Waiting Room

an essay about slow moving life

It has been a long travel and a rough night yesterday. Although I slept a good lord’s sleep and emptied my bowel as much as I could, my stomach is still full and there is a feeling that I am carrying a small baby made up of stones inside me. I am sitting in a supposedly AC waiting room, and looking at faces as I write. Its dark out here and I could hear murmurs all around. I don’t know which language, as I am an alien to the South Indian land. I do look like a south Indian, owing to the thin mustache that I possess and my dark brown color. I kind of like this color…not dark, but a faded version of it. This is the color of the soil in which I grew up. Moreover it is the color of romance…depth…coffee…chocolate…love and hugs! May be this is how I see it. There is a mystery in this color and there are secrets hidden inside it. I remember wandering in reserve forests of Kalibheet in south Madhya Pradesh. There I had seen an abandoned palace of a prince and several Shiva temples around it, broken. It was a treasure lying over there. I walked inside each temple just to find a number of bats, vulgar graffiti and stinky soil. It must have been a much better place before. I had touched temple walls; I had recalled the voice of history that made me go crazy. I had hugged the oldest fig trees that were surviving and felt the love that I always wanted. I had smelled moist soil and played mouth organ in the darkest nights sitting on a cliff. I have always felt the love that I always wanted in all the non-living things…but least I have got from girls I have had except one or two.

        

I see a girl moving here and there, carrying a sack on her shoulders. My luggage is lying in a corner. I have two big bags…two rucksacks of 80 and 65 liters and a camera bag. I do not use my camera much, but it’s there…just in case! Sometimes it’s better to treat your belongings as if they don’t really belong to you. Its good…not caring for something which you value the most, so that people around you won’t think that there is anything much valuable in it. I see them lying in a corner, like helpless b******s. What would be the world for them without me? Nothing! They are non-living. It is me trying to get attached and detached from things around. I look at the girl’s face. She looks tired…may be a rough night, a broken heart, a bad stomach, headache or worry that prevails everywhere like ether! I feel an urge to urinate. I leave the room and rush towards the loo. There is a man sitting near the door with coins lying in front of him. He asks me for 2 rupees. I don’t like it. Why should I pay? Pay for something which is very natural and happens frequently to a man in a day. It is not even as if someone is going to help me relieve myself. The worst thing is paying for going into an unclean, stinky room just to make it worst. I pay him 2 rupees and he allows me to enter. I go, urinate, take my time…force the bladder to empty it fully, so that I wouldn’t need to go back and spend 2 rupees on it. I see myself in the mirror, make my hair…they have been shapeless since last twenty years. I wrap the muffler around my neck and appreciate my look. I have not grown enough to understand that I have become a man. I go to a coffee shop, buy a cup of hot coffee. These South Indians are the best at making coffee…but forget about tea! I sit on an iron chair, watching around as I sip my coffee to warm my cold neck. I remember some of my longest waiting periods that I had gone through in last few years…at airports, railway stations, bus stands, dream-lands and in love-life. I used to read books, wander around, look at people, observe them, observe the traffic, read the name-plates of the shops, write stuff, think and remember the happiest moments in my life. People are such an entertainment for empty mind and curious eyes. They quarrel, there are break ups happening all around throughout the year, they make love and think that there is no-one to notice them; they laugh and fall in love; they get drunk and cry like anything…there is a lot to get entertained from them. I must have been someone’s entertainment sometime or the other…may be now, as I write! Positions keep changing…wheels keep moving. I think I should go and smoke…but I don’t smoke. Sometimes I feel bad that I do not smoke. Smoking might be giving freedom to announce the loneliness, aloofness or being haunted by something…but I don’t think; it’s worth it. I might have mere attraction to such things. I have tried the stuff, but it didn’t enlighten me nor did it reduce my heartache. I call my friend and share a joke or two. I tell him about my latest crush and he warns me to be careful with girls! May be this is my habit…my smoke…getting into someone and then wanting to be there for the rest of my life. Am I haunted by the brown patch? Many a times it doesn’t work out and I feel lonely, helpless and powerless. May be he is right…I should be careful. But how can one like someone and not love, and leave her when time or place is inappropriate. I have had the darkest of love which anyone can give me and I have returned it with the same passion every time! How can I betray someone’s trust that is lying in my arms and wanting to be loved? I am an honest guy and follower of Shiva-the passionate lover; though I do not pray or go to temples regularly! I have got a good sense of humor and some of the girls find me a romantic person. I do not like to hop person to person. I want to win a heart permanently and forever, not on a temporary basis. The aftermath of heartbreak has been terrible with me. It has taken away my piece of mind and instead has compelled me to write stories of betrayal…full of sadness. It has compelled me to look around for a new mate and a person which will be there with me forever. There are people in my life on which I wrote stories after stories…when they were with me or not. There are people which I imagined to be living and wrote stories on them…just to finally find out that the imaginary character resembles my past acquaintances of one of the crushes I have had. Their memories are buried inside this stupid mind of mine and I am not able to get rid of them. It is better to live in real life than in virtual. I try it hard, but when it comes to writing…it comes from the dark brown patch in my mind and I can’t control it.

I board the bus. It’s half an hour late. My co-passenger is a girl in her mid twenties, sitting beside me. She is a foreigner with blue eyes. She is not beautiful, although in a European look. Do I need to talk to her or don’t I? Would I talk to my co-passenger if he is a male or something other than a female? Would I talk to my co-passenger if she is a female but not a foreigner and an ugly fat-a*s girl? I don’t know. I turn and welcome her with a `hello’. She greets me, tells her name. We talk a little bit, I look outside the window…I am leaving the bus-station and there are people waiting for something. Have I really moved out of the room? I do not speak with a word to Ritz who is sitting beside me. She is a teacher, graduated from Oxford with a degree in chemistry and now teaching in a school in Tamil Nadu. I am a researcher working on birds in Central India. I look at her; she is sleeping with her hands folded. She has a bunch of bananas in her hands…she is wearing a sky blue jacket and her hair are brown. I remember my friend’s advice. What’s there in life to achieve? Smoke…I say not worth it…someone’s heart…may be not worth it…but I would like to. It is going to be a long-long journey and a tiresome, boring waiting period. That’s life.