ONCE AGAIN!

On the whole Pune is a quiet city. Like a well disciplined bachelor it lives, rising with the sun but spending the first few hours in quiet contemplation slowly getting ready for the day during which it puts in a good seven hours of work then gently winding down to settle for a quiet dinner and a early night, awaiting the next day.
*there are moments when with quiet suddenness everything ceases as if the city itself is holding its breath, shocked at some monstrosity, like an ill judged comment during a group conversation.
The summer was stretching itself into an epic. Warm air swept through Pune streets, black clouds hung enticingly on the horizonbut were soon whisked away. {The heat was broken into chapters by scarce showers not enough for the salvation of souls waiting for the monsoon.} The day pulled itself into the evening putting extra resistance to the onslaught of night hoping desperately that rain might make a late appearance but it didn’t.
Purple evenings drowned into darkness with spectacular blaze of colour. Restless sparrows jetted through the air in seemingly chaotic flight patterns, I waited too see a mid air collision which never happened. The day slowly died to the sounds of rain-birds crying softly in the somewhere-land. And Pune waited for rain or something to happen.

It was afternoon. The lashkar police station was looking very beautiful. Trees on all sides were shedding leaves, toasted brown, hiding the ground in shades of peach and browns, somewhere underneath was treasure or entrance to a magical land where they had tea parties with riddling hares, or underneath it all would be dry mud, red of the land. You would never know if you never tried to find out.
Why was I here? Because they sign on the road from where they had towed my bike told me to. it waited at the side along with other miscreants, sulking rebelliously, daring herself to defy all, ‘the system’, in a heroic attempt for freedom and the open road and the next traffic stop to be accosted again by its offended host.
I stood quietly under a tree observing her thoughts and other owners nearby. All of them had that posture conveying a mixture of carelessness, naughtiness, rebelliousness and regret. Their calmness depended on their present liquid cash reserves, ad-lib and acquaintances.
I had been through the Routine before. The enquiry, the explanation, the excuses, the pleading, the transfer of tender. I knew how it all went. I felt like I should tell the rest of them that it will be all right, that in a few hours they will have their vehicles back and forget that anything ever happened. I felt responsible for them, as if I was their messiah, I had to show them the path. But I didn’t. instead I just stood aside and watched them gradually become friends, retelling their sad stories of how they came about to be in this situation. They only needed some commonness, which they tried hard to find, to feel some sort of belongingness to a group which included all those who were just and right and were being wronged by an oppressive system.soon they would be laughing and exchanging intellectually stimulating abbreviated sms’s, I was glad that I didn’t own a cellphone.
The station had a very surrealist atmosphere. There had to be a different world behind there somewhere, from outside it looked very small for the amount of people coming in and out, maybe in there was a doorway to a parallel universe where everyone indicated before they turned and only parked in designated parking areas and lunch hour started around mid morning and stretched into the evening.
Autumn seemed to have skipped the whole of Pune and settled only at this place. Outside the borders of this land, trees were either leafless their dark green-brown coverings fallen besides them or evergreen, dusty, not lifeless but jaded.

**The place had a wonderland like feeling to it. it seemed to be the only place in Pune that seemed to be experiencing autumn.it was surrounded by tar roads on all sides and as soon as you stepped in it felt like one has passed into a season-warp.

I sensed my kinetic’s restlessness, it was planning its escape. I could see the headlamp carefully recce the area looking for the bigger piles of foliage-fallof, trying to decide how quickly dried leaves burn to make a diversion. it pleaded me to flick my cigarette butt into a nearby hedge which was looking quite flammable. But I scoffed at the idea and convinced it to wait some more.


“hey,” the past spoke.
I turned around, in the shade of trees she waited. Dreams and demons look alike in the shadows. Her peach brown eyes like the sleeping foliage around her feet, dead, waiting, expecting something, they stared at me, the slight curl of the lower lip and half pout, and light furrows on the forehead which would deepen into wise lines of graceful oldage. On the edge, the halvness, the indecision, it could go anywhere.
Say something, anything. Please let it be nothing stoopid.
“hey”, my halfsmile in return, raised eyebrows and troubled eyes. What was there left to say.
Everything
“what are you doing here?” she smiled, it seemed to be a sign of acceptance, loose conversation greased the tracks of memories letting them slide into the vast emptiness of the mind.
“just passing through,” I replied
ok that was cool I can admit, but it would have been so much betterif you stoped grinning like an idiot.
There was something so fake about people trying to be weird and interesting. Maybe I could be more debonair and suave if it weren’t for my subconscious significant other snickering at my attempts.
“I missed your smiles,” she informed me.
“I just missed you,” that’s exactly the sort of thing I shouldn’t haveblurted out but I did.
Her eyes darkened like the half hearted rainclouds that appeared over Pune and disappeared before anyone coul;d get acquainted.. but her eyes retained their colour as she glanced behind at the guy sitting on a bike under the tree looking anxiously at her.
We can take him, no problems. Easy, I will distract him and you can kneee him in the groin. Just get him on the ground then I will do the rest.
In the shadows dreams become demons, and wait, for night to come. I stared at the man, trying to evaluate him. Visually balancing his pros and cons trying to fit him above or below me. He smiled weakly under both are glares, his dress indicated a person who was easygoing but stylish in a ‘I don’t care what I wear’ sort of way. He glanced at Rita waiting for her to move.
Don’t look now but she is waiting for you to react. keep calm you don’t know who he is.
She really was staring at me, watching every single muscle on my face with expectation. She expected me to react in a certain way, but I wasn’t certain what she expected. I turned towards her and smiled casually.
She smiled back, almost relieved. Maybe she had expected the dolphin to rise and kill, but the dolphin had learned. I thought she would introduce us but she turned towards me and and kept on talking.
“so what are you doing these days?”
nothing wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t tell her I was working at a call center, I remembered her hating them, I remembered me demeaning them. I remembered being hungry and with no money. I remembered that I would stop pretending. I decided.
“I am working at a BPO,” I said softly, waiting for her to turn away and run to the guy who was most probably an investigative journalist taking a break to research his upcoming documentary on VCD pirates.
It’s not me you know, I sometimes feel that you made me up just so you could beat yourself up.
She laughed. Her eyes twinkling, suddenly alive like the boxer jumps on the top rope while the vanquished lie on the floor unmoving.
Leave just leave. Or say you are the manager, vice president in charge of something, make up something. This feels too bad. Wait! What did she say?
“what?” I was too lost in my schizophrenia to have heard.
“I said I am sorry, I know how much you hate it. what you were starving or something?”
“yeah kind of…” I replied. Was she mocking me or was she genuine. Before I could say anything more her guy walked across.