Kahaani

कहानी

कितनी कहानिओ के कागजों 

का कारवां कहाँ कहाँ

क्या क्या कहता गया

कितनी करीबी तमन्नाएं

क्यों किसी कागज़ की

नदी के बीच में

कहीं खो गयीं

कहाँ खड़े हम

क्या सोचते रहे

जब दूरियों की तलाश में

नज़दीकियाँ मांगते रहे

जब नज़दीकियों की तलाश में

दूरियों का चादर लपेटते रहे

कहानिओं की भी अजीब सी सच्चाई है

कहानियाँ सच्चाई बनने में लगी हैं

सच्चियां कहानी बनने में

हम बस यही सोचते रह गए

कभी हमारी भी कहानी सच्चाई होगी

और हमारी सच्चाई कहानी बन गयी||

The greatest invention of our time, “The CP Technology”

“Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity”- Bo Bennett

The above written quote was Googled, copied and pasted. Period

Ideas are copied, actions are copied, even mistakes are, but those are more visceral actions. Not conscious ones, as a kid in 3^rd class might buy a pair of aviator styled sunglasses, wear Lee Cooper maroon coloured shirt and go out, walk with style spitting chewing gum on his left and smirk while lowering his sunglasses and wink at the round faced girls in his class who might lend him their butterfly themed and florescent coloured neatly covered notebooks and become the centre of attention and gossip, and generate envious classmates in the tuition at 5 in the evening. The next day all dude classmates end up doing it, fighting with their mums to get those sunglasses.

But that was more emotional method and copying something really trendy and stylish was never a stupid thing to do. Awkward, may be, wrong, never, as stylistic influences were always a part of inspiration and as the kids would attempt impressing those girls, they might end up choosing a better wardrobe, and showing signs of creativity. Where they faltered were, when they asked for those notebooks and copied the content of the borrowed notebooks, word to word and got green stars from their teachers for submitting their home works on time.
Probably it was the error in teaching methodologies, or the pressure of deadlines, or the way we were brought up, but that is not the point of discussion here right now. The point is when they used to copy they read the content and wrote at-least in their notebooks, therefore when their teachers asked the content on page 5 they would raise hands and answer.

But as those kids grew up, and they became we, also, the computer became smarter as we did and that inherent intension of scoring green stars turned into a desire of getting rid of a task, that we feel isn’t credible enough, and hence should be over as soon as possible, sometimes it could be extracting appreciation from a client or a manager. The inspiration of doing right and doing it all by ourselves, was taken over by paired keystrokes, ctrl+c and ctrl+v, keystrokes for Copying and Pasting, the CP technology.

While those of the smarter kids, used to read and re-work it, would later on become the creative ones as inspiration would lead to motivation and motivation would lead to solving the problem, reworking would help in exploring leading to knowledge and thus solving the same problem in a different way, reinventing technology and thus ending up being more successful.

Rest of us chose routines, we accept tasks, out of our disgust and because there is no way out, and because we earn through it, we google, even the nature of it, find an approximate solution, without even considering its consequences, we put it in our PPTs, present it, then if there is a criticism, we simply say we didn’t think about it, and then we google something else, we present it and after multiple iterations of ideas and routines and discussions we do find a solution to the problem, but all that stays with us is, that answers can be googled, assignments can be submitted, exams can be cleared yet nothing can be really understood.

Thus we don’t discover anything new, in our lives, we simply distribute anguish, we are tired of routines, and then we unload it on our future generations.
And then we complain,life, is so boring.

Round The Crossroads

Youngsters can’t be adjudged rowdy, loud, careless and disturbing because it is not true. Human beings are inherently violent. The point is whenever they are in a situation and that too if there are a bunch of them, they become rowdy, and that inherent violence, slightly comes out.

People don’t talk sense these days, moreover they don’t speak the truth out of fear, that they might lose something important and that includes their future. With people, I don’t mean the grown-ups, because in India more than 50% of the people are less than 25 years of age. So when I say people it means youngsters. Youngsters are afraid they might lose something important, they are fearful of losing importance itself, in front of all those who surround them. So tough it becomes, to tolerate someone who is around, who seems to be important to you but you aren’t important to him, to gain that importance. But that doesn’t really happen when a boy is staying with a bunch of others. No one is important to anyone, and after a time, it is merely tolerating each other and everyone else.

Few boys do show serious inclination towards friendship being more important than female companionship, few of them want both, and then there are few, like I am who are oxymoronic in those terms, flickering between here and there and turning up nowhere. But these are the days, of fresh youngsters, finishing their college, and coming out and facing challenges of the real world, accepting jobs and trying hard to stay together. After one point of time, it becomes really tough for everyone to simply tolerate, but they can’t leave each other, because they are together hence they have a roof, they have food to eat and one of them has a car, his own, a 2nd hand Hyundai Accent and biggest reason of them being together, someone to talk to.

But female companionship is sometimes a headache, and most of the times it is tough to achieve, because first of all, youngsters are filled with energy to celebrate but lack inspiration to do something really big that would make the celebration worth it. If they can’t celebrate it is tough to have someone by their side, or they have to settle down with someone who is like them, ordinary, but no, boys need good looking girls, the more than ordinary ones and they are tough to find, because someone else at a former point of time would somehow manage to make that one fall into commitment with him, rest of the ordinaries would simply keep trying.
Even if, one of them is committed, it doesn’t really matter because, usually that one is fed up and needs a change or the existing girl is substantially foolish and handling her is just another burden or that girl doesn’t offer what guys usually want or the girl isn’t as good looking and by chance they are committed and he wants to get rid of her and hence a new girl friend.

So it usually ends up with a bunch of aimless guys, a car and a lonely weekend. Movies can be watched, but we watch so many movies that there is a saturation limit and most of the weekends offer nothing as qualitative, that one would go and buy a ticket out of curiosity. And then in a place like Chennai, discotheques are there but, not all guys enjoy it so it comes down to a shopping mall, beach, McDonalds and a drive.
It is then when we all decided that we will go to a shopping mall in the beginning, one of us said that he will drive all through, he wasn’t that confident with driving though, so the owner of the car decided to sit beside him, in the second front seat, and the rest of the two of us, occupied the seats behind. It is strange, that in the night, a city automatically looks good, probably this is because, one, in the most stationary moments of life anything that moves, is good, two, the road lights and lampposts and the way so smoothly they are left behind, it makes a scene to observe, three, we listen to music along with it and if the right track plays along with the right mood it enhances the overall impact.

And suddenly those who merely tolerate each other inside the boring rented flat, feel more energetic and talk about the city, about their futures, about girls, about movies, about music and the songs and the occasionally awful lyrics. It is so strange that that small place brings people closer.

The guy who was driving, wasn’t confident, occasionally he’d get impatient and a bit careless with the accelerator, already, the guy who owns it had complained his slight recklessness would make his heartbeat skip a couple of times and so would the 2 of us who were sitting in the rear seat.  Using the Google maps application, on one of the phones phone we had, we reached the shopping mall, the last few minutes were spent in abusing the traffic, it is awful near the citi center on weekends, so we can say traffic pretty much took away the last few moments of enjoyment of the drive. We reached there, went inside, those who wanted to shop, shopped, I for one went inside Landmark, spent most of the time there or at the balconies, looking down at crowd coming in and going out, once shopping was done, we went to the top floor and had our burgers, nothing memorable happened there.
Then it was fixed, that we would spend some time at a beach, citi centre is next to a beach but that is fairly dirty so we decided that we would go somewhere else. On Google maps we locked in “Golden Beach” and embarked on our journey away from boredom to an unknown beach. It was 9 in the evening by then.

The problem with the city is, one, they are making Metro Railways, so it is slightly tough to drive, as few roads are turned into one-ways, and you have to take many U-turns, so the guys in front, were navigating and making ways and we at behind were simply enjoying, hence I didn’t really understand what was going on until really something stupid happened. The guy on the driver seat, the not so confident one, had told clearly that at least 5 minutes before a turn, he should be informed or he would not be able to take it and we would have to go up a long way and then come back for it.

Obviously that didn’t happen, the guy, playing with the Google maps kept saying straight, there was some connection problem and the phone didn’t update the position, the blue dot indicating our location didn’t move, and he failed to realize it. We went straight for 10 kilometers, when Google map notified connection problem and map had to update the data, once updated, we realized that we have come 6 KMs from a left turn and to go back we had to take a U-Turn in front of us, and that was a flyover, so we took that flyover and we realized that we had to take a U-Turn but we didn’t have to climb up the flyover, the flyover led us somewhere else from there we waited Google map to update, which showed that we are now 15 KMs away, so we followed it, took turns and wrong turns and then asked people then again checked with the map, and suddenly we saw a Lacoste store, and then we thought we have seen this before, and we went straight to realize that we ended back at the citi centre.

We took a sigh of relief, that we are not lost, now we were more careful this time, we planned it which way to go. Once again, it was obvious that we are going to make a fool of ourselves. We knew that we have to get to the OMR, Velachery, Guindy interconnected roads, not only because it will lead us to Golden Beach but also because we knew that area and we didn’t need Google maps. So we had to reach there, and we started off, we had already wasted 40-50 minutes and a chunk of fuel. So we opened once again, the path of journey from boredom to the golden beach. We started off, went straight, a flyover came, this was a different one, we crossed it, we went straight, and there was a crossroad, now we had to take a left, but because our friend was a bit impatient and drove right into the first lane and reached a traffic signal where we had to wait and then we realized, what wrong we had done, now, slowly as the traffic jam was resolving, our friend started to shift into the other lanes, he managed it, after, a couple of troubles and slangs from others who were behind us and came forward, that we didn’t understand what they said, as we can’t understand Tamil, and we had our left at that crossroads, and now at another one, we had to take a right. But before that for 6-7 KMs we had a straight drive, again it was a pleasure, on our music player, “Subah Hone Na de” from Desi boys was about to explode our car’s speakers and our eardrums and the guys in front seats were shouting that song at the top of their voices, doing so we reached another traffic signal, and while we were shouting, also, we were attracting the traffic’s attention towards us, and trust me, we sing really bad. A girl inside an auto rickshaw waiting next to us had a look at the guy’s, who was driving, face and left a smug smile, which gave him more confidence, who grinned at the road and the Alto in front of us, and we started teasing him because of his nervousness that he was sweating and looked funny, taking off that grin from his face, and that traffic signal turned green and we moved on, but once again we failed to realize that we had to take a right from there, instead we went straight and this happened many times later and we missed many turns on those crossroads, but slowly familiar places appeared and we realized we have reached Velachery and now all we had to do was drive towards Thiruvanmiyur, and we will have a right that will be OMR and we knew that drive very well.

We somehow managed to reach OMR, now Google Maps couldn’t help us, because we were low on battery already and soon the phone turned off. We were all on our own, now. But we were and we are familiar with that road. Almost all Software and few electrical, chemical and other engineering and management companies in Chennai, are here on this route. We were riding, singing and shouting, occasionally we would simply sit and see outside windows as lampposts passed by in all this the guy who was driving lost track and almost drove us upon the divider nearby the tollbooth, but we had noticed him and we alerted him, he got more nervous and more oriented towards hitting the divider.

But one thing he did well was he’d slowed down once we’d alerted him, so in good time we managed it we bought the ticket and went on. Suddenly his phone started ringing. I had his phone. I told him that his dad was calling. Now, because he wasn’t confident, apart from us his dad knew that as well, so we can’t pick up the phone tell his dad that he’s driving, so we waited, allowed the father to complete the call let him know that his son missed his call. Then stopped by and inside the car, we closed all the windows, turned on the A/c and then he told his father he went to the wash, explained how nothing big was happening in life, it was just going on and how he was only 23, too young to discuss about marriage and future. He finished his conversation, and asked someone else to drive, so the guy sitting with me behind took the steering wheel.

We went singing and talking about GRE and higher studies abroad and Public Sector Jobs and how PSUs now accept GATE scores only and offer a better life and how I want to become a film maker and then again singing and shouting. It is so strange that we, in those moments could maximize the fun and most of the times we were simply shouting and shaking and cracking stupid jokes and using words never found in the worst of the dictionaries, probably that’s why, us youngsters are like that. We simply shout or fight or laugh or speak loudly, to suppress the fear of the failure future might conceal and to maximize the fun of the moment and forget everything else, and outsiders, for example neighbors in a society, simply label them as rowdy, loud, careless etc.

That evening we were late, quite late, it was 10:30 in the night and we were tired, we could not find the Golden Beach and so we returned back. Once we were back, we were awake till 2:00 or 2:30 AM, but we didn’t talk, we were mostly updating our statuses on Facebook or commenting or sharing memes and liking them and stuff similar to that, or watching movies, or tweeting but we were pretty much to ourselves and back to normal routines.

But that evening, we did talk, we did enjoy and that, when most of the time we were simply riding, dodging turns, round the crossroads.

Change

Change is such a subjective term. People want society to change, society wants culture to change, culture wants mentality to change, girls want boys to change and boys want girls to change, wives want husbands to change, husbands want to change wives, journalists want news to change, politicians want government to change and something wants something else to change or someone wants someone else to change and so on and on and on.

Talking about change is an utter wastage of time, because all what we want is to stay the same but we want everything else to change according to us, but again the problem is we would get used to that change and ultimately we will need a new change. In these modern times we need a lot of changes every day because lives are so dynamic. One of the many things amongst them is monetary change, and no, I am not talking about returning Cadbury éclairs in place of 1Re or 2Rs change, but what I am talking about is our frustration against our salaries and we want it to change, to greater values.

But even monetary change is not my problem, my problem is the change itself which is desired and assured, many times the change does occur but in an unwanted manner that completely changes our lives. We want so much to change, but what we really don’t change is ourselves because we have always loved ourselves, so changing ourselves would mean changing according to the world and that would mean hurting our own ego, so we are not going to change ourselves and we stress so hard on changing others, that had we put in that much effort in changing ourselves there would be an immediate immense change in everything around us.

But then we do change. Sometimes we change the truth, for a bitter, hollow satisfaction, sometimes we change ourselves temporarily, to impress someone, because that someone might bring in a happy change, or sometimes we simply change to change someone with someone new in our lives. The problem is, for everything genuine we change something genuine to such an extent that it loses genuineness  and that genuine something or someone is genuinely changed or we change ourselves according to something flashy and hollow and by the by losing our own genuineness and then we are genuinely changed.

So once again because change is important, it’s better that we realize what kind of a change is required and then change accordingly, instead of changing someone else and thinking that he has changed from someone to someone else we have to realize our thinking has changed and nothing else, if it is right then it needs to be supported or otherwise, it needs to, well you know it, change.

But then because change to change genuine mentality to something really changed from originally changed thoughts and mentalities, it is better that to think first and then change because the change will be a successful change only when the way of our thinking changes otherwise as we change we might change into someone really changed and then we look at us and say, wow, we have changed! And then everyone around us will say, hey, you really changed, and then you regret what you have changed into. But we are humans and we won’t change because we are selfish and lazy and that will never change and ultimately nothing will change. This is too much and we deserve a topic change.

Do we deserve entertainment

The problem is that Indian youth is so much into talking and day dreaming that most of the sensible form of entertainment really doesn’t matter. This, I realized, when I was watching “Midnight in Paris” few days ago, and I was thinking about it yesterday. More than 40% of the cultural references in the movie I couldn’t identify, there were film makers, painters, writers (the most easily identifiable ones) and others. It is a known fact that now even 10^th class students have a facebook account, a smart phone with internet access and SMS packs they can use to send multiple messages to their friends.

Now here lies my fear, pop culture and true entertainment is dying. The problem with facebook status updates and SMS packs is enabling a gossip function. Either you say something that enables gossip or you do something that is widely shared across the internet media, and from everyone in your class to your teacher might be aware of possible stupidity you have done.

Us Indian youngsters, as I have written earlier in different blogposts, are cowards, we might have the ability to be creative or generate ideas unusual in nature but the sheer monotony, and as Hungarian film maker Bela Tarr would say “Burden of human life” takes it from them. Success at its core deserves making an idea that can, in my harsh words, make a fool out of the others. But that needs confidence and ability to evaluate one’s own abilities and find the right path of success. But since we are all cowards we don’t want to lose the easiness in life because fulfilling dreams would mean hard work and standard lives here, are dreamless, impersonal and least passionate that stepping out of the house to go out and fight would and allow motivation to come into being.

The fact is we don’t really go out of the houses, meet people, listen to a lot of music, read books, but we do come to office, we gossip about our love lives and colleagues and bosses, ignore sentiments,  we go back to our houses, we are bored by our roommates or soul mates (whatever applicable) and need something terrifically new and that most of the times turns out to be a an affair or in other terms someone else’s affair that could be talked about or worst of them all someone else, in person, who could be talked about.

There are so many other things, one of my personal favorites being food, which can be explored. But no, restaurants and places like this most of the times turn out to be another reason where people can be talked by those who are sitting across the dining table and most of the times the worst part, that attacks viscerally and people don’t necessarily want it to happen subconsciously is dinner or lunch because that would mark the end of gossip and hence entertainment when that evening’s entertainment was meant to be good food. Talking about food, how many of you know that there is a nationwide chain named as “Kobe’s” who serve pretty good sizzlers, though it is costly and one platter may not be fulfilling, but it is good indeed.
Perhaps that is my agony, in our fairy tales where we fall in love so that we become a centre of attraction, be entertained by being gossiped about, or after updating a status and hoping that to be liked by a 100 friends or even having 2487 friends in our friend list with most of them being girls who themselves tend to show off their sympathetic sides and in an attempt to find their pity perhaps we lose the need of real entertainment. Many of us, I see return from offices and open their facebook accounts spent 2 to 3 hours, if they would watch a film, or may be write something or may be draw, listen to music for that much of time, or read a book perhaps gossips would be more entertaining, talks would be more productive and ultimately, may be, many of us find, what we have to do and what we should.

But that has not happened and unfortunately we have too much to talk, that I see, instead of sleeping, whole nights are spent in talking about people from college, from families, mutual friends, bad teachers, laughing and crying over what has happened or who did what and when and ultimately being emotionally exhausted and we accept it as it is. The problem here is we have lost much of the taste, let it be food, music, art or cinema and most of the times we end up liking either that is shallow and superficial and ignore the richness and goodness or the pleasure of something really delightful. Most of us don’t even watch animation films like “The Secret of Kells”, “Ponyo” and “The Iron Giant”, have you heard about them? But when I say “The Iron giant” was made by the same guy who directed MI: 4, and ask have you seen MI: 4, everyone will raise hands.

Because we want to prove it to others how important we are to others and gossip about others or let others do it about us and our love lives are troubled and we need sympathy from the opposite gender, because we want to hurt others because we think, they were mean when they left us when we were most important to them, and most of our lives are wasted in thinking about it, basically we know it subconsciously, that we have taken too many short cuts in our lives to be like this and may be will go unnoticed for the rest of our lives and hence we do all this. Perhaps, that is the reason we don’t deserve entertainment, but as far as getting likes and comments on our status updates are concerned, yes we sure deserve that.

STALKERS

It so happens that we tend to omit the truth from our lives, Monika, was afraid, the problem was, it
was dark, and streets inside the colony are usually dark. Lights do work at times, certain parts of
that environment are visible at times, let’s say chunks of road, here and there. Houses are present on
either side of the road, but in the dark when fear seeps in they really don’t seem to matter.
It was a day job, but youngsters, in an uncaring city, large enough, are usually bothered and
workload does take most of the part of the day and it is late, this time even more. The streets are
cold and silent; noises are there, different kinds, generators and Air Conditioner vents and trucks on
the highway running parallel to that street. The template of yellow road light and darkness seemed
whole world was light less, only certain pieces of it illuminated, truth is usually hidden,
philosophies aside, there were many other things those images were conveying and many other
angst ridden thoughts were invading her mind. Monika was never so late, or even so, with few
others, and there was slight movement usually, but this time it was lonely.

She walked through street lights, illuminated patches, after which there was absolute darkness,
behind her, she had crossed the last street light glowing and the next one was 500 meters away, she
had to walk through that patch of darkness. All, which gave her the idea that she was on the right
track, was the solid ground and her experience, of going through this way, of six months and this
morning, that she knew that road was leveled with a few bumps here and there. But darkness freaks
courageous ones out, she was just a youngster. Her anklets made slight noise, along with the
generator and AC vents and trucks and horns, but she could hear that. She walked slowly, so that
her anklets didn’t make so much noise, and suddenly a dog barked, she shivered, but kept walking,
she didn’t pace up, probably that was the right thing she did, if she started running, probably that
dog would have chased her. Listening to that dog bark, a bunch of other stray dogs joined in, she
was extremely scared, but she didn’t pace up, suddenly a couple of dogs from the street light in
front came running in towards her but she still somehow maintained her posture, and carried on and
dogs ran right past her, she was sober and felt comfortable and kept walking.

Her slow pace was more comfortable now, she looked up, from, in between the lines of non
illuminated figures, that were houses and felt like giant black shades of monsters, there was very
dark blue colored sky, the stars, most of them could be seen, few of them were partially covered
with translucent and thin floating clouds, white in color, moon, it looked like a bangle, an
incomplete one of course, it was waning crescent, gentle, peaceful and resting like an old man on an
inclined armchair, it seemed. It was mostly dark in front of her, and behind her as well, as she was
moving forward, slight details around her revealed themselves, the only other detail that was visible
was the end of road, that illuminated end of the road, now, at 400 meters, she had to take a left from
there.

Where she was at this time, at her right there was another road inside, and on her left she had a
house, on that road on the right, at that corner, earlier, it was illuminated because they had a halogen
lamppost there, it was not working now. Immediately next to it, there was a tea stall, shut down, but
it was there, she turned around, couldn’t see anything behind her, but the last street light she left
behind, few minutes ago.

Suddenly, a there was a glowing light, in that darkness and pacing footsteps. Someone was chasing
her. She ran, and instead of going where she was supposed to, she ran inside that another dark street.
She knew very well which turn she should take and where so that she could return but at this
moment she was wanted to dodge that chaser. She ran into wilderness.
That was a playground for few local kids, all with long grasses, untamed, weeded and irregular, at
certain places that grass was quite tall, tall right up to the knees, all she could now see was this
grassland, after that a muddy path after that another grassland and then a canal and the highway, she
turned around, she could see the beginning of the street, with shadowed houses on both sides, she
just ran through, earlier it was the end of the road, she realized how quickly she could cross 200
meters and reach here. She waited for a few minutes, analyzed where she was right now and which
road she should take, and in case she was supposed to deceive what turn and when she should take.
After thinking for quite some time, she started walking, and went inside that street, at 50 meters she
had a right turn that was another street, of 200 meters and it was curvilinear in nature that would
meet that street light road again and she could be there, she walked calmly. What Monika did realize
was there was another sound of footsteps, now she didn’t know from where, behind or front, she
stopped. Other footsteps as well stopped.

It was silent, that street, as usual generators and horns, sound of the wind and other noises were
there but it was silent, any abrupt thing and she would shout on the top of her voice and run for her
life. Yet, she waited for activity. For some time there wasn’t any activity until she decided to move
forward, there was no other noise, she walked slowly and her anklets crackled, she spooked, for a
moment. That was scary until she realized that it was her anklets and gained confidence and moved
forward, someone lit a matchstick to light his cigarette, she turned to look at him, he was looking
down as matchstick illuminated his face, and slight details of his shirt, and then he looked away
after pulling his smoke out from his mouth, extinguishing his cigarette and again one side of his
face was in darkness rest was moonlit, only thing that was glowing was one end of his cigarette,
yellowish orange in color, which moved away from his face and floated down in darkness from
visibility. She thought that she wasn’t attracting his attention that comforted her to some extent. She
kept on moving, something was shining behind her in the moonlight. She turned back and tried hard
to check what it was. It was a motorcycle, she kept moving, there was a way towards her right, she
knew that very well, it was dark inside and really tough for anyone to see.
The road was outlined by drainage system, it was pretty dry because it was deep summer and there
was not much indication of a rainfall, the clouds present were too thin to really precipitate. Houses
on either sides looked like soma gigantic shadows as if there was nothing around her but black
structures an open sky and the least illuminated street.

Monika was pacing, hard enough to avoid yet another stalker that might be truly a stalker, already in
India women are really vulnerable, almost every second headline these days seems like a warning,
next one could be me, she thought. Funny it is , how mind plays when scenario around is dark and
cold, there is every signal of anything that might happen and not one signal of something that could
happen in a right way.

Suddenly she heard a rattling sound approaching. She panicked, and started running, a motorcycle
was chasing her. She tried everything to dodge that guy on the motorcycle, who himself sort of
stumbled but handled it and drove faster towards her. She didn’t realize that that road was broken in
patches, and there were craters, rather big ones. She stepped on to one, probably twisted her ankle
and fell down, as the motorcycle guy was catching up. She knew that that was the end of the story,
anything could happen now.

She looked up the motorcycle guy was really close, now and anytime he would step down, she was
determined, as he would slow down stop his motorcycle, and step down, she would shout on the top
of her voice, and ask for help. All those thoughts crossed her mind within fractions of a second as
the motorcycle guy came close, he didn’t slow down, he, rather managed to drive through the
craters and made his way through the muddled street.

Monika was perplexed, all the time she was scared unnecessarily, she stood up, brushed her stole
and her dress, sobered up and started walking. She was at the end of the road, and she had to take a
left, that she did, and could see that lamppost she was waiting for since the beginning.
But before that she saw the motorcycle guy standing there, sitting on his bike, but that was
stationary, she kept on moving, until she passed by him, somehow she knew that that guy wasn’t
harmful. He was talking over the phone, by the time she passed by him and the lamppost, suddenly
she heard something,

“Excuse me...”

She turned around to see another man partially illuminated by the street light as he was still at a
distance from her, behind the lamppost, this happened as the motorcycle guy kick started his bike
and once again drove past her, on the straight road, so there was no help whatsoever, and that again
scared her, she panicked and started running, towards her place, as the guy with the torch shouted
again behind her to stop,

“No, please, stop, at least take your purse!”

She stopped and turned around to see, her purse, she was carrying, was missing, as the guy with the
torch paced up and crossed the lamppost and she saw a man carrying a purse coming towards her,
once he was here, he said to her,

“You dropped it there, where dogs suddenly came running, I followed you but you went
somewhere, and then I reached here and I was waiting maybe you’d come this way, so......”

He handed over that purse and went back into that darkness, making his way, using his torch, and
she stood there for sometime wondering all she thought they were stalkers, but it is India, better to
be safe, she thought.