A tumultuous innings

One day while going home during the post exam leave from college a young lad’s hand was palmisted by a senior, he saw that there were too many lines in this guy’s hand which formed many triangles and he said


“you’ll have to face challenges all through your life” and just like that somewhere across the country a young girl’s destiny got sealed…while she was putting in all her efforts to make her life…the purrfect life…somebody up there had just twisted it…intertwining it with somebody else's destiny

You know if you come across romantic novels…they talk of happy endings…or well in some cases like Laila Majnu or Romeo and Juliet tragic endings…but its not the endings that make life do they…it’s the middles…the living the life part…which is the really interesting part.

Life as it’s meant to be has provided all of us with certain strengths and put on us certain limitations. It’s like playing the game of monopoly, you don’t know what the dice will throw up when it falls on the board…some rolls will be good some will be bad, but its upto us to then within those make the best we can, you can either keep cribbing that you landed up in jail for the third time in one game (that’s amazingly bad luck) or you can play the game and mop up whatever you can.



This story is about two people and we won’t put in their names, because it can be any two people…with their set of opportunities and the limitations life put on them…and how they lived it…with many a laugh and many a tear…this is a love story where the word love became taboo…its about the tumultuous innings…it’s a story that has no end…it’s a saga called…life

What happened after that day is a long story…the guy went on with his life…he anyways had been living a classic topsy turvy life that the news…was no news to him. He battled his way through college…wasn’t he intelligent…yes he was…but did he score high…did he do anything extra-ordinary…no…he spent the four years of insomnia…of not being able to sleep at night…of seeing other people make something out of themselves…on the basketball court…on the keyboard…while his brains were sloshed in a sleepless daze…a morose life made interesting only by movies and porn…kinky porn. Then job interviews happened and he realized that to add to his intelligence…he had no knowledge, so when the companies came for placement and asked tricky questions in binary sorting…he knew not the answer. Was God being unkind on him? No, not really…God gave him luck…luck that one company…the great Infosys itself came…and they asked CAT style questions, one thing that he knew how to solve…yes yes before you ask did he get through…a trivial yes…but no this can’t be called good luck…you see Infy hired 27 other people from college. No luck was that when one company, a small start up, where the brains from his college had gone previously, did an off campus, he went there to see how badly he would be rogered, but that year the company decided to change its testing pattern…and by logically showing how he would develop a technical solution to a business problem, he got selected…one of the six that got through…this was luck.

Lets not forget ‘her’ in between…well she was what can I say knowing fully well that she didn’t have ‘Luck’ was putting in her best efforts and rocking her way through life. A simple girl…winning her way through sheer determination and hard work. Ok that’s enough about her :P

So our guy then began this journey called career. A dreamer putting in 13 hours a day at office, living a lonely life, looking for love and his calling under the sun, an insomniac…it wasn’t long before his ‘new beginning’ went the same troubled way. Didn’t he have a choice we say…to focus on his career, to sleep easy, to use his brains, put in the required effort and make the millions he could have. Why did he end up meeting a psychiatrist then? What was it about life that depressed him; why couldn’t he take that one simple decision of living his life the best he could which would make everything all right….



So anyways while you figure that out…he gave his MBA entrance exams and learnt dancing in the prep leave he took…like his engineering entrances…he got exactly one call and he moved to Mumbai. It was lucky that he got that call for two reasons. One he needed to get out of software, two his love life was in the worst possible stage and he needed a change.

Oooh…we used the ‘L’ word. Well lets not use that word again please. We’ll simply say that when you’re friends with your pretty, fun neighbor and you guys spend all your time together (including while in office, coz you’re both on chat), and you keep trying to make her happy, going in the morning across the corridor, making her tea in bed before going for your jog, feeding her dog when she’s late…heck cleaning, I mean mopping her house clean (dog hair carpeted house) because she’s coming back from chutti after a long week…it must mean something. She on her part gave him that special position in her life, that probably even her bfs didn’t get. I don’t know if any of her bfs ever got her house keys...there was a bond of trust of friendship. But alas...like all relationships where there is a difference in expectations from the relationship this one also fell apart to bitter tatters and our chap almost dead from the pain moved his caravan ahead

Somewhere else a bond of trust, of friendship that had formed in college between two young people…was being put to test…and in between fights and love, they were finding out whether they really understood each other, trusted each other and wanted each other, more than anything else, whether their friendship was bigger than their egos.

So our chap shifted to Mumbai, and though he and she didn’t know, they were closer to each other than they thought… they might have actually crossed paths also in the oceanic city who know…two unknown strangers going past each other.

And the MBA phase began…and while in this new crowd of people, each with their own story our chag struggled to find his footing. He never was comfortable with crowds…its was too much data at the same time, too many variables for his child like heart to understand. So he made some friends, some enemies, wrote some business plans…went across the country to various b-schools to make people some reason…but alas…intelligence and luck takes you only so far in life. On the personal front though…having seen couples form right from school, through college, through work to college again and not being able to comprehend the dynamics of people in real life, he found solace in the online world, where he could be himself…his fun, kinky, conversationalist self, without somebody else trying to bring in their variable. It was just him and the other person he would be speaking to. And in hundreds of these conversations that he had…he made some friends and eventually two relationships. Small in terms of the time they lasted as a relationship but big in terms of his understanding of himself.

MBA finished another change of cities, another new beginning. While our chap had grown in his understanding of self, two others had found they didn’t understand each other that well and over many bitter words they split. Her parents found her ‘a suitable match’ and it was another change of cities for her.

But did his new beginning make any sense to him…did her new beginning make any sense to her?

Probably not…and then the biggest twists of life happened, there wasn’t enough fun in this world for God, what with all the wars, riots and terror strikes happening…so he brought the two face to face…and they were left dumbfounded…for they found each other as mirror images of each other…she was the girl he would have been if he was born a girl…he was the guy she would have been had she been born a guy…they could understand each other’s minds…simply because it was like understanding themselves.

But like the movie race this one had another twist, while they were so similar and you would be led to believe that they were purrrfect (by the way this spelling is intentional…I like the effect) for each other…they were not…else the next line I would have to write is ‘and they lived happily ever after’…that wouldn’t be much fun now would it…so no they weren’t. While he had never found lu lu lu….ok we’re not supposed to say the ‘L’ word…so err we’ll say…While he had never found the purrrfect sandwhich in his life (borrowed from How I Met Your Mother) She had tasted a sandwich which looked perfect and it turned out to be rotten and gave her food poisoning. So while he in his search for the purrfect sandwich broke down all barriers and made himself accessible…she boarded herself up in a castle of ego and self reliance. So even while they were face to face she was in a thick walled castle protected by a moat filled with hungry crocodiles. The only way in…was if the Moat door’s were opened…from the inside.

As I take a pause to breathe, its tuff telling such a long short story :P…one of the little kids ask…phir kya hua bhaiya…kya hero moat mein gir gaya…crocodile usse khaa gae? (please tell me you recognize where I borrowed this from…if not remember…ek chidiya…anek chidiya :P)

No well he didn’t…what happened after this point is a little hazy…but it’s like this…their individual lives made no sense…and well they did share common brain architecture so in terms of wavelength they were most compatible. So they both in search of giving meaning to their lives…switched life paths again…he became a full time writer after his book was selected by a publisher and then went on to make movies. What did she do, well she was meant to do a lot, I’m not sure, I think she first quit her job and traveled a bit, became a restaurateur, a shoe designer, a professor…yes a professor!!!

So did they live happily ever after?...Bloody you people…rassi toot gaee par bal naee gae!!! This is not about the happily ever after…that’s what I’ve been telling you from the start. They did become friends, their lives did intertwine…they exchanged a lot of laughter, they shed a lot of tears…they visited places and they did fun things together and they shared each other’s sadness…heck I think they even adopted kids together…I don’t know all the details sorry…I can’t help it…this is just a story you see...the real life is outside...you look around and in different couples you'll see the same story repeat...with its own variations and unique flavors



Was it easy, no…he was still racked with the challenges…she still had her issues…but they were a lot better…you see…a lover…is simply a friend you can kiss…There is no purrfect sandwich in this world…but when you are hungry…you just go to the nearby subway and hope the chap there makes it as good as he can…some days you enjoy your sandwich…some days you curse it…that’s the fun of life…there are no guarantees, there are no happy endings…its just one heck of a tumultuous innings

Stranger in the city

"They put more ice than liquor in the LIT here, you would rather do well ordering the muggers' pitcher...very potent"

And that is how the conversation between the man in the green chequered shirt and the one in the Chelsea jersey started. Had one been there for hours or days one could have seen the Chelsea guy almost permanently fixated to this place for hours and days in the bar cum pool joint, so one guesses he knew about the drinks when he set out to make his recommendations. LIT btw is referring to the drink known in its long form as Long Island Iced Tea, though probably the only liquer the drink lacks is tea.

Why the Chelsea guy had made that comment to this chequered shirt man is quite unknown since of all the time that he had been here other than playing pool he had always kept to himself sitting at the barstool just observing the crowd.

It could have been that he want to pry the chap into ordering a pitcher, for having ordered it the chequered shirt guy realized that...well one pitcher of that stuff really wasnt doable by a singleton.

And so the two of them got down to demolishing it, together. And when they did, like most times when one finds himself in a train journey or a bar with a stranger one ends up sharing the most deeply personal things of one's life before coming to such trivial stuff such as exchanging names. so spoke the chequered shirt guy, of his girlfriend having ditched him, his dog having gotten run over and a bad appraisal all in one week. And though he had liked his girlfriend a lot and didn't care much for the dumb job he was in, he really missed his dog.

The dog had been his companion since college days, having found him lost in a park as a small pup with an injured leg, a fine little specimen of an alsatian, he had taken the shivering little thing to a vet and then to his hostel room and while the hostel didn't really allow dogs in the premises, most wardens would find themselves unable to resist a soft spot for a little whimpering pup. And that had been the saga of the two of them. The pup grew and the guy graduated and the two of them together adapted to a new city, the pup to his new colony and the guy to his job as a software coder.

At the half pitcher level the chequered guy talked about how he really didn't like his software job, how he had lofty goals of doing something meaningful when in college and now he really didn't know what he was doing other than being a small part of a huge system repairing one small piece of a gigantic machine.

Some of his best friends had also been ripped apart...having taken up jobs in different cities and here it was time to reband, though in a strange city all he had with him were his colleagues who seemed to suffer from the same gigantic machine syndrome, with weekends spent mostly catching up sleep or some other laundering of pay in silly things which after a while got boring.

Life would have become hell had he not met Sarita (finally some names). By a rare chance in a crowded country the two of them found themselves together and alone in a slowish lift for about five floors wherein she pointed out to him that his shoe laces were open, in response to which he managed to prove that girls can make a guy go very clumsy by dropping his files upon trying to lace them back, which evoked a light cackle from her and made her bend down to help him and then the exchanged names and rest is history. But alas the gigantic machine could not see its nuts and bolts getting together so they posted Sarita onsite for two years. It was a great move for her career but for a relationship only into its eighth month it was a death knell, they both knew it but played along till one day when she called and told him that she had started seeing someone else there.

After all of his sob story was over, he looked at the Chelsea guy probably expecting some comforting words to come out, but what happened was totally different after looking at him straight for like a whole minute that guy just burst out laughing...a laugh loud and resounding, for a moment it left him flustered and then he couldn't but help out laughing himself, almost as loudly as the the Chelsea guy.

And just like that the evening turned from one of mourning to one of laughter, from bitching about the boss or to some of the wierd things of his now ex, to the F1 season to the treks he had been to and on and on and on

They crashed at the chequered guy's one room flat ordered pizza...watched die hard series and conked out. Then next morning...or afternoon one should say late afternoon the Chelsea guy dragged him out of the house to another small apartment half way across town. The door opened to reveal a bunch of cronies similar to them huddled over maps, almost as if to plan a robbery, though they were into something a shade less exciting, trying to finalize on the destination of their next trek. The chequered (though he is now wearing a different shirt ) shirt guy didn't know when he started of as a stranger and when he became one of the gang. After an hour of deliberation on location, date and other such details everybody slunk out for lunch, some split up to head out elsewhere while in the remaining another deliberation as to where to head for lunch began only to be cut short by one member who was just getting of his cell to anounce that Ramesh had just set up his Nintendo Wii, not that one would begin to think how many of them there knew Ramesh, but they all knew the Wii and that quickly decided where they were to head.

Cramped up in a taxi with half of the gang...the other following in another...the chequered shirt guy smiled...wasn't it just yesterday that he felt a stranger to the city.