IV
Akash takes nearly seven hours to reach the destination. Before looking around for Rony and Gini, he can already see them sitting at the Namastey cafe. He sees them now better than the last night. Rony is fair and keeps short hair with a beard twice as big as his entire head and it seems that his body is squinted due to his facial hair. The hippie swag he carries gets amplified by the metal ear ring on his left ear. He talks softly in such a heavy voice that few syllables of the words he speak die down at his lips only. You have to be attentive to catch those syllables. His eyes are joyful but mostly he is at peace. He keeps on listening to Gini with a plain appreciation that can be easily ignored. He is one of those introverts who experience every moment with a deep sense but are unvocal about it. Gini was sweet in every gesture she made. She had a modest smile fixed to her face. She is fair too but her skin is tanned in a way that makes her look even more gorgeous. She is so nice that when Akash was being a bull, cocked up in frustration last night, she was actually apologising to those guys for him. Not that the guys bothered listening to her. Gini and Rony both giggle and go for a high five as if remembering some past incident. “Hi guys”, Akash says to both of them. “Oh we were just talking about last night only”, says Gini with a grin as usual. Rony adds up, “Man you were crazy as fuck last night, I hope you remember”. Of course he did. He notices Shantaram on the table, twice in the same day. ‘So you too are reading this’. ‘No this other girl we met here is, she has gone for a walk’, says Rony. Now the odds are good enough that it’s Riya but he couldn’t see any of the stuff she was carrying at the table. He could ask her name but doesn’t bother to. ‘So you guys were laughing because I behaved like a jerk?’, asks Akash. ‘No man. It’s just that you were so peaceful and philosophical while we were at the beach. Some shit you said I didn’t even understand, some conscious thing. I thought you were on some BABA kinda trip and in next moment, Whack! You didn’t even warn that guy. It’s hilarious ’. ‘I don’t know what happened’, says Akash with a chuckle. The laughter continues. Gini puts a sarcastic question, ‘So who else did you find reading Shantaram’. He could sense the background behind wicked smile on their faces. He turns around to see Riya standing at her back. And he raises his hands up with middle fingers for them, ‘Whatever you guys.. I was being nice’. "Yeah so nice of you to ask for directions in the middle of a highway road", refutes Riya. "Well it was an icebreaker", defends Akash.
PART II
I am no Casanova but I am beginning to get a feeling that Riya has developed some sort of fondness for me despite my bizarre preferences. She looks at me with the same polite smile even when I speak of something dull and obscure. I could have been sure if I was sober. Rony is equally wasted and if not, his appearance and the cool lingos, half of which go right through my ears make him appear so. We were happy to talk. All of us, blabbering around our experiences with people we just met at a place serene yet stirring.
The table at the cafe was looking like something taken right out of a Hangover movie scene. Neither did any one of us bother to get it cleared nor did the waiter thought of it as his job. Maybe his job is only to put things on the table and leave the rest to the customer's resolve. There are more than a dozen pints of KF blue on the table most of which Rony had guzzled down and a bottle of Double Black half done, at which Riya has kept the pace up with me. The table looks messed up. We have been sitting and chatting for almost five hours now but it is comforting still. Although, whenever Riya and Gini exhibit their explicit fashionista awareness while talking, which all girls do without noticing men in the group, Rony and I relish the smoke which calms down the noise on our eardrums. We were okay to keep shut as we had no opinions. I guess all men are equally good at this. Men don’t talk much but they understand the vibes, generally. Rony told me about his travel stories which in the beginning were really fascinating but then I kept losing interest in them because I already got a general idea and partly because my attention was still with Riya. I would look around to take a glimpse of her face and every time the vivid expressions on her face under the dim lights would startle me so much that I would take a silent breath and that moment my heart wished to know more about her. But then the gutless insecure emotion which comes out of nowhere screws it up all, making me avert my eyes from her. I realise that it might actually get awkward if I let the emotions ride on.
When I realise that the cafe is about to shut, it is because the waiters had already left for the day. Gini is almost hanging on Rony’s shoulders, half-asleep while Rony was up and ready for another beer although the numbness had disabled him. Riya is in deep thoughts looking towards beach. I look at her and she is always a new person to my eyes. Meanwhile, I was deciding if the remaining Double Black is enough for the night. When Rony realises that he won’t be able to carry Gini to the room after a few minutes, he gets up and calls it a night. “All right guys, time to crash into bed”, he says and gently pulls up Gini trying not to startle her. Gini opens her eyes only to say goodnight to us. The moment Rony and Gini went out of sight, I knew I have to make a move before Riya makes up her mind to leave and that might be the end of the universe for me. I was in a hurry to say something to her and I looked at her face but she was staring somewhere at the end of the world with eyes wide open as if lost in some thought and speaking to herself. So I decided to let my universe end while she was busy in hers. It is easy to understand the situation and do the correct thing only when we are not occupied by selfishness. I wanted to talk desperately but only if she was not disturbed by my intrusion. Besides I had a couple of drinks left with me.
She stands up after some time and says, “Care for a late-night walk on the beach?” I nodded with a cold ‘Okay’. The tendency to portray oneself as exactly the opposite of what is going inside the head is the most spontaneous reaction in these situations. As if in the moment, my ego was driving me to protect the weak heart which is full of emotions. And the silence was no better. She says to me, “Are you always this quiet at night” and before she could finish, I thought it’s time to seize the moment but not get carried away by it. " As I had already swept you over with my first impression, I was waiting for your move", I joked and she chuckled. We kept walking. She continues, “So you do not like your job and you don’t get to do as many things that you like but can you tell me, which is the most important thing that you want to do in your life. Not an ambition or achievement that you have set for yourself but one thing that is close to your heart and it makes you complete in whatever little sense.” Okay, this is not fun anymore. I was getting light and she shot me through the heart and soul with an arrow of grief that has been a constant nightmare to me. I take too much time to come back and so she continues further, “Don’t you think we are caught up in the wrong contest, struggling only to overcome issues which have been created by us only. If you don’t like your job why don’t you quit?” I wish I had a simple answer for that and I tried hard to save myself the embarrassment but could not find even a complex one that I could tell her. But I realised that I feared getting out of the comfort of having a fixed salary which is nothing more than a dog chain.
Riya has quit her job and she is travelling and I can understand what she means here. She has a strong appreciation of the affairs of my confused being. She means whatever she says but something is still on her mind. She is anxious while she gives me the sermon as if she is trying to establish a ground for her own resurrection. ‘You think quitting is the solution?’, I ask her. “How else would you know what you want?” I respond this time, ‘Look first we have to understand the basics of survival, whatever shithole of a world we live in, it is all we have unless you have the guts to leave behind everything and live in the jungle and eat whatever nature provides. So we need to survive at par with basic requirements and I agree that we have turned this survival business into the struggle of accessing more and more luxury and comfort of our modern day societies which give us little time for ourselves. We lose ourselves and the things that matter to us take backstage as we partake in the rat race. So we need to stand our ground and explore the things that bring peace to us’. “And how would you do that” she smiles. ‘I am working on it. You’ll be the first one to know once I crack this’. I couldn’t have been more assertive while explaining all this to her, but deep down I knew very well that we both are precisely facing the same conundrum. After walking to one end of the beach, we find few rock beds to sit and chat a little more about similar things.
VI
I receive a call while we are still at the beach and before I could pick up the phone disconnects. It’s Sandy calling. At this time of night either he is caught up in some situation or he is going to get emotional on me for not making it to Goa. In both the cases, I am not going to help him anyway. When he is emotional he speaks of such nonsensical things that I can only say "It's okay bhai". If he is stuck in some situation he is just going to tell me what mayhem he must have created. As if he is some gangster and I am his sidekick. He sends a message instead of calling again. “Pops is here”. I have never known what pleasure he gets by calling himself Pops. I call him back to find out what Pops is upto and he tells me that he is in Gokarna. I am sure at once that he is fucking around. Then he asks me to wave the phone with flashlight on. He shouts out loudly, “I see you bro”. Taking monstrous giant leaps, he reaches to us in no time. He is still the same beast that he was in college. ‘How the hell did you find out?’ I ask. “Chuck it”, he retorts. He pushes me aside and introduces himself to Riya. I was beginning to think that I was keeping it cool with Riya until Sandy showed up. I am sure nothing is going to happen now. I know him well enough to guess that his intention will only be to embarrass me in front of her. Nothing more, nothing less. “Riya I hope you are not taking him as a charity effort”, he winks with his usual wicked grin. ‘You and your stupid comments, same old horse shit’, I rescue myself before he could continue. He has been the same asshole for ages. I remember the day still crystal clear, we first met in college. He was sitting in the canteen with his gang of dumb hooligans, while I was standing waiting for my French toast. He whistled at me and threw a comment, “Hey dickhead! Move aside”. I didn't turn around at once. He went again and harder this time. I turned to face him and shook my head with a smirk. I turned around and kept waiting for my order. He came up again, " How about you get my order too?". This time I replied, ‘Please wait till I eat mine, and then I will drill my dick past your head after which you will not care for food’. And I smiled, I don’t know why. We could have had a fight that day easily but we grinned at each other as we knew instantly that we were the same kind of assholes.
After some time at the beach, we were still talking although neither of us knew the context. I saw two policemen from afar, walking towards us, looking out in the dark as if searching for gold. I stood up and reached towards them and before they could ask, I was ready with my defence, "We were just leaving". But as they are always better at coming back, one of the policemen replied, "Oh then you were just waiting for us.. so kind of you." I could come back with a witty answer to that but I was sure it would do no good to me. At these crucial times, Sandy has a knack for coming over for the rescue but that ass left with Riya before this gold-searching party could even notice. I think policemen might have seen them but knowing that they got one, they must be like, 'why bother catching others'. They ate my mind for more than half an hour and I was also at it, giving them excuses all of which implied that I was just leaving. I guess that fault was mine only,d when I asked them that where is it written that one can't spend the night at the beach to which the same guy replied, "Come with us to Police Station, we will show you in detail". Finally, when I handed them some of the lost gold pieces they were so eagerly looking for, they were happy to leave. I walked towards the other side and when I found Sandy and Riya they were laughing as if I was a circus clown. Sandy breaks in, "You helped them find you, they saw you only after you were near them". Yeah, I am helpful which is why most of the time that 'help' flies around like an arrow, coming back right into my ass.
Riya leaves us and I tell her that I’ll see her in morning. She nodded her head in agreement as if teleporting me that we will continue from where we left. Sandy draws out a joint the moment Riya leaves and hands it over to me. I light it up already missing her. Sandy smokes up almost half of the joint just to take care of the sideburns. He takes exhaustive drags and the smoke calms him down. I let him be as there is nothing more assuring in the world than your best friend’s company. Once both of us are high enough and a gentle smile turns up on our faces, I ask him, ‘When did you get here?’. “I had a meeting with client in Bangalore yesterday, winded it up and came straight here to respond to your distress call. Your Instagram posts kept me reminding that I screwed you over.” He shared his stories and as always I enjoyed them.
‘I really needed this man. I am beginning to lose interest in everything I am involved with. And I know clearly that I am missing out big time in my life. And what is coming ahead is not more than this for sure. I want to make it count, only if I can know, how? Some days I feel like I must consult some psychiatrist only to be sure if I am becoming insane’, I said to him. “Fuck! Your head is not at the right place”, he laughs out. ‘Come on man I am not kidding. I am not saying that something disastrous has happened with me. But it’s like my life has been exactly the same every day since we left college. You can say that I am over thinking at it but somehow I feel like I am struggling to survive. I am happy to have made it out this far. I mean I am okay but I got to find some purpose to life. I have told you these things many times. You know what I mean.’ Sandy comes back with a reply this time , “Then let me tell you again that you are not a person that can be satisfied so easily. You remember when we used to smoke up on the top of the overhead water tank behind our hostel and we would chat endlessly on how there is more life inside of us than what this manipulative world offers to us. Bro, who we are, how we live, what response we have to different circumstances in life and the morals we stand on are much more important tools than anything else in the world to find the true purpose to life. You are stressed out just by the thought of not knowing things better. Atleast you are aware of this. I say you are better than most of us who are living in a bubble. To find the answers, you must know the questions. But my advice, don’t wander around too much that you become insane. And if you are destined to wander around, then life won’t be easy as finding the “true” purpose can never be easy”. ‘Yeah man! I think I get you’ I add. He continues with a smile, “And besides who knows the purpose might have been to find Riya. I could see the sparkles in your eyes.” ‘Just like your eyes have, when you meet with every other girl’, I reply with a grin. Sandy comes back, “Mine is an artistic talent bro. You will need some serious training to reach to that level.” We keep up the chit chat whole night long.
VII
The sun starts to ascend and across the sea sky is carroty coloured. The clouds are dispersed like stretched cotton candy and the orange light skirmishes across the cloud surfaces. The sky is almost a colourful canvas painting and better than that for it is not static. As the light intensity increases, the clouds move around as you wish them to be. Sandy is still enthusiastic as if his day is just about to start. Tourists are already taking morning walks while my yesterday was yet to finish. I tell Sandy that we must move to the shack and get some sleep. He is not interested in moving an inch and just nods only to procrastinate. Suddenly after sometime he tells me, “I am going to stay in some other shack. I’ll come and catch up.” ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ He says with a sheepish smile, “Got a girl waiting on me”. ‘And you came to meet me, same old horny asshole. See you later’.
I start walking back to the shack and I wonder how after confessing to Sandy what troubles I am facing, I can actually see more clearly. I was too busy understanding the complexity of the issues that my psyche only had created that I couldn’t find the simplest of the way out. Atleast I know now that I have to focus only on the things I want to do rather than contemplating on every other bug that bothers me.
I remember again what Sandy told me that how we used to discuss about the same stuff in college. The difference was that we would include our agendas in college activities. One of the most satisfying experiences of those was arranging a campaign to collect the leftover food from all hostels and sending it over to people in need. I remember I got supplementary in two papers in that semester. Sandy had coordinated the transport while I had tied up with all hostel supervisors and NGOs to ensure that the bargain is fulfilling. Hostel authorities helped us only for the good publicity till the date the college festival was not over. Then one fine day the hostel authorities made an issue out of nowhere, pointing out that the students were not happy to pay extra bills and blamed it all on the supervisors for making extra food. Supervisors were briefed in person about the actions they had to take. I vaguely remember one of those nights, when an argument led to another and we had beaten the hell out of our hostel supervisor. Overnight the campaign was shut down and we were thrown out of the hostel.
Nothing can stop me to start over that campaign again but I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage it alone. And I don’t want to know that. I just want to get on with it. I get back to my room and drop dead like a zombie exploding after a gunshot. I am half awake when I receive Sandy’s call. He has planned camping for the night and tells me that I can come only if Riya is coming along. I tell him to fuck off. I sleep back for some more time. I get up and find that I slept the whole day. I feel better and the thought of starting my food relief campaign is already cheering me up. It is going to keep me busy long enough to settle my nerves. I walk out and grab a club sandwich at the shack’s restaurant to kill the appetite which has been bothering me throughout the day but wasn’t good enough to get me out of bed. I call up Riya and she tells me that she is at the beach.
I see her buying some antiques from the locals. She is talking and seems more interested in the lady selling the things rather than the objects. I wave at her. I am not sure whether I should straightaway tell her to come for the camping Sandy had spoken to me about. Before I could speak anything, she says, ‘ Rony and Gini have left. They wanted to meet you but you were not reachable. Never mind even I am leaving in some time. I am glad we met.’ Before she finishes I interrupt, “I am glad too. But let me tell you at least this much that when I first met you I didn’t know that it could be this special. You are unique. You have the strength to face anything that bothers you. I could see how you were so happy to talk to that lady who sold you the antiques. It’s an experience you take out from every person. You are more than you know yourself. And yeah you have helped me as well to come out of misery as I have cracked the code for now.’ “Happy to hear that” she smiles. We sit on the beach sand and talk some more before she leaves.
After she leaves, I lay down and look up in the greyish sky, just before the darkness engulfs the sky and I think of nothing. I just keep staring with an empty mind till it’s completely dark. I collect my things from the shack and text Sandy that I am going back as I have to plan out the things I need to set up my enterprise for free food. He says, “I knew Riya would ditch you”, to which I reply, ‘You wish, she is my new collaborator and you are hopeless.’
