Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The Past. Yes, he remembered everything. He remembered how he loved the sound of doorbell in the afternoons. Because it usually meant the arrival of a Courier Boy. They brought with them, the expectations of future. He did not even mind receiving Mobile Phone bills. Tearing crisp, colourful envelopes. Wetting his fingertip with saliva and then turn a few pages. Pages which contained details of his world; the numbers he had dialed and the calls he had received.

And sometimes for days, no doorbell would ring in the afternoon. On days like these, he would just leave home. To have a coffee at Barista in Greater Kailash. He would walk till a point, take an auto rickshaw and bargain if he felt like. While the auto negotiated roads, poke-marked with potholes and blocked by castrated bulls, his mind would take a flight. He carried a newspaper to read. Sheets of blotting paper, pregnant with known, little known and unknown tales. Tales of people ready to die for a piece of land, the holes of a heart mended in a faraway city, tiger surfacing in a habitat after twenty years and killed instantly by a train, lives snuffed out in skies in fighter planes and somebody winning accolades in a game.

Sometimes he asked the Driver to drive towards the Tughlakabad fort. History always fascinated him. Because history consisted of moral and sordid fables. Of rulers and those who ruled their hearts. Of loyalty, of deceit, of rubies and of daggers.

When he reached Barista, he would think of Mrigya. Mrigya, his wife of three months. He wondered when Mrigya would come home. The time of her arrival was like a jigsaw puzzle which he was unable to solve. Even if she came home early, there would be no exchange of ideas. The conversation was bound to revolve around old and new clothes, crumpled bed sheets, post-dated cheques, car parking or FM Radio.

Just a month before those afternoons, he had quit his job. The successful job of a Television Journalist. The never ending world of deadlines had made him sick. And everyday it was the same story. Another ceasefire in the Northeast, another suicide attack in Kashmir, another operation to flush out militants and yet another set of accusations against a politician. It was a murky world out there – thankless and spurious.

He just decided to call it a day, one fine afternoon. He was in the office canteen, eating a burnt toast and looking outside through the window frame. He had felt his shoulders with one hand, pinching the flesh. Knots of lactic acid had accumulated under the layers, which were a indication of how stressed out he was. In fifteen minutes, he had to leave for an assignment. Some bloody Pentagon official was scheduled to meet the top brass of the Indian Army. The mobile phone screen blinked. He looked at the number flashing on the screen. It was his Bureau Chief.

He thought of Vivek Singh’s Paan Masala-stained teeth and his wet lips. He would be sitting on his throne, aiming his spit in the dustbin kept under his table, with the hands-free of his mobile fitted deep into his ear canal. Vivek Singh would treat his Reporters like chotus working in a Dhaba, destined to run for errands.

At the sight of Sheila, a Junior Reporter, he would drool and if he had his way, he would make her the Editor-in-chief. For her, he was a slave, born to serve her – suggest story ideas, arrange camera units and a vehicle for her on priority, write her scripts and arrange a video editor for her. For others, he was the commander of the Third Reich.

In the morning, he would even make calls from his mobile to Reporters, while sitting on the Pot. At times like these, his voice echoed through the phone, as if he called from a Well. When he called him, he imagined Vivek Singh with his dirty Pyjamas lying at his feet, three newspapers in his lap and he talking to him about an assignment, and at the same time pleased about how last night’s laxative had done wonders to his bowel movement.

The mobile phone was still ringing. He had made up his mind not to press the green button and take the call. He was no longer willing to talk to someone who referred to Pastry as Cake. He switched off his mobile. He just walked off. Siddhartha must have felt the same, when he left his kingdom to become Buddha, he had thought.

He was a free bird now. He thought of taking a teaching assignment. He would teach students of journalism. More than journalistic skills, he would teach them how to tackle Vivek Singh’s of the Industry and how to follow their heart, once the knots started appearing in their shoulders. For Sheilas he would have nothing to offer. They would eventually find their Vivek Singhs. Or Vivek Singhs would find them.

He also remembers that afternoon in Barista. A love-struck couple held hands in the café. Love won by an expensive perfume or an Archie’s greeting card. A deal clinched under the table and the cupid becoming a petty clerk. No fifty-page letters, infested with magical prose and verse. No beseeching to walk on rose petals; redness fed by blood. Only short-lived butterflies in the stomach. Their kissing each other on lips. One pair coated with lipstick and the other with lust. No real contact. That micro-millimetre of a space would gradually turn into a gorge. Both of them would sit on two ends, thinking the other will fall into it. Eventually, both of them will fall into it, one after the other. Even in their fall, they will not be together.

He sipped his coffee, thinking of his new assignment. And of words he had always wanted to write.

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