Uncertain

I can’t remember now, from this morning, how I wanted to start this post.

There’s always THE phrase that begins it, na?

I had it, the moment I shook off the shattered glass from the shoot out. At the Ashram flyover. They were chasing Manmohan Singh’s envoy off the road, while guerrilla snipers [they might’ve been Mayawati’s commandos] from distant peripheries shot sleek bullets through tense air.

And where was I going, during curfew hour amid political turmoil? I think either to attend a sanity defying 11-part film at the festival, or a swim. [Don’t we have such an acute sense of juxtaposition, irony and drama? The Greeks really knew their shit.]

Somewhere, an official, high in the ranks plotted with cold precision. They had amputated his conscience gland decades ago. Apparently, it is a compulsory drill when you enrol. Those who don’t survive the operation are, naturally, considered martyred to patriotic duty. And I recollect thinking: so this is why… Why didn’t they tell us before?

Daylight, I’ve decided, creates confusion.

So Manmohan was whizzed away; his quiet, turbaned dignity bundled off in a dark screened, red-light-flashing blur.

A circus set up camp, just off the flyover. They had sharp shooting snipers and fire juggling politicians, bicycle balancing actors and lion taming heroines. A million sycophants thronged the gay canopied gates, and a raging stampede was born. Barkha captured the frenzy with valiant persistence while Renuka Chaudhury juggled offal-shaped slippery words with an experienced glove. Pranoy wielded a joystick in a remote OB van on Lodhi road. And then I saw, the road was crawling with an epidemic of cockroach winged OB vans.

Meanwhile, a sad eyed, blue turbaned fugitive snuck into the laundry room of a crumbling government bungalow in Moti Bagh. Nimbu pani was served and no one spoke. Least of all a shell shocked girl rudely stopped short of a sanity defying 11-part cinematic experience. [Or was it a swim?]

I awoke with the guilt of his downfall on my conscience. The Bhopalis had their best chance with him. Na?

Fated

And how.

Just heard from someone I’d crushed on, after 8 years. Someone whose 500cc Enfield coloured the sound of Enfields for me, forever after.

Just heard that 8 years ago he had fallen in love, over an incident I’d forgotten involving Band-Aid and “the pleasure of your healing touch”.

Just heard he got married this January.

Just heard he had to, because “I couldn’t find myself a girl, so my aunt did that and got me married”.

Just heard he sold his studly bike.

Just heard he wished he had taken me on a longer ride way back then, and was kicking himself that he hadn’t.

Just realised, that three and a half years ago, his interview in a magazine on the woman of his dreams, which I’d read with envy and wistfulness, was probably about...

Just wondered, yet again, how fate works.

Just realised, I’m grateful. Else I wouldn’t be here.

***

Such a much better place to be in, blogging about the non-incidence of it, na?