Not Another Random Rambling

The Beginning

Fir bhi yuhin kabhi ek hasrat karaah si

Banti hai zindagi ka bahana, ya fir bahane ki zindagi

And yet once in a while, a desire clad like a scream

Becomes the dream of your life, or the life of your dream

This is the end of the story. Well, because, eventually looking at the title and the beginning, you would have had imagined the kind of material that will be served in the pages ahead, for your mind to chew on. Words that will be tossed and sautéed in the heat of the moment and served with a garnishing with familiar emotions. I dare not disagree. So, I will wrap up with a random wedding instead.

The bride was lifted by four men, supporting the four corners of the pedestal she was sitting on. They were to raise her high enough for the groom to be able to see her face. Well, the groom was airborne as well. With almost the precision of a mid-air drill, the pedestals were competing to reach higher; the cheering crowd around made it all worthy for the men who carried the human obelisks on their shoulders.

“Oh gosh! What kind of a shamelessly giggling bride is this!” one of the aunties in gravity challenging head buns and earrings (the ones that will later broadcast the spiced up, blow by blow updates of the situation to privy ears) threw her words in the air, “lojjar to naamgondho nei!” 

The bride was enjoying the moment to the hilt although trying in vain to glue herself to the pedestal. Her body shook in tremors of lively laughter and she barely managed to hide her face behind the beetle nut leaves she held with her delicate mehendi ordained fingers.

“Aiiiii look out, look out!!” by the time the father of the bride was about to trespass by his third cardiac arrest, a fifth man had supported the almost falling pedestal of the bride. The girl, like the crowd hushed by the shock of the moment, caught back up again with the celebration in a minute.

It was the beginning of the final ceremonies for her wedding that involves a pertinent ‘gaze’ along with good humour acrobatics, Shubho drishti. In a while, the sound of conchs arrested the air and she slowly parted the beetle nut leaves, unveiling her face, adorned with designs made of white silt on her temple and cheeks. She lifted her eyes to meet the eyes of a very amused man, sitting on the other pedestal, his olive skin emitting blue light. They locked their gaze amidst the frolics under the blue and white shamiana.

The temporary vehicles of the bride and groom were lowered down and some of the carriers dispersed in various directions, in ambitious pursuit of checking the huge checklist of the sundry things that need to be performed during a Bengali wedding. Crossing their path, was a white headed man in a traditional attire of dhuti and panjabi who seemed to be particularly in hurry, despite his stooping back and struggled gait. Lifting the trailing ends of the garment he was not very used to be in, he looked around squinting his eyes under the dazzling lights. Having spotted the one he was looking for, he sped to the area where an elderly woman in a sublime blue saree was pouring pink transparent liquid into glasses.

“There are other people to do all this work, why are you here? Mamon is looking for you”, the man, hands on his hips rattled the words, catching for breath in between words.

“Why were you gawking at me like that during shubhodrishti?” she didn’t move an inch.

“Why shouldn’t I? I will look at you whenever I want” he seemed irritated.

“Well, you jammed onto where Mr. Sen was trudging and he had almost dislodged Mamon off the pedestal! Goodness, my heart had skipped a beat!” she chewed each word. “You know what Mrs Singha said? How will the bride gaze at the groom when her uncle and aunt are having shubhodrishti instead! Preposterous!!”

“Hahaha, she’s rediscovering her wit after all these wasted years, good for her!” he gave way to a hearty laughter. “koi, ektu dao to, gimme some of that pink sherbet.”

“Try and grow up a bit!”

“Exactly!” he grinned.

The Middle

Contrary to popular belief, the middle path is always a tricky way to trudge. The middle of something is always a place where weird things start unfolding. Things you had neither summoned in your foresight nor summed up in your maths while calculating the cost of the journey. And the beauty in intricate designs of fate is such that you rarely know when you are approaching it, you just know when you are there, in the middle of that something.

The middle is somewhat vaguely intriguing as well, like the coming of age of a boy, who at times doesn’t want to leave the trails of innocence but has been sold to adulthood already. But there’s no intrigue in the one I am telling you. In fact, sans the titillating bits and interesting twists and turns waiting around the corner, it will appear to be a rather malnourished middle. And in such stories, there are aimless conversations, chores and then some more aimless conversations.

So, time passes by and you never really know if it’s going forward or backward. After a long gestation, you wake up rupturing the cocoons of life and find yourself in between a conversation again.

“Have you had dinner?” he pulled the sleeves of his shirt up, baring his thin wrist.

“Yes. And you?”

“Nope, was waiting for you.”

“C’mon, since when did you grow into a nutcase?” she exclaimed. “You knew I had to take this phone call.”

“It’s not like I wait every day, just thought of catching up.”

“Hmm. How’s work? I noticed you smiling in your sleep in the morning.”

“Oh fancy! Was I? The new project is one step behind of getting terribly messed up. We have lost quite a few days in deliberation, you know how it is to work with agencies,” he rattled in a single breath and chuckled.

“What’s that there?” She looked on and pointed towards his forehead.

He touched the nodule on the right side of his forehead, feeling it with his curious fingers, the mop of his hair playing hide and seek with his fingers. She looked on, with long unpractised admiration.

“Ah, this one, this has been there for a while, I remember to have touched it before.” He shrugged his shoulders.

She reached for the green tube of trusted antiseptic cream in the closet of the settee. Handy closet. It was his idea. 

Apparently, on some rainy days, the most romantically alluring sentence is –‘Have you had dinner?’. And no, antiseptic creams probably don’t heal bumps on your skin, neither does time heal pain. Time simply makes the pain bearable comparing it to the numerous inflictions you experience, every other day. And in a rigmarole of chores, in a hopscotch between the beginning and the climax, it’s very tiring to preserve the folds of a memory as neatly as it had first etched your heart.

And yet, time passes by and you don’t know if it’s really going forward or backward. After a long gestation, you wake up from the cocoons of life and find yourself in between a conversation again.

“This is getting tougher by the minute” her face was almost purple in pain and anger.

“It’s the same with me, I never imagined life like this will be so darn difficult” he jeered in pain.

“What’s the use of putting up with all this? It’d be of no use if we are not together”

“So, are you saying the obvious?”

“What is the obvious? Open your eyes, look around, nothing is obvious. Things are just certain.”

“Certainty is as certain as the faith you have in it.”

“I am not saying I’m losing faith on us.”

“I am not saying you are either.”

“I don’t think this is heading towards a logical conclusion.”

“Absolutely, there’s no point in discussing any further.”

The Rains

It didn’t even take minutes for the drizzle to grow into splashing rains, pouring on the maroon tiled roof. It’s a time of celebration, it’s a time of togetherness and of isolation too. They say, there’s something mystic in the sound of the rains and it affects your psyche like very less other sounds. The sound of earth in scorching sun, the sound of the first cry, the sound of passion unleashed and the sound of your own soul. A sound less impaired that invades through the borders of your soul, no matter what you are up to!

And before you figure out what you are up to, once again, time passes by and you never really know if it’s really going forward or backward. After a long gestation, you wake up from the cocoons of life and find yourself in between a conversation again.

“What are you up to?”

“Stuff.”

“Let’s go for a walk today”

“Nope, there too much on my plate today.”

“Exactly which is why you need to digest, what better than walking?”

“Are you at the mouth of that alley again?” she frowned as she stretched his mouth and examined his teeth.

“Which alley?” he struggled to pronounce the words with his mouth open but complied.

“That alley, where your common sense is robbed by your idiosyncrasies.” she chuckled while inspecting the lobes of his ears next.

“So unfunny, you should do a page on the local newspaper, they’ll be inspired by this heightened ability to be completely boring,” he made a long face mimicking the serious air about an imaginary priest at work.

“Why can’t you be a normal man harbouring healthy habits like cleaning the goo inside your ears?” she reached for the box of earbuds in the closet of the settee. “Oh! By the way, I forgot to tell you, Mamon called today. She wants those blue and white striped cookies for her birthday.”

Random talk is where they met each other usually. Big fat drops of rain poured down and embraced the earth. It was raining after quite a while, you could tell by the smell of the earth lingering in the air for long.

It was one such rainy evening when they had met. It had been long since they had swiped each away from the senses. Honestly, I don’t recollect the exact coordinates of the place but how does it even matter? At a wedding or at the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan selling sweet meat, all the same, so how does it matter?

And what followed is not a love story per se but a story. Clad in casual daywear, clean hair combed neatly to the back, nothing upbeat about the attitude either, an ordinary story. A story with most of the common ingredients thrown in, fluttering hearts, a moment of truth, fighting the forces of the world, blissful togetherness, blissful space, fluttering rage, a moment of truth, fighting the forces within, blissful togetherness. Cooked in slow to medium flames of love and served for life, slurped up in the zest for life, plates licked clean. Only the conversations remained.

Those random talks.

P.S. By the bye, in case you are still looking for ‘a love story’, why don’t you consider the real faces, if you were reminded of any while reading this. Maybe that’s actually the story you are looking for!