Ends to ends and a coward

The problem with Jaideep was he could not speak. At one moment he might be thinking about the plan and at the other moment the consequences and would question the possible positive outcome because almost certainly every time something negative would distract him from taking a step forward. Commitments and promises are done without conditions and there are conditions and circumstances that lead to breaking those promises and commitments. Inside a glass walled structure there are cubes and inside those cubes there are human beings who work and carry on, but passion slowly goes down as monotony seeps inside and emotions become less substantial and life is less problematic. The outcome of this is that in reality as well people tend to avoid problems let it be of any kind and hence people avoid any kind of a change. In engineering, it is meticulously observed that any system if subjected to a sudden change has a transient response, perhaps, that is responsible in human behavior and emotional fluctuations as well. Many times people ask a straight question, for instance, what is the time?  And in response if the guy has become cold enough, after travelling a suitable distance of patience, and passing the test of, time, he might very coldly respond with expression which cheats nothing, in order to pretend to be humorous, it’s really bad time man, it’s really bad. A straight scenario and situation could not be seen without a teaspoonful of salt, questioning about the outcome and truth of situations and framers of language coined a term to it and called it skepticism.

While emotions, on the other hand, had posed another challenge in front of him. Three times, including this one he had felt about it in a similar fashion. Every time he had waited long enough only to express so late that nothing could be done or happened. Falling for someone is a strange phenomenon, Ram Gopal Varma, a Hindi film director, rightfully blogged about it. He wrote that falling in love with a girl who lives across the street has more possibility rather than falling in love with a heroine. Perhaps the truth in that statement is so powerful that it is faced by the newer generation almost every now and then in every phase of his life, whether it is school, college or professional. And since Zuckerberg invented Facebook, too much of psychology and reality goes in to the status updates that leave losers and cowards even more fearful of many things that future in life will probably offer. One of his friends shared an update which quoted “Arranged marriage is a rubbish theory, if you are a coward and think that is your only way out, well, register it deep somewhere that your future wife could be having fun with a womanizer”.

It was this, whole hearted reality and unadulterated knowledge that was served on Face book and Internet, which he could bite with a slobbering desperate mind, and this time was probably the first time when his emotions fueled with worldly materialistic knowledge were able to counter his ability to question every truth and goodness in this natural world. But he would not step ahead as cowards are meant to be like that and more over what they can at most do is, affect their own genuine friendships and people around them in reciprocation of sentiments which hold good and might be genuine, or because Facebook and Twitter and blogs are there people like him become small time writers, sometimes to generate sympathy, or maybe hoping that another girl might find it genuine and if she is good looking and perhaps likes it then that would be a start and losers can take a step forward to be a winner.

But Jaideep would fail to realize those genuine sentiments and continue to be someone sitting in the corner of the cafeteria and notice and observe the one he thinks he is fond of, actually he knows it, but most of the times he tries to deceive himself. It really is disheartening in these days of internet and facebook and blogs where there are many shortcuts to impress others, it is so disappointing that youngsters, more educated have less fierceness to face themselves and to confide to someone or express their affection. Earlier it was so, that people were less educated and perhaps more intelligent to recognize the rights and wrongs, and in the generation of truth when there was no facebook, people could really look into the eyes of the desired and the other side could read it and reciprocate. But there lays the problem, an eye contact is asking too much, and as far as people like Jaideep were concerned, it was a nightmare.

How important is an eye contact, is another remarkable reality, but the easy way is put it into words, and that is not a handwritten note that could as well find its way somewhere deep inside the other one’s could and connect to it, but it has now turned into keyboards and messages, either status or text where people might like it, or probably could ignore it as well by not commenting to it or replying to the text messages. So shortcuts to emotions, that are digital now, isn’t as effective, even handwritten notes can falter and even fail and get ignored but an eye contact is not at all ignorable.

So, here he is, Jaideep, his cowardice, his sentiments and the indispensable valuable education he received from social networking media, and his corner in the cafeteria and his coffee, that is complementary, it is not trivial to mention the free coffee because with his income anything that is for free is important, and that with a bad throat and reasonably cold winter morning presents a bliss. If you visit your office, early in the morning, and then you are relatively free and don’t have much to do on your desk, and things are pretty easy with your life then mind starts playing with you and that’s what happened with him.

Early mornings in cafeteria is fairly empty, very few people here and there could be counted on fingers, are present in plain sight. Now this leads to the mind playing with the character. The cafeteria, most of it is empty, what if she comes and sits somewhere, now she is she because Jaideep doesn’t know who is she and what’s her name and his mind continues to play with him, what if she notices I am here, what if the color of my shirt isn’t what attracts her attention towards me, what if she comes and leaves without noticing me, and she comes in, takes her coffee and, oh my GOD,  now Jaidev doesn’t really believe in god as his logic doesn’t accept it, but this randomness is perhaps an explanation of the statement that ‘God can make even stones speak’,  run Jai, Run or you will do something stupid and leave a terrible impression, oh, ok you might make her notice, but no, no impression is better than bad impression, see, how mind plays, coffee isn’t over, you might spill, okay finish it, Jai, stop staring, oh and of course, while Jai’s mind was trying to create a havoc, he was staring at her all the time, Jai, if she by chance considers you as a stalker, then it’s done, and all your dreams and fantasies will go down underground in all this turmoil, stop it, stop staring, Jai wanted this to happen and it happened, his brain failed his heart took over and, stop it, NO I WON’T, he countered his mind and, this could be the last time I see her alone and otherwise she is always with another girl or a bunch of them and that could be the end…., and she this time raised her gaze, their gazes met, they had, a news reporter would say, a disaster, Shakespeare would say tragedy, well he could say comedy as well, while most of us normal people would say, an eye contact.

That was probably a good thing to happen but it was criminally short, she noticed his stare, clenched her eyebrows, in suspicion, or that was meanness, or that was a response which communicated, hey stalker you made me freak out, set your eyes off me, well, there are more possibilities to it, even good ones, but that only she can explain and occupied a table somewhere in his line of sight, but Jaideep was stunned and extremely embarrassed, to such an extent that he wanted to go up and apologize, but that was a bad idea as he had a past. In past, out of sheer curiosity, he got a really sensationally good looking girl’s phone number, no he didn’t get the phone number out of curiosity that was more out of desperation, out of curiosity how does it feel when a guy calls a girl who doesn’t know him and he wondered how did guys impressed girls over a phone call and he wanted to try that. So he called and he got nervous, so he blabbered something stupid and got insulted, so he was similarly embarrassed then and called back to apologize and again blabbered non sense and got insulted to such an extent that this day he could not gather courage to go up and say sorry for his gesture. Better, he decided that he committed a disaster and this story doesn’t have an ending to it, and decided to drop it there and then.

But the scenario was scintillating, it was early winter morning, cafeteria was pretty less crowded, so if he really committed blunder, no one would notice and it would be covered up easily. Nothing wrong in seeing, isn’t it, he thought, and stupid human nature to hell with it, he considered it a blunder and did it, and suddenly she kept her coffee breathed out, Jai was staring at her, and she crossed her hands, Jai was staring at her, placed her crossed hands on the table, Jai was still staring at her,  she moved her head upwards, Jai was as usual, she looked outside the cafeteria on her right while he would be on her left, Jai was easily continuing with his stupidity, and turned left and Jai was staring at her.

Now she noticed him, it is unnecessary to say that so he did, he was doing that, it seemed since eternity, then she looked down at the table, noticed her coffee, lifted her cup took a sip, while doing that, she didn’t lift her head, she gazed in his direction, he was still noticing her, his face didn’t betray any emotion, he was flat, but he was staring, she blinked and returned to her cup of coffee and put it back. For some time she looked down, she looked up, in his direction, also she didn’t move her head only her gaze, and it’s better that we avoid mentioning what Jai was doing when he was sitting there, then she quickly looked down, and slowly she looked up and their gazes met, and they had, what a news reporter would say, global recession, Shakespeare would say Romance, while most of us normal people would say, a long eye contact. And at last she blinked, in between she blinked as well but could not remove her eye sight off him, but this time she looked down, finished her coffee, stood up, gazed back again, then turned around and left, Follow me, Now it could have meant that, but out hero, Jai, even though he partially decoded it, he got nervous and rather thought that he led to a mutual embarrassment, and he decided that he would not face her again and rather avoid a similar situation, even if she wanted me to follow her and talk to her, how would I start the conversation, I have never in my life talked to a girl purely because of such circumstances or simply talking to talk!, this was another thing  that crossed his mind.

So, Jaideep decided to avoid such a situation, if he’d see her in cafeteria, he’d make sure she doesn’t find him, if she’d see him he’d act, I’m a dead man walking, lost in my own dreamland. This happened for weeks, Jai had dropped it, there is no way she’d be thinking about me, and probably she never did, he was thinking this while he was having his chicken burger meal and that is really cheap in cafeteria and satisfying, the only thing that is dissatisfying is the crowded cafeteria  during lunchtime, after 1:15. Too much noise is sometimes distracting and the guy eating in front of you is so impatient sometimes, that he makes more noise with his cutlery rather than using it to eat. Inside crowded cafeteria, it becomes difficult to find a place to sit, and many times it happens that even if there are empty chairs, and someone asks that are these occupied, to their dismay, usually the empty seats are occupied. Cafeteria is a nice place beyond work as well, apart from Jaideep’s romantic encounters there are other interesting things that happen as well. For example gossiping, that if listened to carefully are damn seriously done but unintentionally extremely hilarious. It is quite observable that grownups’ jealousy is as pure as that found in a 3^rd standard a kid, who is jealous of his classmate because he might be a particular teacher’s favorite because of his or her handwriting. So this jealousy is an emotion that defines envy which leads to enmity and enemy’s enemy is a friend. But there are reasons of friendship other than that as well and people prefer to eat with friends. So its usual that one or 2 empty chairs doesn’t solve the purpose. Usually a minimum of 4 are needed on a table. So Jai was enjoying French fries with coke with chicken burger on a 6 chaired table, and most of them like him preferred eating alone. Apart from him all of the others finished their lunch and vacated 5 chairs, and immediately someone with pure and very sweet voice asked him “Do you mind?”, Jai looked up a very ordinary and simple with clearly defined girlish expression was asking whether they could use that place, and Jai didn’t have any problem with that, how could he, the girl was just okay, and there was nothing in her that he should be conscious about, she was just another girl everyone sees every day and  she called her friends to join her.

Suddenly 4 other girls came and joined in at that table and one of them turned out to be her, well, HER. Like those capital letters his eyes became when he found out and she sat right in front of him, and once again that happened, what a news reporter would say, Rainstorm in winters, okay a weather reporter would say that, Shakespeare would say Comedy of Errors and us normal people would say a mere coincidence, but they had an eye contact, and since she was with the her friends, she was soon distracted with chuckles and giggles and jokes and poor jokes and she got involved with it. Jai avoided as many eye contacts, while she turned and did leave a serious glance before temporarily returning to her friends with inconsistent frequency, but this dude would look only into his burgers and coke and French fries. She removed ID Card from around her neck and kept it on table, in order to avoid it interfering her lunch and seeing her other girls did so, and she smiled, that he noticed, she didn’t remove it because it would mess with her food and disturb she did it because she wants me to know her name, and she smiled because her friends got the wrong meaning, maybe, maybe he was right, but he didn’t do the right, he didn’t first of all betray a single emotion, secondly he didn’t even turned his neck to read her name. He was plain emotionless as a robot eating burger in fixed pattern and strict monotone. He finished his lunch, stood up in perfect coordination turned around, she looked up and sighed and then returned to her friends.

It was this absurd chain of events, that she looked perplexed, but at the last step of the last hurdle all his skepticism seeped in, like in the film Margin call there is quotation when three characters are standing at the rooftop of a skyscraper, one of them crosses the railing and says, “you know at this height, the greatest fear a human being has, it is not the fear of falling, it is the fear whether he might jump off from it”. Perhaps it was a similar fear that crept in, he thought he might end up falling hard and hurt and maybe she does too, that he stood up and decided that may be he isn’t confident enough, maybe it’s a mistake or maybe he would take it and find her again, or maybe someone else when he is more confident, and maybe she finds someone else more confident. But who knows, tomorrow things may change, he is here and she is here and ends aren’t an ending and cowards have to face their worst fear someday, and maybe there is a new beginning, because God may or may not exist but such situations do make atheists vulnerable.