Water Baby - Part 2

Arnab closed his eyes and shook his head trying to wake up again, “this must be a dream”, he thought. His mind screamed that this is not possible but the evidence in front of him didn’t leave much scope for argument. The pictures were a wide angle shot and the girl with the medal in the picture was wearing a full body Speedo swimming suit covering everything except her face, it was really difficult to tell if she could be his mother 25 years back.

He tried to find out more things from the pictures and the artifacts but after a while it was not possible to know more. In a rage he went up to his mother’s room and started pounding her door, after 5 minutes of beating the door she opened the door sleepy-eyed and asked “What happened Arnab ? Is everything ok?” “No” replied Arnab, “Can you explain this?” he raised the photo frame to her mother’s face. She was horrified and snatched it away from him “this is nothing and where did you find this? Stop meddling with my stuff!” she screamed. “Is that you in the picture? Were you a swimmer? And who is the guy with you? Is he my dad?” Arnab screamed back. “He is no one, forget about the pictures, they are not mine and go to sleep. They mean nothing to me!” saying this she pushed Arnab back and closed the door on his face. Now Arnab knew where he got his hard-headedness from, furious he stormed out of his home and started walking, sub consciously his steps turned towards his lab, when he was almost there at the Applied Physics department he realized that he had unknowingly walked towards his ‘alone’ place, his lab. Not knowing what to do he walked up to his familiar security guard who always used to be there in the night and said he had forgot his ID card at home and asked him to open the lab from his security card. He happily obliged him by swiping his card at the entry and unlocking all modules of the facility for him. He smiled and asked him to enter “Go in Babu, I think today you will discover something very big”. Arnab looked up at him in bewilderment and said thanks and entered the lab. He went in to his module and tried to do some work to get his mind off the events that just unfolded but it was futile, the same questions kept coming back to him again and again.

“Was my father in the picture? Who was he, what was he like? Why did he leave my mother? Was my mother a star swimmer? The same woman who never even entered a bath tub and never let me in too.” He had no answer, he felt cheated, let down, abandoned, like the whole universe had conspired against him, today he felt like an insignificant tiny speck in this universe whose powers influenced him but he had no influence over the Universe. Frustrated he put his face on the table and muttered to himself “The only way to find out anything for me is to go back in the past”. And then it hit him like a ton of bricks!

He sprang up and from his table and ran towards the Taurine vending machine, he needed to sober up fast and think straight. What he thought could be done, thanks to his colleagues’ recent discovery of tachyons and ability to accelerate particles to superluminal speeds through use of low energy particle accelerators and his work on teleportation.

If matter could be moved along the three Euclidean Dimensions, that is through space and It could be very well be moved along the fourth dimension as well, that is time. All he needed to do was accelerate the constituent molecules beyond the speed of light at which they started moving backwards in time, along with the information as electricity in the wires which were also accelerated superluminally to carry that information back in time too, all he needed was to hook up his teleportation equipments with the particle accelerator team’s Tachyon producing machine and use both their computing powers to map the process, of course the calculations would take up a lot of time, but for what he was doing ‘time’ was not an issue at all. The final ingredient in this recipe was stupidity, there was no other word for what he was doing, for the subject of the first ever time travel experiment was he himself.

He ran back and forth between the two laboratories and used the resources seamlessly thanks to the ‘All Access’ security clearance given to him by the security guard for tonight. Thankfully there was no one in the whole facility as everyone was tired of the celebrations and the work earlier in the day. There were two major difficulties in his plan, he could only travel back to the time when the first working Teleporter was invented as he needed a working Teleporter to teleport out, also he had no way of coming back as the technology to make a time jump did not exist back then. The first thing he was overcoming by going back to the very next day the Teleporter was invented in this very lab and he had mixed feeling about the second, the knowledge that he had now would surely make him win a Nobel Prize back then. But all in all he wasn’t bothered about all that too much, he wanted to go back find out answers to his questions, and why his life was like this. Trembling but fixated he went into the Teleporter after making all the necessary arrangements and then everything went black.

He regained consciousness and walked out of a box which had lot of wires and tubes coming into it. He looked around, it was surely not his lab so his experiment had succeeded, but whether he was in 2013 or not he needed to find out. But currently he needed to get out of the lab fast as he could be easily be mistaken to be an intruder, he had no ID or papers of the current time to prove his identity. Luckily he slipped out without raising an alarm. Everything around was different, like set of some period movie, it was night and it was difficult to make out if this was the same MIT campus, thankfully the lay out was same and he knew which way was out. He took the same way as he usually took and thought about searching for something familiar after he got out.

He was walking by the MIT swimming pool lost in his thoughts when suddenly he heard a scream, a woman’s scream. He looked around to see a woman splashing in the pool violently, maybe she was drowning. He ran over to the edge of the pool and saw a woman splashing hysterically, holding one edge of the pool with one hand and trying to reach something. He realized what was ‘the something’, there was no time to think and he jumped in the pool to save it, ‘the something’ was a 4 year old boy drowning. He took hold of the boy and swam to the side, he put out the kid to the side and got out panting, the woman limped to the boy. The boy was alright whereas the woman was crying as she hugged the boy and kissed him hysterically. Arnab was surprised he could swim, that too effortlessly, he was reeling in this discovery when the woman came up and spoke to him.

“Thank you very much … You saved my son’s life, I …. I was teaching him to swim and then suddenly I had a cramp in my leg and I started drowning, I caught hold of the side but I lost him… If you wouldn’t have saved him then I don’t know what would have …..” And she turned and hugged the boy again.

She had a slight accent probably she was from the Indian Sub Continent as well; “You are welcome. I am glad I could help” he said feeling slightly nauseated. “I am sorry to ask this but what were you doing with a small kid alone at this time of the night?”

“I am a swimmer, I am in the MIT swimming team, I stay alone so I have to bring my son along too when I practice, he is just 4 years old. I was just teaching him for some time too, you see he is such a natural, he took to it like a fish to water” she said. “But today I suddenly got a cramp and I couldn’t move my leg and …. Thank god you were here. Are you a Grad Student here as well? You look like an Indian too, but I haven’t seen you in any of the Indian club meets”

“No I am a researcher here in the applied physics department; I was just getting out of my lab when I saw you people”

“Oh ok, my name is Jhoomur …. Jhoomur Ghosh.” She outstretched her hand saying this and Arnab took a step back stupefied as it sunk in who this woman really was. “Your nose is bleeding. Are you alright? What’s wrong?” she added. Arnab turned around and ran from there.

He kept running, his vision was becoming blurry and he was feeling more and more nauseated, he threw up in a trash can and then passed out. He woke up in the Infirmary with all kinds of vitals sensing equipment plugged into him. He looked around for the call bell and pressed it, within a minute a doctor appeared. “How are you feeling now… Mr Arnab , if that is indeed your name” he asked him.

“Yes I am a little better, what happened to me? And yes my name is Arnab, but how do you know that?”

“You were found passed out in the university campus yesterday, a group of students brought you here, we went through you driving license and other ID, but we couldn’t find any Arnab Ghosh either in the DMV or MIT’s database, officially you are still listed as a ‘John Doe’. And as to what happened to you, I think you would know, it is final stages of radiation poisoning”

“What ? Radiation poisoning? But I didn’t work with any hazardous material; I am just a teleportation researcher! I … I …” his voice trailed as he realized what might have happened.

“Yes radiation poisoning, you are a very severe case of ARS, acute radiation syndrome, I have never seen any case like that, it is like you got radiation inside of you, every cell in the body is affected, we thought you would know. Nobody this severely affected would have gone without symptoms, we thought you knew”

Arnab started feeling blurry again “Yes I knew, I just got confused, maybe it’s a symptom of radiation sickness. Is there anything which can be done?”

“Well yes, we can give you some pills which will ease your pain for some time, you can be admitted here or some other hospice and they will take care of you in your final hours. But apart from that you must know that there is no cure for this thing. Do you want me to call you family members?”

“Yes I know, thank you very much. I would like to have those pills. And yes I would like to see my mother, but I think I should go to her instead of calling her here”. He knew that there was no cure for this thing, and what he had heard in the HazMat training and from the doctor he realized he only had a few hours, a day at max. The tachyons and other radiation which might have been emitted when his molecules went superluminal had caused this poisoning, there was no Nobel Prize coming for him now. All he could do and wished to do was get the answers to his questions. He discharged himself from the hospital and went to where he thought he might see his mother.

She was there where he thought she would be, right beside the pool and staring at it but afraid of going in.

“Hi” he said “Scared of going in the water?”

“Yes” she replied “I don’t think I will be ever able to, nor will I let my son. Even the thought of it is giving me Goosebumps. This water almost snatched my son away from me, but only almost, thanks to you”

“Oh I merely played my part; it seems you love your son very much”

“Yes. He is the only thing which keeps me alive and gives me the strength to carry on. I shouldn’t have brought him inside water, but he likes it too much, he is such a water baby, it was all my fault” She tried to fight back bitter tears.

“Oh don’t worry about your son, I am sure he will be alright, and it wasn’t your fault, plus you made sure that there was someone to take care of your son”

“What … I am sorry I don’t understand”

“Aah never mind … But can I ask you a question. Where is his father? I know this is very personal and I hardly know you”

“It’s ok. You almost feel like family to me already. So you wanna know about his father? I am a single mother, we used to be in swimming team together, we were called the Ideal couple. And then I conceived him when we were not married, he wanted to give him up. But I couldn’t, he was a part of me, and will always be. It’s like killing a piece of you. Of course this wasn’t ok with him, he asked me to choose between him and my would be baby. I chose my son, and I have never regretted that decision for a second since then. “

“I am sorry I never knew this, I don’t know why I felt like asking”.

“It’s ok, no big deal, it’s good to let it out once in a while. Besides I owe you a lot more than the answers of few questions. I owe you my everything; I don’t know how will I repay you? I don’t know what would have happened if you weren’t here”.

Arnab popped in more pill, his eyes were burning and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold this façade of being alright for long. “Oh don’t worry I will be there. I realized how much this kid means to you now. And I know this sounds strange, but make him learn physics, he will be good at it but make sure that he is the best. Push him hard, like, like his life depends on it”. And he got up to leave, he could barely stand now.

“You are leaving? Will I be ever seeing you again? I don’t even know your name”. She asked Arnab

“Oh yes, you will be seeing me, perhaps in some time, but you will be. The Universe is finite but it has no boundaries, you end up again from where you started Mom. And my name is Arnab, perhaps you can name your son after me” He smiled as he said that, waved, turned around and left.

THE END

Water Baby - Part 1

Arnab Ghosh looked around to see what time it was, he never wore a watch and lab didn’t have a clock anywhere. Maybe they didn’t want the people working to realize how much time they used up here; the lab had no windows, no skylights, no way of even knowing if it was day or night. He felt his pockets to look for his PDA and realized he had deposited it with security, the facility had strict rules about PDA and other electronic devices, with the new life connect devices people didn’t even know how much confidential data they were sharing without being aware.

He guessed it will be around 8 in the morning; he was always good with guessing the passage of time though his entire thesis was based on proving that passage of time was an unreal concept, people just moved in the space-time without being explicitly aware of it. It was the property of the entire universe to move along geodesics. He realized that this was another night this week that he spent away from home, his mother would be worried even though he had told her he was going to the lab.

He got out of the lab, swiped in his ID card in the machine in front of the security guard, who retrieved his PDA from the bin the machine had told him to. The guard returned his PDA with a smile that he thought he should give a fellow Indian down here in Boston. He returned the smile while taking the PDA and said “Good Morning”, the guard smiled even wider and said “Good Morning Sir”, he wanted to remind him not to call him ‘Sir’ or ‘Babu’ which he used to do sometimes but he realized that might tempt the fellow Indian guard to launch into a conversation with him which he didn’t want at this time. He signaled a goodbye and started to turn around to leave but not before the guard said “Oh its morning again, working I didn’t even realize the passage of time here”. Arnab smiled and quoted HG Wells “There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it" and left.

He took his normal route to home which was a little round-about avoiding all escalators and conveyors knowing that this was the only exercise he was about to get the whole day. He would now go back home, eat the food mom had kept, sleep, get up, socialize on the web for some time and then it was time to go back to the lab again. His research on teleportation had hit a plateau, with his day to day work now being going over past calculations, derivations and seeing if the earlier researchers had missed something. Around 20 years ago in 2013 this very lab had discovered teleportation or rather the first working prototype of a teleporter, the idea was simple, strip down the matter to its constituent molecules, transport them over a dedicated line and then reassemble them over at the other end, nothing more than graham bell had done with his telephone, but the calculations and data required to reassemble the matter required a few Petabytes of data to be sent along the matter and the entire processing capability of MIT’s supercomputer working at few exaFLOPS speed. But this had come down due to new algorithms developed by two Philippine mathematics students, but still it was substantial and time taken was far more to satisfy curious science fiction enthusiasts who could have been possible research grant donors. It was hailed as the next big thing by fellow scientists and media alike but now 20 years later it had still to become commercially viable. It has been put on the back burner by MIT’s applied physics department and totally ignored by the media now, but 2 years earlier when Arnab had surprised everyone for opting for it as he had shared the vision of Prof. Jin Swan of living in Asia, coming to work in America and being home in time for dinner. He was the brightest of Ph.D. students and looking at his thesis work on space time, accelerated particles he was supposed to work on the hottest field of Grand Unified Theory or GUT as it is called but he shocked everyone by opting for teleportation.

He walked out and passed by the University Pool where some kind of race was going on, of course the swimmer was alone but on the giant screen in front of her she could see all the other swimmers swimming in their virtual lanes probably swimming alone in lanes of their Ivy League pools, the coach was of course physically there and had added the ambient noise of a crowd shouting and cheering in the background. Maybe he also had realized the advantage of being physically there rather than tele-commuting as they used to call it. Being present there on a screen never had quite the same effect of physically being there and people like Arnab were trying to make it a reality. But till that had happened the rising costs of transportation and fossil fuels and inability of mankind to find a cheap alternative source of energy had made it nearly impossible for people to travel large distances except for the Uber Rich. He took out his PDA and clicked a snap of the pool with his Augmented Reality program, the program threw up a lot of data, he touched the recent happenings section, which showed that there was currently a race going on in which MIT’s best swimmer Bella was competing with other colleges. He felt a twitch inside of him seeing the pool, he felt like jumping in taking a swim himself but he remembered he had swore on his mother never to be in water not even a bath tub. His friends used to make fun of him and call him a rabies infected dog because of his complete refusal to even enter water, he had missed many a trips to the beach, water parks etc due to this. Of all the idiosyncrasies of his mother this was the greatest, her being hell bent of keeping him out of water bodies. He sometimes used to wonder if his mother’s being possessive and controlling was the result of her being an immigrant of India in the USA or something else, many of his friend’s mothers were single mothers too but they never acted like his mother. He had actually wanted to visit India in an exchange program and see if all Indian mothers were like this but his mother had flatly refused and made a huge scene of him wanting to leave her for a whole year and go to some other country rather than concentrating on studying physics.

His mother’s insistence of him studying physics was another mystery to him, he was a natural at physics and could imagine the most complex of physics’ theories in his head, in fact better than his any of his known peers at it, but still his mother kept pushing him more. He didn’t know he was at this position because of his mother or despite of it.

He entered his house and saw his mother on the treadmill as usual, even at 51 she had a stamina of 25 year old athlete and was in better shape than people his age. Panting she asked if he had something to eat, he shook his head and started to move to his room when she got off and said she will fix something for him and asked him to sit down at the table. He pulled out the table from the wall and sat down to what he dreaded most, his mother’s questions about his work, she knew nothing about physics but always asked a lot of questions.

“So how was the day at lab”, she asked as she put down a microwaved ‘quarter pounder with cheese’ in front of him. “Uhh.. Ok ok … “

“Anything special?”

“No maa… Nothing special, just routine everyday work” he said getting irritated, he picked up the remaining burger and walked off to his room. He went in and punched in his name and password at the door of his room and instantly the room started configuring itself to his liking. He kicked off his shoes, finished his burger and switched on his TV to watch some movie and dozed off to sleep.

He woke up to the sound of his PDA ringing. He picked up the call half asleep; it was his over eager research assistant Kwon speaking in a hasty manner. “Slow down Kwon, I already have difficulty understanding you” he said to him. Kwon in his short-out-of-breath sentences told that the particle accelerator team had got some new break through with their tachyon research and there was some crisis situation at the lab which he needed to see personally. He couldn’t make much of it but Kwon instead of sending an email or sending an IM over the messenger had called on his number, then it must be important. He got ready quickly and headed out to the lab skipping 'breakfast' much to his mother’s daily displeasure. When he reached he saw the maintenance and IT people were doing some work on his lab when he asked them they said to contact their manager as they were just following directives, their manager pointed him to the head of the department saying this was his directive that most of his power and computing capabilities be directed to the particle research lab.

When he met Prof Steve he said he was expecting him, he then went to explain to that particle research team had finally found evidence of tachyons, particles which travel backwards in what we perceive as time. They have also found a way to generate tachyons with very low energy particle accelerators and that too in abundance. And they needed all the computing capabilities and power they could get, they needed to do a lot of work before this could be published. Arnab tried to argue but he knew it was futile, this was a major discovery, Nobel Prize winning major discovery and this would take precedence over a research which had not published any papers for a year and wasn’t going anywhere.

Dejected he went back to Kwon who was sitting outside the lab like a puppy who has been turned out of his home. He told Kwon the story and pretty much the news that this might be the dead end of their research. They needed a really fast computer to work on their teleportation data and even the remaining computing power was also taken away from them. Apart from a miracle or some new kind of algorithm which would lessen the amount of calculation necessary nothing could save them now. He asked Kwon to schedule a tele-meeting with the remaining team at a time which was convenient to all the time zones and let him know. He then walked over the particle research lab where many of his ex-classmates were, he saw the whole division was in state of celebration and frenzy at the same time. So much new data about the particles’ properties was coming in and many people were just running around to collect all that, many people were there to congratulate the pair who had achieved this, Michael Adams and Ernest White, the pair was a couple in real life too, they had met in the university and had realized soon that they shared more than their love of particle physics and sexual orientations. There were many big shots there , who he recognized from conventions and paper presentations, everyone was saying the same two words to the pair ‘Nobel Prize’, he went up to congratulate them and said the same two words. He struck around to drink a little champagne which was just sparkling wine imported from some African country. But he was at mourning, his lab, his place of solace where he found a little peace if anywhere in the world, was dying. He took out a bottle of wine and left for his lab when he got an IM from Kwon saying that meeting was scheduled in ten minutes from now, he had to tell his children that their mother was dying, he needed some liquid courage.

The tele-meeting went worse than he had imagined, many people felt very let down and angry and didn’t hesitate to show it in on the screen, one girl Allesandra from Brazil broke down in front of the web cam and started sobbing that her life’s best years were wasted on this project. He tried to keep a stern face while he felt like shouting “you are crying for your few years my whole life just vanished” but he knew that such was life and all its random injustice. He was increasingly getting more irritated as the day was passing, coming out he even snapped at the security guard who called him ‘Sir’. He stopped on the way back at a liquor store to buy a bottle of wine, he knew he was drunk but wanted to be more so, if there was any day to get drunk this was ‘it’.

He got home fully sloshed, when he walked in his mom got startled as she was not used to seeing him at this time, as soon as she looked at him she realized that something had happened. She asked him he was ok, he replied in the affirmative and started to walk towards his room. She asked him to at least have dinner to which he said an instant no.

“What’s wrong, what happed today at the lab?”

“Nothing happened in the lab and nothing is never gonna happen in the lab, ever”

Shocked she started following him and asked him “Tell me na what happened? You don’t come drunk every day, was there something major that happened in your lab today?”

This was the final straw for him, he erupted “Yes something happened, but not to me, nothing major happened nor is it going to, only thing that happened to me was this stupid teleportation project and you, and both were the worst thing that ever happened to me. This this …. God forsaken life happened to me” he threw away his PDA which smashed to pieces. There were silent tears in his mother’s eyes she got quiet and withdrawn like she had seen this kind of anger before.

Arnab started furiously punching in his password in his door and after a failed five attempts he was locked out of his own room, frustrated he kicked the door. His mom quietly walked up to the door put in her password. Arnab without saying a word walked in his room which didn’t seem like his own, it had different lighting, different position of the bed, even a new storage space overhead which he has never noticed before, this was his mother’s configuration of the room. He kicked off his shoes and tried to sleep but his thoughts didn’t let him, he wondered why was this happening to him, why his research failed, why his mother was like this, what happened to his father, why his life was like this? He realized he had no answers and that he needed something to drink. He got up suddenly from his bed and hit his head with the overhead bin which suddenly popped open and lot of junk fell on him.

Dazed and confused he switched on the light and saw what the junk was, it was pretty old, at least 20 years old, a digital photo frame, a jersey of a guy having MIT swimming team written on it, a thing which looked like a bike helmet from the 2000’s and some other random stuff. Curious he picked up the digital photo frame and turned it on and surprisingly it came on, first picture was a group of boys and girls wearing the MIT swimming team jerseys like the one he just saw, then it showed a guy and girl sitting on a vintage motorbike, a girl in a swimming costume holding her medal up for the picture and screenshot of webpage which says Jhoomur Ghosh wins gold in some Inter-state swimming competition. He stared at that one till the pictures switched again, he tried to clear the cobwebs from his head; as Jhoomur Ghosh was the name of his mother and she was also a student here at MIT once.

TO BE CONTINUED…..

Rebound

A rebound in basketball is the act of successfully gaining possession of the basketball after a missed field goal or free throw. Rebounds in basketball are a routine part in the game, as all possessions change after a shot is successfully made.

Rebounds it seems are a routine part of life as well, especially mine. Not many people know and neither have I had the physical characteristics of one, but I used to play basketball in school and was in fact a decent player. I used to play at the position what can be loosely described as the 'Point Guard'. I used to play defense and was good at it, especially at checking and dribbling, I was fairly ok at layups too, but what I used to suck and still do is shooting. First of all I am short (for a basketball player that is, otherwise I'm above average height, at least for an Indian) so couldn't go over raised hands and blocks, plus my shooting accuracy was bad too. So I generally I used to make play happen and pass the ball, or occasionally shoot the ball hoping some of my team members will take the rebound. I never could, because of my playing position and my height. But I guess what I couldn't do on the field maybe life is doing to me off it.

To a layman a rebound (offensive rebound) is a failed attempt to score, it's when you throw the ball but it doesn't go in where you wanted it to be instead it bounces off the ring or the board of the basket but then someone of your team gets the ball and puts it where you wanted it to be in the first place, the basket or the goal.My life has seen a few rebounds too, especially two very recently. It was when I shot towards the goal, missed, and then got it in the rebound.

Excuse the dramatic portrayal which you are about to encounter and the pseudo intellectual gibberish you just did. But if this stuff happens to you in real life then Shakespearean dramas and Hindi TV soaps look bland compared to it.

First rebound was when I came back from my class; it was after my first 15 – 20 days in BIMTECH. After 98.8 percentile in CAT I was kind of overjoyed and almost with the feeling that now I am pretty much through with the MBA entrance and a good college is guaranteed. What I didn't realize that time there was a big hurdle in front of me, namely the GD-PI round, one hurdle too big it seems, of all the 9 colleges I was shortlisted for I could only clear one of them, namely BIMTECH. It seems like I missed quite a few shots. Now it wasn't too bad or too lowly for me or something but I'll be honest here, it wasn't what I was expecting either, after truly working hard for once in my life I thought I had deserved something slightly better. But what I got was what I got and with that thought I told myself to get the best out of the opportunity that I was given. BIMTECH didn't have a lot of things, but good people certainly was not one of them, I made friends quickly there, and I am still good friends with most of them. I started settling in, enjoying my first ever true hostel life and imagining my future there.

But it was the 17^th day of June and I had come back after a full day of classes and was just Facebooking and checking my mails, when a mail from a certain Ravi Sharma came in which certainly changed the course of my immediate life in many ways. It had a pretty bland subject line 'Admission to PGDM Programme - 2008 – 2010' but what was inside was pretty exciting for me. I had got into IMI, though in probably the 3^rd list but got in nonetheless. I showed it to my friend who was standing right there, where I was overjoyed his reaction was 'Abey matlab tu jaa raha hai', I nodded in approval and went out to call my parents. What had happened the earlier day was that they had said that Ravi Sharma from IMI had called and said you are offered admission in some course, the first list for IMI had come in so long back that I had totally forgot about it and had given up any hope on it. I had said it maybe for some other program of them, their main program's list, for which I was interested in had come out long back, and I wasn't really interested in all those. They had still asked me to call him once to confirm, I had also said yes just for the sake of it but wasn't planning to do it.

But then life has its own way of turning out and no matter what and how much you plan the journey there are some unexpected turns in the road that change your destination altogether. What if I had not gotten in IMI, what if I had taken finance as a major as I was planning to that time, there are a lot of what ifs that I can ask, but no one knows their answer. I was happy needless to mention, as I got into a good college, what my friends say about it now or what I feel about it from time to time is a different thing, but at that time I was happy, and content with the feeling that I got what I thought I deserved. That I had finally scored with the rebound.

It was another struggle after getting into IMI and as much as people don't think about it now but it was pretty chaotic back then, in the first trimester, juggling classes, case studies, assigned readings, reports, my sidey room in Katwaria Sarai, a certain Marketing Professor. I was almost going bonkers. The recession had hit full time and my seniors were facing the heat, scrambling for the thing they had taken for granted, the most important thing in any MBA student's life, PLACEMENTS! I had been asked in the IMI interview itself that how you think this current recession is going to affect you, I had very replied very smoothly that it's a minor slowdown, it'll blow over by the time I pass out, Guess it wasn't to be. A few Americans who I had never met, done anything to or thought about took loans on high interest rates on the simple hunch that housing prices will go up and changed the lives of many people far beyond their wildest imaginations. I was one of them. The college boasted of an average domestic package of 8.75 LPA and by even the most conservatives estimates was about to touch 11 in two years, i.e. when we would pass out. My seniors from Placecom had come and said that our senior batch was placed in just a day; we will be placed in half a day. And you … (he let out a chuckle) .. you would be placed in a matter of few hours. Of course that didn't happen, and what did happen is what as they say is history.

So as fate would have it, I passed out with a modest package of 5.5 LPA in an automobile manufacturing company and a disappointed dad who had lot of expectations from the B-School which ranked in the top 15^th in India (I still believe it does). What he didn't know was how deep and bad this recession thing was, a word he had heard a lot in the media a few years back, before it got pushed to the backburner by the media who had got bored of it. Also he absolutely hated the mechanical engineering field and any company that had something to with it. So it was like a double serving of bad luck to him. I on the other hand was ok with it with a slight twinge in my heart again, the "I think I deserved something slightly better than this" one.

So I got into Mahindra Navistar with a sales profile and a Calcutta posting. Once again I made peace with what I got or fate as someone might call it and started settling in my job, making friends, and growing roots for the lack of a more dramatic word. But then as all big things, this had also started as a small thing and got bigger and bigger. It was one day when I was sitting in my office when I got something which I recall as a ping from Mayank Sharma saying "Brother zara apni CV forward kar do". And I did without asking many questions, the one I had prepared in IMI. He later told me that there were openings in Infosys and he would refer me. I didn't give much thought to it except once in a while when Mayank used to talk about it. One day he said he was changing my center from Calcutta to Delhi as it was taking too long to happen there and Delhi was just a flight away, I again said yes without thinking much. I did start thinking about it when I got a mail from Infosys people saying that I was short listed and I had to appear for an interview in Delhi on 18^th September. I immediately booked my tickets and got serious about it when I realized that more than 10,000 Rs were at stake. I gave the interview, did 2 days of fun and came back praying that I get through. I finally got the offer on September 29^th when I was sitting in conference room with my colleagues, they are actually more friends than colleagues, again with an e mail with a bland title 'Offer of Employment'. And another rebound.

I ask the same questions to myself now and then, what if I had stayed in this company, what if I was doing Sales only instead of IT consultancy. I have no answers; but what I do have is a much more satisfied father, a higher paying job and the belief that in life you can't plan everything, certain things come out of the blue and change the game.

In an Absolut world - 2

Continuing on my vision for an Absolut™ world I think the following points should definitely exist in one –

If you have driven around in any of the Indian Cities sooner or later you would come across to what has been termed as the 'Hand of God', it's when you are doing 60 on a empty road suddenly a pedestrian pops in front of you and shows the stop sign with his hand like a traffic policeman and crosses the road. If you get too close he won't mind shouting at you a few obscenities, because he actually expected you to freeze wherever you are, doesn't matter if it wasn't the zebra crossing, it even doesn't matter if the vehicles have the first right on the road and it still doesn't matter if the vehicle hit him or her the vehicle may lose at most a few spare parts but he may lose his life. But no, you should stop dead in the tracks for you have been shown the 'Hand of God'

Well in an Absolut™ world there will be some reward points for running over the hand of god pedestrians. If some khadus looking uncle tries to give you the hand when you were happily cruising at a good speed listening to favorite song, don't brake, in fact step over the pedal and run over the bastard and get a pat on the back and reward points for doing so.

Have you ever come across a skinny guy wearing faded jeans and chappals and a tee shirt which says "Sorry girls, I only date models" or an overweight, spectacle wearing, hair tied in bun girl wearing a tee shirt saying 'Rock Chic'? I have, and there's nothing more annoying than that (except maybe the TV Reality Shows)

In an Absolut™ world these kinds of tee shirts will require a prescription from a stylist or at least some kind of qualification in terms of dress sense. This way at least the tee shirt and its message won't be de graded.

Now we are living in world where there are no poor people, just some people at the bottom of the Pyramid, there are no Muslims in our country either but some people belonging to the minority community. People have also successfully overcome the difficulties of the handicapped persons, by giving them some physical or mental challenges.

In an Absolut™ world a spade would be called a spade, a short person will be called short instead of vertically challenged. And when I will lose all my hair on my head I would be bald and not cranium coat deprived or some shit like that. No politically correct Euphemisms!

Since the Tiger survey came out which said only 1411 of them left people across the world or at least on its third most populous country i.e. Facebook really came together and worked seriously towards conservation of the tigers. They joined communities of 'save the tiger' campaign, clicked the like button on the 'save the tiger' pages some even went on the extra mile and copy pasted 'save our tigers, only 1411 of them left' as their status message. I really can't tell how many of them think the tiger poachers would be cowering in their home seeing the sheer size of the members of 'save the tiger' community on Facebook or how many tiger hunters were in their friend list who would have a change of heart after seeing their heart wrenching appeal to save the tigers, I really really have no clue. And there is no dearth 'Good Samaritans' on Facebook there are people clicking like on 'save a girl child', 'reduce poverty', 'don't indulge in nuclear warfare' and what not.

In an Absolut world the whole of Facebook would be monitored by the government and every time somebody joined the 'Save the Tiger' community immediately they would be served a summon for 50 hours community work in the forests where the tigers resided. Whenever someone liked 'Reduce Poverty' they would have a sum of Rs 10000 deducted from their bank accounts to help the poor. That they would realize that if you want to make a change in this world don't click on random buttons which makes you look cool & socially considerate and costs nothing but in fact do some actual work.

And lastly something which is very close to my heart. In an Absolut™ world anybody who ordered mixed a scotch with stuff like Thums Up or Coke or Sprite and then claimed something like "Yaar kasam se waise to maine bahut daaru pee hai lekin ye saali Scotch to bahut Smooth hai" would be shot on sight. The scotch master died blending this stuff for you and while he was busy working on the aroma, palate, and finish of this golden liquid you were pouring cola over it! And for people who ordered truck loads of snacks like Peanut Masala and Tandoori Chicken etc. along with doing the aforementioned to further kill the taste and aroma …. Well for them let's just say I might have to get medieval on their ass.

What good can drinkin' do ?

What good can drinkin' do, what good can drinkin' do ?
Lord, I drink all night but the next day I still feel blue.

There's a glass on the table, they say it's gonna ease all my pain,
And there's a glass on the table, they say it's gonna ease all my pain.
But I drink it down, an' the next day I feel the same.

Gimme whiskey, gimme bourbon, give me gin.
Oh, gimme whiskey, give me bourbon, gimme gin.
'Cause it don't matter what I'm drinkin', Lord, as long as it drown this sorrow I'm in.

I start drinking Friday, I start drinking Friday night.
Lord, I start drinking Friday, start drinking Friday night.
But then I wake up on Sunday, child, there ain't nothin' that's right.

My man he left me, child, he left me here.
Yeah, my good man left me, went away and left me here.
Lord, I'm feelin' lowdown, just give me another glass of beer.

What good can drinkin' do, what good can drinkin' do ?
Well, I drink all night but the next day I still feel blue!!!


P.S. - This is one of the very first songs of Janis Joplin, the Icon of the hippie era. There are no even proper recording available of this song, as said Janis just sang this in a bar impromptu after writing this in a drunken stupor. Some drunken stupor. I normally don't copy paste stuff on my blog, but couldn't help myself with this one.

5 days of Winter

Many people said about the two short stories I wrote that they had an abrupt ending; I said I had meant it that way. Most stories in real life have abrupt endings, including this. This is most certainly not a love story; it has no heavy dialogues, no drama and very little emotion. The only thing this story has is the truth, it actually happened.

It was the time when I was coming back to Delhi from Kota. It was mild winter and I was wearing our college sweatshirt which I liked to soil in places like trains. I got out and started looking for an Auto, I found one and as always he quoted me an insane price to go to Katwaria Sarai to which I refused. So after a little negotiation he brought down the price but said then you will share the auto, I said fine as I had just one small bag and no qualms to travel with someone else as long as I have to pay less.

After waiting for 5 – 10 minutes the Autowallah brought two people, a girl my age heavily wrapped in a cap, muffler, sweater, gloves and what not and a boy slightly younger which I assumed to be her boy friend or something. As usual I kept quiet during the travel and was looking in my cellphone the whole time, there was something wrong with it, it was saying 'Memory full. Close some applications'. The girl was giving some instructions to the boy, I thought of her being the bossy type in the relationship.

The boy got down some time before the AIIMS flyover, got some more dosage on instructions and said "theek hai didi" in the end. So the boy wasn't her boy friend I thought, then I got back to fiddling with my phone. When I was about to reach the girls suddenly asked me which year I am in. I said 'huh', she repeated the question. I said second, she said oh ok. Then we stopped talking. I thought we are going towards IIT so she would have assumed I am a student, but then I wondered how she could digest that I was a second year B.Tech student; I certainly didn't look that young. Then she said I am in the first year, I'm in IIFT. Then I added two plus two in my head that she was an IIFT student which was very near to my college IMI so that's why she could recognize the IMI logo on my sweatshirt and hence she asked which year I was in. Otherwise no way in hell somebody could recognize our college logo, people right in Katwaria Sarai didn't know which college IMI was. We chit chatted for a few minutes then it was time for me to get down, she asked me to take down her number and said maybe we could get together some time. Unfortunately my phone was conked and hence it was not possible to store any numbers. I gave her my number said bye and got down. Went back to my routine and didn't think about it much. She never called or messaged either.

Then it was few days later I was coming out of Katwaria Sarai when I saw her drinking espresso at a small store, she was with her friends, I went over and said hi, I again chit chatted for a minute when her and my friends started giving us weird looks, when parting she asked if my phone is ok now, I replied in the affirmative so she asked me to take her number and make some plans to get together in the near future. I said ok and took leave.

The next day she asked me if I wanted to have lunch, I didn't have any class so I said ok. She asked me to meet her outside her college. I was walking towards IIFT when she called and asked me to wait on the way, she said she was coming towards me as all her friends were there and she'll get teased if they saw her with me. I said ok, she came in a few minutes and asked if we could go someplace nearby as she has a class in two hours. So I suggested we could go to this place called 'Secular house canteen' which was 10 mins walking from here, was cheap and had good food. While having lunch she told me she had a class of one of our faculties only, Prof. Deepak Chawla and they were terrified of him. He had caught one guy reading the newspaper in class and insulted and ridiculed him very badly. I laughed saying that we used to watch movies in his class and played games on his laptop, we had seen scarier professors. She told me she was Indore and done engineering from there only and then had worked for a software company in Pune for a year, then she came here. I told a little about myself. I was eating slowly as usual when she said we should hurry as she had a class in half an hour and wanted to be minimum 5 minutes before time of the class. So we hurried off from there, I walked her to her college, said bye and we agreed to meet again soon.

It was after a week or so when she called me again to go out for lunch. She said this time we had a little more time and could go someplace a little far away, I being a 'lakeer ka fakeer' as always suggested to go to Saket, we could stroll there for some time and could eat somewhere there only. She agreed. We took an auto to Saket and strolled around for some time when she said she had something to tell me, I asked what but she said she'll say when we sit down. We went to Subway when she told me that she had given CAT again this year and got a good percentile, she had calls from all IIMs except IIMB. I asked but IIFT is a good college why does she want to change. She said it is ok but IIMs are better, she will only change if she gets A or C, plus she said she has some problems staying here, so she wants to move. I asked what but she didn't elaborate.

On the way back we both were feeling a bit weird, to make harmless conversation I asked her that we have met the 4^th time now and I even don't know her last name, she said it is 'Behl'. Then she asked me I said 'Chauhan', "My full name is Anirudh Singh Chauhan". She said "Oh you are a Rajput" with a tone of sadness and derision. I said yes, and asked what's wrong. She hesitated for a second and said her experiences with Rajputs till now have been bad. I again asked why , so she continued in pained voice, she told me that her boyfriend in engineering college was also a Rajput, they went around for four years and had planned to marry as soon as get out of college. But that never happened; he ditched her and married someone else, and she spent a hellish year in Pune trying to get over that. So she decided to focus on career then, got through IIFT and came here. She looked up and I saw she was trying to fight back the tears. No one spoke after that, we went up to her college, she got in and I walked back to my house. I couldn't stop thinking about this for many days.

She never called or received my call after that. Neither did she reply to any of my messages. I just saw her once when she was walking to her college carrying some packets, I offered to help but she refused and said she was in a hurry. I never saw her again. After a few months her number was disconnected too.

P.S – I generally don't talk about this incident or write about these things on my blog. May be today I am having a momentary lapse of reason.

Is life supposed to be this way?

It was again there today. My friend said it to me. Ever since I started working it has become increasingly hard for me to ignore. At first I thought that only I am having it bad, then I suddenly I started seeing it everywhere, and by everywhere I mean my remaining point of contacts with the world, Gtalk, Facebook, the occasional tweets and phone calls of friends. Status messages saying how sad their life has become, how hard their boss is coming down, status updates saying their job sucks or the exhilaration when they changed it. The phone call which said that I have quit my job because I was going crazy. I tried to ignore it thinking maybe people liked to exaggerate, liked to bitch about their boss and work or maybe it was some kind of fad when everyone started proving their life is more miserable than the other. Then one of my senior in my office quit, he was constantly ignored by the boss, made to do shitty work and was passed over in the recent annual appraisals. He finally quit. Then I met another senior who was from Calcutta, he just mentioned that how he was having it tough in Pune, no time to see his wife and kids, whole life had become office to home to office. He was travelling 20 days in a month. He tried to keep it subtle but the pain was real.

Call me naïve or ignorant or immature, but nobody told me about this deal. To earn money, which most people now agree or will agree in the future is the key to happiness; you had to be away from your loved ones, slog in the office for 12 hours, travel like crazy to attend meetings, trainings, functions. Take abuse from your boss; maybe even pass some to your sub-ordinates. Listen to demeaning things, engage in office politics, back stab people, see gross slip ups but stay silent to present rosy pictures, stay in office later than your boss just to show you are a sincere worker, staying in alien cities, giving up your hobbies. And all this for what?

A pay hike which adds 5000 Rs to your monthly salary, a promotion which changes nothing but your designation, one pat on your head from your boss meaning ‘good dog’. A drinking problem, rift in your family, never being there to see your kid grow up, lifestyle diseases, alienation from the people you spend most of your waking hours i.e. your co-workers, depressions, affairs. Spending money on shopping, expensive restaurants, imported liquor and gadgets you never needed just to feel happy, just to prove to yourself that you are happy and successful? I had updated once on Buzz and twitter that one beer should be made compulsory after work. My friend had replied in the affirmative saying that he has realized why a daily wage laborer spent half of what he earned on buying liquor, otherwise he can’t sleep with all that hard work and abuse.

When I think about all this, I always remember a scene from DDLJ. For most people it was a great romance, a big song and dance spectacle, a tribute to true India and Indianess and blah blah….. For me it was the pain of Amrish Puri, staying away from home, not seeing his loved ones, wanting to go back but not able to, why? Because of money, his store, his source of income. If I remember correctly the dialogue was “Roti paer kee zanjeer ban gayi hai’. His feeding the pigeons had they were the only ones he identified with, mind you he identified and shared things with the pigeons, not even with his family. “Inka bhi meri tarah koi desh nahin hai, jahan daana dikha wahan ruk gaye, paet bhara aur ud gaye”

But what is the alternative? Sit at home, do nothing, molly coddle your wife and kids all day long. Watch TV and pursue your hobbies, take out one hour every morning for Yoga and then sit back and reflect upon the uneventful day’s happenings? Will your wife be happy if you couldn’t fulfill her basic necessities, will your love be enough for the kids when they have no education and no material comforts so to say, nothing what the kids in the neighborhood have, and how will you pay for your TV and it’s electricity, not to forget anything else in the world. But most of all, will it not trouble you if you didn’t have anything to do whole day, nothing to contribute to the world, no sense of achievement. And what would it be, maybe a world full of mediocrity? I don’t know. Like most situations in my life I don’t have any answers, only a few good questions.

I sometimes sit and ponder over it like I am doing now. When I used to see people taking it easy in their work, acting lazy or even not willing to work harder I used to think, what’s wrong with these people, why don’t they wanna work hard, don’t they wanna progress, become someone in life, at least work is place where extra effort always shows. Now I am in the same boat, I am not working, blaming it on everybody else, my boss, my senior, the company, the fact nothing is going to matter even if I did try a little harder. When people in HR used to talk about employee satisfaction, job enlargement, job fulfillment, employee engagement, team spirit we used to laugh our ass off “Saala ye HR waalon ko to bakar karne ke hee paise milte hai”. But not anymore, ever since I started working I realized these factors are all out there, and now it’s not so easy for me to laugh at them. I still laugh at the solutions HR people come up with for these problems, but not at the problems.

But what are they doing about the problems I mentioned above. Is anybody at all? I don’t know. I don’t know why nearly everybody I know hates their job, I don’t know why nearly everybody I know hates their boss, I don’t know why nearly everybody I know wants to change his job no matter what job he or she is in. I don’t know why nearly everybody I know is away from home or away from the people he or she wants to be, I don’t know why nearly everybody I know says his is bad company. I really don’t know.

As I have said I have no answers, only questions. I can go on for some more time but I’m afraid it’ll be tautology. So I leave you with one question – ‘Is life supposed to be this way?’

Oh! Calcutta

I'm worried that this post can offend many Bengalis, especially from Calcutta (some might even feel my calling it Calcutta instead of Kolkata inappropriate) so I am gonna start with the things I like about Calcutta and then maybe move onto the things I am not so crazy about. So here I begin.

Things I like about Calcutta –

• At 5'8'' I am above average height here in Calcutta.
• Even at 10 o' clock in the morning I don't feel late in the office.
• You don't have to take a lot of Bathroom breaks here, as all the water out of your body is evaporated as sweat.
  
• The rush hour is over if you leave office by 7.
  
• Whenever on the road you have no chance of Car accidents, the people have made sure of this by using a strategic mix of narrow roads, lot of ambassadors and encroachments.
  
• Pedestrians have the first right on the road, the cars have to look first left and then right before driving on the road.
  
• Even after 10 years of completion I still proudly say that I live in a 'New' building in Calcutta.
• There is no problem in getting a seat in any restaurant on weekdays which doesn't sell 'Maach Bhaat'.
• There is always this hope that this some Bandh is going to get you a Holiday this month.
  
• After sitting and chatting whole day in office I still get to say to myself convincingly 'I work harder than most people of this city'.
  
• I get approached by Pimps and Pros right out at Park Street, no need to even go to Sonagachi.
  
• Taking a leak by the road side has never felt so dignified when others are doing worse things (Taking a bath or taking a dump) right there, in the Posh Areas of Calcutta.
  
• Driving a Accent still gives me that 'Ooh I have a big car' feeling here.
• Stepping out of the building every day I am treated to people fighting over price of fish and chickens getting their throats slashed right on the road, nothing else works better to drive out the last trace of sleep out of your head.
  
• And yes, I heard that during Puja it's very easy to get laid.
  

Now that I have put up all rosy things up front I don't think anybody would mind if I rant a little. Though there is hardly anything to dislike here except the horrendous traffic, the stench of fish everywhere, bad food and worse weather or the fact that there is rampant poverty and standard of living here is very low. But the city is very likable, though that is when you overlook the regressive mentality of people, their stubbornness to change and their falling back on culture and the accomplishments of a poet who has been dead now for 70 years and the other Bengalis who themselves do not stay here in Calcutta when it is pointed out that how far lagging behind they are from the other 3 metros. Like my friend pointed out that all the successful Calcuttans have become so outside Calcutta. Now I am sure that some people maybe boiling up after reading this, and they would like to remind me about me their Engineering Marvels, the Hoogli bridges or how Calcutta had Metro for past 20 years and how the English chose Calcutta as their capital as it was the most advanced city in India.

Anyways, jokes apart. That is all correct, Calcutta had the metro 20 years back but the fact that it has hardly added any new stations or facilities after that and just runs on one straight line through a small part of Calcutta speaks volumes about the city and its people. And yes the English did chose Calcutta as their capital as it was the most advanced city in India, WAS. Whatever the people of Calcutta are proud of, the Maidan or the Victoria Memorial were built by the British, the city just froze in time after that. To quote SRK from Swades "Jab bhi hum log muqable mae dabne lagte hai, hum log ek hee cheez ka aadhaar lete hai, sanskar aur parampara". Fine I agree that Delhi has no culture, but it is full of people who are taking risks and living life to the fullest instead of people who are 'Maroing Adda over endless cups of cheap tea and cigarettes discussing whether Argentina's team is better or Brazil's or debating politics endlessly and then voting the same party to power every time who is most responsible for their backwardness (in my humble opinion only) ; I also agree that Bombay is full of on-the-run, detached people but they are moving the weight of the nation on their shoulders, and not coming late to office because their biggest concern is finding good and fresh fish for their family in the morning. I will also be the first one to point out to you that Bangalore is full of Techno junkies who work as Cyber Coolies in IT/ITES companies for American or European countries and give the city hopeless traffic jams every day twice but there is something in them which are making all the IT companies flock to the city where here one Di has successfully driven out the only company which was foolish enough to invest in this state to make a 'cheap car'.

The thing which bugs me is not how people don't want to change and have this notion that whatever has been going on should go on but the fact is people here know that they are like this and defend it vehemently and vociferously. They scoff on people who want to change, who ask them to concentrate on work rather than forming unions and boycotting work every day, who ask them to build new buildings rather than just admiring the old ones, who asks them to replace burned out lights rather than just reading poetry about light, who asks them to show heroism rather than worship old war Heroes.

But then there are a lot of things I like about this city too, things you can't find anywhere else, first is of course the women, yeah I have a thing for Bengali women but this is not about that solely, the fact that they are so dynamic and outdoorsy here should be a inspiration to women everywhere in India. The polite people, somebody stepped over my shoes in a crowded Disc here, but instead of the shoulder shove that I had prepared myself for, after staying in Delhi for 2 years I got a 'Oh I am so sorry' and he meant it, never anywhere else in India. People go out of their way of to help people, our Zonal Service Head offered a ride to Dealer Sales Executive because he had slightly mentioned that he was not feeling well, my landlord religiously asks me to come to his club every week even though I have slept well past his coming back time for the last 5 Sundays. Then there is the music, after so long I could find a band playing live rock music here. And of course the number and the size of bookstores here, it always reminds me to read more. There is this one thing, a common thread, a part of the whole which everything shares in this city, which unites it. People here call it their city's culture, Vir Sanghvi called it its soul, I don't know what to call it, but I feel it and I like it. Calcutta has a lot of eating joints too, though I don't like the Bengali food and the joints which serve them, nor do I like the Biryani here or the sea food on offer, but still it's great to have so many choices. Good nightlife too, the bars are plenty and good too, though I was amazed to see properly formed Queue outside liquor shops, with no pushing and no commotion, nowhere else in India will you find this much decency. Even after the fact that Liqour is big taboo here while Smokers and Cigarette shops are plenty and people are cool about it too.

So there are a lot of things I like and lots of things I dislike, and as it is almost my policy, I do not judge. I do not judge a person; I am certainly not going to judge the city. I have my own reasons of liking the city and people might or might not agree with me and I have my reasons to dislike. To quote from Vir Sanghvi's article of Calcutta "

In Bombay, a man with a relatively low income will salt some of it away for the day when he gets a stock market tip. In Calcutta, a man with exactly the same income will not know the difference between a debenture and a dividend. But he will spend his money on the things that matter. Each morning, he will read at least two newspapers and develop sharply etched views on the state of the world. Each evening, there will be fresh (ideally, fresh-water or river) fish on his table. His children will be encouraged to learn to dance or sing. His family will appreciate the power of poetry. And for him, religion and culture will be in inextricably bound together."

Fine, just don't expect me to appreciate this. I have my own views about what a man should do with his life.

But then good or bad this city has many things inside it and it never ceases to amaze me, and at most time I can only utter this phrase which is the name of a painting, a play and a chain of restaurants – Oh! Calcutta!.

Black Out : Concluding Part

Robbie was pacing up and down in his room like husband whose wife has just got in labour. He was mad at Natasha, mad at Varun, mad at the whole world. “If I could just get out of this”, he thought. Why did Natasha have to open her mouth and tell that to Varun, when whatever he had said had worked out so beautifully. He was sure there were gonna be repercussions after what Natasha had told Varun he kept thinking. “If only that bitch could play along for some more time! But no, she was worried about her reputation, like she even had one, slut! “. Robbie burned up inside with these thoughts and his rage. He always had trouble controlling it and he knew it. In his anger and frustration he was about to throw the thing he had in his hand at that time, his phone.

But suddenly it beeped. It was Varun. His message made his head spin.

“I know wat u did that nite…. I rem everythin now no matter hw much u tried to hide it… I even knw where da body is”

The message made the world go vertigo around him. “Fuck fuck fuck, there was no way he could know where was it, he was not there, nobody was there, and I how did he remember everything suddenly, it that whore Natasha’s fault”. He had a million questions in his head.
He broke into sweat in his A.C. room, with trembling hands he messaged him back, he knew it was no use calling him back, his voice would give him away.

“What do you remember? And what body? I don’t know what you are talking about”

Varun’s reply came in seconds. “Meet me 2morrow morning @ a place I tell u n I will tell u what am I talking about.

Robbie panicked, he was sure now that Varun knew. “What did he want”, he thought, “money, or some favour, or something else?”

He knew what he had to do, he called Natasha immediately and asked her to meet him at the fateful place and drove off the house immediately. They both reached around 1 o’ clock and sent the servants back to sleep and asked them to not to come out no matter what happened.
Robbie could find that place very easily and he thought so could anybody else if someone was looking for it. He started digging immediately though he had no idea what he would do after that. Natasha kept saying something or the other continuously, which infuriated Robbie even more, he felt like hitting her with the shovel and burying her there. How could she say that he dragged her into this, it was her coke, her idea to have it in his car, her idea to take the girl along. It was really all her fault.

Robbie had to move her, this was the only clue anybody could have. He was going on at it when the stench hit him. He could see her. He almost felt sorry for her. But suddenly he saw a light in some distance, it was a cell phone’s light. Varun stepped out of the dark and said “Hello brother”

Natasha let out a shriek and Robbie almost fell backwards. Robbie started shouting at Natasha “See I told you he knew it, he knew!”.Natasha replied in quivering voice “But how? You said nobody saw you bury her, and he himself said he doesn’t remember anything”. “How did you know where?” they both let out almost in unison.

“I didn’t. At least till now. I just had a hunch. But I followed you two and you people led me here.”

“See I told you it was a TRICK! Jhuuth bol raha tha saala, kisi nae mujhe nahi dekha tha, I knew it. But but…. I had to be sure, I had to get the body out of here. I, I had to sure” His voice trailed off, he was having a hard time believing this was happening.

“Ya, that’s how the TRICK works” Varun replied. Natasha and Robbie both were stunned, at their own foolishness, by Varun’s intelligence, by the confidence in the college Geek’s voice and their shaking knees.

Natasha started crying, she fell on her knees and asked “But how did you know, you don’t remember anything at all of that night”

“I don’t” Varun shirked and sat down on the ground “And I never do after drinking that much, but I know that I won’t, so I took a few Mementos”

“What mementos? What are you talking about? We checked all your clothes and then threw them away, we checked your phone you haven’t told anything to anyone, we asked around the party if you spoke to anyone, I asked you even that If you have told anybody else than me. There was nothing, you had nothing, you hadn’t spoken to anyone and nobody knew. Then how did you get to KNOW ?”

Varun replied coolly, the shock he had received after deciphering his message to Sunny and putting two plus two together made him immune to anything else ”First you tell me your part and then I will tell mine. What happened to that girl? What did you people do?”

Robbie who was silent till now started speaking; he was sitting on the ground holding on the shovel between his legs like a lifeline.

“The party was in full swing” he began “But I was getting bored at around 2:30 I told Natasha her party was ‘bakwaas’ and I was leaving. She told me that the real surprise was not yet out, she had gotten some ‘pure Colombian cocaine’ through her US return cousin’s contacts. So I stayed, then she took me to one corner that she has it, but she didn’t want to shoot it here in her farm house, so I suggested to go shoot in my new Audi. Pas isne kaha kee she wanted to drive after that, I said no. She said she will give me something else to play with, she asked this Chinky girl who had come with that girl Priya if she wanted to get high, she said yes so she came along with us and then on the way … on the way”

Robbie stopped and looked up to Natasha who was brimming with anger. She shouted at him “Bol na tune aage kya kiya you sick animal!” She turned to Varun and started speaking, though she was not speaking to no one in particular. She started re living that time in her head.

She had the first line from the vanity mirror she had in her handbag and jumped on the steering wheel. “I wanna take out this baby for a spin” she exclaimed. Robbie asked her to go ahead, he had his hands full with the coke and the girl. Robbie stepped in the car with the other girl. She had come to her earlier in the party asking if she has anything stronger, this feels like a high school party, she wanted to get ‘high’. She had smiled at her and told her that she had some exclusive stuff and she will call her when its time. She whirled away in the car out of her farm house gates and wanted to hit the main road. Suddenly Robbie shouted from the back “Oye paagal ho gayi hai kya? Main road pe cops honge, yahan andar hee drive kar le, tab tak main yahan drive karta huun” Robbie focused his attention back on the girl and urged her to shoot one more line and started separating the white powder into two more lines from his dad’s platinum credit card. It was a wonderful drive, the rush, the euphoria, she felt she on the top of the world, why was she wasting her time here in Delhi drinking Vodka Orange and Cosmopolitans when she should have been in States having a wild time. She heard some commotion in the back, she looked in the back Robbie was on top of the petite girl and was trying to force himself on her, she was struggling. Natasha laughed “Don’t struggle Kudiye, It’ll all feel good in some time, enjoy the taste of Delhi when you are here”. She stepped on the pedal a little more to see what this baby can do, she had hit 120 easily, suddenly she heard the heard the rear door open and a scream, ‘Oh fuck” Robbie reached to catch her but it was too late, she hit the road at 120 Kilometers per hour trying to jump out of the car. They were already quite some distance ahead when they turned back, they saw a figure get up and walk back into a deserted part of her farm house crying for help.

They momentarily stopped on the spot where she had hit the ground, it was a lot of blood on the road, and she must have been bleeding a lot. But she walked in the farm house again, somebody might see her and might call the cops, they had to reach her before she reaches anybody. At this point Varun called in a drunken voice saying that he found a girl in the backside of her farm house all covered in blood and too incoherent to talk. She asked him to stay there and not to leave the girl and not to call anybody else. They parked the car and started running inside on foot when Varun called yet again on Robbie’s phone, apparently the girl told him what Robbie did or rather tried to do to her and he started abusing him, Robbie told him to stay there and said he was sorry he will come and take care of the girl, it was all an accident. They both knew that they were in this together, if the girl told the police about the cocaine, her driving drunk, her not helping her when she struggled she would be in as much trouble as Robbie.

They found Varun red eyed and too drunk to talk, he said he found her in the trees like this and she only gained consciousness once, he had called his friend Sunny first but he didn’t pick up, so being her place he had called her second, then the girl regained consciousness and told him what happened and he had called Robbie. They asked him not to worry, they were sorry, it was all an accident and Robbie will take the girl to a hospital while he should lie down as he was too drunk. Sunny called back saying that he didn’t pick up the first time, what was it, she said “nothing, Varun was busy” and hung up. She remembered Varun’s last line to her before passing out “Tell me exactly what happened to the girl tomorrow, she is Priya’s friend. But I won’t remember anything in the morning so you tell me” when she came out from recounting her thoughts. It all felt like she was just thinking aloud.

“So you put me to bed, took off my clothes which had the blood of the girl on them, checked my phone and deleted the message I had sent to Sunny. And told these stupid stories the next morning when I confirmed I don’t remember anything. Right?” Varun looked at both of their faces after saying this, they didn’t look up. ‘So what happened after that? The girl died due to blood loss. You Cleaned up your car and told Natasha to tell Priya that her friend went off with somebody during the party, told her a fake description of the guy and his car as well so even if she files an FIR it would not lead to you. And she will become one more missing girl. Am I right?

Robbie anger boiled over “Haan Einstein, yahi hua tha. Par wo mari nahi thee when you left her. I hit her on the head with this to make sure she was” Robbie started walking towards him menacingly with the shovel in his hand.

“Baith ja pehalwaan, mujhe bhi maarne se pehle, mere side kee kahani to sun le” Varun replied in a steel voice. “Sunny told me about your new Audi with the number 8055, I checked out the last dialed no again. ‘3555122278055’.Do you know what does ‘3555122278055’ become when typed in a message? DL 1C P 8055. That is the number of your car isn’t it? BOSS? Cool number, but the problem is that everybody remembers cool numbers, like Sunny did and that unfortunate girl who had to jump out of your car, apne aap ko bachaane ke liye. Then I thought could it be that message I had sent Sunny mean something more than just random numbers. So I typed them and played around with them until I could make something meaningful out of it. And that told me part of the story of what happened that night. Rest of it you people told me. It says in my message that I was not able to reach anyone else that night. And you people thought anyways it was a meaningless set of numbers so no harm done, but you deleted it from my ‘Sent Items’ anyways. Luckily for me I had SMSed somebody a number before and had forgotten to change the mode to text from numbers before I started typing this message. In my drunken condition and panic I didn’t realize and sent the message to Sunny who had no idea what it meant.

“So what do you want from us now? Tell me. How much money?” Natasha screamed,

“Bhaai tu ye Audi rakh le, jo hua bhul ja, kuch bhi karne se wo ladki to waapas aane se rahi , hai na?” Robbie said in a broken voice.

Varun felt disgusted. “I just want one thing from you both. Tell me, what was the name of that Girl?”

“Who cares!” Natasha shouted.

“I do. Priya cares. Her parents did. And a lot of people who are here care” He said as more people stepped out of the shadows.

” No no no …. Tune mujhe fasaya hai …. Main …. Maine ye sab…” Robbie cried.

“Chal koi na, bhaiyon ke beech mae ho jaata hai aisa, koi gal nahin. Daaru piyega?” Varun patted his back and walked off.