A Dark Backroad.

The Horizon seamlessly meets the dark grey tarmac as the second of the two housing complexes on that backroad abruptly end. Some hundred different windows of about the same amount of flats. Some display miniature money plants, hung in a subtle yet desperate urge to get their wallet back to a heft stature, some display novelty innerwear that reflected the once shiny and lustrous amour shared in that house’s bedroom, now lost somewhere between a hectic job and a doubt in the mind about decision of spending the unknown eternity until death together. Some display the seemingly rightful owner of that isolated window leaning on the rented flat’s window, smoking, trying to balance his mind somewhere between the girl who doesn’t know how much she is loved and goes out with that hunk our angry young man can’t match with.

The other end of the balance holds the aspirations of a small family from Siliguri that is expecting this young man to be sitting somewhere in Dalhousie, in a office, as he is the last hope of their salvation. Isn’t that what life is? A simulation where you keep trying to do things and try to justify them with whatever bullshit reason your heart can come up with its four ventricles? And let’s be honest, we let the logical flaw in that argument slide, because that is what we want. As my gaze shifts a little south of the messy and loosely organised housing complex, two security dadas catch my eye. Dirty Blue shirt that he has probably borrowed from the past two consecutive shifts that he is reluctantly pulling. I eavesdrop a little and understand that her daughter needs the money to buy a guitar. Often seen as an impulse purchase by the likes of me and you, is a struggle – worthy commodity to Bhuvan dada. The Person he is talking to is a rookie. Fresh off from Howrah-Buxar express. Learning the ropes from the mid60s dawning Bhuvan dada. My interest dilutes as their conversation enters the Ranna Ghar and how 4 seentis is the perfect point where potatoes are soft enough to make a good pairing for his dry rotis. It had been raining. You know the smell of ground fresh after rain? That refreshing, almost inviting smell that can take up the aura of whatever you want it smelling like. An incense burning in a roadside mandir. A chai stall’s boiling Chaa and Milds. Or something as simple as the smell of an old minibus dragging on to reduced maintenance bills for Babus in their Hazra office? I was out here, almost detaching myself form the housing complex both in spirit and observations. I wanted have a stroll on the cool concrete of that silent and hidden backroad before the rain decides to give importance to some other smell. I wanted to smell her intoxicating self. Almost as a proof of its passionate lovemaking with the earth.

I wanted to keep that smell with me as I closed my eyes for the day. Something real to be feeling good about. I also wanted to take my mind off the noise of all the conundrums going all over. Just me and some simple pleasures of nature. I am almost temped to keep on walking until my comfort gives up for the comfortable seat of a yellow taxi. But this late at night, all I was to be privy to is some kids sneaking out from their flats to kiss their newly acquired partner. For some, A person. For Some, A Joint. Nonetheless. It gave me a flash of my time with both those gripping companies and my “adventures” with them. To think that we choose to bring and invite pain just for a few fleeting moments of happiness makes me question our mindset and if we are even thinking straight. But the answer to my newly observed and born pondering is quite simple actually. Our time here is not privy or a guarantee to happiness. Its just a pass to be at the fair. Now it is our pick to be the kid screaming with joy on the Ferris wheel, or to be the teenager hiding in the photo booth because she saw the love of her life committing his lips to a someone whose thought encourages an upsurge of all those deep-rooted complexes she had been fighting. And its simply and affair of choices and not something more divine.

The only divine intervention is energy. It is like a currency given with a strained hand. Now if you use it to bring joy to yourself or to cope up with pain that is your call. I am not short selling pain. I am condemning it. Bearing anything more than what is absolutely necessary is a deep slurred insult to us, our evolution, our history and our literature. But I am one to talk. It took me a divorce and the death of my career as a university professor to come by it. This just brings me to the sweet realization of how entitled to our expectations we really are. I am expecting me these kids to be happy and safe. Their parents are expecting them to be safe and happy. Their friends are expecting them just to be happy. Confused? This is where that one kid will be torn. My all our definition of him being happy differ and are dictated by our past, our lacking and our aspiration all projected on a young and fragile character, all while we have operatively eradicated the principle of his expectations. His hope. His ability to dream.

This is exactly why I have ceased to be a pleasure for people to have around. I dictate my actions and they more than often aren’t in accordance with my stakeholders’ expectations and goals. I really wish separate entity with perpetual succession was a concept available to us fleshlings too…..

Nishant Gupta