Ludhiana Diaries
“But my daughter, these things are not planned. Did Romeo hatch up a plan to fall in love with the enemy’s daughter and die young in her arms? Did Paris and Helen ponder upon their situation before they ran away with each other to cause the eventual destruction of Troy? Did Mirza contrive in any great detail about giving his heart to Sahiba and ultimately getting killed at the hands of her brothers? No, none of them did my daughter, for these things are always spur of the moment, impromptu, like the creation of an artist,” Mr. Rai tried to explain.
“You do realize that your tragic examples serve to oppose rather than support your argument, don’t you?” Anoothi asked, shaking her head. “Anyhow, I am not meeting any settled Engineer and that is final. I don’t need to be someone’s wife to be happy in life,” she declared firmly and then stepped briskly towards the doorway leading to the front door. “Come Mr. Dixit, I need to get out of here,” And without waiting on him, she rushed out.
“Just what do I do with her professor? Just what do I do with her?” Mr. Rai reiterated with a dejected sigh.
Raghuvir wanted to say something soothing that could allay the grief of the old man, but since nothing of the sort came to his mind, he just gave him a sympathetic grimace, patted his shoulder twice, and walked away.
*******
“A single woman must be an unhappy woman. Oh what a ridiculous notion!” Anoothi said with bitter disapproval as she drove the professor to his new apartment. She was getting tired of her father’s recent attempts at setting up a match for her. The awkward introductions, the superficial conversations, the masquerade to impress each other, the idea that one could decide to spend one’s whole life with a stranger after just one or two meetings, the sheer idiocy of the whole process of an arrange marriage was well known to her from the time when her late mother had forced her to meet some so-called eligible bachelors in her younger days, her experiences then having made her pledge to stay away from the madness of it all in the future, so now when her father tried to push her back in to that same quagmire, it infuriated her no end.
“I agree,” Raghuvir replied simply, feeling reluctant to involve himself in the discussion.
“Agree with me or agree with my father?” Anoothi asked in a sharp voice.
“With you of course,” Raghuvir responded, a little flummoxed.
“Good,” Anoothi said, calming down somewhat after hearing his answer. “Do refrain from making ambiguous statements when you are with me,” she went on to suggest.
Raghuvir was hoping to avoid any further conversation on the subject in order to save himself from bearing the brunt of her anger, but it was not to be as Anoothi carried on venting out her thoughts.
“And he has given his word, can you believe that? Given his word that I will meet this guy without even asking me about it first! I mean this is some first rate buffoonery,” she groaned, at the same time making the car take an abrupt and sharp turn to the right which nearly threw the professor’s head bumping against the window next to his seat under the effect of the centrifugal force.
“It is,” the gasping professor at once gave his acquiescence, feeling timorous in front of her rage spurts.
“Excuse me. Are you calling my father a buffoon?” She asked, turning her gaze to him and raising a brow. They were going over sixty and she was not even looking at the road ahead!
“No, I called the act a buffoonery, I made no comment about any of the actors involved,” he quickly clarified, desperate for her to turn her attention back to the road.
But instead of doing so, she thumped on the breaks and brought the car to a lurching halt in front of a park facing building.
“And we are here. Have we arrived at the right place or has that Kamal erred in the address he forwarded to me?” she asked, ready to call the man in question up and give him a piece of her mind in case the professor did not reply in an affirmative.
Luckily for Kamal, the professor affirmed that they were at the right place, upon which both he and Anoothi got out of the car and made their way in to the spick and span white building. After submitting the initial amount of rent and collecting the keys from the owner who lived on the ground floor, they ascended the stairs to the professor’s new apartment. Here for the next couple of hours or so, they ran a number of chores to get the apartment in to a livable condition.
While Raghuvir swept the floors, cleaned the window panes and grills and made arrangement for some drinking water, Anoothi dusted the furniture, set up the kitchen and helped fix the bed sheet, at the end of which both came to the balcony to relax and rest their eyes by gazing at the park on the other side of the street, the verdurous ground currently occupied by some kids playing cricket on this pleasant summer evening.
Outside the park, there were some placards that carried noble-minded messages such as ‘Save trees’, ‘Save water’, and ‘Save a variety of other natural things’. Reading them ignited a memory or two in Raghuvir’s heart, and since no acerbic exchanges had taken place between him and Anoothi for the past couple of hours, it encouraged him to share his thoughts with her.
“Festers o’er untamed rage,
Prime mayhem it begets,
Blindeths all, nuns or kings,” said he wistfully.
“Lovely lines, you wrote them?” Anoothi asked.
“Aye I did, on my school’s notice board. My teachers got aware of my knack for a bit of poetry and made me scribble some lines on the notice board every now and then,” the professor replied, but there was more to the story he wished to reveal. “I also hid in them messages for my girl, to tell her of the time and place of our coming meeting,” he smiled, reminiscing.
“The notice board was near the school’s front gate and could be easily read through its sliding grills. So in the afternoons when she used to go past it, she would read my lines, and get my ciphers.”
“Was there any message encrypted in the lines you just spoke?” intriguingly she inquired.
“There was, if you take the first letter of each word, it translates to four pm IB Bank,” he remarked with a bit of a cheeky grin.
Anoothi began to repeat the lines she had heard in her mind, and as she took out the first letter of each word and arranged them in a sequence; it confirmed for her that the professor was not speaking any flapdoodle.
“Bravo! Beautiful!” she shouted admiringly, laying a hand down on his shoulder. “Can you tell me any more of them?”
Raghuvir at that moment turned his eyes to her, and enunciated another little verse, giving life to his words in a soft deep voice.
“Beneath unseen stars,
Sirens trill and nymphets dance,
As thy serene enchanting virtuosity,
Enraptures the night”
As the evening breeze suffused with the scent of flora blew past their faces, as she stared in to his eyes and he stared back in to hers, as he sang his poesy and bared another little fragment of his past and of his heart to her, it felt as if the past had become the present, that the words he spoke were not for a lost love but for the lover sitting right in front of him. And his feelings were getting reciprocated by the woman sitting across; color had rushed to whose cheeks as the petals of his poetry had fallen upon her tingling ears.
“Bus stand at seven?” Anoothi put forth after what was a long pause in the conversation.
“Tomorrow after college?” Raghuvir proposed in return, to which she nodded her head, squeezed his shoulder and leaned in to land a soft kiss upon his cheek, which immediately caused a gleeful smile to be plastered across his face, one that remained unaltered, long after she had taken her leave for the evening.
*******
A moment before they were two distinct souls, journeying through life in their own individual paths, a moment later they had melted in to a single nebulous form, their destinies intertwined forever.
Sometimes it is just the caress of a soothing breeze, sometimes only a kind touch or an amorous glance or the moist imprint
of a soft kiss, and at times the catalyst for it comes in the most unexpected of forms, and hard it is to describe, even harder to expound upon, how the magic of an instant gets two people to fall in interminable, endless love.
But in the environs of these new affections, what was one to do with his bonds with the past? Could one just shun them off, now that he had newer avenues to look forward to?
“Uncle, Uncle.” Raghuvir was disturbed in his thoughts by a small hand tugging at the hem of his shirt from behind. For the past hour or so, he had been out on the roads walking and reflecting upon his situation.
“Yes beta,” Raghuvir addressed one of the two young boys he found standing behind him after turning around. They were untidy and disheveled looking youths in threadbare clothes; one appeared to be in his early teens while the other was much younger and consequently shorter.
“Sahab, Sahab, me and my young brother have not eaten anything since the morning, Sahab.” It was the older boy who spoke, looking up at Raghuvir with a sad look in his mousy eyes.
“Have not eaten anything..” Raghuvir murmured softly to himself, his face turning a little grim and his eyes wavering as he deliberated upon the validity of the boy’s request in his mind. “You will use the money to eat and not for any drugs or something like that, right?” He said after a pause, his voice assuming a stern quality.
“Yes, Sahab, have not eaten anything from the morning,” the boy just repeated, making his eyes even sadder than before.
Raghuvir again fell in to some hesitation, but eventually took out his wallet and held out for the boy a fifty rupee note. But before handing it over, he demanded from the boy a promise for the sound use of the money.
“Promise Sahab,” the boy said with urgency, at which Raghuvir gave him the money.
“thank you Sahab, bless you,” the boy stated his gratitude, a look of relief coming on his face as he grabbed the hand of his younger brother and scampered away.
As they left, Raghuvir found himself once again immersing back in to his thoughts. But having not eaten anything since the afternoon himself, he decided it best to forgo his deliberations for now and search for some food. After walking around a bit more, he discovered a small sandwich shop at one of the street corners. Run by a man who looked to be in his mid twenties, the shop had a single table up front that held all the ingredients used in preparing the three varieties of sandwiches which were sold there, along with a small microwave in the back which was used to grill the victuals after they were put together at the table up front. A regular looking shop it was indeed, until one happened to divert his gaze upwards at the white signboard above it, upon which was painted in italic red letters the name of the shop, one that aroused in the minds of most men, a feeling of amusement.
‘Engineer Sandwich Wala’
Raghuvir too was not immune to that feeling and so somewhat fascinated himself after reading that signboard, he turned his eyes to the young man standing behind that table, who was presently preparing sandwiches for a couple of awaiting young girls. Was this man really an Engineer? Or was the signboard just a hoax intended to draw the public eye towards the shop?
“Any order Sir? We have here delicious sandwiches of the Cheese-Corn, Baloney and Mix-Vegetable varieties, all available in their low fat variants as well.” Raghuvir heard the young boy speak to him, his clear and fluent diction signifying that he was indeed well educated and that the name on the board was no dupery.
Raghuvir went on to order himself a Cheese-Corn one and thus joined the other two customers in the waiting list, while the young man in the shop hustled to make them their sandwiches. It was after twenty minutes that the tasty delicacies were served to them on disposable silver colored plates along with a small serving of mustard sauce.
Who said engineers are not good cooks? And if anyone did, then one melting bite of any of those tasty, savory sandwiches there was enough to prove wrong even the staunchest of doubters, it was as if that young man had used all of the analytical and design tools he had learned in his engineering to devise the perfect, most mouth watering recipe for these vittles.
“lip-smacking tastic as always,” announced one of the young girls, after taking a nibble of her mix-Vegetable Sandwich.
“It’s a good thing you did not get a job after engineering, otherwise we would have never gotten to eat these yummy sandwiches.” It was her friend’s turn to chime in, and she did so with a little giggle. School aged girls both of them were, and often on their way back home from their evening tuition, they stopped at his shop to partake of its tasty delicacies, so that the sandwich maker by now had learned to ignore the occasional silly comment emanating from their ditzy mouths, but today he seemed to be in the mood for a bit of a rejoinder.
“Have you girls heard of Excel Sheet Technologies?” he inquired.
“Yes of course, it is my brother’s dream company, he is also doing engineering these days you know.” It was the first girl who replied, a proud smile coming on her face as she mentioned that her brother was also pursuing engineering, but she was sure that unlike the sandwich maker, he was going to be successful in that profession. “Did you also give interview for that company?”
“I did, in fact I was a System Engineer there for two years, and afterwards, an assistant Project Manager for one more,” the sandwich maker revealed with an impertinent smile.
In great awe, the two girls were left at that little disclosure, the shock of it causing even their blabbering mouths to cease talking for the next many minutes.
“Why..why did you leave that job?” It was the second girl who finally managed to ask after gathering some of her bearings.
“So that I could open this shop and serve you guys with my tasty sandwiches,” the sandwich maker replied with a sarcastic chuckle.
No other questions followed, and after a little while, the two girls went on their way after finishing their sandwiches. Raghuvir, who had been listening to the whole exchange quietly so far, was also done with his and stepped up to the table to pay for it.
“It was delicious, thank you,” he complimented while handing over the price of the sandwich to its maker.
“You are most welcome Sir,” the young sandwich maker said, opening a drawer under the table and putting the money he had received in to it before closing it back down.
Now usually Raghuvir refrained from meddling in other people’s lives, but this was such a singular scenario that his curiosity ultimately ended up getting the better of him.
“Did you really leave a job in that company to open a sandwich shop?” he could not help but ask.
“Yes, left it, but not of my own volition,” the young man answered, a pensive look casting itself forth on his visage.
Raghuvir nodded and said nothing more, if the Sandwich maker wished to share his story then he must do so without any persuasion from him, otherwise he was quite ready to thank him once again for the sandwich and just go off on his way.
“A very improbable story it is,” the young man did go on, at the same time he was using a rag to wipe his table clean off some sauce that had spilled there.
“One day you are on top of the world, working in a dream job, living with a wonderful girl, then one evening you return back home to find that you have been reduced to nothing but dreg, a most lowly kind of detritus.” He said with a sigh. “You come home after a hard day of work, hoping to spend some time with your girl, but instead of her, waiting for you there are a couple of police officers, there to arrest you on rape charges your own girl has filed against you!”
“Yes, Sir, I was completely dumbstruck too. It was explained to me that I had given her the promise of marriage at some time in the past, and two days earlier, when I had told her that I was not ready to marry her yet, I had quite simply gone back on that word. Thus I was guilty of using falsehood to obtain her consent for intimacy, and such consent is no-consent at all in the eyes of the law. At once I was arrested and taken away to be pu
t behind bars. Within minutes, Vishav the Engineer was turned into Vishav the rapist, both by the law, as well as the society.”
“The repercussions of such vilification can be dire Sir, as they were for me. Within weeks, I was fired from my job, I was leaking money to lawyers, eschewed by all the people who I thought were my friends, and all that while I continued to spend my time behind bars. Bleak days they were indeed.” At that point the young man stopped his narration as he had to attend a newly arrived customer.
It took a total of twenty more minutes before this customer was duly dispatched, in which time Raghuvir just stood mum, feeling much commiseration for this young man.
“So, that was my story. After spending a year in jail, I was offered settlement by that girl. She took off with my patriarchal house, as well as most of my remaining savings, and I was left with only this small shop to my name. Since no company would touch me because of my past, yes the world is superficial like that; I came here and opened this sandwich shop. I used to make sandwiches for my study group during my engineering days, so I said what the heck,” he said shrugging his shoulders, a reflective smile on his face.
“You spirit, it is quite commendable,” Raghuvir stated, giving him a condolent look.
“Far too much credit you give me there,” the young man shook his head and then turned his eyes up towards the ceiling of his shop. “See that hook over there?” the young man asked, to which Raghuvir replied with an affirmative nod. “Just three weeks ago I tried to hang myself dead from there.”
That last statement sent a chill down the poet’s spine, who now with incredulous eyes was staring back and forth between that hook and the face of that young man.
“Luckily I was saved as the rope that day snapped under my weight. Looking back Sir, I am glad that it did. For when I woke up the next day, all my grief was gone,” the young man recounted.
“Gone?” a confused Raghuvir inquired.
“Yes, gone, whoosh, disappeared, just like that. I mean those memories were still there, but no longer did they haunt me. It was like a miracle, as if I had been given a second chance.”
“Quite difficult to believe that grief could just disappear like that,” Raghuvir replied, suspicious that he was being lied to by the Sandwich maker.