Awkward Estrangement

Vikas did not think of trees could be terrifying, he was a sadist, yes, the one who relies on guilty pleasures of life, teasing, seeing someone hurt or crying in wane, someone grieving over loss, teasing someone weak, who can’t help. The problem with society is they dig on a dead man’s grave, beat the dead body and leave the remains. Vikas wasn’t a typically social human being, but today he was trapped inside a cabin by the woods. Vikas was out on excursion, with him a friend and teacher Anurag who was listening to music on his mp3 player with his girlfriend outside his own cabin, there was a bonfire at a distance. It has become a necessity  now when you are done with your life in the hush and noise of cities, you have to take a break, resort to a place where you aren’t bothered about anything, let it be food, laundry, traveling, commutation, a good package and everything can be taken care of.

Green Velvet Resorts was a fine place, a bit costly, but everyone can manage that these days, income is sufficient. They got their huts rented, each hut was pretty distant from another one, inside forests that could be spooky but it is fun, most of the times, and that forest wasn’t known for wild animals but for birds. It was built by the side of a bird sanctuary and was fenced, no such threat otherwise but snakes and lizards can’t be avoided there. Long and dense vegetation seemed to calm down with violet evenings. It was soothing, green leaves, blue-velvet sky, white petals spread on the ground. Little area was cleared for the hut so in that premises sky was clear of trees and shadows that would filter out light from evening sun, so a fine streak of orange light was visible in the sky. Paths were also made by removing patches of trees these paths connected one hut to another and to the manager office, so it looked like trees then like a broken tooth from a jaw a gap that was a path, then trees and so on. Dwelling places were huts but they called it cabins, no one ever knew why or cared. May be earlier writers would come and write stories and each one preferred his own and would have booked the same hut every time, but that’s just a presumption. Vikas booked one in between the woods, he had an option to book one next to Anurag’s who preferred lake view and in summers he could see sunrise quite early every day, and this was dusk, so Anurag had a chair, a big one, his girlfriend sitting on his lap, almost lying on him while he was listening. Silence had its own beauty and charm, thought Vikas.

He took the 3^rd path counting from his left, it led to cabins by the lake. Paths were meticulous beauty, halogen lamps turned on, on the ground they put some yellow plants on either sides, so their flowers and petals would highlight that path. That way it looked bright yellow, so by now, it was dark sky, green leaves of trees, there they had put bulbs as well, then woods and then yellow corridors. He walked down that path, slowly he realized it was dark, and leaves deep in the dark rattled. Now this could be some small animal, rabbit, rodent, but Vikas freaked out. So he started walking faster. Now he was walking on petals and dead leaves so they started making sound as well and that animal probably freaked out by that and it started running so a cumulative effect was pretty scary and Vikas started running and suddenly ended up on the other end where the 2 of them were sitting who got baffled. Anurag’s girlfriend Chhavi who was constantly irritated by Vikas’ sadist jokes giggled after noticing the afraid look on Vikas’ face. “Ohh freaked out, kiddie, now you won’t pee without Papa standing by the side?” Chhavi was rarely mean, but somehow she had fun whenever Vikas was weak in anyway. Vikas had a high pulse rate at that moment and his angst triggered another poor joke, “And, I didn’t know you had incest feelings”, Chhavi realized it was foolish of her to talk to him she gazed in another direction with clenched eyebrows. Vikas took pleasure in that stupid victory, smirked.

Anurag didn’t know how to react, he turned Chhavi’s face towards his, and made a gesture, to express not to be bothered by this loser. Chhavi squinted in the direction where Vikas was standing, then returned to her boyfriend, decoded the gesture and relaxed & restored her original posture, but this time with her face in the opposite direction. The lights on the trees were lighting up the evening and suddenly there was power cut, so the bonfire was the only lighting source and Vikas freaked out all over again, spouted slangs and Chhavi Burst out laughing along with Anurag, they both relaxed and retained their posture all over again, no one said anything after that.

Vikas pulled a chair from their cabin and sat across them. It was a remote area, so power cuts were normal but usually it happened in day time when they went for rock climbing, boating etc. so they didn’t notice it, manager had already told them that this might happen and they were well discounted for that as well. So, power supply was not resuming for the next 2 hours, while Vikas had freaked out and couple had lightened, the best thing they could do is talk in that darkness lit by the fire. Somehow people enjoy that more than anything. And many times intruding each others’ brains was such a pleasure. Sometimes people talk so that they could defeat the war of words and set an impression in front of everyone, such that they would praise him or her behind his back. Few of them are ready for being the “bitched about” topic. Few of them talk to impress girls if there is a gang, few of them talk out of the obsession, while some intend to share their angst but aren’t ready to accept others’, the “Let me speak and I don’t care who else wants to” kind. For that you need a gathering, here it was a relatively smaller one, 3 people, but 3 have enough to talk for, for the next 2 hours.

But having a couple is a problem. They won’t talk, they dwell in some kind of unsaid happy scenario, and would enjoy sitting, just that and as if they were talking but were not speaking, wireless communication marvel, Vikas being an engineer, thought. It was silence, crickets were chirping but it was silence. Pleasure, Vikas thought and relaxed on his chair. The Chair was a short in height, slanting backrest armchair. Pretty comfortable, on a similar one on the opposite sat Anurag, on him his girlfriend sat, almost lying with her head facing right, on his chest, right hand on the pocket, her eyes were almost closed, her left hand around his waist one earphone in his right ear another one in her left ear, which was not visible. Vikas was simply seeing the fire, it was on his right, he didn’t have a thought, but wanted to talk, may be to interrupt their romance and attract their attention towards him, but he thought otherwise rather decided to keep quit, and, he sighed.

That’s it, they got interrupted, wherever they were and whatever they were talking without speaking, they left it unconsciously behind, forgot it and returned to the woods, and came to their senses that they are having a power cut. “Shameless you guys”, Vikas took that opportunity to speak out and feel as if they all were together and he too existed, that when he was looking at the fire and throwing leaves into it. This is a necessary evil in human beings, proving existence in front of others even when others know you, perhaps that is sometimes a foundation for success in life. But most of the times people have strange behavior, one who listens exists for the speaker, the speaker who is impressive exists for the listener and rest aren’t really substantial. To some extent, grownups have same desires and fears as those of children, slightly modified may be, but yes they do. On Vikas’ quotation, the couple was perplexed, Chhavi sat upright in attention, they looked at him as he threw leaves and wood into the fire and then he turned around and met their confounded gaze, he couldn’t resist the temptation to speak as the other 2 waited for a following statement, “I am here guys, you know”, he waited for few moments and then carried on, “I am alive, and I am bored and I don’t have a better half to me as you do”. Chhavi relaxed and Anurag smiled as they again returned to their original postures, but Anurag took this opportunity and speak up, as the 3 of them relaxed on their backs, Chhavi and Anurag were now facing Vikas, “What freaked you out when you were coming?”

“Some sounds, rattling ones, as if someone was chasing me”

 “that could be a rat or a rabbit or something else”

“He freaked out, and that was a sight, his face” Chhavi interfered as she chuckled. Chhavi was really, really cute, sometimes Vikas wondered if he liked her, and most of the times he did, and his poor sadist jokes were an attempt to show off a sense of humor he never had and so he usually irritated rather than impress.

“Ohh yeah, you might have fainted had you been there in that long scary pathway”, Vikas can’t let go of his ego and if someone jokes about anything related to him he would respond in an awkwardly twisted way, and Anurag being a teacher behaves as the peacemaker, so he spoke “Who asked you stay there, you had an option to book a cabin nearby, but no, you asked for isolation” “Isolation, hah, strange it is”, Chhavi added to his point and carried on “Now get spooked, you deserve it”. She is nice, he thought, his foolishness opened up her meanness, he looked into those woods, lit in a flickering manner, he could barely find the path but couldn’t see through it, it was dark on the other end as well. He turned back, faced them and said “I don’t know, you might call it strange, but that’s how I enjoy”

“Make sadist jokes, stay away, give others a creepy feeling and let them think what you might be thinking, it pleases you doesn’t it”, she somehow judged it the first time she met him. Sometimes few human beings can see through the other human beings, sometimes when they think a lot about the other one. It leads to multiple conclusions sometimes and sometimes few are right and sometimes all of them, but seldom wrong, it depends on the one evaluating and the one who is evaluated. This guy won’t speak the truth and that’s the only problem, she had thought many times before and the best way to get him normalized is the hard way, be rude and practical! And she concluded it right, when she spoke what she did, Vikas had to be uncomfortable, and he could not comprehend what struck him, he looked away, dark woods, he didn’t have a thought he was just seeing the woods, trying to build a response but he couldn’t, his mind was devoid of thoughts. “No one listens to you? Isn’t it?” That one line she said left him bewildered, he turned around, Anurag was smiling, she had discussed it before with him, but he wasn’t the right guy to normalize Vikas, he was his friend he rather left it behind, Chhavi was waiting for the right occasion, “you feel estranged, from whom you don’t know, but you feel like that, and then you make others feel about it, so anyone else who is around you, that might generate curiosity and listen to or talk to you. Isn’t that true?”

“What are you saying?” Vikas replied,

“I am simply saying you need not stay there in that cabin, in isolation”, Chhavi was perhaps confident she struck the right cord. She is wearing rings in her right hand on the index finger, pinky and thumb and also she is having bangles around her right wrist, he still couldn’t decode it, it made him uncomfortable, he was trying hard to make up for it, but all he could see was what was there in his plain sight, not anything his mind could reproduce that he would reply, he just said to say, “Its better like that and let it be”, Vikas then looked away when rattling sounds could be listened again, he looked up following that sound, a cat came out of the woods and then went back in another direction. Things aren’t bad unless you take them to be so, as he turned around faced the other 2, this thought crossed his mind, as if they said it and he read it, but they didn’t speak. Vikas looked away, into the fire, for few minutes no one spoke a word, silence is peaceful, why did I even come up to talk to them, he thought, because you wanted someone who would talk to you, immediately invaded his mind. “So what is the plan for tomorrow?” Anurag could sense that it was done and now it is okay to drift to other things.

“Brochure says boating, it starts at 10:00, so we have to be ready by 9:00 and the bus will be ready to take us, other tourists who are here will be joining.” Vikas promptly replied and continued “I have special wide angle lenses so that I get to capture scenery and…” he was interrupted by the power supply which resumed and bulbs were glowing again, and after noticing that Vikas carried on “ and the power supply is back…. So I better go back and read something, and the 2 of you get special attention tomorrow on the boat as you guys look cool together but I won’t be shifting to a room nearby.” Chhavi and Anurag smiled to each other they resumed their original posture, Vikas stood up and as he moved across that path way, he heard a rattling sound, he waited to check in, a couple of squirrels ran jumped and climbed up a tree. Things aren’t bad unless you take them to be so, he turned around looked back, and the couple were sitting there, relaxing peacefully. He thought, maybe he knew that girl, would give him what he wanted, without being his girlfriend because he didn’t need one but someone to talk to him and she perhaps did, and maybe that’s why he joined them here.