Journey Across The Street

Journey Across The Street Madhusudhan R.

Journey Across The Street Madhusudhan R.

www.whitefalconpublishing.com All rights reserved First Edition, 2017 Copyright © 2017 Madhusudhan R. Cover design © 2017 by White Falcon Publishing Cover image © to Pixabay.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the Author. Requests for permission should be addressed to [email protected] ISBN - 978-1-947293-41-0

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1 The sky had begun to lose its blue to the darker hues of

an unseasoned storm. Sooner or later, like a boomerang, everything makes its way back to us. Everything is re-directed towards its origin, every action rewarded; one by one or all at once. The day had put me on the receiving side. My heart felt heavier. It seemed like I had lost it all, except for the will to hold on and stay strong. I had not seen it coming. I was sitting on the hipped terrace of my pent-house that evening. Due to the thicket on either side of the street, no one could notice me here. I could see the entire city lighting up slowly. It wasn’t my first time here. I sat here every time I was happy and every time I was sad. Everyone has a safe haven in this world where it is quiet enough for them to listen to their inner voice and this place was mine; one place where I  could find my solitude. The Mangalore-earthen tiles, with which the terrace was made of, knew a lot about me; more than anyone else ever did. They had gazed at the stars with me during the night, joined my laughter during success and also sunken many of my tear drops. I was early that evening. The stars were not out yet and the birds were onward to their nests. Though my

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eyes were wet, I did not cry. Crying is easy, what is hard, is trying not to. The unfortunate turn of events since morning had knocked me to my knees. I had to get up, I knew. I  always wanted to be popular. I  wanted people to know me for who I  was and what I  did. But this day had made me popular for all the wrong reasons. People started to recognize me for what I did not do. I wished people would ignore me as they ignored most of the things in this world, but being accused of a crime was not something that anyone would forget in a day or two; it is not every day that the police takes one into custody for interrogation. Being the prime suspect for any crime is not something anyone wishes to be. I wanted my dad to smile and be proud of me again. I so wanted to stop my mom from crying. I  wanted to prove myself right but had no idea what to do. I had to pull myself together, gather my lost courage and find out where she was. I did not know if I should feel sad for what had happened to her or be angry for the kind of girl she was. It all started with my obsession with the stories. There was something about the tales, their mysteries, the emotions filled in them and their ability to take me off to the unknown that pulled me towards them since childhood. I believed I was not the only one with this kind of fixation to stories. At least that is what I kept telling myself so that I wouldn’t feel weird about this facet of mine. The Words‘let me tell you a story’ can enliven anyone on this planet, even someone on death bed. I liked them so much that I turned into a story teller. And before I could realise, the storytelling habit, turned into my passion. I  grew up with the imaginary stories that I used to cook up about the lives of the people I saw

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madhusudhan r. on the streets. I grew up imagining the conversation a person would have with himself. ‘What would an old man think as he rode his rusty scooter back home from work? What might be going on in his life? Is he happy? Is he still fighting for something?’ I  wanted to know how the life of an ambulance driver was! How many lives would he have saved? How many tears would he have seen? There were times when Postmen started to seem like heroes to me; for the number of stories that they were part of. I imagined every life that I could not live. It was fun back then. As they say, a person is the sum of his life experiences, but life had never been hard on me, which might be the reason for most of my stories not being serious. I  liked narrating stories that were lively and funny, the kind of stories that instigate people to think. For me, every life had a story. And every story, when told in a beautiful way, had a life. A story, most of the times, is a beautiful lie that we tell others or ourselves; a fancy lie with exaggerated and fascinating situations so that the listener would forget all his pain and smile, laugh, and rejoice at the victory of the protagonist or if not, at least comfort his soul saying that he is not alone in the struggle. The plots for the story of our lives have already been written by the puppeteer above us, but it is we, who choose the genre in which our story will be narrated once we are done playing the character. I  had to find a way out of all the mess I  was in. I wiped my tears and started to think where my story/ life went wrong. I  started to evoke everything that happened from the day it all started.

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2 Aroma of the freshly brewed coffee brightened my

eyes. The wind chimes played softly to the tune of the gentle morning breeze. The morning sun had just begun to warm the air. The coffee bar, that I  was in, was beautifully painted. The early sun rays helped the fumes over the hot coffee, placed on the table, to form an elegant dancing shadow over my laptop. Just as I thought that the day could not get any better, a girl who seemed like the only purpose of her life was to be beautiful and make this world a better place to live in, took a table next to mine. Our eyes met and she smiled as she sat down. I offered my silent prayer to the universe, as a token of gratitude. I  smiled back at her and asked, “Do you talk as sweetly as you smile?” “I  don’t know,” she said with a mild laugh turning towards me, “What do you think?” There was an obvious blush and an uncontrollable smile on her face. “I guess I’ll have to spend a lot of time with you, to know that,” I said, drooling all over her. Now that I had her attention, there was no stopping. “You seem to be good at this,” she seemed impressed. I took a sip from my coffee, turned to her and said, “Not always. It depends on the person of interest.”

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madhusudhan r. I paused for a moment and continued, “A strong cup of coffee like this and a pleasant smile like yours is all that I need in the morning. And I wouldn’t mind taking shit from my boss at work all day.” Her laugh syncopated with the wind chimes. It was perfect. That laugh was more than enough to indicate that my words were working just fine. The guy at the next table could hear our little conversation. We were loud enough for that. “You seem to hate your job!!” “Oh! ‘Hate’ is a strong word but surely not the wrong one to use,” I rhymed. “You hate your job too?” “No! No! I Love my job.” “Love enough to work on weekends too?” I pretended to be curious. “What? No...” she said the obvious and I  was stupid enough not to know that, but my intentions were different. “Then how about we meet this Saturday over a cup of coffee? You can smile at me all through the evening till it is dark and I walk you back home,” I flirted. “Sure,” came an instant reply, with a smile bright enough to light up the whole cafe. “I’ll call you then,” I said and she nodded. “I said I’ll call you,” I repeated. “Oh, sorry!” She said slapping her head and wrote down her number on a paper napkin from the table. We spoke for a little longer before she left. The guy on the next table seemed like the one whose sole purpose of existence was to listen to our talk. “Dude, listening to talks is free but I guess you should order something to be here,” I said sarcastically to the guy as soon as she left. “How do you guys manage to talk to women like that?” he asked, completely ignoring my comment. “My

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tongue goes numb every time I see a girl.” He seemed to be impressed and I took pride in it. “Starting with the tongue every muscle in my body freezes whenever I  speak to women!” He sounded pathetic. “Look my dear stranger, women love to laugh, especially at men. They feel confident and start feeling comfortable around you. Be a humorist. Make them laugh. And that is when you strike!” I taught him and what followed was a fifteen minute knowledge sharing session. The topics varied from psychology to sex life. “Enough theory, time for some practice,” I announced, looking at the girl sitting alone at a table reading a novel. “What?? Now...? What if something goes wrong? What if she slaps me?” he was too scared to approach her. “Thomas Alva Edison failed ten thousand times before inventing the light bulb,” I said and pushed him towards her table. The feeling of being superior to him had really gotten into me. Now that she had seen him stumble in front of her and he was in her zone, there was no other option but to initiate a conversation with her. I walked out of the cafe and sat in my car which was parked across the street. I  lowered the window so that I  could see them talking through the glass walls of the cafe. They spoke for a while and he left with her number. My plan had worked. As soon as he left, the girl came running towards me. She got into my car and said, “Thank you so very much, guys!! If you guys had not intervened, he would have never spoken to me. You both are my best friends forever,” she said to me and the girl sitting in the back seat. The girl in the back seat was the one I had flirted with, in the cafe earlier. She hugged us both and that’s when the screen froze.

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madhusudhan r. “A Game Called Love” words appeared on the big screen. “Concept and Direction, Goutham Jain” appeared on the right bottom corner. The entire auditorium echoed with applause and whistles. The auditorium was packed with students. The entire cafe scene had taken place on the big screen of my college auditorium. The audience loved it. It was my ninth short film. Short films were the medium I had chosen to narrate the stories in my mind. Have I  mentioned that I  loved narrating intelligent stories? The stories that made people think? The stories I  used to write were similar to sex. Literally. Where one wouldn’t know why people are doing what they are doing, but finally there will be an ‘Aha moment’ similar to an orgasm, when everything makes sense and seems worthy. The concept given to us was ‘love aaj kal’. I was in my final year of engineering. These short films contributed to my popularity in the college. Not as popular that everyone would surround me for autographs (which I secretly wished for), but popular enough for most of them, if not everyone, to know who I was. I had formed a crew of five (including me). Four of us were seen in the film and the fifth was our camera guy. Our short film was announced to be the winner. And as we walked back to our seats from the stage after collecting the prize money; a hurt butt in the crowd (there is always one) shouted, “Lucky Bastards...” Before I could react to the comment, Deekshith, my camera-guy replied, “Dear bitches!” He had a fairing attitude for comments like these, “You see... Success is like a Fart. You can’t handle it around you, unless it’s yours. So if you can’t ignore our Fart... I mean Success...

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You need to run and save yourself.” The auditorium exploded with applause and Deekshith took a bow. I  enjoyed their envy and jealousy more than my success. And Deekshith’s perfect reply to shut them up added a little more life to it. By the way, my name is Goutham Jain and this is how the story of my life unfolded.

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3 We received a cash prize of twenty thousand rupees

and we divided it equally among ourselves. One would say that I deserve more than the share I received for the amount of thought and time I  had invested in it, but unfortunately, I  could not find the one who could say that. I  would not ask for it either because it was not ‘morally-right’. Ugh! Who makes these rules? Now that we had money, we had to blow it away on shopping. None of us had the mentality of saving. We did not have anything to worry about. All the problems that we had were first world problems. Most frustrating thing in our life was downloading a song over 2G network. Dying of boredom was our worst death. We’d feel most violated on being charged extra for the dips when we bought garlic bread. I  mean, who on earth would just eat garlic bread without the dip?? The dip should be complimentary. But this does not imply that we all belonged to wealthy families. We were all based out of Bangalore. Our families belonged to a class of the society where we were not rich enough to be called rich but we were a little richer than the typical upper middle class. We were somewhere in the middle. Struggling to be rich and desperately fighting not to be called as upper middle

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