It was like every monsoon season that he hated and it was no different than every evening after work that he whined and complained to himself—about work, economy, world, people, dogs, cats, cities, seasons, Nazis, Capitalism among other things. Turning off his laptop and gulping last few sips of coffee, he decided to throw the rest of the sandwich in the waste-bin. Some dreams would never let him rest in peace. He took-off his leather shoes and put them in his bag, slipped into a pair of rubber slippers, put on a Zara jacket to save his shirt and tie from the rains out, folded-on his trousers high up his ankles, unfolded an umbrella, and walked down the unevenly spread pooled potholes of BKC to catch a cab back his home at Bandra. It doesn’t take much for the Bombay monsoons to make you look helpless and stupid together. On his way, he could see, like every day, literally a million people, mostly young girls, some accompanied by their guys, shopping along the teeming market on Linking road; haggling for cheap forgeries he’d find tacky of co-existing American or European labels the road across -- they say East meets West there. Shoes, bags, clothes, make-up stuff he had zilch idea about -- they had it all. These shops would never shut down, but for the night, and people would never stop coming in numbers -- withstanding heat, rains, traffic and everything else. He passed through the chaos with indifference. Like every day, to everything.
A few lanes before his house, he asked the cabman to stop at Bombay Blue. Getting out of the cab he noticed the place swamped with people inside and out. "Fridays be damned!", he chided himself for forgetting that. 'What and where to eat?' was an every evening’s challenge for him. More so on a weekend-eve when asking for a table for one was no less than a biblical sin. But rather than asking for a take-away, he decided to wait for his turn for a table like others. More for the fear of being engulfed by the nostalgia and loneliness back home than for the razzmatazz out. But nostalgia had his own ways of reaching and biting him. Maybe the long association had attuned it to derive a sadistic pleasure of trampling over his haplessness every time. A voice most familiar dragged him to a past long foregone within a moment so ephemeral. A voice that had played in his head all nights they’ve been not together.
He knew it was her from the music of her laughs, interspersed with liberal use of 'awww...'s and 'hawww...'s. He could easily recognize her from half of a dozen women she was with, and he was sure it would have been a no task even if there were all the women in the world. Yes, she was that beautiful, he believed. A few awkward glances followed by a difficult smile later, his presence was acknowledged with a smile that was as pure, innocent, and care-free as ever. A smile that could melt him down in seven seconds, as he'd confessed to her at numerous times; a smile she'd used to melt him down in seven seconds, as she'd confessed to him after each of his numerous confessions. Not much had changed since the last time he saw her at Carter Road but for her carefree and slightly irresponsible curly hair which were now rather ruffled back, again carelessly, than left loose and open. He remembered they had conversations on Vikram Seth, Jim Morrison, Bombay, the Portuguese, Sea, fish and cheese. Her dusky Konkani skin was as radiant as ever (maybe even more), and as ever, he had the urge to touch it all over on the old pretext of...She would never deny him of that; and she knew that he always knew that she knew his pretext but chose to act naively. Her choice of cartoon tees and that of faded ripped denim shorts have had always been predictable. And so have had been the movements of the Blackberry in her hand, and her occasional fidgets to keep a shoulder bag from slipping down. She'd always say that dressing good but difficult was better left to him, like a lot of other things. She still had her braces on, he noticed. He once had got restless while she mentioned how the smell of rubber gloves turned her on during visits to her dentist. But he didn't mention her that. Like he never mentioned her how much he had loved her. Love enchains, he believed. And he had always wanted her to be free. That was the only way he had liked her - free. So when she had decided to leave, he didn't ask her to stay. Being enchained, too was best left to him, he had thought. "Some dreams" would keep him enchained.
