The Indefinite Stay

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. 

The Floating Bus Across Town

After a long time, I returned to Kochi.

It was a very unsettling part of my life when I went there, with hopes and wishes to settle there, in Kochi.

During my stay in Kochi, it was rich in experience in the form of a continous flow of childhood memories; I got to be in the past again at my grandmother's place.

It's good to just exist sometimes.

Not trying to change the world, not trying to deliberately make things happen.

Sometimes it's good to leave some of the details to nature and let it show us all the wonders that were never expected.

One such magical journey was the local boat ride I took, about twice. Just for the heck of it.
I make it a point to do this whenever I am in Kochi.

Go to nearest boat jetty, get on a boat and travel to the other side of the town through the backwaters covered with floating hydrilla plants, among the cargo ships arriving and leaving, among the islands visible in the distance, covered with vegetation almost overflowing into the sea, not to forget the one or two stops the boat takes at the land masses it encounters and the people rushing in and out, some with bicycles, some going to work, some tourists and maybe some like me, wondering where else can a bus be floating across the water rocking with the waves when it's tied to a wooden pillar when it's stopping at a jetty, and you rocking along with the waves and waiting for the joy ride to begin, the conductor issuing tickets to all the passengers for a mere five or seven rupees and signalling the driver seated like a captain on top of the boat with a bell in a sound coded message for on your mark, get, set and go!

The occasional ship from a far away land might pass very close to the boat making you feel so insignificant and makes you wonder how man could even make such humungous metal vessels that float on water and even move like some giant swimming tortoise.

I usually reached the end the of my journey and sat in a park to look at the backwaters all the way till the ocean.

It's something I would keep staring at and never know what time it was or what I had to do next.
The feeling of wind on my face and the reflections of the sun on the seas.

The huge machinery moving the containers and the little fishing boats, even smaller than the bus boats!
When I felt like I was saturated by the feelings this place could give me, it was time to go back home, at least for now, at least because I could come back here again.

And then, when I traced my route back to where I came from, the boat ride takes a different mood, with the sky changed in color, the ocean a little calmer, or maybe rougher at places, with the bigger motor driven fishing boats going back and forth and the people returning from work patiently wainting to get back home again.

Meeting Old Friends and Wada Pav

One weekend, I thought I would leave for Mumbai. There was nothing much to do and it was long time since I met my friends in Mumbai. And Mumbai is just a night's journey from Goa. So I called my friend Nikhilesh and told him that I was going to come to Mumbai for a couple of days and stay at his place.

So, on a Saturday night, I got on my bus. It was sleeper coach (with beds you can lie on). It was all good until the bus started moving. The ride was so bumpy, I was in a different posture every time the driver hit the brakes or ran over a speed bump. I managed to sleep only in little bits. When I woke up, the bus had stopped at one of those remote restaurants. When I got out, I found that my wallet was missing. I came back to my bed. I couldn't find it. I asked the driver and he asked me to list the things I had in it first. After I described all the contents, he took my wallet out from a little box. He said somebody had found it lying near their bed. I was tossed around so much during the ride that my wallet flew off to some other person's seat! OK bed!

Soon, I was trying to sleep again. I woke up in the morning and saw outside. It was Panvel. I crossed the gate of the school where I used to study (my 11th and 12th Std) and I was eagerly waiting to arrive at Belapur and meet my friend.

I got down at the flyover at Belapur and started walking towards my friend's house. As I walked I saw how the place had changed so much with so many new shops and so much more crowd, but still remained the same with lots of greenery and wide roads. It was wet everywhere from the slight drizzle and the whole place had an old familiar feel to it.

Just then, I got a call from my friend saying another one of our people, Anup (from my 11th and 12th Std class) had arrived just today all the way from Jalandar (Punjab). He came to meet me outside and we walked to Nikhilesh's house. It was almost after 6 years that I met Anup, but I tell you, it felt like school got over just yesterday and we were meeting once again.

We reached Nikhilesh's house. There were a lot of people there. Nikhilesh's mom, dad and two of his cousins. Since I have been visiting Nikhilesh's place every now and then, I was a familiar face to Nikhilesh's mom and I always have an amiable chat with her despite my broken responses in Hindi. I briefly met Nikhilesh's father who was quite busy getting ready to leave for office. Nikhilesh then tells me that the plan is to go to this amusement park called Essel World and asks me to get ready fast.

In no time, Nikhilesh, Anup and I were on our way to Essel World. We took a bus to Borivali, got down, had a wada pav, got into an auto that took us to the jetty and got into the ferry that took us to the amusement park. From then on, we were on a frenzy. Although I was a little scared in the beginning, we didn't stop from flying around, hanging upside down, hanging upside down while flying around, looping the loop on a roller coaster, almost free falling without a parachute on a roller coaster, getting sprayed by a fountain while hanging upside down and ice skating on a fake ice lake! Yes, I know. Then we were all done, tired at last, we ate some pizzas, walked around and head out for the boat back.

Now we were in a bit of a hurry to head back because Nikhilesh had to go to one of his relatives' place. So we were thinking about what would be the fastest way back home. We asked some taxis and they were all too expensive. We then decided to take an auto. We got an auto for a decent price and we were on our way to Belapur. But after a while, the auto started coughing badly and we had to stop. After starting again, the auto continued to cough and the driver had to get down every now then to tighten some piece in the back of the auto. This went on, until we reached a somewhat familiar place and we decided to take a bus from there. We got a bus till Vashi. We got down at Vashi and found a car that gave us a lift. We parted ways with Anup at Jui Nagar station and then Nikhilesh and I got down at Nerul, which was the furthest the car took us towards Belapur. We then took the state transport bus and went all the way till Belapur. Phew! Home at last. And in good time. I was so tired, I dozed into sleep while trying to read a book.

The next day, I left from Nikhilesh's house to meet my cousin studying in a management college called NITI. I had to take a bus till Powai. After a long ride till Powai, I had a wada pav at a roadside thela and then took another bus to a slum area. I got lost in the slum area but I walked around for a bit and found my way to NITI campus. Now this place was quite excluded from the rest of Mumbai. The college campus was full of really huge trees, thick vegetation and some old buildings meant for academics.

It was beginning to become dark and was slighly drizzling. I met my cousin near the administrative building. He was leaving for a freshers' party, so he showed me to the guest room where I was about to stay and then the canteen. He told me how the campus is almost an extension of the Borivali National Park and leopards tend to enter every now and then. Wondering if I would spot any leopards, I walked to the building with my room on the sixth floor. Inside the room, I opened my window. It was darker now. I was in a forest looking at the city bustling with life. Just outside the window were towering trees almost making it impossible to see the ground and the small lake inside the campus. To my left, was a green forest that spread all the way till the little hills at the horizon. On my right, I could see the huge lake at Powai, lots of traffic on the roads, tall buildings all lit up and even the airport with an occasional plane landing.

The next day, I met my cousin again during lunch in the canteen. After a final word, I left NITI almost as if I had come for a 'night in the forest house' visit. Now I had to go back to Nikhilesh's house and take my bus back to Goa in the evening. I felt like walking a bit so I walked till the Powai lake and walked along the lake side and reached a bus stop. I took a bus to Vashi. As soon as I found a seat, I fell asleep and hardly realized how long the ride was. I got down at the bus stand in Vashi and walked to the local train station. The road was so familiar, I didn't even have to ask for directions. I stopped at the jumbo wada pav stall on the way and took a bite. I was looking at railway station and remembered the times I had came here with my parents, friends and even my special person. Feeling all nostalgic, I bought a ticket to Belapur and went straight for the platform. I always used to get nervous when the train arrived because these trains are usually very crowded and stop for only about 20 seconds. After getting inside the train safely, I was looking out at all the familiar places on the way to Belapur.

I was back at Nikhilesh's place again. I had to pack everything and leave for my bus. Nikhilesh's mom insisted that I have dinner before I leave for my bus and I couldn't say no! After quickly eating and saying goodbye to Nikhilesh's mom, dad and his two cousins (and Nikhilesh on the phone because he was in office), I left for my bus to Goa.