Stories

One Day

The waves crashed like a ballad of the tempest, never a moment of weakness. The sky coloured a dirty orange as the sun set low. I sat there half-naked on the rocks, getting goosebumps whenever the cool gusts of air swept over me, losing and finding myself in every moment. Not thinking anything, just taking in the view that lay in front of me and letting my mind go dull. It was kind of romantic, the whole setting: orange sky, the swoosh of the waves, a soothing breeze which brought the scent of the sea, and just pure serenity. Mountains or beaches, they ask. Beaches… always. Mountains give you solace, a break from life. But beaches, they change you a little every time, you are never the same after visiting one. The sense of unending vastness and sheer nothingness, sweeps away all the thoughts you bother yourself with, and gives you the freedom to let yourself loose. And yet, it’s funny that I have a fear of water. I wanted to jump into the grey-blue vastness in front of me, feel the freedom of the fall, and just lose myself into the sense of being. When you are in the water, it’s just you and the water, nothing else matters. The sense of being is at its peak, as you struggle to stay afloat and breathe, breathe for your life, breathe for your very existence. And so I had kicked my feet, kicked hard the way I had seen in one of the swimming videos which showed how to rise up inside water. I had felt the dirty river water in my mouth, it had tasted bitter. I had somehow managed to find the edge of the rafting boat with my thrashing hands, and had pulled myself up, sweet, sweet air filling my lungs. Never had I thought that I would jump deliberately into a river full of rapids, with people I barely knew for a few months. But that’s the thrill of life, isn’t it? But those were young days, when we didn’t have a care. A shiver ran through me thinking about the day of river rafting in Rishikesh, and I looked at the thousand of rivers that had formed the vastness in front of me. “One day, I’ll conquer you. One day…”

Magic of us

“Hey, it’s raining”, she announced, sliding the door open and running to the balcony. I felt a gust of fresh, cool air with a hint of petrichor, and I sighed with relief, “Finally!”. The night was still young, so I followed her out. The lamp posts in the mini-park in front our building hadn’t been turned off yet. I loved the way light from those lamp-posts reflected off the puddles of water that had formed on the brick-lined path around the park twisting and curving like a snake eating it’s own tail. “I should stop reading those fantasy novels”, I thought. The rain and the light gave a surreal touch to the park, hinting something magical is going to happen there. We just stood leaning on the boundary wall, hands on the wet railing, watching the rain fall. “It’s such a relief from the crushing heat, isn’t it? I wish the rain doesn’t stop at all”, she said happily. “Yeah it is, but too much rain is a nuisance too. We’ll have a hard time drying our clothes, and streets would be full of water-filled potholes. Do you know people have died falling into those potholes?”, I started rambling as I always did. “Why do you always see that dark side of everything? Why can’t you just enjoy the moment and think of what is happening instead of what can or will happen?”, turned to me now, one hand on her hip, her voice had a hint of disbelief. “I was just speaking the obvious”. “But I’ll keep my thoughts to myself now”, I added, looking at her dead stare. “Better”, she said with a slight grin forming around her mouth and turned to face the rain again, inhaling a lung-full of sweet, fresh air. I despised her for using that word “better”. It felt as if I were a child who had just apologised for a mistake, but I let it go, such trifles shouldn’t hamper the mood, and I was actually in a good mood because of the rain and because of her being with me. “Let’s go down, let’s get soaked in the rain”, I proposed. It was very unlike me to suggest something like that, but I was in a good mood. She stared at me in surprise, “What has gotten into you mister?”. “Nothing, just feel like it. Let’s go”, I took her hand and pulled her along, grabbed the keys and the phone and headed out the door. As soon as we were out, the rain slapped our bodies like small bullets, and we got drenched almost instantly, clothes sticking to our skin. It was raining hard. I walked slowly towards the park and sat casually on the bench near the lamp-post. Looking up, I closed my eyes, and just lost myself in the onslaught of rain on my face. Silently, I waited for her to join me, and after what must have been a few tens of seconds, I felt her sit beside me. “You are different today”, I faintly heard her say, her voice muffled by the rain. I opened my eyes, putting an arm around her, I pulled her closer till we couldn’t feel whose clothes were sticking to whose skin, and planted a light kiss on her wet lips. We sat there, lost in each other, probably just a blur to anyone looking at us from their balconies, in our own world of rain, creating our own magic.

Perfume

As I entered the office elevator, the scent caught me off-guard and a flood of memory-sensations bathed me at once. The sense of smell is an interesting one, it unknowingly attaches memories and feelings to different aromas. I had made a note of this fact early on in my life and I made a habit of buying a new perfume every time I travelled to a new country. Back home, whenever I would use that perfume, I would be instantly transported back to the days when I used it while exploring the new country. However, this time someone wearing one of my perfumes had been in the elevator, and I was reminded of an old getaway. I couldn’t help a grin reliving those moments briefly while the lift carried me down. A few weeks later, again while leaving work, I was met with the same scent in the elevator, but this time the elevator was not empty. A woman stood inside, completely occupied with her phone. “It couldn’t be her”, I thought. “This is a men’s perfume. The perfume-wearer must have just left the elevator.” Reliving the memories again, I rode the elevator down and the commute back home. The very next morning, after reaching my office building, I was struggling to get into a lift. Struggling, coz people get this sudden urgency to reach their floors in the morning, I think standing near the lift is the worst way of passing your time for many. I had already let 3 chances to get into the elevator pass after looking at people who were in much more haste than me. “I have to get in the next one”, I thought, “else I’ll be stuck here”. A familiar scent suddenly floated around me. “Not again”. I turned around, literally trying to sniff the scent, and found an elevator waiting behind me. It was for the other side of the building, but I was sure the scent-wearer was in that particular lift. Without thinking, I leaped to enter the floor, not knowing why I was so obsessed, cramping myself in the front, and barely managing to stay out of the elevator doors. As the lift ascended and people kept leaving on their respective floors, I found myself feeling dejected, unable to find who was wearing it. Eventually, it was just me and 2 others in the lift. I moved towards one of the corners, near the buttons, to make way for others to leave without any hindrance and I gazed at the people I was sharing the lift with. One of the women looked familiar. “It can’t be her”. It was the same girl whom I had seen the day before. Without thinking I blurted out, “Excuse me, are YOU wearing the Zara men’s perfume?”. Startled, she looked at me, and said “why, yes”, a little embarrassed. I was ecstatic. “Found him, or rather her”, I thought. “I have been finding the scent all around me for a few days now. I too wear the same perfume once in a while, but I wasn’t able to find any gentleman around me wearing it.” She stared at me for a while, then asked curiously, “Did you come all the way up the lift just to find the one who wore the perfume? It must mean something special for you”. “Ummm…yes, kind of”, it was my turn to be embarrassed; “just some memories attached to it”, I added. “Me too”, she said. “It’s my brother’s, he passed away last month”. I just stared at her, this was not at all how I had imagined things would go. Quickly coming back to my senses, I said “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know”. She continued with a forced smile, “It’s alright. I had gifted the perfume to him. He had liked it so much that he wore it everyday. Now, it has become my only way to feel his presence….memories, you know.” “I really do know” I said, suddenly glad to have made that trip up the elevator.

Drumbeat

I could feel my heart thumping, like literally a drumbeat, in my ears, in my chest, all over my body. “Is that how it’s supposed to feel?” I didn’t know. My whole body was on fire, like a million neurons firing all at once. I could hear laughter and talks all around me, but I was too busy with all the new sensations, that I couldn’t care less. I couldn’t focus on any one voice, it was all jumbled up in my head. “So this is what those psychedelic music videos mean to convey when they show all those colors and patterns. Hmmm, interesting”. My body felt so light, I didn’t realise that I had started swaying whenever I made any movement like getting up or reaching out, spoon in my hand, trying to get a morsel of biryani that we had ordered. I didn’t especially feel hungry, even though everybody told me that weed gives you bouts of hunger, and we had ordered 5 biryanis from Meghana’s, expecting the same. 3 packets still remained sealed in the cloth bag they came in. The drumbeat still felt very strong all over my body, like a pulsating machine was thumping inside me. “I need to do something about this drumbeat”, I thought, “or it’ll make me go crazy”. To drown the thumping in my other bodily movements, I decide to get up and walk. The brain works in strange ways under the influence, and it just felt so right at the moment. I started walking in the shape of infinity, around the hall. The symbol for infinity is so graceful and yet so powerful, I have always liked that symbol, it’s sheer simplicity of representation and starkly powerful meaning always blew me away. Suddenly, I became aware of someone calling my name, and turned my head to face my caller. “Are you ok dude?”, I heard my caller say. I was not wearing my glasses, so couldn’t exactly decipher out who he was. I could tell it was a he though. “Yes, yes. Why?” I asked annoyingly. “You have been walking around the hall for the past 20 mins. Come sit down with us.”, he said pointing at the bean bag beside him. Bewildered, I thought, “Has it been that long? Did I just skip time? What else am I going to experience?”. I assured my caller that I was alright, that I was just lost in thought, so that he would leave me in peace. We…all 7 of us, had decided to try weed in a friend’s house, it was the first time for me and a couple others. After taking 7–8 drags of the joint and still unable to feel anything I was declared a “weed waster”. But I knew that I have been hit hard, when I had tried to sit down on a bean bag, and almost tumbled over backward after falling on the bag. I kept walking, the drumbeat was louder than ever now.