A Story...to do..
I had started writing a story a while ago.Never went beyond the third page.
Anyway, I am posting here, whatever I had written so far...
It requires lot of refinement and is quite boring...
Here it is..
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It was a cold December evening in Delhi. Although the freezing winters had not yet fully arrived, it had started to become quite chilly – especially, during the evenings and night.
Tired and exhausted from the day’s work at office, I was sitting alone, in my third story 2-bedroom DDA apartment in Munirka, mindlessly flipping channels of the TV. I am not much of a TV viewer, but then it was already 11 p.m. and sitting alone in my lonely apartment, I had nothing better to do.
Before that, like a zombie and man on autopilot, I had gotten down from my company bus at Munirka bus stop and strolled towards Anupam restaurant for my dinner.This sequence – getting down from bus, stumbling towards Anupam, ordering dinner, gulping it down the throat and then back to the apartment - had become so much of a daily routine that I hardly had to think about it. It was like brushing teeth or driving a car, which once practiced and perfected doesn’t requires any conscious thought or effort for doing them.
I usually ate dinner at Anupam, because, firstly, it was near my apartment and secondly, its kitchen was always kept neat and clean and food was also made in a hygienic way. There wasn’t much of a variety in menu - the same sort of common dishes found everywhere – some paneer ones, chana masala, rajma masala and the like. All the dishes always tasted the same. I had stopped caring much about the taste, anyway. Food becomes just a way to fill your empty stomach once you start living away from your parents and stop getting home made food.
Watching the TV, I had already half dozed off and was almost asleep, when my apartment’s metallic door opened with a huge thud, banged into the back wall and kept vibrating for quite a few seconds. The loud noise startled me and brought me back to my senses. Dreamingly, I looked at my apartment door, which was visible from my bedroom. Firstly, I thought that I was seeing some sort of a dream. Then I had a vague impression that I knew the guy standing at the door and in the next few seconds it registered in my mind that it was my roommate, Vishal, standing at the door.
We have been living together for the past six months or so. Prior to that I had been living alone for almost a year and the loneness had taken its toll on me. It was pretty depressing to come to the apartment in the evenings and finding no one but just the empty walls to talk to. So, once when, out of blur - Vishal had called and asked me if we could share an accommodation, as he was shifting from Bangalore to Delhi, I had happily agreed. We had studied in the same college albeit in different branches and in the four years of our college, we never became anything more then mere acquaintances. Nevertheless, I had agreed, even though my past experiences living with other roommates had not be pretty good, but I wanted to give it a try – moreover, at least there would be someone to talk to in the evenings.
The joy and excitement of his shifting to my apartment had short-lived. Firstly, because he had a shift job and we hardly got any time to talk. In the mornings when I had to go to office, he would be coming back from his office and when I came back in the evenings, either he was fast asleep or had already gone to his office. Secondly, he didn’t do anything much at the apartment except sleeping all the time.
Nevertheless, over the months, slowly and steadily, we had known each other better. I wouldn’t say, we were very good friends, neither were we much bad either – it was okay sort of a thing.
“Hi Romeo! Welcome to the palace. How’s your Juliet?” I tried to start conversation with him. He had gotten engaged with a Chandigarh girl, a month back.
He was an average sort of a guy, average height – nothing much attractive to look at but not bad either – the sort of guys you meet everyday in crowds – whose face and features are easily blended and lost in the crowd.
He didn’t answer my question and kept standing at the door, with his both hands firmly placed on both sides of his waist and kept scanning the whole apartment with his perturbing eyes – first left, then right, then above and then bottom. I didn’t understand what was going on in his mind or what he was up to – maybe he was drunk, I couldn’t figure out. I already had the TV remote in my hand, so I started playing with it, flicking channels. Star Movies was showing Terminator for the umpteenth time and HBO was showing Ghost – I settled for Ghost.
After about thirty seconds or so, which seemed like eternity to me, Vishal slowly walked towards me and sat on the edge of my bed. His walk suggested that he was disturbed by something and his eyes still looked vague as if lost somewhere in his own world.
I tried once again, “What happened man? Are you all right?”
Still, no response. Patrick Swayze was about to be murdered in a dark alley, so I concentrated on the TV. After the scene was over commercial breaks took over.
“Aman, Let us go for a walk outside”, Vishal spoke for the first time.
“Are you crazy? It is well past 11 pm. You want to go for a walk at this time? I also have to go to office early morning”, I thundered back.
He didn’t answer but his eyes looked almost pleading. I got up from my bed, “Ok, but just for a little while”, I gave in.
I opened the cupboard and put on the first sweater I could lay my hands on and started combing my hair in the mirror.
“There won’t be any gal waiting for you in the streets at this time”, he resorted back, urging me to hurry up.
“You never know man! You never know”, I replied with a wicked smile and started singing – “Kahi karti hogi vo mera intzaar… jiski tamanna mey firta hu bekraar …” along with moving my limbs a little bit, as if trying to dance along with the singing tune.
Seeing them, Vishal smiled for the first time, that evening.
“Ok, ok, Majnu, Hurry up!”, he pleaded again.
After locking the apartment, as my usual habit, I dashed down the three levels of stairs, at full speed, taking two steps at a time, covering the last few steps of the bottommost stairs in one go, landing on the ground with a huge thud and stomping on the floor a few times. Most times, seeing me Vishal also used to follow suit and after that we used to grin like small kids, who had just performed some mischievous wicked act.
I guess, some part of me will never grow up.
But today, he was miles, miles away – lost in his own world. After waiting for a long time that seemed like eternity, I saw him coming down, slowly dragging himself through the last of the stairs.
We started walking towards the main street road, which eventually led to the ring road. At that time of night, the scene on the streets was in total contrast to the one seen in the daytime or the evenings. In the daytime, the streets are always crowded and noisy, full of hustle and bustle with people and vehicles moving everywhere just like a swarm of bees. But at this time the streets were totally deserted and silent. With neon streetlights after regular intervals, bathing the roads with their yellow light, it looked calm and beautiful.
We kept walking, but neither of us spoke anything. This time I also didn’t offer any help to start the conversation. I had already tried twice.
If you don’t want to tell – I don’t care.
I am back...
My absence from the blog world has stretched to more then three months now. A very long time by any standard. Initially, I thought I'll take a break from it for a short while and then resume blogging. But that break first stretched to one month, then two and then three...Its not that I didn't want to write, in fact, countless times I thought to writing a post but that never quite actually materialized.
Its like a story once I read through the chain forwarded emails that we keep getting everyday. I don't remember the full contents or the complete story. But, it was something like - I have a friend down the road whom I have not met for a long time... I will go and meet him tomorrow...today I have to do this... I am very busy..I have to do that..but yes surely tomorrow... and the next day - the tomorrow becomes today, and again I have to do this, I have to do that...the tomorrow that I was supposed to meet my friend never arrives...
Procrastination is a very big weakness and I have been its victim for quite a long while now..
So, What changed it? Why are you reading this new post today? Why on 14th July 2007?What made me come out of my slumber? My hibernation?
No, no - the answer to that question has nothing to do with the date mentioned in the previous sentences. The date was just put there to have to have a little fun...
Yeah coming back to the reason - It was the book The Zahir. by Paulo Coelho. I just completed readng it a few hours ago. The book is terrific. I'll write about the book in another post But here I mention it just for the reason..In The Zahir, the author does everything else..but does not write a book. Finds every possible reason, not to write. The situation was something similar to mine and I connected with it immediately. The author had to travel through road to Santiago, Spain and after that he wrote a book. Of course, I didn't have to do such a thing. I just had to switch on the laptop and start typing.While reading the book, I got a strong feeling, to just stop reading the book there and then and write a post first. But then the rational mind popped its head that, its a weekend - you can very well complete the book first and then write the post immediately after that. As, the book was also becoming quite interesting.
So, here I am writing the post after completing the book. Intoxicated by the book? Yes, I am. Lot of varied thoughts and feelings going on in the mind. Its not that something entirely new is discussed in it. Almost everyone must have thought on similar lines in one or the other phase of life. Yet, it makes you seriously sit down and ponder on a lot of things. Anyway - leave Zahir for some other post.
During these months I have been dreaming of getting a cellphone with full keyboard and GPRS support, etc..so that I can write posts sitting anywhere and at any time, because many of the ideas and the urge to write come at places where you don't have access to any means for writing a post. Laptop is quite a bulky affair, which can't be carried everywhere and used with ease at all times. Nokia 9300/9300i was on the radar. I even bid for it on ebay.in, but nothing materialized. I have junked the idea for the time being.
I have also found out that my thought process is much, much faster then the time it takes for me to write a post. I don't have much patience, so thats why many times I end up without writing anything. I don't even read my post again before posting it to weed out the grammatical errors. The same thing happened while i used to sit down and give 3 hours examinations in school and college. Even if I completed answering the paper well before the 3 hour time, I never quite re-read it for finding mistakes. What was done was done - I wanted to get over it - didn't have the patience to go through whole of it again.
So, thats the story so far. hope that I'll be regular from now on.
Kids!
I had to buy some gifts for my niece and nephew, but wasn't aware of any good gifts' shop stocking goodies especially for children So, on Saturday, I did a bit of net surfing and made a list of 8-10 shops that looked promising for my adventure. Mostly were greeting cards' shops and I didn't have high hopes on them, but anyway - What was the harm in trying?
As it turned out, the first few were huge disappointments and didn't have anything much apart from one or two dolls and a few racing cars. My hopes were rapidly diminishing with every entry I striked out in the list. But, before I striked out the last entry, I did find the kind of shop I was looking for. The first thing I liked about that shop was that it was quite large and yet no greeting card was stocked in it. The collection of gifts was vast and unique and some of them very extremely beautiful.
After selecting the gifts, which itself took a considerable time due to the sheer number of different options available, the owner started to gift wrap them. In between he also had to take care of a few others customers. His 2-3 years old son was playing around in the shop, so I just went ahead to have a chat with him and probably play with him if he seemed interested. The kid was very cute, with a pencil in hand, which he was assuming to be a gun, he was running here and there - ignorant of anything going on the world - just enjoying himself. I tried to shake hands with him, but he didn't seem interested. Then he started to point his pencil towards me as if it was a gun, and started shooting - I acting as if injured or dead. Then he smiled. A smile so beautiful & cute - I wish I had a camera and could catch that moment. Instantly, we connected and played for a long time. I wished for some more customers to arrive, so that the gift wrapping was delayed further and we could keep on playing. But after a while, the gifts were wrapped and after paying the bill, I had to leave. The kid looked sad at my leaving - I was too, but he'll forget it in the next few minutes and be his playful self once again, on the other hand I'll never forget it. I'll surely go to that gift shop again - maybe not to buy and gifts but just to meet the kid.
This makes me remember one more instance, which I'll write about in my next post.
Some beautiful lines...
Yesterday I was trying to find something and went through all of my cupboards and things and junk, I have collected over the years. I found out quite a few things which brought back remembrances of a bygone era. For e.g. there were hand written letters from two of my close friends, which had been written many years ago. There were many other things also - photographs, cards etc etc.
Here I'll share with you a few lines that I found written on a piece of paper. They are not mine - but I must have read them somewhere - found them nice and jotted them on a piece of paper.
Life is like an Ocean...
Sometimes still, like a drop of dew...
and sometimes rolling, like a drop of tear...
Joy, Happiness, Tears and Pain...
are all part of Life,
but after every night
there's always a
Bright New Morning...
a New Sunrise...
And at the beginning of this New Year,
Let's promise to be each others Joy in Celebrations,
Strength and Hope in Problems,
with hearts full of Love always...
and faith to last forever...
Let's sail in the Boat of Companionship...
and win across every test in life...
Wishing a wonderful year ahead...
With you..
With Lots of Love....
That seems to be for a new year ....
Two other entries are -
Life isn't a destination, it is a journey
We all come upon unexpected curves
and turning points , mountain tops and valleys,
Everything that happens to us
shapes who we are becoming.
And in the adventure of each day,
We discover the best in Ourselves.
Some pictures are never seen
Some words cannot be uttered
These are only sensed in the heart
There presence is only felt in the soul
and when that happens.......all is bliss....
