Windfall...

I try not to name characters; not if I can help it. For me, pronouns suffice -- he, she, it, they. In names people search for meanings. In names people search for secrets and pasts.

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He strolled aimlessly between aisles of books, feeling at home. He had come to receive his friend from the railway station and the train was three hours late, no surprises there. What better way to burn up time, he thought, than walk around the closest shopping mall. After just fifteen minutes of wandering, his feet led him straight into his favourite spot in the mall. Now, he found himself reading the backsides of countless books, at peace in their redolence.

An hour later he was bored. Cursing the inimitable Indian Railways, he looked around, hopeless. Then he saw her, in a dark green salwar with a peacock blue duppatta loosely over her head, framing her face. Searching for serendipity is an irony in and of itself. But he would have been lying to himself if he said he had never hoped for something like this. A few shelves away, facing him, she stood, absorbed in a paperback (is that a Murakami?). When her eyes met his, it was as if he was gazing at the clear azure sky.

It was not like the opulent movie sets; wind did not play with strands of her hair, there was no violin background music playing, the people around did not go brain-dead and start dancing in synchro. It is said that every person has his own heaven within him. It was not as if when he laid eyes on her, he found his way to it. He never believed in love at first sight and sure as hell hoped he was not that shallow. For years he had been convincing his less decisive friends about the naivety of it, denouncing it as being similar to the chemicals produced in response to eating a few bars of chocolate.

Except, now he felt as if he had just devoured a truckload of chocolate. And that day he knew why it is said ‘to fall’ for someone. You know that moment when you miss a step while walking down the stairs, the miss of a heartbeat, the moment before your feet finds solid ground again. Most confuse it with fear, but the fear comes only after the solid ground part. The elapsed time in between the slip and the hit at the bottom of wanton reality, the moments in between, they just take your breath away.

She caught him staring and with the indifference inherent to the feminine charm, looked away. But he stood there, with the wind knocked out of his lungs, staring. He could see his cold logic-obsessed psyche whipped black and blue right in front of his eyes by some invisible, insurmountable force. He could see all his convictions and prejudiced notions crumbling around him in a heap of shadows and dust. She must have sensed him staring, for she looked again at him, arched an eyebrow and looked away again, like a pair of startled birds flying away from a devout dilettante. He realised he was holding his breath from the moment he saw her. He saw his psyche in an inexorable chokehold, desperately trying to tap-out. To him, the world now looked as if through a sharply focussed high definition camera, with her in front and chaos all around.

Serendipity occurs once or twice, and for the precious lucky few, it occurs all in the right time. From amidst the chaos around, he saw another female emerge and talk to ‘the’ girl. This second girl looked familiar and he recognised her as one of his long lost classmates in school. He watched them talk for about a minute and then she looked across the shop, saw him standing there. One moment and then recognition lit up her face, smiling and waving, she walked over to him.

For first five minutes he followed the harebrained social etiquette to be followed on meeting a friend after a long time. He almost counted off those three hundred agonising seconds. Once the whereabouts and what-to-dos were over, he asked, as casually as he could manage, heart pumping as if the whole Indian subcontinent depended dearly on it for its power supply, “So, who is your fiend over there?”

Even from schooldays the girl had known him to be a cynic of the highest degree, someone who regarded almost everything around him with egregious disdain, who used words like 'egregious'. With barely concealed glee and an even more barely concealed smirk, she asked, “Oooh!! But why ask?” The smirk lingered. She turned around and waved at ‘the’ girl and she waved back at her. In imax horror, he watched his hand wave at her as well. The corners of her lips betrayed hesitant amusement, eyes widened a fraction in surprise followed by confusion.

“No, simply,” he choked out, clearing his mouth, forcing his eyes (which seemed to have developed a separate consciousness, making incoherent decisions and sporadic movements) back to his friend.

“Hmmmm,” said his long-lost, opportunistic, facetious new-found-best-friend, the smirk never leaving her mouth, “She is my batchmate in college. Her name is ………”

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Names are curious things. They give you identity, religion, cultural assumptions, ethnicity. They convey a myriad of inferred information, subject to interpretation and misinterpretation.  When you hear names the first thing that you perceive, maybe right after categorising them male-female, is their religion. When you read Arjun, Zoya, Iqbal, George, Ethan, Arushi, you start labelling in your subconscious, Hindu, Muslim, Muslim, Christian, Christian, Hindu. If there is a surname, the more the merrier. This is something ingrained in us, by years and years of subliminal messaging by the hypocritical society around us. Without explicitly telling us, we are being trained, with exceptional diligence, to label, categorise, stereotype, recognise.

I do not name my characters, not if I can help it. In names people search for meanings, secrets, pasts. In names people search for ways to judge; ways to differentiate and discriminate.

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As his long-lost, opportunistic, facetious, new-found-best-friend told him ‘the’ girl’s name without the smirk ever leaving her face, he realised what he knew in his gut was true.

The duppatta covering her head, framing her face, giving her the glow which deprived his lungs of fresh air, was in direct contradiction to the thin, white sacred thread which he adorned under his shirt, across his torso.

A hornet’s nest… Collateral in some primordial cosmic war between Gods….

He shook his head and smiled to himself. His logic-obsessed psyche which was choked out from yellow to magenta through different shades of blue, was now panting on the ground, with a triumphant ‘i-told-you-so’ expression on its harassed face.

It was not like those melancholic movie sets; the heavens did not thunder upon the revelation, no plaintive background scores played, no fake tears were shed. It is said that every person has his private piece of hell within him. It was not as if he had found his way to it. He never believed in bitter heartaches and sure as hell hoped he was not that shallow.

He bid goodbye to his smirking friend, looking at his watch and lying that the train might have arrived. He walked resolutely across the shop, without turning back to look at ‘her’ once.

But then again… At the doorway of the shop, ignoring the tortured screams of his horrified psyche, he turned around once again.

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French philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, ‘We are our choices’. Maybe not… Maybe even more than the things we choose, we are those that we lost, given up, let go..