Sunday, August 30, 2009

alvida II

But they were talking nonsense. It isn't that they never did so. They always talked nonsense. After chatting for hours they could not tell what they were talking about. Topic wasn't important, talking was. But not this time, when they were in front of each other. Words were not coming naturally. He didn't know what to say......
And suddenly he feels her palm on top of his. Fingers cross. In a tight hug. First barrier crossed...

They reached his place early, thanks to the low traffic of Sunday. His place was a mess, just like him and she was surprised how he cud find things from the garbage bin he had made of his table. He tries to clean up and she asks him to stop. They order their lunch from a nearby restaurant as they didn't want to 'waste' another hour on trivial things.

She shows him some pictures, of the place she had visited last and they glance through them while dining; sitting on the floor, plates in their hands. She seems uninterested in the lunch and he in the pictures and they keep doing it to avoid the head-on. “We have finally met” she says and grins. He pulls her closer and hugs her. A tight hug follows. And then a tighter one...

He wanted to hold her forever like that not to let her go. Ironically he was the one who didn't want to meet. He had 'decreed' his decision with a firm voice and aching heart. And now he thinks what and idiot he was. It was her who decided otherwise. Only she had the guts to. She wanted to meet him even if it was for a day and be content with the memories of that one day. She defied his decree and he was happy that she did. He wanted the time to stand still. It was slipping out of his hands though, with less than a day left and a lifetime to live.

They loosen a bit and see each other. Eye meets eye, breath meets breath. He lowers his head touching her lips with his; breath slowing down and pulse rising. He raises her chin and looks at her face. She closes her eyes; a subtle smile playing on her lips. He lowers again. She holds his head with her hands and takes his breath away. They kiss again and then again. She loosens her hold and lets him go at his pace.

“You look better with long hair”. She grins at it and lets her hair fall on his face. “It's getting dark outside”, “And you should be back home like a good girl” he grins. “Shut up”. “Do you want to go out”. “No we better stay in. I don't want to waste a single minute.” He smiles at it and they embrace.

She woke up with a start and saw that he woke up at the same time. They didn't know when they fell asleep; together. They were still in embrace and had fallen asleep like that. It was 3:30 and they needed to pack up. A message from the airline had declared an earlier check-in time. They packed up in a hurry and left for the airport at 4.

Every minute seemed important now. The cool morning breeze was soothing his eyes but his heart was restless. She dug her face in his chest and they remained in half embrace till airport. She entered the airport to inquire if she could check-in a little late. The airline staff gave her a weird look and asked her not to be late more than another 15 minutes. She was so much relieved. Fifteen more minutes! They sat on the garden dyke beside the entrance. These were the last 15 minutes of their life together ! 15 more minutes to live.... No one spoke, words were out of place. They embraced again and started kissing. Kissing at a public place when no one was around except the morning breeze.
It struck him at once: the time was up. This was a life where you knew when it was going to get over. And the time had arrived; time to bid farewell and be content with what you got.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

alvida


STA: 11:30 AM
ETA: 11:20 AM
Wow ! The flight is landing early... That rush in the last hour to reach the airport early seemed fruitful. Even if it was 11:00 yet and he had another 30 minutes at his disposal, he could not take chances for the fear of listening to a complaint of not waiting with open arms.

He started watching people: his favorite pastime. There were a number of them; waiting for their loved one’s to arrive. This girl leaning on the railing caught his eyes. She was a chubby couch potato clad in her patterned pajamas and graffiti Tee. Her messy hair, the hanging earphones of her i-pod and that ‘I m fuckin bored’ look on her face made it an interesting watch. She was holding in her hand, with the same carelessness, a thick novel: one that would take him a lifetime and still remain unfinished.

STA: 11:30 AM
ETA: 11:30 AM

The initial happiness of getting those extra 10 minutes was gone. They were really important, at a time when they had just one day and wanted to live a lifetime. A fresh bunch of people appeared at the ‘Arrivals’. Looks like another landing. 5th since he came. He looked for the girl again and didn’t find her at the place. Her boyfriend had arrived and they were more than hugging each other. It is not that he felt any hatred for the PDA’s. He just didn’t care. But now, it was different. He was uncomfortable.

STA: 11:30 AM
ETA: 11:40 AM

God !!! What the hell. Ten more minutes gone. Why do they give a hope when they can’t stand upto it. This thought made him even more uncomfortable. In the mean time people kept coming out of the airport with different moods. Some more pissed off by the hot and humid climate of Mumbai than the flight delays. He took a cup of coffee for the third time and kept trying her phone to check if she has landed.

His phone rings. “It’ll take me 10 minutes to reach.” Looked like everything now came in EMI’s. But this one wasn’t equal in any measure, neither quantum nor intensity. He kept his eyes at the gate searching through the flood of people. He had a difficult time recognizing her. It was her voice, he was acquainted with. She looked different from the last video chat they had. Different from all the photographs she had sent. They hugged each other but left instantly, uncomfortable with each other’s bodies.

They took a taxi and were heading for his flat which was at an hour’s distance. He was being too courteous, giving her a treatment befitting a lady. This came to her as a surprise as he was being more polite than he ever sounded. To her he seemed different from the one she knew. One she knew would pull her leg at every given chance and speak nonsense for hours together. But today he was silent. Both remained silent for the first quarter of their journey not knowing how to start. Their bodies were still strangers. They had known each other so well. They knew things about each other that nobody else knew. But…

She broke the ice with a casual conversation. She knew that she had to because this dumb will never do. With the voice came a comfort that they had always felt while talking to each other.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

pursuit of truth...

It was surprising... my eyes always deceived me. It was only when I used my camera, could I capture it. Not in the shining daylight, but in the dim light of dawn, the "sankranti kaal" as they call in sanskrit. It was the slow shutter of the camera that made me feel the fourth dimension of spacetime. The picture was blurred. Like my view of life. It captured motion for quarter of a second during which the reality had changed so much that the picture was vague enough not to reveal anything.

When we capture moments, we don't actually capture moments. We capture periods. This is not a problem of the camera, it's our brain or rather the TIME itself. My training in science and engineering has taught me to rely on experiments and observations for the TRUTH. For this I rely on my senses. When I see something, it is what my brain perceives from the image formed by my eye using the visible spectrum of radiation. There are two aspects to it: One is lack of totality and second is subjectivity. But we will talk about it later, let's come to the time part first. So when I see something it is because light from that object has fallen on my eyes and my brain has processed it into an image. But there is always a time lag in this process. So when I see something it doesn't actually exist now. What I see is past. So when I am just living for the moment I am not actually living for the moment :)

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle again puts a limit to the observation. It says that you cannot observe reality without changing it. There is a limit to what u can know. This limitation has been put by none other than the laws of nature, in pursuit of which you started observing in the first place. It is actually this law itself which decides if you can know it !!!

This pulls me to mysticism. While science tries to understand, mysticism tries to feel. As I said in earlier, the limitations of scientific method makes my understanding subjective. It is based on observation and hypothesis. While there is a limit to what one can observe, the bigger limitation is put by the hypothesis. There can be an infinite number of them and thus you tend to rely on intuition. This blurs the boundary between science and mysticism. I am standing on this blurry line now and waiting for my call.