Bharat's Corollary

So there's this really amusing trick my friend Bharat pulls sometimes, an ice-breaker worth trying if you ever get invited to stuck at a party where there's no intoxicants to partake in nothing better to do.

Here's how it works.

1.) Go up to a random person.
2.) Wait for a lull in the conversation.
3.) Lean in slightly and whisper: Is duniya mein do bade chutiye. Pehla X (with X preferably being a person in absentia). Doosra kaun?
4.) The target should get slightly shifty-eyed and bluster out the name of person Y (also in absentia, in all probability).

At this point it will suffice to shake your head slowly and change the topic; but if you lack faith in your audience's intelligence (like my friend Bharat sometimes does) you can get the desired result by saying Nahi. Tu! with the exclamation mark emphasized by a poke in the chest.

Then you change the topic.

*

The Delhi Metro. Crowded basement level of Rajiv Chowk.
Half of the city's population gathered to catch a Sunday evening shuttle to Jahangirpuri ("What's so friggin' special about Jahangirpuri at 5:45 on a Sunday evening?").
The other half hell-bent on going towards Huda City Centre with you ("What's so friggin' special about" etc).

You're accompanying a friend who happens to be female and kinda skeptical about riding twelve stations in close proximity to a few dozen of Delhi's finest sons, but that's not the kicker.
You have a heavy bag to attend to, but that's not it, either.

The thing is, your friend happens to be mad at you.
And as anyone who's ever accompanied an irate female onto the Delhi metro will tell you - there's only one direction a story like that can take, and it's not up.

Farthest thing from it, to be honest.

*

The train rolls in, your standard 6-coach Bombardier.

Your friend enters the first coach unscathed - the first car in the moving direction is comparatively free of the ladies it is reserved for, and you're thankful for small mercies as you simultaneously tread on two guys' toes while a third tries his best to get to fifth base with you.

"Wrong team, buddy," you mutter to him as you cut through the other people between you and the first compartment. He probably doesn't get it.
What he does get, however, is the heavy bag you were attending to (remember?) - right across the testicular region. The bag refuses to travel next to you, and every swing manages to club somebody in either the gut or the shin.

Then you're at the rubber accordion between the first and second compartments.
And the look on your friend's face suggests playtime is over.

*

The next fifteen minutes are excruciating, to say the least.

Like all the best arguments, the original bone of contention has been buried somewhere in the folds of history, roughly between Nirman Vihar and Lakshmi Nagar by your estimate - it will lie there, humming to itself and getting fossilized until some offhand remark in some other argument brings it back to the fore.

ding
Next station.. is. Central Secretariat.

"What exactly are you mad about?" you ask, giving your equivalent of a disarming smile.
"I'm not mad," your friend insists, and the look on her face wipes out any hope of a speedy resolution like brown rings on a glass table.
"Say, I brought you chocolate!" you exclaim, clutching at straws. You don't think she could look at you any more hatefully.
Like all the best friends, she is full of surprises.
"I don't want your chocolate.. And I'm not mad," she repeats. "I just think you should stop needlessly exerting yourself on my account."

ding
Udyog Bhawan. Station.

"Isn't it weird how they pause randomly in the middle of the announcements?"
"It is. You know what else is weird?"
"What?"
"That you're still talking to me. Didn't I tell you to shut up?"
"Heh."

The guy standing next to you on the divider turns to his respective female counterpart.
"Well," he declaims loudly. "At least I'm not a stalker."
She finds that funny, for some reason. You label the guy Mismatched Polo Shirt in your head and dismiss the girl as too easily appeased.
Where's the challenge in that?

ding
Race Course. Station. Mind the gap.

"You know what I think?"
"Didn't I tell you to stop-"
"Yeah, yeah. Listen. Remember Bharat?"
"What about him?"
"He pulls this trick, sometimes."
"On whom?"
"Well. Me, for the most part."
"Does it get you to shut up?"
"Um. Yeah, but that's not the point."
"No, seriously. What's the trick?"
"Would you listen?! Okay, I didn't mean to raise my voice, but- excuse me?"

She turns away.
"Friendly spat," you tell Polo amicably, but he leans away and is suddenly absorbed by his female companion, who gives you a dirty glare.

The guy standing opposite you keeps his mouth shut, sharing an earphone with his respective female companion.
Is the whole world whipped? You wonder, suddenly missing the guy who almost got to fifth with you.

Nothing like a little ol' fashioned chemistry.

ding
Jor Bagh. Station.

Polo attempting to convince the girl to help with his laundry. Laundry almost certainly a euphemism, given the sort of glances they keep passing each other and everyone else present.

Earphone leaning comfortably on the divider, hand brushing against that of the woman next to him. Smiles on both faces.
Song playing on his phone possibly some old favourite.

Bharat's Rule n. an old adage which states that in any random congregation of three people with sufficiently similar backgrounds, two will probably be chutiyas.

An inexpertly-wrapped piece of dark chocolate melting slowly in your pocket.

ding
INA. Station.

"Did you hear that? Emphasis on random letters," you say to your friend.
"Still not talking to you," your friend says to you.
"But it wasn't all that bad!" Polo says to his friend.
"You're this close to doing your laundry alone. By hand," Polo's friend says to him.
"All right, son, let's go," a policeman with a unibrow says to you.

Well, they did it. They've finally outlawed beards, you think dazedly, but then you see two other policemen putting Polo and Earphone through the same motions.
Both of them clean-shaven and looking considerably more wholesome than you.

You follow the policeman, still in a daze, and then you're off the train.
This particular phase of your journey is over.

*

"Why exactly were we hauled off?" Polo asks hotly.
"Is it a crime to share music?" Earphone demands to know.
"We're getting kinda late," you mumble, but nobody cares to listen.

"Baat ye hai, sir, ki camera mein aapki tasveer aa gayi hai. Aap bolo toh control room chal ke dikha dein," Unibrow says all of this in a drab monotone.
"Photo of what?"
"It was just an earphone!"
"Aap connector pe travel kar rahe they," Unibrow gives a triumphant smile, as if he's just managed to eff the ineffable once and for all.

"What's happening here?"
"I'm not sure," you say to your friend. "Didn't I tell you to stay on the train?"
"And miss all the fun? Dude! I'm kidding!"

But you stride on after the phalanx marching towards the escalator. You jab a brutal elbow at the next train, the expression on your face suggesting you might never see each other again, but your friend merely rolls her eyes and follows you.

*

The control room contains a thin policeman with a squint, a man sitting before a bank of monitors in the trademark yellow shirt and red tie of Metro officials, and your new best friend Unibrow.

They play a round of Good Cop-Bad Cop-Clueless Desk Jockey for your benefit.

-Rules are rules, son.
-Aapko pehle se dhyaan rakhna chahiye tha.
-There's footage proving conclusively that
-You wouldn't be here unless the situation was
-Camera jhooth toh bolega nahi
-I can bring it up on the monitors if you
-it's highly disappointing
-Roz hazaron log wahi galtiyan karte hain
-very sophisticated technology
-look like decent kids
-Phir ek jaise bahaane banatey hain
-easy to keep track of such things
-Regrettable, but there you go
-Ham bewakoof hain kya yahaan par?
-Two fifty rupees fine

"Per head," they finish in unison.

You wouldn't believe a friend telling you a story like this. But it's actually happening. Right now.
Your hand creeps gingerly towards the pocket where you keep your cash.

*

Earphone takes his chance.
"It's my first day in the City," he announces proudly. "I wasn't aware that we're not supposed to travel at the front. It's an honest mistake, but I'm sure you'll understand. I'm a guest to your City."
He stands there, waiting for the Delhi Tourism jingle to strike up somewhere in the background.

In the meantime, you wince.

Your entire argument revolved around a refusal to admit that travelling on the connectors was an offense - there have never been any announcements to the effect, no noticeboards warning against such a heinous crime - and now your friend has gone and pleaded guilty for something that is not against any known rules. Your argument sinks without a trace.
It was a flimsy argument, but it was also the only one you had.

Polo steps up to bat. You know his track record is poor - fifteen minutes of travelling with him have all but proven his propensity to spout utter garbage ("Allo, pot? Ees kettle calling- you black!") - but you hope against hope that he'll see sense and not say something that will screw things up even more.

"We were travelling on the connector, yes," Polo begins confidently. Earphone nods his approval - you tell 'em, buddy - "But it's not like we were in the women's compartment! I mean, I'm not a stalker! I didn't molest a woman! Neither did I try to grope anyone in the crowd-although, let me tell you, it would've been easy, the way we were packed at Rajiv Chowk."

You take a step back, away from the guy, your body language literally yelling that you have nothing to do with him - but the damage is done.

"Kya bola bhai tuney abhi?" Unibrow is talking to Polo but it's your beard he is eyeing up.
"Kuch galat thode bola, sir! I'm from a respectable family!"
"But how could you even think such a thing?" Squint appears shocked to the core of his existence.
The Controller merely shrugs, lets out a regretful tsk, and passes the challan booklet to Squint.

You stand at the back, hand in pocket, watching both Polo and Earphone pass thousand-rupee notes and exclaim that someone will hear about this.

*

"Next," Squint says, and you walk miserably up to him.
"There are no notices anywhere about this," you begin. "How can you-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know." he doesn't really look you in the eye. "This money isn't going in our pockets, you know. It will be passed forward to the PMO. You can lodge a PLI, wait an year or two, and maybe get it back later. As of now it is a national resource. Pass it forward!"

You consider your national resources.

"I have just a hundred and fifty on me," you say. "What now?"
"Now? Now? Now you call home and ask someone to come pay for you."
"That's not feasible," you say. Unibrow chuckles appreciatively.
"Kahaan se ho?"
"Karkardooma," you say. "Blue line."
"Ho kahaan se?"
"Faizabad." you shift uncomfortably. "Look. I am not calling anyone from either place to cover for me."
Squint laughs at that.
"What about your lady friend?"
"My cousin," you say it sharply enough, but they've seen enough roadside Romeos to not believe you.
"Yeah. Her. Call her here."

"Wait!" the hand cowering in the pocket finds something usable. "I have my metro card!"
"Return it, then," Both Squint and the Controller look disappointed. Unibrow continues to leer. "Let's hope you get a hundred for it."

You walk from the Control Room to the Customer Service Center, your new best friend coming halfway with you and watching the rest of your progress closely.

The card yields 115 bucks and a receipt.

Your female friend catches your gaze from the other side of the security check, raising her eyebrows, wanting to know if she should come out.

You do the brutal elbow jab again.
She rolls her eyes, yes, but there's also a hint of a smile at one corner of her mouth.

You don't smile back - not just yet - but you're grateful nonetheless.

Your friend in the Unibrow treats your return to a smile as well. But it doesn't have the same impact anymore.
Not even slightly.

*

ding
Green Park. Station.

Your friend begins to laugh.
You stare at her but say nothing.

You've gotten on the third compartment.
The second one was emptier but neither of you felt up to it.

"What?" You ask after her chuckles subside.
"Nothing," she smiles. "It was funny, is all."
"Of course it was, you sadist."
"Oh, it was harsh on you. I'm not denying that." She gives you a brief hug. "But-you know-it was also ridiculous. Don't you feel a bit like laughing, too? Just a little bit?"
"Not yet," you say. Her face falls slightly. But then you hug her back, equally briefly. "But I probably will. You know, on the way back."
"I think I would like that chocolate now."

*

Later, on the long ride back towards Rajiv Chowk, you realize how ridiculous it all was. And you laugh.

A cursory patting-down reveals the fifteen bucks left from your brief encounter with the Law.
The tenner you'll need for the bus fare back home. But the five rupee coin you hold up, over your head.
The year 2002 glints in the light.

"I think I'll keep you," you tell the coin, "as a reminder. You know? Maybe interesting things can happen to me, after all."

Then you think of Polo and Earphone again, and the two cops and the controller, and the chuckles don't subside fully until after you're home.

*

Bharat's Corollary n. an update on an old adage. It states that in a group of three people, if a person previously established as a chutiya attempts to sort out his act, the others shall be more than happy to compensate.

A Bad Day

So this was going to be a rant but it is not.

It has every right to be, I think. Things have been weird on both personal and creative fronts of late, and the past few days have been a different sort of pain - nothing particularly bad happens, the books are seldom in the red when you take stock at night, but there is a small feeling in the back of your mind that all your cynical notions about specific people and the world in general are being slowly but irrevocably reinforced.

All days but this day.

Had a (slightly) productive morning, an eventful afternoon and a good evening. It is just that the people I enjoy hanging with and the conversations we tend to have veer into melancholic territory, so a good discussion is generally not indicative of the state of mind it leaves one in.

Had been discussing Vonnegut (again) today - how his career graph shows his struggle with the growing sense of despair that he felt with regards to the world around him. He was of the opinion that we are all passable people as long as we concentrate on our intrinsic humanity; but he also believed that we were steadily losing our ability to recognize that fact.

The journey home was supposed to be brief, but it gave enough time to acquaint oneself with another poem in G.M. Muktibodh's repertoire. The poem was bleak, too. So I was in a slightly morose state of mind as I made my way up the looong escalator to the red line, to Welcome, towards home.

The red line was more crowded than the yellow at this point: most of the Jamna-paar workforce headed homewards at the end of a hard day's work. I wedged myself into the doorway, completed the Herculean task of turning around, and began making my way across the width of the compartment, since Welcome (unlike Kashmere Gate) is one of those few stations with an island platform that serves both rails.

In the end the crowd got a little too dense to handle, so I hung about in the middle as the train began its long journey to Shastri Park station.

It was while we crossed the Yamuna that I first noticed him: a short, thin man standing slightly to my right, positioned so that his dirty backpack was digging into my shirt. I shuffled a little to the right to minimize contact, and the resultant paradigm shift gave me an excellent view over his shoulder. The first three things I noticed (in order) were:

1.) The fact that he was missing a couple of nails

2.) The scar that ran down the side of his neck (stopping just before his jugular); and

3.) The fact that I would be forced to look at the screen of his phone unless I was willing to attempt another change in position.

A change in position was impossible, for now; I stayed put. Besides, the dude wasn't even reading any embarrassing texts or anything; all he was doing was going through his phonebook at a sedate pace. It was an interesting exercise; he had a nondescript moustache and no discerning marks to tell me his religion, and there were both an Amit Chacha and an Adil Mamu in his phonebook; was he another one of those lovechilds born out of the bounds of religion? And if yes, did he have an interesting story of his own?

Presently he came to somebody called Ashu. This Ashu seemed pretty interesting himself: he seemed to have numbers across every network! An Ashu was followed by an Ashu Airtel.. an Ashu Airtel (2).. An Ashu Docomo.. An Ashu Dolphin.

The first stirring of unease came with Ashu Hutch (2). I had a vague idea that they checked a person's records before handing him a new phoneline; a guy with seven numbers (eight now, and counting) had to show up as a pretty big blip on some radar somewhere.

By the time he finally reached Ashu Virgin (2) I was starting to get distinctly uncomfortable. My mind skipped over all the jokes about sexual inexperience that had no punchlines. And I listened closely as he pressed the green button and brought the handset next to his year.

"Main metro talag pahunch gaya hoon," he said. "Haan. Haan. Theek hai. Baad mein baat karta hoon."He hung up. His part of the conversation had been innocuous-I'm on the metro, I'll talk to you later-but his choice of words was slightly strange. Why would he say he had reached the metro? The metro was a path, not a destination!

ding

Said the PA system, followed by "Shastri Park.. Station."

The man with the scar reached forward into the crowd, cutting through to the door with an exaggerated sense of urgency, and he was at the head of the mass exodus that would follow within a moment or two.

ding

"Stand clear.. Of the doors."

And suddenly I could breathe, loosen my grip on the handhold, actually turn my head without establishing potentially-embarrassing eye contact with a perfect st-

And there it was.

Lying a couple of feet away, packed in a layer of newspapers and frayed twine, a rectangular crate the size of a large shoebox. Exactly where my friend with the scar had been standing.

I looked up blankly, uncomprehendingly, and the last thing I saw before the doors hummed shut was him, shoving his way through the crowds, trying so hard to get as far away as he could.

What followed were perhaps the longest four minutes of my life. Three people were standing equidistant from the crate - me towards the left, an old man with an apologetic face behind it, and a young guy in a black pullover with oversized headphones to the right. We broke the cardinal rule and established eye-contact, trying to establish if the crate belonged to one of us.

All we saw was our own confusion mirrored back.

There was absolute silence, and in my head I could already hear the rumble of the collapsing overpass, the flare of light and sound so bright and loud it would cause people miles away to flinch, the screams of the twisting girders drowning out the screams of the people onboard.

I probably wouldn't even get to scream.

ding.

"Seelampur.. Station."

I was pretty sure we'd've reached Dilshad Garden by now. I would get off, cross over to the other platform, catch a train back to Welcome, and laugh at my idiocy all the way. If only. If only. If only.

The doors opened.

"Y-ye bag kiska hai?" It was the guy with the oversized headphones. He had probably started off trying to sound nonchalant, but his voice had betrayed him on the first syllable itself.

"Kiska hai, bhai?" The old man this time. I wanted to get in my two cents, too, but I wasn't sure I could manage at this point.

The air was thickening. I was positive of that. It shouldn't have been so difficult to breathe.

"Mera! Mera bag hai." We all turned simultaneously. A middle-aged person rose from a seat behind us, his salt&pepper hair in a tizzy, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

He came forward to stand beside the crate, babbling disjointedly about inconsiderate morons who kick other people's luggage into the netherworld, and we finally relaxed a bit. The old person shook his head resignedly, the young man began humming (a bit too forcefully?) along to his music-an old Kishore number that I didn't mind being slaughtered. Not here. Not now.

I turned to the window and looked out. A pale face stared back at me, his expression completely blank, his complexion ashen.

It took another two minutes before my heart-rate returned to normal.

ding.

"Welcome," said the automated voice, and I laughed like an idiot as I got off the train.

I sat on a bench for a few minutes before making my way home, and turning on the PC, and beginning the entry I am about to end. There,. on the bench, I had a weird thought. I had a lot of weird thoughts, but this one has persisted through the bus ride, the inevitable scolding, and my dinner (which I have forgotten ten minutes after eating).

I know my thoughts and actions aren't completely in sync with the sort of life I lead - I have it easy, mostly, and the sort of melancholia I display (enjoy, suggests a small voice in my head) isn't exactly called for.

I am not going to justify anything I say or do - I have a right to lead my life the way I want, after all, and even five-car pileups are a rubbernecker's paradise - but I still think it is my life, and I have the right to infer the glass is half empty and whoever drank half and left are probably dying of thirst somewhere remote.

What I hate is being forced down certain paths by events beyond my control.

I had a bad day (or a good day that left no impression on me, if you want to be anal about this) and I hate the fact that I am feeling lucky to be alive.