantasized and lived believing in what I knew was not going to happen. 

It’s a dangerous pursuit. The pursuit of chasing my fantasies, I ended up in a ditch. 

I was blinded the illusion. The possibility so minuscule yet vibrant. 

There was no one to console me now, but this one girl, who saw how desolate I had become, waiting for an impossible desire. 

Like two lovers coming together, becoming friends in conversation and getting married after living for so long in each other’s affection, reality felt like a fairytale. 

Getting married was the easy part. But having kids is another thing. 

That’s when she realized that it was not appropriate for her to be with me. 

And took me to all sorts of religious ceremonies. 

Like it was going to change me and make me celibate. 

Hah! I got more desperate. 

I surely enjoyed the walks to her place, visits to the supermarket where I spoke with her sister, and even asked her to forget about her previous lover and accept me wholeheartedly. 

At which point she took me see her new husband. 

That’s going to be my new lover, she said and left me no choice, but to dig a deep grave and lie in there for days and days. 

I was beginning to decompose as the maggots started eating my flesh and my body became dry of blood and my heart slowing down to an indefinite halt. 

There was no life left for me as my karmic Mother came to my rescue, revived me from the dirt and took me for a long drive around the oceanic landscapes.
She knew how I’d felt. She had been there before. She had been with many men before and her heart was big. 

She kissed her new husband in the front seat as sat at the back, happy to be breathing air again and felt loved, in the presence of someone, someone who cared. 

I liked these car rides. 

They took me around to amazing places, stopped at odd places, sometimes even took me to their houses and where we cooked together. 

Things were looking real good, for everyone. 

Even He found a girl on some mobile application. 

How weird, I thought. 

They surprisingly got along really well and started seeing each other often. 

I got along well with them. In fact I loved to be among these couples now. Free rides, free beers and not a single day goes by without fooling around and having fun. 

They said it was now time to find my girl and complete the story. 

I said yes, I totally would. 

I really wanted to. 

I ran after a couple of women. 

Asked their phone numbers. 

One of them even told me we could be friends, hang out and stuff. 

I never bothered to call her. 

I don’t know what I was looking for. Because if I wanted to be loved and needed someone to spend some time with, then here I was, with all the people I’ve ever wanted to be with, these lovely couples, loving and connected. With me like a puppy dog in their house. 

***

I met an African woman. She was the friend of a friend who game me her number. For some strange reason, he encouraged me to talk to her, checked up on me even, asking if I’d been getting along with this woman.

I had texted her. 

She had replied. 

We got on the whatsapp and texted some more. 

Then we texted more. 

And more, and more. 

It got exiting, asking all the details about each other, while having no idea how the other looked like. 

This was my Tindr. 

We went out to uninteresting places and had amazing conversations.
I took the bus from my town to the next. 

It was wonderful. 

She lived near a spinach farm. 

And spoke in an accent. 

She was very particular about teaching me how to respect women, about how one should treat her right. 

The most important aspect was about how a man should let the woman do her hair. No matter how long it took. 

It is apparently important for an African woman, to have her hair well groomed, all the time. 

As a matter of fact, it also happens to be the most elegant way of bonding between her girl-friends. 

Her hair looked beautiful. 

She had amazing huge eyes and dark black skin. 

She was an angel. 

It was beautiful the way she talked. 

I enjoyed the bus rides back home, thinking about her. 

We sometimes caught up in between our busy lives. 

It was always funny when we did. 

It’s hilarious when an Indian man tries to interact with an African woman, especially when he knows nothing about where she came from, her language or her way of living. 

She loved how stupid I was, despite being a smart-ass computational scientist. 

I soon got busy with my work as there was so much chaos at the office. 

Figuring out what was happening itself became a huge challenge and we were trying to advance in our work as a team. 

There was a new member at the office who was very different from the others. 

He was much older than the rest of us. 

We became good friends. 

The African guy was fun too. 

The three of us had to work on some really important stuff that would help us reduce the chaos in our lives and become sane again. 

There were disagreements, there was confusion, there was hard work, there was sheer exhaustion, but we were pushing through. 

We went on and on and came to a point where we were about to finish. 

I hadn’t met a soul outside the office for over a month. 

The only trip I had was from the office to home and from home to office.
I took a week’s vacation after the whole mess was over. 

I traveled to the mountains in the south and consumed a lot of psychedelic drugs. 

I was lost. I was tripping in the forest, with some strangers and made fires every night. 

It was an extremely misguided journey. 

I never took the time to meet that girl again. 

We never even spoke after that. 

I had a dream one night where three of my colleagues were working in an office that was on a train. 

I figured it was like a metaphor where the train was the common journey we were taking, moving together in unison. 

I went to see my parents perfunctorily and soon took the latest flight back to Mauritius Island... 

And boy, everything had changed. 

The team of the three got broken as the new guy had left and the African guy got fired. 

No clue about what had happened. 

I thought we had just worked through most of the chaos. 

I was welcomed by my bosses, but things were still unclear why my teammates were gone. 

Things were not making sense and I had promised to a Chinese man on the plane that I would try the Indian meditation technique that he had learned in an Ashram in Bangalore and witnessed his whole life change before him.
I thought why not. 

There was an ashram a little far away from where I lived and I decided to try it. 

I was wondering if I could figure out what was happening in my life and why all the people I meet were getting blocked from my life, in some weird way. 

It was some self fulfilling thing. 

Nothing really happened. 

I wasn’t finding any answers. 

I was only listening to some elderly guy preach away. 

And I took part in all of the activities from serving food to doing yoga postures and even all the mopping and cleaning. 

The only lesson I learned there was that the people who were happy here were the ones who faked it. 

The ones miserable, like me were the ones just trying to figure out what was going on and how it happened and blah blah blah. 

And all those who faked the supernatural effect of the guru upon them got uplifted and were in fact very satisfied with the whole experience. 

I played along for a while, trying to blend in, until it was over. 

I was working from nine to five. 

There was enough faking that I was doing anyway.