Chennai Diaries

Without opening my eyes, my hands set about their business looking for the phone as it kept beeping louder and louder. I finally got hold of the phone and looked at the display opening my eyes just enough to notice that it was already 8.45 AM. I had somehow slept through two alarms (again) and this was the final alarm, the backup to the backup. I sat up on the side of my bed for a moment looking at the mobile for any clue as to how I kept missing my alarms. But I knew there was no clue to be found there as I had this life-long struggle with waking up early. So, I roused myself from the temporary stupor and got into the washroom. I squeezed whatever little life was left in the toothpaste tube and got about my business. 

I turned off the flame in the stove where I had set a couple of eggs to boil. I got dressed quickly and gobbled the eggs in one bite each. Still chewing on the second one, I stuffed my backpack with the laptop, charger and the file I was supposed to be working on. Locking the door and running down the stairs from my 4th floor room, I looked at the watch which read 9:35. “Oh boy! Late again”, I thought aloud as I made my way towards the bus stop which was just a minute’s distance from my room. The April sun was shining with full fervour and made waiting for the bus a hugely taxing ordeal. I put on my earphones and played the “most played” playlist and it felt like the very first song was teasing me with the lines “His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy” which was exactly what the heat was doing to me. I was on my second year of the 3 years of internship every CA student had to complete and still had almost a year and a half at a minimum left in Chennai but I was physically and emotionally exhausted. 

Suddenly an ambulance zipped past the bus stop, sirens wailing which displaced enough hot air to hit me square in the face. That gust of air turned my thoughts to my very first day in Chennai. I had just disembarked on Chennai Central Railway Station from a 44 hours train journey at about 5.30 in the evening and the very first thing that I noticed was not the heat or humidity, not even the hordes of people pushing and shoving each other as some tried to get out while others desperately tried to enter the station. What struck me most was the peculiar inexplicable smell emanating from god knew where. That weird smell was probably the first in a long list of things that made me dislike Chennai almost instantly. 

As I was still contemplating my first day in Chennai, a huge bus came to a halt just in front of me which actually had the body of two buses adjoined like an ugly metallic version of the Siamese twins. It was probably my lucky day I thought as I got on the bus and gleefully took an empty seat near the exit. I was still listening to music looking out the window aimlessly when I suddenly felt like there someone’s gaze was on me. A row back to the right side of the bus sat a young girl who, like me, had earphones in her ear and was looking at my direction. She was probably just looking past me, outside the exit door I surmised and, without giving her much thought, started to turn away when through the peripheral vision I thought I saw her smile at me. I quickly turned to face her and my suspicion turned out to be true. She was indeed flashing a warm smile towards my general direction. That came as quite a shock and I looked around me to see if she was actually looking at someone else as I didn’t want to be embarrassed by returning her smile only to find it was meant for someone else. Finally, I felt confident enough that the smile was indeed meant for me. I took in a few breaths, calmed my nerves and turned around, my eyes frantically looking for her but the bus had just stopped and she wasn’t there. Instead, there was an older woman sitting there who gave me an apprehensive look as our eyes suddenly met. I quickly turned around and thought that girl must have gotten down at that stop.  At the next stop I got down, still thinking about her. It was almost 10 and I was determined not to be late. So, as was customary after getting down from a public bus, I checked to see if my wallet and mobile were still in my pockets. I was just about to start walking when a soft tap on my shoulder startled me. I turned around to find her standing right in front of me and gave her an awkward confused smile.

Apparently, she had left the seat for the old lady and was standing near the door, blocked from my view by another passenger. 

“Hi! You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked smiling. Tried as hard as I may, I just couldn’t recall that face nor that voice. I smiled sheepishly shaking my head, still trying, trying as hard as I could to remember that pretty face. “I’m Salina” she said waiting for a response from me. “We met at the interview room in that Auditor’s office near Chepauk Stadium a couple of years ago. How come you don’t remember a fellow Nepalese, that too a girl, in this far away land?” she grinned. “God! I’m such an idiot!” I exclaimed suddenly the memories of that day came gushing in and making me wonder how on earth I had forgotten her in the first place. We proceeded to make some small talk. “How come I’ve not seen you in this route before?” I asked.  Apparently, she was on her way to a client’s place for audit and this was her very first day on this bus route. “Lucky me”, I thought to myself. She glanced at her watch as we both realised we had to get to work.  Just as I was building up my courage to ask her for her cell number, someone called out her name and she ran towards the voice saying, “Bye, see ya!”.It suddenly dawned on me that I did not even know her full name. My heart sank and I stood there worried if that was it; worried that I would never see her again.

My frown slowly turned upside down as I saw her scampering back. “How would we ever keep in touch without even exchanging numbers, silly?” she scolds me playfully. I had never in my life known that kind of happiness that too even after being called ‘silly’. I scratched my head, flashed a warm smile, took out my cell and finally asked her, “So, what’s your number?”. “Nine...Double Five....”she had just started to speak when we were rudely interrupted by a loudspeaker blaring a hit Tamil song which went ‘excuse me, Mr. Kandhasamy oru coffee kudipon ..come with me...’in which the actress was actually asking the guy out on coffee. Having come to understand a fair bit of Tamil during the 3 mostly miserable years there, I drew a quick parallel with our situation, looked at her and smiled. She must have understood as much because she too blushed, tucked the strand of hair which had fallen in her face neatly above her ear and smiled.

This was definitely something I would never forget. 

Crash & Burn

It was only about 7.30 in the evening but the the sky was pitch black and the infamous Nepalese power cuts(aka ‘load-shedding’) meant even the street lights were out. Nabin lived a very short distance from his office in New Baneshwor. He worked as assistant editor in a weekly magazine called “Aawaj”. He turned up his collar to shield himself from the cold breeze and started the ten minutes walk towards his room. 

He was already 39 and had worked extremely hard during his heydays to get the magazine established as a reputed weekly issue amidst the flurry of other newspapers and magazines. The magazine had never shied away from a story of public importance. Even in the best days, the subscriber base of the magazine was a fraction of the major news outlets, but the editorial team, consisting of Mr. Kiran, Mr. Binod and the editor Mr. Aashish, was proud of their work and they knew that their brand was unblemished and that if they printed something, the public would know that was something credible. While Aashish was undoubtedly the better journalist, Kiran and Binod thrived in the office environment. So, the workload was unofficially official in that Nabin would remain in the board but not have a major say in the day to day operations. He enjoyed the freedom of his role and would sometimes remain absent for days until the last day for submitting his articles. 

Nabin reached the gate to his building and saw that it was already locked. “Shit! It’s only 7.45.”, He muttered, “Why the fuck do they have to lock the door now?” He had been asking the landlord to not lock it so early but the old lady never listened. He turned around with the cellphone in his hand looking for the landlady’s number. A van suddenly screeched to a halt in front of him and even before he could react, a sack was pulled over his head and he was bundled inside by a couple of burly men. He tried to struggle and scream but a blow to the head knocked him right out.

He came to his senses, still a bit groggy from the hit and realized that he was tied to a chair with a scotch tape covering his mouth. He started twitching in the chair, trying to make sense of what was happening and where he was. “Well, well! Welcome back Mr. Nabin”, said someone and he instinctively turned right, towards the source of the sound. A bright concentrated light switched on behind the man rendering him almost indiscernible. “I hear you’ve been poking your nose where it don’t belong”, said the man he twirled a chair backwards and sat on it with his arms folded on top of the back rest. “What are you talking about?, I think there’s been some kind of a mistake here” Nabin said while the journalist in him was trying to observe as much as he could in an effort to put a face on that voice. All he could notice was that the man was well built and about 6 feet in height and his voice had a certain ring to it, kind of like the ones you hear over the radio.

“Oh, stop you,” said the man feigning a blush, “I know you’ve been looking into my ‘business ventures’ for quite a while now and I’d like to know what you know and who else you might have shared it with.” Nabin flinched ever so slightly, realizing that the man in front of him was the elusive crime lord he had been investigating for a few months now and who was only known in the criminal underworld ‘the boss’.

“There it is! I can see it in your eyes!”, ‘The boss’ gave a manic laughter exclaiming, “So, you do know me”. As Nabin kept professing his innocence, ‘the boss’ was losing his patience. “Boys, keep working on this guy”, the boss called out and left abruptly. Two of the goons came up to him and he could sense their malevolent intent. He knew he was in big trouble and that this was probably gonna be the end of him even if he gave up everything he had.

Suddenly, there was a sharp pain on the side of his head. His adrenaline kicked in and he managed to free his hands and stand up but the bright light almost blinded him. As he adjusted to the light, his world came crashing down.

His heart sank as he woke up to find that he was on his bed, sweating profusely with a light red mark on his cheek where his wife had slapped him. “Go and get milk and groceries, you useless little piece of shit!”, She shouted. As he got up and got dressed, he could still hear her venting about how a journalist was not a real job, about little money he made and about how he never helped in the household chores. 

As he left for the store, silently contemplating on his life and choices, he actually longed to be back in the dream even though he knew that, towards the end, he was probably not gonna make it. That thrill, it seemed, was worth more than this tedious life of making ends meet.