Short Story: The Stories We Must Tell

The old man was at his usual place when I entered the bar, his back facing towards me, drinking leisurely without looking around. I never saw him leave the bar and he was always there when I came in, sitting all by himself at the far end of the bar. I wonder if he ever left that place. He never seemed unnecessarily chatty with the waiters and never for once got drunk. He was always the same man sitting there and drinking as if he was saying “It’s Ok. I’m here and I’m drinking. What can be wrong?” to the world.

Once I saw him stand up and walk towards the men’s room and that was when I guessed he was a really old man, must be in his seventies or more. I don’t know a thing about being seventy, or how men walked when they became that old but the man walked slower than my grandfather when he was seventy. So, I guessed he was around that age and he walked to the men’s room as if it was an effort, an unwanted chore that he had to get through. He walked the same way back to his place as he went in and resumed his drinking. Sometimes I get too drunk to observe him, or I got to run some errand or something, and that meant I always left before he did.   

He was not a hard drinker, that old man. I timed his drinks and he could not guzzle more than one an hour and he always appeared as sober or as drunk as the last one left him. Probably he loved sitting there but I could not find a single redeeming feature in the little bar for it to become an object of such genuine affection. I mean it is a good place, cheap and moderately clean with friendly waiters who never rushed you away towards the end of the night, and the owner always had a word or two with everyone, but for a man to devote so much of his life to its confines was a stretch even to imagine.

On my good days, I felt content looking at him from a distance; he appeared to me like a monk, peaceful and alone, at ease with himself and the world around him. I felt relieved when I saw him there and he had a kind of soothing effect on me. On my bad days however, I begrudged him, I wanted to hold him by his shirt, lift him and shake him off his chair, bring him into the reality away from his meditative stupor. I wanted to take it all on him, show him what it feels like to be alive and ask him if he ever felt it. I thought it was unreasonable and illegal for a person to be so detached from everything that’s happening around. I wanted to show him a newspaper and ask him what he thought of that. I didn’t do any of those, for most of the feelings pass but the old man stayed there, a poster of absolute defiance and unshakeable resolve.

Sometimes I wanted to know him, ask him about his childhood, how he was as a kid, when he had his first drink, the women in his life, his interests, hobbies, his anger, his strengths, his weaknesses, what made him, what broke him and what drove him to this state. Everything. I wanted to know the person inside out so that I can get rid of him, throw him out of my system after leeching his very life out of his mouth. I wanted to tell him that he can’t play enigma for long and that I was calling time on his mysticism, or façade, or musing orwhatever he called the little game he was up to. Maybe he knew all that and he had no intention of letting me, or anyone do that to him. On more than one occasion, I thought of asking the people in the bar about him, but I was quick to dismiss that idea. It seemed unethical and plain wrong to invade on his privacy from behind. If I was too gutless to face him and talk to him, the least I could do was not to resort to shortcuts. It was my cross to bear and I'm glad that I didn't work on the idea.

Lest anyone get any ideas about my psyche, let me clarify that the old man was never an obsession to me, at least that was what I wanted to believe. I was curious just as anyone but, I had my life away from the bar and I doubt it if he did and wondered what it must be like. He always dressed either in black or white, never crumpled, so he did seem to take some care in how he presented himself, though I can't picture him to be fretting about those sorts of things.  I thought about the money. There had to be some way he was able afford his drinking. At 70, he must be earning a pension, and if he did, he must have worked, and must have had a place to crash after the bar closes. I decided to tag along that day, for I had nothing better to do with my Friday evening. I was not invited anywhere and had the entire weekend for myself, so the seed was planted.

As a person, I'm not the most instinctive or proactive and I arrived at the decision to follow him after subjecting the idea to a painfully long thought process, but the idea itself was the easiest to arrive at, at least in hindsight. A ton of what-ifs were running through my mind even as I debated if I had it in me to go through with it. I chose to drank my senses out of working overtime.

An hour passed after I made the decision and I downed a liter of rum by that time. I stood up to see if I can walk behind him and follow him to his place. I could not focus, the surroundings appeared too hazy and I needed to urinate. The waiter who was serving me, came up to me and asked if I wanted anything else, as they were about to call it a day. I looked at the old man's glass. It was near empty and he sat there looking at a wall that was painted tasteless, too bland to hold anyone's interest for more than a second. I started walking.

My steps were decidedly haphazard as I made my way towards the bathroom, a mild excitement running through my veins for I was going to see his face for the first time in all these days. I didn't want to rush the moment, so I walked slower than normal, careful not to let the man sense something behind, also afraid not to disturb his ritual. I was about 10 feet away from him, his back facing me, his head a bit stooped on to the table, probably in fatigue, or drunk. "Please don't drop dead on me, you old man" I prayed as I took the next ten steps eagerly.

I went past him.

I didn't know if I felt ashamed to look at him, standing up and turning back to look at him, but I knew that I couldn't get a better chance to see his face. I was probably afraid of what I might find in his eyes. I felt my legs disappear under my abdomen, I guessed I was falling down. It was probably the alcohol, or the shame of standing up. I stumbled on my feet and grabbed a chair, exactly opposite to where he was sitting, still looking in the opposite direction. When it became too much for me to hold the posture, and when I felt too weak to take a step further I collapsed on to the chair. It was convenient, not exactly calculated, but there I was facing him, looking into his eyes, rid of all inhibitions.

A sense of achievement seemed to crawl into me when he started talking. It was like he was expecting me and he prepared the speech in advance. His tone seemed condescending, that I wasted so much time. It was a stream of consciousness, yet every word embedded with so much meaning and thought behind it. He said.

"Son, I know you were looking at me. I know that you want a story. I know you must have imagined one. Let me tell you, that whatever you imagined is way better and truer than what I have to tell you. Frankly I have nothing to tell you. I got no story to tell you. I wish I had, but no, I don't. You might think I got a dead wife, my kids abandoned me, and I'm wallowing my time away in sorrow. Let me tell you, none of that is true. If I had a story, I wouldn't have been here. "

"When I see people like you, looking at me, my heart goes out to you. I wish I had something to tell you. I wish I could speak to you, something that you don't know, something you would like to know, something only I can tell you, but alas, oh alas. I sit here every day, wishing and willing you to come to me, so that I can tell you something. I want to talk to you, the lot of you, but what can I speak of. I don't have stories of adventure, imagination, optimism. I didn't live that kind of life. I'm an old man. I lived some days, some years, none too memorable."

"Look at me. Do you think I'm hiding something. Heck, I'm not capable of that son. I'm 72 years old. Not the best of the time or age for keeping secrets. I don't have the energy for being enigmatic and sustaining it every day. If my routine interests you, that may be because of your interest in the mundane, the dull, and the unhappening. Who would want to spend their time like that? I wouldn't. Do you?"

"You are the one that should tell me stories, son. I'm sitting here, drinking my time away, seeking stories, yet you come to me for them. You disappoint me, son, and you wasted so much time doing it. You are better than this. You are better than me. Go ahead. Tell me a story. Be a story. I'm all ears. I'm here and I will be drinking to your story. But, son, please, give me a story. That's all I ask. At this age. Go away. This is not the place for you."

"I won't, for once, say please and rob you off your wish to live the life your way. I can only point out to you one of the ways that brought us together on this dull night. How do you feel tonight? Do you want to feel the same tomorrow night? And the day after? It's easy to say yes, and you can sit there, away from me. We can drink our nights away, but never together. You want to talk to me? Know me? Bring me a story. I'm all ears. I'll be here. Let me tell you the last thing. If you got a story to tell me, you won't need me. Don't feed on the old bones, son."

I never saw him again. I wanted to be a story worthy enough to tell him.  

In Love with a Nomad

So, she stood there waiting for the bus to take her home after an exhaustive hour, when she heard the insanely violent raging bike sound of her nomad, she wanted to become invisible for a while. The sound was coming towards her in a great speed as if to engulf her in its intensity. She closed her eyes for a while, and he stood in front of her, clad entirely in black biker attire, and without even taking off his helmet - that denied her any chance to read his expression – beckoned her towards his bike, to ride as his pillion, and he decides for how long and that’s what irks her. 

She wants to say no, but she is afraid, he might ride along without a thought, so she got up to the bike. Her hair, tied fiercely in a knot, defiant to the hilt, refused to be overwhelmed and brought her a semblance of control on the situation she was facing. Her dupatta, however, was not up to the game, it has to learn, she thought, while the bike vroomed it’s was ahead.

Again, they were not talking much, since they could not have been audible to each other, and probably that’s the point to his ferocious acceleration. He gave her a helmet to cover her head, which she took with the least possible fuss and wondered where they were heading. They are racing away on a huge barren land, devoid of human presence, not caring to check the speed, he never did anyway. Now that the initial nerves of the ride have settled, they settled into a rhythmic ride, but she couldn’t control the mystery behind the ride to the unknown. 

So, she asked him – Damn, she thought, always the first to ask – where and why are we going, she knew he would be cocky, ready with a smart-ass rejoinder, and she was right. Why do you care, he got back and had the nerve to ask her - or it was just a rhetoric question – if she was enjoying the ride. She didn’t let him know. He knew it. Her dupatta flew away. She pointed towards it, and he laughed it away. It traversed a path as uncertain as the one that they are taking. 

He took another turn, and a long narrow road, the longest she has seen, lay in front of her, curving seductively, probably a national highway, she thought. Unlikely, she couldn’t find anyone else travelling alongside. Probably a dream, likely but fatuous, in its convenience. No point asking him, no point trying to figure, no point beating around the bush. Then he stopped. The bike looks as if it still didn’t come to rest completely, leaving smoke and feeling like an oven. If it had a voice, she thought, both of them would have asked the same things.

They were in the middle of nowhere. He asked her to get down. No point arguing. It is how it is always with him. He parked the bike carefully, as if he was trying to make her envious about the attention he is proffering it with. She didn’t mind it, she was past those games. He took off his helmet, to reveal his handsome face, sunburnt after all the driving, revealing a mop of hair falling carelessly across his face, he knew she wanted to touch it. He didn’t give her a moment. He said the words, throwing them recklessly around, it’s his way to mean them, to look as if he doesn’t give a damn, as if he was saying this is how it will be with him, as if she didn’t know it. She knew he said, and he knew it too. And then he left. 

His bike left wild fumes again as it raced away from her, leaving her all along, stranded on a road that she never saw. She didn’t know what to do, but she understood what happened, and glad that it did. She knew what to do, where to go, where to find him. She didn’t feel alone when she started her journey again. It will be a long one but a worthy one.

He woke up to find himself near a petrol bunk, where he slept last night on the side of the road. Thanking the owner of the bunk for letting him sleep for the night, he wasted no time and raced his way back to her.

It’s a Yes. She snuggled closer towards him. 

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This post is written for Closeup Cupid Games hosted by Indiblogger Happy Hours 

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PS: This story is inspired by the below song:

The Man with the Lunchbox

Have you ever wondered which is the image that resembles The Average Indian Man, who is truly average in every which way, through his entire life, living it by the definition of average? In what can be termed as a rare moment of epiphany this afternoon, the image struck me. It screamed the averageness of the Indian Man out so loud that I thought I was stupid all these days not to recognize it. It is The Man with the Lunch Box. He is your truly average man, who would neither bring out any emotion from you, nor evoke any memories or a sense of recognition. He is quite commonplace in the areas that he sets foot in, and does not pull any surprises, just like how the box and its contents does not surprise him.

Once you see a guy with a lunchbox, he will be doomed to be remembered along with it. It doesn’t matter whether he is tall, fat, short or handsome, he will always be the man with the Tupperware Lunch bag, or the man with the long stainless steel carrier, or the man with the black and red lunchbox. His face doesn’t register with you. Only when he appears without the box, you seem to notice him. You sense that something is wrong with the guy, if he doesn’t conform to the image the lunchbox has given about him. In a way, the lunchbox says a lot about the man, which he could not bring himself to say about him. 

If ever a cartoon were to be made out of this character, I’m certain it would be more iconic than the Common Man Cartoon by R.K Laxman and more importantly, it would be relevant and representative of the look of the Common Man in these changing times. The image of the man builds itself unconsciously into our collective psyche and its power to evoke the man, lies in the simplicity of the imagery the lunchbox offers to the man carrying it. 

Chances are that you would have encountered the man with the lunchbox more than once every day, unless you are living under a rock or in a hostel. You can find him in your commute to your office or the walk towards your home, shopping for your groceries, or even waiting for a bus. He is always there, walking or driving towards his destination, with his box dangling by his neck or firm between his legs when seated, or occupying the seat next to him in his car. There will be no surprises, for he is not a man of intrigue. He is like the electric pole at the end of your street, an assurance that it is there, and all is well with it, but never important enough to warrant serious thought. 

Many of us are the men with the lunchboxes ourselves, at least in a metaphorical way, without consciously being aware of it. I always resisted the idea of carrying a lunchbox with me even though it was comfortable for me to do so. It is not about carrying a box, or the comforts it offers, such as the indulgence in food cooked at home, or the economic viability of it.  I saw it more as an act of defiance on my part and the refusal to become a common man just like other men carrying their lunchboxes. Now with the benefit of hindsight, I think it was living in a denial and the lunch box was always inevitable and it has seen more men like me than I thought I had. 

My lunchbox weighed around half a kilogram and when I carried it for the first time today, I felt a part of me was completely buried in it. I became like the other men whom I have scoffed at. Someday, you may come across a man who, like all the other men carrying lunchboxes, may come in your way and excuse himself as unintelligibly as he came in your way. You may never notice him again but, that could be me.  

Short Story: It

He woke up from his bed at the middle of the night and looked at what he held in his hands with a look of utter incomprehension and horror. His wife lay by his side, sleeping peacefully and for a moment he wanted to shake her up into life and show her what he was holding in his hands. But first, he has to understand how it happened. It was probably his obsession with it that finally led to its downfall, quite literally. Had someone told him about it, he would have laughed at the suggestion, for its ridiculousness but now that it has happened to him, he was unwilling to see the funnier side of it. 

He took it in his hands, trembling with the fear of unknown, which for a large part of his life was very much known to him. He didn’t know what to do with it suddenly. He didn’t know if he loved it anymore. He missed it, once he was fully awake, when he was unable to indulge himself with it. A drop of tear started to well in his eye, as his wife knocked over the bathroom. He put it quickly in his pocket and acted as if nothing happened. 

“What were you doing in there, Love?” Her voice was as husky as when he heard it for the first time.

“Come back to bed. It’s 3 AM for Heaven’s sake.”

“You go to bed, Darling. I’ll sit here for a while.” He mumbled to himself.

“In the bathroom? Are you insane?”

She whispered her love into his ears along with a couple of words of admonition, before going back to the bed and he was left all alone to himself again. 

He made sure that she covered herself with the blanket, and then took it out from his pocket. It looked lifeless in his hands. He wanted to fix it, but he was scared of ruining it for life. It was a long agonizing night for him, which he spent entirely in the bathroom. He has to ensure that his wife does not look for it early in the morning, so once the clock struck six times, he came out, dressed himself quickly, planted a kiss on her forehead and started his car towards his family doctor.

The doctor heard him out and burst out laughing at the utter hilarity of the situation. He couldn’t blame the doctor, but he came to him for solutions. So, he shook him up violently and asked him for a solution. The doctor took a look at it again, trying to act sober, so as to not hurt his patient, but after a while he again burst into delirious laughter. He didn’t have a solution and told that he would refer to his books, consult his seniors and get back, and later suppressed his smile.

The wife observed a change in the evening, which he anticipated. She asked him what’s wrong with him and he had to tell her that he loved her, but he was not capable of loving her. She looked as if she was not sure who has gone crazy, her or him. The wife and husband spent the night again in bedroom and bathroom respectively. 

His obsession with safeguarding it was making him miserable and depressed and he stopped going home altogether, and sat looking at it all day and night long. Against, his own better judgment, he went to meet a certain Baba, his doctor recommended. He couldn’t believe that a doctor can advocate such silliness, but in view of the extra ordinarily unusual predicament, he found himself in, he chose to take a chance. 

Baba sat by a lake with a huge group of his followers, who all had a content look on their faces. The Baba listened his story out patiently with an annoyingly beatific smile and asked him to show it to him. When he took it out carefully from the protective container he carried it in, the Baba took it in his hands, examined it for a while, feigning a thought and threw it into the lake, and told him that he will now love with a renewed vigor and an eye for the Nirvana. He turned psychotic with rage and kicked the Baba, where it hurt the most but that did not erase the smile off his face. He jumped into the lake, as the Baba called after him to meet him again after a month. 

The water in the lake was cutting through his muscles with a fiercely cold determination, but he swam into it, with the determination of a man possessed to find his love. He got to the bottom of the lake, but was unable to find it exactly in the mountain of similar things. He had to be careful enough not to mistake it with others. The water was choking him and he gasped for breath and swam towards the shore. There was no sign of Baba.

He went back to his office, dejected having lost the most precious thing in his life. He looked at his desk where the divorce notice from his wife lay, mocking him for his efforts. He signed it without much thought. It seemed the best thing to do, when he was unable to bring himself to love. He sang paeans for it through the entire night. 

The doctor wanted to meet him and ask him what happened, but he didn’t want to meet anyone. It felt as if he lost the sense of purpose of his existence and the world has somehow conspired to make his life miserable. He quickly typed a letter of resignation, mailed it to his manager, threw away his mobile phone and checked himself into a dingy hotel where he spent the next month. 

When he finally came out of his room, he felt weak and exhausted with only one place on earth to go. Baba sat there all alone now, almost waiting for his arrival, and when he saw him, ordered him to go into the lake and find it. 

He jumped into the lake without much hope, but found it at the bottom of the lake. He took it in his hands, and saw it come back to life. He threw it into the lake again and swam up, where he saw other followers of the Baba coming in slowly. He joined them.

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Written for Indispire Edition 41: Love. Weave a story.

Short Story: The Vodka Thief

Disclaimer: This is a story I wrote long ago. I was searching my archives for something yesterday and this one caught my attention. The story is a fictitious one, but is based on some actual incidents. Read on

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 It was 10:30 in the night when I entered my room and switched on the lights. But there aren’t any surprises waiting for me as sincerely as i wish them to be. It takes more than a wish i suppose. I take a look at the messy room with clothes thrown everywhere, footwear occupying more space than the clothes and was genuinely amused at my dexterity in keeping it the same after every cleaning session the care taker gives to my room. After a particularly bad day at the office I wasn’t looking forward to spend the night lonely though I would have loved my loneliness on most occassions. I looked sheepishly at the corner of my room which contained the magic liquid that kept my spirits high on weekends. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this on week days. What about your office tomorrow?’ The voice seemed to be admonishing but was a bit meek. ‘You should not have bought it in the first place you dumbo’. I retorted at my voice. Since the first mistake was made the second was only inevitable.

 Three drinks and two hours later I was kind of spent and particularly in a joyful mood. I wanted to take it to the next level and lifted the bottle again. But instead of emptying it, I chose to admire it’s beauty for a while. A cool wind crossed my face and made me shiver a bit. The night was getting wonderful by the minute and I was loving it. I thought only one thing was amiss and with a smile I set about to do it

‘Gata Rahe Mera Dil
Tu hi Meri Manzil
Kabhi beete na ye Raatein
Kabhi beete na ye Din’

 My voice seemed pleasant the first time and got coarse in between and that was when I decided to leave it at that. I left the bottle and the song incomplete and lost into a deep satisfying sleep.

 10:30 it was again and the same old me in my same old room again. Lights on! Admire the room! Take a glance at the corner! and voila..the bottle was empty. I wasn’t really sure if I emptied it last night but not able to do soemthing about it I chose to get lost in Amitav Ghosh’s Glass Palace. The next morning he knocked my room and asked for rent. I gave him the money promptly and asked him
‘Mama!!(That’s what we call him at our P.G)Was there someone in my room when I was away?’ The usually cheerful expression changed to one that of a hurt one. I regretted asking him but could not say so to him. As I started to retreat he said in a low tone. ‘It’s me! For cleaning your room.’ That was probably as close as he could go to the truth.

 First weekend of every month calls for being generous and this time I wanted to spend the night with Mama. I never bothered about him more than I should which was limited to paying rent, paying for washing and ironing my clothes and similar stuff. So when I invited him for a drink with me he was more than pleased. He brought the drinks and we sat on the terrace. It was a typical March night in Pune. The summer has just about started to arrive with the winter giving its way to it. There was a cool breeze blowing through the air making us comfortable. We started some music and what more can I ask for?

 We chatted for some time before i brought my most famous question ‘Mama! When did you start drinking?’ He looked at me for a while and seemed to have lost in thought. He finished his drink in a gulp and started. ‘It is a long story. I was 12 or 13 I guess. I dont know what my father wanted me to become but he admitted me in a school. The people were all weird looking and carried lot of books. I could get none of it. I pleaded my father to stop this. But he refused. He was considered a great man coz he wanted me to study instead of working. I took none of it and started flunking every class. Not that I would have topped the classes anyway, but that led to my father’s misery. Finally he let me out of the school and I celebrated the occassion with my first drink.’ I smiled as he pushed his glass for one more drink.

 Then he asked me the same question again. ‘I started drinking when I graduated from my college.’ His smile became wider and he gave a pat on my back. ‘That’s why you got into a BIG company.’ He expanded his arms to symbolize BIG. More chat and music followed till we both felt it was enough. I kept the remnants of the bottle in the same place as usual and went to sleep.

 Monday is always another day. Though I’m not looking forward to it, I get through it somehow. So Once again it is 10:30 and I’m in my room with my loneliness. I looked at the corner. Found nothing.

‘Jo Mil gaya Usi ko Muqaddar Samajh Liya,
Jo Kho Gaya me usko Bhulata chala Gaya’

Mama sings.

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PS: I do not intend to call Mama a thief but I used it as a title because I felt it is too good and was unable to resist it.

Bonus Read: Other Story Featuring Mama one of our drunken nights