Nikhil had been waiting for about half an hour near the tea stall in his Honda City. He looked at his watch restlessly and turned to see the somewhat deserted lane by the side. It was about 7:30 in a usual late November evening in Delhi. The lights on the posts were surrounded by large hazy luminous rings as smoke and fog settled down to engulf the whole city. “She would come. She would have to come”, he assured himself.
A swank Mercedes slid stopped just in front of him. A late middle aged handsome man poked out his head and signaled to the chai wala. He rushed out with a pack of Gold Flake. He gleefully accepted the Rs. 500 bill from the car owner and came back to his stall and wrote something in his notebook. The rich man came out of the car with an exceptionally pretty young woman in an elegant black evening dress. She must only be in her late teens. He lit the cigarette that she held rather tightly between her lips. They were talking softly resting themselves against the car as the guy puffed perfect smoke circles in the thick air. The undivided attention she had from him suggested it was their first or second meeting. Those sidewalks of Defense Colony would have witnessed countless such meetings.
It still seemed like an alien world to him. But not more than when he had arrived in Delhi 6 years ago. He could still feel the nausea he felt in the DTC bus. It was the month of June and the bus conductor was in no mood to make any concessions for heat. He crammed the bus till the public was near death from suffocation. He gazed at the dusty, parched and indifferent concrete landscape outside scorching in afternoon heat. The thick black smoke from the bus did not seem to affect the two wheeler drivers stopping alongside the tin monster at the red lights. Even the reflecting glass facades, space frames and louvered frontals of the buildings at CP and ITO gave him the same desolate feeling. He was for first time in life feeling like a nobody, as if he had no purpose to be there. He was just another of the thousand souls who came to the capital everyday gaslighted with the ‘promising’ future that the city offered. How in the world would he work in this human jungle?
“I am OK here”, he remembered saying to his dad three weeks later. Though, he still felt a pinch when he walked past those glittering jewellery show rooms and mega garment stores in South-Ex market but things around him had started looking so much friendlier. There was this strange soothing feeling in anonymity, of flowing amongst the human mass in spite of being nobody. Those thoughts of desolation did not haunt him much as he had found good friends in his roommates. He now had got more used to seeing four luxury cars parked inside the gates of bungalows, people hanging out of the DTC bus gates with their limbs dangling in thin air, college girls smoking Marlboro waiting at the pavement at PVR, people spending a good fraction of their daily times at red lights. More flyovers were crisscrossing the city by the day. But it was an unknown impetus that kept him going under some impression of hope. The realization of working in a basement in a non-descript software company did not help however as he was itching to get somewhere in life.
And one day it all just started looking so all right. Someone at work had started finding him special. She would just come and sit next to him and they would talk for hours. They did not even realize when they became indispensable for each other. The setting sun in the evenings had a different hue to it now. There was a world outside the basement which they explored hand in hands. Nirulas, Wimpys and Pizza Hut were all such romantic places he thought. So were the rear seats in PVR while watching a flop movie. Priya had a strange magnetic thing about her. He loved to see his friends get jealous when she sometimes came to his house. They were often subtly signaled to leave the two alone. Life was one large bottle of a mix of norepinephrine and oxytocin.
But as it was to be Nikhil landed upon a dream job in the US, something which he had always yearned for. The parting was heart breaking. They had cried in each others arms for 3 hours but she had to let him go. The weeks turned into months and months into an year. The initial torrent of e-mails and yahoo chat had subsided and his phone bills were saner. He was getting used to the comfortable life and did not mind too much when his inbox did not show any mails from her. The idea of someone else had occurred to him several times but probably she still lived somewhere in his heart. 6 months later he got a 3 line mail from her saying that she had found someone else and won’t be writing to him anymore. He cried but the realization that it was long coming held him together.
He landed on IGI airport a full 4 years after the day when they had promised to wait for each other. The city seemed to welcome him with her arms wide open. He was her darling, the kind of guy she always loved and invited. The people at the car showroom loved him for an all cash payment. The people at those giant shopping malls loved him for his generous spending on designer clothes and the people of the housing society loved him for an instant 10 minute deal of his new flat. His parents were excited about his engagement to be held in a month to a girl of a highly ‘reputed’ family. But, he wanted to see Priya for one last time. Her tone was indifferent on the phone and she replied with a ‘I am not sure if I can make it, but I will try!’’ when he asked her to come to the same old spot near their office.
After an hour of wait he finally saw her coming. His heart skipped a beat. Her eyes started browsing the surroundings for him. He was searching for any expressions on her face. There were none. He came out of the car and could see her face suddenly change. He was still not sure what she felt.
“You look good”, she hastily mumbled.
“So do you”.
They slid in the car seats and talked about mundane stuff they both knew they didn’t want to talk about. He could sense that her mind was working furiously.
“You didn’t wait for me…did you?” his sudden words caused her to lower her eyes.
“But it is not going anywhere. He does not understand me.”
He could sense something coming. “What is the use now?”
“I could never get you out of my mind. It was always you!” she was still looking at her lap.
Something exploded in his mind and he felt he was sitting with the girl he had seen with that man a few minutes ago. A deep revulsion occupied him. He could not make out why those words which probably he wanted to hear before he came to meet her were making him feel awful.
“I am getting engaged next month. Won’t you wish me a happy married life.”
She looked up with her eyes wet. There were a thousand boulders lying on his heart now. He didn’t care for those tears anymore. She tried to hold his arm but he looked away. She sat there for a minute, opened the door on her side, got out and walked away.
He stopped at the red light beneath the Moolchand Flyover. He did not know what to feel. His thoughts were interrupted by a small face pressed against the driver’s window. It was a face of a small girl, tarnished and trotted. Her hair had dried up and she worn a frayed frock. She was too young to even ask for money. She mumbled something that she would have been taught by her mother, her eyes focused at the lights of jazzy DVD player on the dashboard….continued in comments