The old man and the tea..

Five more minutes to go before the company bus turns round the archies corner...weekend plans-to-be-made run through my mind as I notice a sudden hush ..Turn around to see every young eye fixed to one farther end of the road..Ah!its time,I realize, for those two pretty chics to make their ramp appearance..And there they show up as usual- elegantly dressed,decently made up, gracefully gliding to their waiting sumo - a daily ritual which none among miss to follow...Its chitter chatter as usual as their sumo wades through the still-colonial kalyan traffic- out of sight.
Two more minutes...
I feel someone tugging my unbottoned sleeve and turn to see a very old man in rags with a plastic cup in his hand muttering incoherently and gesturing to the tea-wada shop nearby...
I try hard to make some sense of the old man...Neither applied mechanics nor marketing strategy, but only a bit of sensitivity is all that is needed, I realized, to feel the plight of the wretched man- a sensitivity lost somewhere in the hue and din of the fast paced life here...Did I hear someone say that mumbaites are resilient??

Being of help to someone and actively making a conscious decision to help someone are two different things. The process of deciding on is often a daunting experience:
Will I be hurting myself if i help this guy (thats what you read about happening to people who help others these days rite?) ?
What will others around think of me (look at this guy, he 's trying to act like a do-gooder-prince, is he?) ?
My consciousness writhes itself through these thoughts at a seemingly slow pace and i appear out of the whole battle between conscience and rationality elightened, confident & happy-virtually..

I take the cup out from the old man's battered fingers and approach the tea-wada shop..
"kya kar rahe ho sahab, woh budda satiya gaya hain.. i had already offered him two glasses of tea and now he 's back again...I wont entertain him even if you pay me...He's goin to stay around and bring bad luck to this shop..and will be a burden for me if he decides to spend his last days here..These are the times......."Just then,I hear my company bus honking round the corner even as i try to collect my thoughts on the course of action...Abruptly putting a fullstop to my train of thoughts, I toss over the plastic cup back to the anticipating old man and get into my favourite front seat just managing to avoid- those hopelessly hopeful eyes..

I recall, while in second grade, we did LEARN "Moral Science"!!!!

She felt...and i thought....

She felt that I was an amateur and i thought that i was so much in control..
She felt that she would never love me and i thought that i would never leave her..

She felt that i was being sacrificial and i thought that i was being most selfish..
She felt that i was being judgemental and i thought that i was being just rational..

She felt that i was being manipulative and i thought that i was being motivative..
She felt that I was being possessive and i thought that i was being sensitive..

She felt that she was being reasonable and i thought that she was being illogical..
She felt that i should have given up and i thought that she should have given in..

She felt that i would never forgive her and i thought that i would never forget her..
She felt that she thought and i thought that she just felt she thought...

She felt...and i thought....

Why did she feel that, which i never thought, and
why did i think that, which she never felt???

back-flashes

Scuffling through the trouser pocket,i came out with a five ruppee coin,which I quietly placed in the "sauf" bowl.Ten buck is what I usually tip.but then this was not what I expected off from baghdadi, the chicken was hard to eat and it would have reflected poorly of my taste to my cousins,here in mumbai for the first time..
A not very neat but definitely one of the best tasting,Baghdadi too probably became a victim of the metropolis' unstatiated hunger for more..
Quickly,with cousins scumpering behind i moved out lest I have to look into the eyes of the poor,tired waiter(now, unlike the popular belief, the tips collected at the end of the day goes to the manager who distributes them among the team including the cooks).
It was close to midnite and we could somehow manage to catch the last local. Home s still atleast one & a half hours away in this slow local.Surprised to see a bit of crowd even at this hour, most of them pavement hawkers and also a few, heavy & drunk like us.
huh! This was the last time i would hav treated any teenager with alcohol...The train had hardly moved out of the platform than Shaju gave a yelp...I knew this was coming from the way the teenagers had acted all through the evening at Mondegar binge drinking..
I pulled him from the seat took him to the door and held him there till he relieved himself off the evening's inheritence.
Settling him on a seat I offered him the lone 500 ml Royal soda that I was carrying as if by foresight.
A sense of discomfort crept over me as i noticed the few passengers around staring at us with interest..

Got up and walked to the door.
It never gets better than standing at the door of an almost empty,last local with ear plugs on.
With the wind blowing over,and the perfectly blended scent of the grinding metal wheels and the impending rain,mind runs amock flashing back through to the times gone by..nostalgia sweeps over..
Its so strange, the speed and the way the electric signals jump over the neuron synapses, gliding from one thought to another, form one folder to another....
But then there always has to be some trigger to give direction to this glide...

Byculla, my trigger....and it-the thoughts, always tred back unlike the bollywood flashbacks...

She just stood there at the hostel gate,that peculiar albeit innocent smile of hers,revealing all... I was not a fool not to read her..
Had been a dream till then...exchanging mail addresses through a 26 hour train sojourn three years back.. keeping up with those kiddish promises of being in touch...through mails through those long expensive calls and finally meeting up and spending a day roaming around the town..sharing a few of those unacknowledged intimate moments..

It was at this hostel gate of Regina Pavis women's hostel, at Byculla, 16:30, a long time back that I left her, desires unfulfilled- forever..
No reasons were given,for she would never understand any...

The pinching rain drops wake me up from my reverie..But a part of me as the floyd favourite goes had already become comfortably numb...