Looking Glass

A look @ the life of a Professional...

Early November �"

Mohan has just moved into the glamour clad urban suburbs of Bangalore, after landing a high profile job in a Multi-national. His transition wasn't smooth, but he is getting used to it. It's been two days since he moved into his new apartment. It’s a stylised two-bedroom apartment, on the 8th floor situated at a rather posh locality. Vivid pictures of how he is going to rejuvenate the place altogether, refuse to leave him at peace. Ideas of all sorts never fail to kindle his curious bones at regular intervals. The two bedrooms’ lying at opposite ends, made the perfect first impression for him to choose this place. And now, he can’t resist grinning. He would smile at the spacious apartment, and feel a need for a shopping-spree every time he stared at it.

Each of the rooms had a window, the plain wooden kind, with deserted spider-webs visible from a distance, carefully knitted with a greyish-black grill. Most of Mohan’s free time was taken up, looking out of it. Every time he looked out of it, they told him a strictly different tale. A tale about how different, yet how elegantly similar everybody around him is. Being from a backward-class poverty-ridden rural area, it was even more interesting for him to make silent remarks on the everyday urban lives.

Mohan was particularly fond of the room to the north. Every day, when he looked down from the window, he could spot varied lifestyles, from armored “Black-coat” businessmen, to daily labourer’s towing truck-loads of stuff for a living. Everyday he used to lie silently, gazing at the vastness of the outside world from the vicinity of his tiny apartment, adding to the irony of it all.

The sight of the not so gifted kids, playing with just the handle-bars of thrown out plastic bags made him realize the crude realities of life. Growing up, he had never realized the wrath of his family in keeping him away from the sorrows of life. Yet, here he stands, amidst the glimpses of the past, and present, haunting him, questioning him. Every glimpse out of that window made him think; think harder than he had ever thought before. Every minute detail, he pointed out started to startle him.

As he stared at the little girl, who dreaded to ask for a supposedly luxurious doll, that she spotted at the hands of one of the school children, that passed them by everyday, the vibrant images of a not so barren childhood would paint itself in front of him. He would feel disheartened at the very thought of he, deserting his parents at this age.

He promised himself, “I would visit them, every chance I get.”

Mid June �"

Mohan, looks happy. He is just back from his honeymoon. The two-bedroom apartment is shrinking by the day. His rooms aren’t spacious enough anymore, to fit his newly bought furniture. The windows no longer open up for fresh air, as the central air-conditioning system demands for it. The deserted spider-webs can’t be spotted even with a magnifying lens. Neither is the window, as it stays half blocked by the huge new generation plasma television.

As he stands in front of the window, he can’t find the view anymore. The construction sites are filling up fast. And now, the enquiring view is replaced with a whitewash wall, which stands firmly blank, and mute.

He promised himself, “I would get a new apartment; I don’t like the view anymore!”