Month: November 2015

The Diwali person

I was supposed to attend this meeting. It was lovely rainly day like this. Those were days prior to the cabs so I had to walk a bit to hire and auto.

By now the rains were lashing the wiper in the auto was moving tamely like a accused murdered walking to the gallows for his final call. Within two kilometers the wiper stopped working. Then it was a blind journey. The auto driver wanted to stop and wait for the rains to calm down. But the passenger was in a hurry and did not mind risking his life so that he can be on time for the meeting.

What was this strong tug or the pull to attend the meeting? Nobody knows. Its one of those crazy moments in the persons life you see that he is completely under this mighty force and his life is not in his hands.

The protection you get from an autorickshaw is the same as the protection you get by wearing an aluminium foil thinking its bullet proof vest. The passenger was drenched to the bone. 100 meters away a group of people were warning the motorists not to go further because of roads being flooded. The auto guy by now has been infected with the same emotions that the passenger was suffering from. The man became bull headed and ignored the warning and drove on braving the floods.

By now the passenger was drenched and this sudden thought of getting back home occurred to him. But then he realized that the inner energy will suffice to dry his clothes through his skin.

He arrived at the desitination. A bit of squeezing out the water and some basic rituals like wiping the face and combing the hair and a bit of wait standing on the door mat for the water to drain away from the clothes. Then his body heat kicked in and he felt ready to walk into the meeting hall.

His sudden feeling of being normal came crashing down when he saw the others who seemed like they had walked out of a baking oven. There was not trace of wetness or water in the room. They looked as dry as a bone of a carcass in the desert. Suddenly the passenger found his level of self esteem plummet to undesiable low.   He felt like a misfit in that room. He took the most innocuous place and got out of the eye contact of angle of the others in the room. In this little cocoon of his he found some comfort. In this meeting he will be a mute passenger and he was already missing the person who had driven him to the venue. How does it feel if your recent profile pic is not liked by anyone on Facebook? That’s the same feeling I had. He was sinking into the dangerous “ of lonliness and lostness” pit he suddenly felt his body tingling a rush of fresh seemed to pass through him. He felt like a school boy who was wearing his favorite superman uniform to school and like the young lad dressed up in his best for Diwali.

He now looked at himself and he realized the reality was far different his clothes seemed wet and ragged and he was intrigued as to why he felt very different from the way he was supposed to feel.

He dismissed the feeling as hallucination that happens before the onset of a terrible flue after having be drenched by the rain.

This surreal feeling will soon go away he thought. Yet it seemed to persist and grow in him. He felt uneasy in a good way.   It was as though the passenger found the driver he was waiting for.

There was a slight hustle next to him and he turned his drooping head and suddely the room glistenend with bright lights. He looked again and saw a face that had a smile and the sounds of crackers filled the air even as the sparkling lights lit up the night sky.

The Diwali in person.