3 Latest Musketeers

So what all this fuss about marriage as soon as you cross 26. Okay ya, even I thought that my parents are super cool until 22nd July, last year. Someone told me marriage is full of restrictions. You either die young or married else see yourself becoming old and grumpy all alone. But no one tells you the story of what happens until you die. Lets assume I know three people. Bittu Banwari, who is not going to live for more than, say;3 years. Second one, Bhanu Chudasama is of course married, because her family wanted her to die a slow death and the third is my friendly neighborhood, The Grandpa, living next door.

Now Banwari is a guy who live in slums of India originating from Patna. My non-Indian folks can go and watch Slumdog Millionaire to know more about Slums. Banwari has this fantasy of going to Bangkok and banging chicks there before he gets banged by life. Hot girls in Bangkok is what he keeps hearing from his friends all the time. Apparently, he is saving money for this purpose. What he does for a living? No, he does not sell movie tickets in black. That will be stereotyping him. He also does not happens to be a small time smuggler. Perhaps, he sells pan masala at a bus stop. Why only chicks of Bangkok? Well may be as they say; one life, make it large.

On other hand Bhaanu is an underrated, over hyped IT professional apart from being a Gujju girl, married to Jiten Chudasama. Her only aim in life was to get married apart from being an independent girl. She achieved it. What she is doing in this story? Well that's the next part. How I know her? She buys smoke and condoms from Banwari's shop apart from the pan masala. What to say, Banwari keeps it all. The fantasy of her life, which is on the verge of having say no to sex, is to get a divorce from Jiten and live a separate life. Date men, boys, girls, women, drink, puke, sky dive, bungee jump, climb mountains and bang every one along the way. She thinks she can do this all but the stand alone factor that keeps her at the rim is the society. The paradox is the way society keeps faith in you to allow your life being ruined by another jerk who can do the same to you, without being even noticed or bothered. 

The Grandpa living nearby is another classic example of what to do and what not to do in life. He got it all from life. A successful business, five bungalows, and four wives, (God! The last one was a hot girl of tinsel town). No wonder he had a marvelous life. He is 84 now. Living in a 1 BHK apartment in New Delhi, all alone. As he says and I quote,"Yes, I had all the fun I wanted but what I miss more is the essence of true love my first wife had for me." I could sense the fun he misses and the fun he missed. At 84, he lives it all, parties, boozes, eat everything he wants, go places he wants, with just that one regret of doing this all alone.

Asking myself what I want from life, what I am going to have from it, I am clueless. Lives of Banwari, Mrs. Chudasama and Grandpa have nothing in common but that flavor of love that was always missing. As far as I am concerned, after being dumped in the last weekend of 2010, I am going to propose this awesome girl tomorrow morning. I hope she says. And yeah, I am the guy who gets his hand down on weed with all these three.

And I Met the Girl with Yellow Stole, Again…

Three years have passed, and I am still there in that rain, fully drenched with longing eyes. Every now and then I get lost among those curls of her hair playing around with her cheek. Rain was dousing us both, but at that moment, my soul was touched by those tiny drops. I still remember the wind that came to me, touching her. That aroma made me forget all my tension. I don’t remember anything that happened before that moment or anything that followed after that. What I remember, is a beautiful girl battling up with her stole, her curls and her umbrella, all at the same time against the strong wind. God bless that wind. I still don’t know whether she saw me or not. Of course she did not. But maybe she did. What if she did? Oh! I must have been ignored. After 25 years of mere existence, I was believing in and admiring God’s creation that night. Since then whenever it rains, I travel back in time. The rain that gave me a memory of life time.

Well one more thing I do remember which happened that night. My office laptop was stolen while I was admiring The Creator's creation where technically he was supposed to watch my back. Logically, you have to deal with your own shit, Creator's prime teaching. Anyhow, I am still stuck with Mr. Dixit (Dick-Shit, as we all know him to be) who is now a Project Manager. We don’t work in the same line of business, can’t say whether I should be thankful to that. Indeed I am stuck in this project because still, a team member. Apparently, there are strong rumors that I might be the next Project Lead. So in a way, Dick-Shit gets to screw me directly now. At least I was about to witness some growth in my life. Today, the moment I entered my office, Himanshu came running to me and whispered about a hot girl waiting for me near my table. A young girl, young enough to be an intern, was waiting for me. Well, frankly speaking Himanshu finds every second girl hot, but Oh lord! She was hot. All those Yo Yo Honey Singh’s songs that tells you how hot his girl friends are started to play inside me. She was Varsha, and she was hot. I sat and we discussed about her internship. I was supposed to be her mentor until, DickShit laid his reptile eyes on her.  And introduced me to our new Project Lead, Chitralekha. 

And on her very second day in office, she scolded me and the hot intern for being late. She was just like her name, uninteresting, bland, and prosaic. May be I was over reacting because she was offered my position. Days were passing, and then a whole month passed. I was about to become a walking dead. Dreary eyes, long work hours, no motivation to even jerk off, until Chitralekha asked me to join her over a cup of coffee in canteen. Because it was then where she made an atomic explosion like comment, “I remember you watching me on that rainy night while you were losing your laptop bag!”

What the fuck did she just say!

Life .. As we see it!

I see love wherever I go. Mommy's love, Papa's love, best friend's love, love of soul-mates. Then I feel like saying," Oh dear God, it's a beautiful place down here". Our lives share a strong network with people we know and with those whom we know not. It may happen that someone unknown, unknowingly teaches us the way to live life. It could be a stranger passing by road or a new student in class or a small chirping bird. Even sunrise gives enough. Because all these elements when work to set things right for us, they shower nothing but love, in their own way which restrains itself from being visible to them and to us. All that one needs, is love.

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Edward Jones, a retired clerk of Mumbai telephone exchange; lead his whole life searching bliss. Now, he is old. He is 78. Once he thought he would never require anybody to make his life better. But here he is, sitting outside his house on chair thinking about his lost love, wasted life, his son - who would never return and his own house that is under the hammer of auctioneer. He wants to sit and talk about everything happened so far but the later is missing. He thinks; when we are young life is too short to do big things and when we grow old, suddenly life seems big. Big enough to grant you your share of happiness, your wishes and big enough to engulf it all.

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Seema Bhandari, a young ardent painter from Mumbai. She always felt that the colors she puts on the canvas so aesthetically are like life, vibrant. Her dream art was to put life onto that leather canvas of her's. Painting and admiring beauty of life was the only thing she knew. Putting in other words, life was her perfect dream.
Now what she dreams about is that horrible night when her love for life, the passion for people and enthusiasm was ravished. The violators may have got the deserved judgement after four painful years, but she finds no reason to paint, smile or giggle or laugh.
Life has suddenly become a burden on her which was once a beautiful aspiration of an artist. Outside that big window of her room, the world seems so small to her. She is not able to find a place where she can go and get back that same smile on her face, that enthusiasm and that life.

                                                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chotu alias Aashrit, an eleven year old child who knew only football and cricket. He never knew what life was. A bliss or a curse, a burden or a companion but thought it to be limited to cricket and football. He never knew that many aren't blessed with a caring father and a loving mother. He was scared of only one thing, home works. But now, he knows everything. That what and how it is like without a caring father and a loving mother. He has realized at such a young age that the world is much bigger and unfair outside the football ground. It's not that his Papa and Mommy are dead or they have left him. It's just that after that Sunday when he went to play football, he could not see the next day with his dear ones. When he woke up, he found himself at a  construction site. Then he was traded to a restaurateur.
It has been eight months now since then and he has no where to go other than the small tea stall, his work place. Now, he is afraid of nothing. What he hopes and prays now is nothing but for monsoon. He feels no connection with god until it rains.

June 6th, monsoon has come as early as humans allowed it to. Well, I guess everything has got it's constraints.

                                                                                                       
The very first drop gave the feeling of freedom, happiness, peace and that bliss which they all searched for. Unlike Chotu, Edward and Seema couldn't feel God but certainly love touched them. A sense of joy ran through their spines. As of Chotu, this was his happy moment. May be their problems won't get solved, but this moment belongs to them which no one can take away.
That's how life is. It never gives solution for our problems, but it definitely gives ample to rejoice for.
And guess what? I found love between raindrops and those three musketeers. 

That girl & her yellow stole ..

It was going to be 10 pm and my sick project lead Dixit (preferably Dick-shit) was pissing me off. It was like all those usual days when he used to give us small dosage of irritating advices. To me he was a perfect "catalyst"- A substance, usually used in small amounts relative to the reactants, that modifies and increases the rate of a reaction without being consumed in the process. Altogether my whole day was screwed. I always gave my 100% to the job. 13% on Monday, 20% on Tuesday, 25% on Wednesday, 35% on Thursday and 7% on Friday. 

It was Friday, supposedly a day on which people want to freak out. On the contrary, Dixit was freaking me out. Finally, I left office at 10:35 pm. I would have travelled only a mile, when it started raining. I didn't want cough and cold as the next bad thing. Parking my motorcycle near to a closed tea shop, I went under its shelter. 

P.S: I won't waste time in describing the length and width of the shelter. 

It was raining heavily. It seemed that weather was never as good as it was then in Chennai. Something distracted my swinging mood. It was a stole. A pale yellow coloured stole. Strong wind worked enough to snatch her stole away. But that girl was in no mood to give up. Her umbrella was of no use in those conditions. She was all wet. Long curls of her hair were playing with the cheek. I was lost in the beauty of that moment. I don't know how, but I felt that my heart skipped a beat. Enchanted by her charm and grace, I ignored the fact that I was completely drenched in rain. Suddenly, everything around me became so romantic. I could sense a connection between us. Any word to describe this connection would have been inappropriate. 

She never saw me or maybe she did. But that time was not to think about all this. The moment for which I even didn't care about my iPhone getting wet in rain was, she crossing the road with all her attention on the not so busy road and mine on her curls and the yellow stole. I saw her disappearing in dark. It stopped raining. I was feeling like a piece of burning wood in a dying fire. My heart never felt so happy and content. Such incidents might be common for many, but how can I ignore the fact that my heart did skip a beat.

I can never define that part of my life, those 10 minutes. It's just a pious feeling. But the memory will always be there, undefined! That girl and her yellow stole ...  

The parrot of love!

Men aren't necessities, they're luxuries. I don't say this, though my friend Richie Rich says so. Smart, talented, good persona, charming, actually a cuisine that girls love to order. But he's among those that are served in 'dhabas'. Girls do go gaga over him, but yet no money gives him no honey. 

Yesterday I had a chat with him on his recent love market crash. He didn't seem much worried but was in a deep thought. "Hey Richie, are you fine?" 

"Yes Rathore, I am fine. Busy in figuring out something." On asking, I got back a boring yet emotional story of a lover boy who failed in his love life in spite of getting all the applauds. I came back home thinking and still trying to figure out the actual problem behind his break up. I'll just share his thoughts over his own love life. 

P.S.: Resemblance to any living or dead is purely coincidental. Generalising the event is on reader's discretion.

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery. Love is like a war, easy to start and difficult to end. According to Richie, love is a cuckoo's song. Soothing in morning and irritating for rest of the day. It's purely like Indian seasons, changes in no time. You search love throughout your life. If lucky, you get to hear the song. Bazzinga! You are entrapped. The love that seemed angel's gift to you was an enchantment. The charm works well and the cupid’s arrow finds its target. You see your incomplete world, complete.

"Poor prey, you are already dead. Because a mindless body is scientifically dead" as quoted by Albert Einstein. On the contrary, you don't die at once, as in tasting cyanide. But it’s something like you die running whole life behind love for love! This kiss of love is actually meant for 4 days, and rest, the side effects.

Soon love becomes an illusion and life a myth. And one day the cuckoo goes off just like that and poor parrot is left behind with no song. You spend your whole life behind the same genre of song and then one day you become old thinking of past glories. Who says Men are from Mars and women from Venus. Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it! 

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness." So that's love. Lovely yet complicated.