February 24, 2008
My day began at the Churchgate station. It was past 2 p.m. when I arrived at the station but for me the day has just begun. I have always felt that it is an excessively Western thing to believe that the day changes at midnight. There are times when you do not know whether it’s today or tomorrow. You’ve been doing what you were doing since it was yesterday and since you’ve been awake it’s still today in your head. But when you think of it, it is tomorrow. But as long as I don’t sleep, I do not feel that the day has changed. It’s almost as if the day has stretched beyond the stipulated hours and is surviving on borrowed time. There are times when I lose the sense of time and stick to my own ways to define it. Yesterday ended when I left the office today where I had been working all night and half the day and today began as I descended from the train some stations ahead to meet her.
Waiting outside Eros, I am mildly disturbed. For some strange reason, I am reminded of the image of Sachin waiting for a very young Poonam Dhillon outside a movie theatre in Trishul. She never made it for the rendezvous, meeting an accident on the way but she arrives in a while, late as usual, but better late than not.
There are many different ways in which two people behave as they meet each other. Some launch into a dramatic monologue expressing extreme pleasure and good fortune at this opportunity fate has provided them with(case in point a former roommate), some attempt an eloquent pause as they offer their hand for a handshake(a roommate), others still just start off talking about whatever they intend to talk about(another former roommate). But whenever I met her, it was always the same. She always starts by being preoccupied with something or the other, paying the auto-driver, staring at something across the road that caught her fancy but comes out her reverie in a few seconds and immediately launches into an anecdote about whatever happened to her most recently. I am amazed at the consistency with which this cycle is repeated.
We head to The Pizzeria for lunch. As we settled down for lunch, both of us grope for a distance which was once ours. I think we are trying to gauge something without realizing it. Can we still talk? Through a stroll around the Marine drive, a visit to the
“You know I can imagine us not talking for say, three years and suddenly running into each other and..”
“And picking up immediately from there.”
“Yeah.”
Some things never change in life. Her laughter clichéd though this sounds, ready and extremely naughty wit, scandalized responses, a taste for irony, the detached sympathetic way in which she speaks of herself, mean and dismissive yet classy reflections on all and sundry, the half smile lingering on the face, the easy candor. Some others do.
“We’re best this way”
A luncheon date which extends into many more hours through the day, and night as we let this day turn into one of those where two people decide to just sit and discuss their fears, the changes they have undergone, the end of childhood and the pains of growing up, dreams and compromises and how life has changed, for the better or for the worse. There is something about people you know and who know you; you can always talk to them no matter how much life changes. Why do we always talk like this, theorizing about life, analyzing everything from a psychological angle yet the whole process never getting pretentious as it does with others, throwing in random anecdotes, and always talking in terms of general principles without really saying much directly about our lives, yet saying a lot. The past, with all its complications looms large, yet we can talk like this simply because we are two people who want to.
It is late morning by the time I drop her to her place. I take a cab back to the Churchgate station. As I embark the train and settle down, I fall asleep, my day ending exactly where it began.
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