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Those were probabily the first days of my fall or maybe the last ones of my pretense to remain sane in a world I partially understood and completely despised.i was getting increasingly frustrated of sonali.her complains about my alcohol breath in the night and my smoking in the morning were getting louder everyday.Its not that i can't part with both of my cherished addictions for her but mine is not a sugar coated fairy tale of a gay looking but pure hearted prince and a nymphomaniac but virgin princess which a grandma tells the kids on christmas nights while it snows outside and the kids get somehow convinced that they will find their nymphomaniac princess one day when they grow up to become gay looking and pure hearted.I needed alcohol in the night in order to sleep with her and a smoke in the morning because i did so. But inspite of her bickering and my indulgences things were fine between us for a while. We both had our moments of bliss and boredom which made us believe that we were very close of being husband and wife.
some nights i returned home with an uncanny jubilation of an unexpected profit so I took her to a seaside chinese restaurant at juhu beach as I knew she loved the sea and chinese food.she talked endlessly about pathetic tales of pathetic writers she met during her day, between her pathetic attempts to eat chopsuey with chop sticks ,which confirmed to me that finally she was really happy.Later on when I walked reluctantly with her on the beach with our footwear in hand and feet in wet sand,she recited to me whatever she had written during her day.And inspite of knowing that I was brought up in a slum and my incapibility to digest abstract thoughts, she was always hopeful that i will find something between her lines that even well dressed,well thinking and overall well rounded convent educated ,opera loving ,morally correct and most eligible bachelor lookalike publishers failed to see in her submissions.
In short she shared her dreams with me and having no dreams of my own , i took them as ours .
I never understood a single word of what she wrote or any writer writes for that matter.For me,they are just a bunch of perverted losers without a girlfriend. I wanted to tell her that it's a crazy dream of becoming a writer she is pregnant with but i never told her that because i never understood a single word of what she wrote or any writer writes for that matter.
At other nights ,while i was watching a cricket match and unlike most indians was praying that tendulkar gets out to mcgrath this over as I have put my 1 lakh bucks on it, the bastard smashed me for a six instead.And to make matters worse, she used to pop up scantily dressed and foolishly cheerful like a blonde jinee of some TV serial I used to watch in my childhood.
' how do i look? '
At those times i gave her a perplexed look which penetrated through her to the wall behind or went even further to the people i owe money and all i could manage was
' what?'
I always found her bedroom door closed on those nights but i didnt care.Slumbering all night over the money i have just lost,i had no taste for alcohol in the night, a smoke in the morning and a fuck in between.
she knew very well that i never loved her and maybe she never loved me either but unlike me,she was very good in hiding her disgust for me.maybe we both belonged to the same breed of loners,always wanting to be loved but never knowing how to return the favour.
One night i had a very bitter fight with her so i got a little bit carried away with my alcohol and when i woke up in the morning i was alone in my apartment so i got a bit carried away with my smoking. It was right at that time, somewhere between my second and third cigarette,i realized that we were actually not married and she was free to leave me anytime she wanted.Halfway through my fourth cigarrete i found a cold goodbye note left by her.My sixth smoke was remorse,seventh was interospection,ninth was freedom and by the time i was smoking my last cigarrete i was walking on street leaving her behind somewhere in my ashtray.
Surprisingly the first few days without her were very good. With the rumours of economic boom floating around, goverment servants who knew nothing about share market , were willing to trust someone as capricious as me with their life savings.With the new pay commission and pension scheme in place, old couples realized that the dream home they fantazied all their life was not out of reach and if they had any doubts i motivated them by showing disputed lands and portraying them as watercoloured hill station huts kids draw in school. With the cricket world cup starting next month the future looked equally promising.The only problem was when i got back home.With her gone i had no use for my satanic addictions and i spent my first few nights staring at the ceiling.But this problem solved sooner than expected.I got addicted to pizza and TV. Every night i ordered a pizza and every night i finished it watching the same soaps she used to watch.I got so addicted that i spent my last waking moments in bed thinking which pizza should order tommorrow and how will the mother in law react when she finds out that her daughter in law is having an affair with an old aged college professor who eventually turns out to be the mother in laws premarital sweetheart.I missed sonali at those times as we could have debated which one of the two adultrous women is more morally currupt and we could have ended the family epic which was running for past 2 years in a matter of few minutes. I also missed my bookie friend as i needed to complain about the sorry state of indian betting industry which was so much limited to a cricket match leaving the countless possibilities a TV soap offered.
But soon my homely obsessions ended and the devil started knocking again.After i have tasted every kind of pizza on earth and have seen every kind of shallow tricks jealous housewives play on each other, i started staring the ceiling again.I could have called sonali on those nights and with my newly aquired knowledge of western cuisine and female phyche i could have lured her back to me but i never did and she never called either.on the third night of my staring contest with the ceiling ,i decided i had enough and in a fit of unjustified and undirected anger,walked to a sleazy bar in a sleazy part of bombay.The doorman greeted me with a smile and i gave him a 100 rupee and when the waiter greeted me with a similar smile i retorted
' whisky,neat'
there was a couple sitting on the table next to me and i hated them from the onset as they seemed hypothetically happy.they shared stupid jokes on which only people blinded with love can laugh and they laughed. Thankfully me and sonali never tortured each other with forced humour. i ordered another whisky and stared out of window only to find equally diaheartening weather.It had started to rain which made the stupid couple to kiss and me to finish my poison in one big gulp.The waiter came to me as a respite and having sensed my constipation asked me
' would you like a flaming shot ,sir'
' yes,please'
Anything flaming sounded good to me.the waiter served the shot with a smile that assured me that the next thing i would see would be gods testicles shinning like a gold plated rollex watch while i pee with my head resting gleefully on the bathroom mirror.
why the fuck she never called me once in last two years?
There were whispers of i love you from somewhere around as i asked the waiter that i want to sit at the counter instead of this pathetic corner of the bar and he agreed. moved by his generosity and my vulnerability i asked the waiter
' are you married?'
both surprised and embarresed he replied with a virgin smile.
'no,sir'
I gulped down some whisky and said
' good'
After giving the false impression to everyone that in fact i was married and the only reason i was getting sloshed alone tonight was that i had a bitter fight with my wife wether to order pizza or go to a seaside chinese restaurant for dinner , i turned to look at the couple who were gone by now leaving behind some wine and a decent tip.
So why didnt i married her beside my general hatred for the melodrama indian ceremonies are. after all, we have been living like a couple for a while now and despite our general unromantic attitute and intolerance for each other ,we have managed to stay together for almost an year .So why cant i go through some cabalistic rituals around the fire to give her the illusion that we were going to have lots of kids and worry about their education for the rest of our lives and give everyone else the illusion that we were in fact not horny prostitutes but tradional god fearing indian youngsters who happen to see lot of karan johar movies together and hence fell in love.
Actually the answer was right in front of my eyes but i didnt want to see it. for the first time in my life which was filled with conscious ignorance and unintentional sins,i faced guilt. And the sight of the monster was so horrific that my entire body shaked till the waiter held my hand strongly and in a serious tone he said to me
' sir, i think you should leave now'
And like love guilt is a very misunderstood feeling.people who are brought up on movies of holocaust consider guilt as a roaring enraged feeling that induces a kind of epilepsy on its victims but in fact its so silent that its almost invisible.It can live inside you for years,decades or even your complete lifetime slowly decomposing you like microbes without you ever realizing the name of your silent killer.
' one last drink'
Suddenly i felt an uncontrollable urge to get married.Even if its not sonali but any decent girl , i dont care.it started with a burning sensation in my neck and moved downwards like a forest fire to choke my lungs.I tried to drown it but it has already spread in all direction in me like a bubonic plague making my eyes to sweat.
' where is the couple that was sitting there ? '
'They left sir, its about closing time'
she loved to tease me with 'lets get married' bullshit as she knew that i hated the idea but i was never suspicious that she was actually serious about it. she was always careful to hide it behind our sex in the night, our coffee in the morning and her writers during the day.
the music stopped and the lights dimed.
' would you like to pay sir, we are closing'
And just like a disease guilt is of many kinds, each having its own symptoms and remedies.Some are born out of a single act of inspired hatred or blind lust and people grasped by them turn to priests for repentence or attend group therapy sessions to sleep sober at night.then there are drug addicts and lousy baby faced guys with white collar jobs who get fired and they either commit suicide or they go on long solitary walks at 5 am in the morning to change whatever they wanted to change in them. My guilt belonged to an entirely different kind. We dont catch the disease along the way like the running nose a white guy gets when he leaves the window of his car open while driving on european highways at 150 miles per hour or the HIV he gets afterwards when he stops at a motel for the night. Rather we are born with it like the kids with six fingers or joined heads who are unable to do anything worthwhile all their lives besides becoming newspaper celebrities on their first birthday.We dont search for any cure,divine or worldly as we already know there isnt any. We just look into your eyes with the emptiest look you will ever see in your life and node our heads to your talk of practical enlightenment like deaf people who are trying to pretend otherwise.
' Can i get more alcohol anywhere'
' there are few bars open on GT road. '
and as i paid the bill he added like a smiling doctor giving prescription
' beside alcohol ,there are other services too on GT road'
When i reached GT road , i smelled the daily carnival of all kind of guilty or not guilty sinners. I was obviously surprised when i took out my phone to call sonali and surprisingly disappointed when she didnt picked it up. after this act of some false self justification , i put the phone back in my pocket and stared at the nocturnal fish market in from of me, when I heard a voice.
' Do you want some quick satisfaction ?'
I turned to look at the source of the question and fell in love at first sight. completely unaware of what philosophers will make out of her question and dressed in a partially open blouse and short skirt, she seemed as shallow as me.
' yes, please'
