Aaryavir
As I stood on the terrace and stared at the city below me, I
couldn’t help feeling awed by the ingenuity that went into making this city
work. The wind blew fast and made my hair fly into my face. I closed my eyes
and hugged my cup of tea closer as I shivered in the cold. I came here often - the insulated glass shielded me from reality and the sense of defeat
reality brought. As I looked at the 134 m tall steel arch that went across the Sydney Harbour, I
remembered what had brought me so far from home. It deferred my sense of defeat
for a while. It filled me with a sense of purpose and knowledge and made me feel
like I mattered.
I always saw the world in black and white – everything was
good or bad. I recently learned that the world existed in shades of grey – that
we made the best decisions we could with the information we had.
Aaryavir showed me more colours. He showed me that colours meant more than good
or bad. Aaryavir was red, blue and white – passionate, knowledgeable and focused
on building community. I was black – focused on self-preservation, independence and gaining power. I guess that was brought me to Sydney, so far away from home.
Aaryavir had asked me where home was. I had been unable to tell him.
The wind became faster, louder and wetter. I felt like it too insisted on the answer. Home was supposed to be
Melbourne – where I would return to at the end of the year. It was where there was
a physical structure with my name on it. It was where I learned, painstakingly,
over a period of three years, to see shades of grey. Home had been Fort
Lauderdale, where I learned to become fireproof. Home had been Atlanta where I
learned to fall apart. Home had been Pune, where I learned to ignore everything
so that I could deal with it 20 years later.
Right now, though, home was supposed to be North of the bridge.
That answer quietened the wind. Secretly I thought that South
of the bridge felt more like home than the North. South of the bridge was where
I could feel Aaryavir’s kind embrace. It was where I could gaze into his green
eyes and feel love and affection. This was where he taught me about colours.
This was where he showed me that in addition to red, blue and white, he was also
green – respectful of the natural order of the world. This was where he showed
me that in addition to black, I was also red and blue – driven by passion and knowledge. The wind
didn’t seem pleased by my wild thoughts. It decided to become wetter.
Even as rain began pouring down on me, I felt warm thinking about Aaryavir. I
went inside where it was drier and warmer. As I sat down at my desk, I forgot
about the colours and was steeped in black again. I accepted my reality and became
one of the many cogs that made this city work.
Steelwalker
It takes about five seconds to fall 450 feet. It takes 5
seconds to reach a speed of ninety miles per hour when you fall 450 feet under
the pull of gravity starting from a state of rest. My heart stopped for the
entirety of those 5 seconds. And then it began to beat at over 180 beats per
minute. My mind completely blocked out all sound, except for the thud from the
contact with the concrete below. Slowly, I began regaining awareness of the
sound of the sirens from around me. I stared down at the Sharpie I had just
lost. Even with my heart beating wildly in my head, I felt a little relieved
that it had hit no one. I shifted tentatively, as I sat on a twenty four inch
wide, grey steel beam, 450 feet up in the air.
I had a safety harness that would catch me if I fell. But it would also
cut off my femoral artery and I would lose my life in about 30 minutes. I knew
this all along, but the Sharpie’s fall really heightened by awareness of the
fact.
There were iron workers around me. Big men, strong men. I
supposed they would walk the steel to help rescue me if I fell. I remember them
joking that I was too little and that I would simply fall out of my harness if
I tripped. They always had the same reaction when they first saw me. Their gait
would slow, their lips would curl up in mockery of how small a dude I was, then
their eyes would slowly widen in surprise as they registered, and then they
would look at my chest to confirm that I was indeed a woman. Then they’d think
I was cute because I had just spent 25 minutes making my way up to the 450 feet
tall roof just to sit around and look pretty. Then the smirks would start
amongst them. And I am sure there were bets too, of when I would freak out or
how soon I would fall. But then, as I’d slowly climb over the catwalk, and walk
onto the steel beams supporting the mammoth roof of this arena, they’d silently
acknowledge that maybe they were wrong.
I was a video board programmer, and didn’t really belong
here. As the safety inspector had insisted over and over during the
orientation, “this is an active construction site”. However, after the boards
were up in the air, welded, bolted and securely held in place against the
fiercest hurricanes, the only way to examine them was to become a steel walker.
These video boards were state of the art. We had spent months designing and
testing all the hardware and software. They had worked perfectly for the first
two days after they were put up. However, now there were dead spaces on the
display. The last time something went wrong with a similar set of video boards,
it took me a week of walking steel to find the tiny capacitor that had failed
us. I wondered how long it would take me today - especially after I had lost my
sharpie and the only way I had to track my movements and findings.
The weather was beginning to cool down. The ETFE pillows of
the gigantic roof were being put up and helped keep out the sun. It had rained
the previous night and I would have been cold had it not been for the thick
socks, steel toe boots, mandatory full sleeves t-shirt, pants, safety, harness,
thick gloves, hard hat and safety glasses. The safety vest he gave me was two
sizes too big, long and beginning to disseminate the malodors it had been
gathering from the greases, oils, paints, concrete and fade under the dust it
had been gathering. The contractor had warned me against washing it too often
for fear that the reflective stripes on it would fade. I didn’t need them to be
visible though.
The men never forgot me. It had been a year since I
inspected the video boards in Tampa, but a guy stopped me on the catwalk today
and exclaimed, “You’re the lady inspector from the arena in Tampa!” Yesterday,
when I took a two minute break to get a sip of water, the welder claimed “I am
making sure you are warm” when he turned on his torch and brought it’s
temperature up to a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
I checked to make sure both the hooks form my lanyards were
still connected to the steel safety wire above me. The shaking in my legs had
stopped, so I slowly stood up and inched forward towards the last obstacle
before I reached the video boards – two giant speakers blasting Katy Perry’s
firework. The audio consultants sure had some sense of humour!
Nirakar. Formless.
“You have beautiful eyes”, said the woman as she gazed into
Alina’s face. Alina had big, brown, watery eyes. They were deep and drew you in
swiftly. Humans say eyes are the windows to your soul. Alina’s eyes were the
gateway to an old soul, who had a million stories to tell – only we don’t have
souls like humans do. We also don’t have hearts – and our chest sounds like a
human heart skipping beats. We run on what the humans called music. The
formless introduced music to humans before we left the Earth. Alina knew she
didn’t belong to Earth. And so she hid her blue eyelids and shimmering body
under human mud – makeup they called it. Funny that a formless would use
expensive mud to “make her up”.
“Thank you”, said Alina to the woman who complemented her
eyes. Alina had recently found herself in a country called Vietnam. Alina had
accepted her fate as the only formless on the Earth. We had left years ago, when we realized humans were going to destroy the Earth. Humans are
silly. It took them years to figure out what was destroying Earth, and when
they finally did, they accelerated their own destruction! They’ve written
stories about how “we create the weapons of our own destruction”. For a species
that can understand so much, they always fumble around and mess things up awfully easy.
Alina was a formless and therefore logical, which also made
it hard for her to understand human beings. Formless are like historians. But we have to earn the right to be storytellers. We can only become a
storyteller when we complete our consciousness. It’s easy to complete one's consciousness - it is like a giant puzzle with millions of pieces. Our "hosts" hide
these pieces in a region they choose, sometimes they hide in many different regions. Every new formless has a host who
helps us complete our consciousness. The hosts are storytellers who’ve
written the requisite number of stories – 195 to be exact. When we write 195
stories, we get the right to host a new formless and then eventually disappear
into the ether. Sometimes other formless carry vital links to our puzzles and our hosts connect us to them. When the formless left the Earth, there was a bit of a frenzy
and Alina was left behind with an incomplete set of clues. Alina knew the best way to piece her consciousness was to
find the places that stimulated it. Hoi An, the lantern city, was
just the place – only it took
Alina many years to understand that Alina meant light. Her host was creative
in the clues they had left her with!
“So, what colour do you want the dress to be? I have pink,
green, blue, grey…too boring for
you…hmmm….red! Oh yes! This suits your face! You must get this dress in red.”
Alina agreed and spent the next 45 minutes defining the wide boat neck of the
dress. She didn’t want a revealing neck line – it would just add to the amount
of mud she would have to apply below her neck everyday. She chose a shimmering red
fabric that would distract from her shimmering chest – an area where humans
generally have a heart.
“Ok, this looks good. You come back tonight to try it on. I
will fit it to your body. Many boys will follow you!”. Alina didn’t really care
for human men. As humans would describe them, they tended to be “cry babies” –
always needy and wanting something. Alina didn’t like human women either. It
might have been because she was programmed to feel attracted to the formless that carried
missing links to her puzzle. She left the tailor to finish the red dress and
wandered around the city – lounged in cafés serving iced Vietnamese coffee,
spent hours with a street artist getting a wedding present made for one of her
few human friends, watched a water puppet show – my, these humans sure are a
creative bunch! – and then went back to the tailor in the evening. As Alina was
trying on one of the many dresses, she felt a jolt! A connection was made, a
piece of the puzzle completed. She looked around, and saw a human looking man.
But Alina knew he had blue eyelids and a shimmering chest where a heart should
have been. Deep brown eyes. A mature, kind and polite voice. That surely cannot
be a human! And then she felt another jolt and knew that he was a formless too!
It had to be – there was no way her puzzle was becoming more complete! Her
consciousness was coming together. He knew too. As did the tailor. She was
human, but apparently humans are good at sensing connections – even if they are
cosmic in nature. She saw how he snuck looks at this girl as she tried on her
dresses, stood in front of the mirror, twirled and let the fabric flare up, let
her hair down and flicked her head.
They made some human talk around the tailor – where did you
go to school, what brings you to Vietnam, and then made plans to “catch up for
drinks” after. Such a human thing, catch up for drinks – humans always dance
around the fact that you have a connection,. They’re always coy and ask, ‘do
you want to come back to mine to listen to some music?’. That’s something they
learned from the formless, because when we share music, we share the very thing
that sustains us. They started mimicking us to feel the same passion we felt,
but humans will never truly feel the power of music the way a formless can. The
tailor quickly wrapped up her red dress and his green coat. And then Alina and
the other formless left, to “catch up” with each other.
They went to a bar with drunk humans, but with very soulful
music. It had been a while since Alina had recharged! They walked over the old
bridge to Alina’s hideout. As they walked under the million lanterns Hoi Ann is
known for, Alina and the formless were careful to ensure the brightness of
their shimmering chests didn’t give them away! They locked hands. In this, they
were like humans, formless needed to hold hands to express their bond. As his
warmth flowed into hers, the mechanical sound of the skipping beats in her
chest got louder and more rapid. As they got to her hideout, he held her and
kissed her. Alina could feel the mechanical sounds of his skipping beats get
louder and begin matching hers. Alina ran her hands through his long, soft
braid. She felt his chest become warm as his generator skipped more beats, more
rapidly. He kissed and caressed her, and her chest shimmered brighter than it
ever had before. They both pieced another part of their consciousness that
night and it was the most powerful piece of the puzzle Alina had found. But
Alina still had 183 stories to write. He never told her how many more he had to
go. But the next day he left to complete his stories. She went to Malaysia to
look for the rest of the pieces of her consciousness, with her mechanical heart
skipping more beats than usual and her chest shimmering more brightly when she
thought of him.
Bhavna. EMOTION.
As I stood behind the yellow line that read “Please Wait Here”, I
wondered what he would ask me. This was routine procedure, but I was restless
that day. After being gone for four years, this land had begun to feel foreign
to me. The people looked different, their language felt awkward. And even
though I looked like them and could still read, write and speak the language
perfectly, something was amiss.
As he finished with the newly married couple in front of me, he
nodded to let me know that I was next. I knew they were newly married - Her
green bangles were a dead give-away! Why else would she wear green bangles on a
pink dress? They weren’t the only mark of a married woman on her, but were far
more obvious than the dark henna tattoos on her hands.
I stepped up, stood on my toes so I could reach over and handed
him everything I was holding. He looked at my boarding pass, raised his head to
scrutinize my face closely, and asked, "Bhutan?". He seemed a little
surprised by my choice. Most people had been.
I replied, "Ji haan!”
Yes, sir.
"Bhutan kaise?" Why Bhutan?
"Aise hi...ghumne..." Umm...just...to see a new place.
It was his job to ask. As an immigration officer, he was supposed
to ensure that I had all my paperwork and was not smuggling something out of
the country or being smuggled out myself. He didn't ask, "Why
Bhutan?" because he knew Bhutan was just the place I would go to if my
life fell apart. If he had opened my passport to the right pages and seen the
recent stamps in it, he would have known. Because no one travels for over 36
hours, halfway around the world, “just to see a new place”. If his nose was any
better, he might have even begun to realize that after about 30 hours, the
deodorant simply stops helping.
As he compared my face to the grainy image in my passport from
nine years ago, I wondered if he was trying to find the real Bhavna as well. I
had already spent the past 5 months looking for her, but maybe he would have
better luck. His receding hairline suggested he was probably around 40 and knew
a thing or two about people. I am not sure if the real Bhavna was the twenty
six year old who had hung onto the same dream for eleven years or the girl who
always gave herself an excuse to ignore that dream. I am still not sure what
compelled me to find my way to the Indira Gandhi International airport that
day.
Email forwards are mostly annoying and have a way of invoking a
strong sense of exasperation towards your friends. However, every once in a
while, they change your life. I remember this strange forward about Bhutan from
eleven years ago. It described a tiny, landlocked Himalayan mountain country
whose fourth king coined the term “gross national happiness” to measure his
people’s well-being. It went on to describe how they didn’t have television
till 1999 and whose major source of income was selling hydroelectric power to
India. Even as a fifteen year old, I was convinced this was the most egregious
email lie being circulated! But 2006 was also the year I discovered google and
instantly looked up Bhutan. It turns out, the country was real and beautiful
and charming. It had 1400 year old monasteries hugging the edges of dangerous
cliffs, hikes that went through lovely mountains and past a thousand lakes. Their
national animal was called the Takin, looked like a cross between a goat’s face
and a cow’s body and was found nowhere else in the world! Bhutan had always
been a sovereign nation, but was also the world’s youngest monarchy. Bhutan
seemed strange, but also full of mystery. I suppose that’s what brought me to
the airport.
"Aapka naam bahut pyara hai." You have a beautiful name.
It was a nice name! It meant "lover".
But the guy in the blue shirt did not know that I had stopped being everything
that name stood for. I had loved truly, deeply and passionately, and still
lost. I had completely shut myself off from the rest of the world. The bullet
proof glass that shielded him was fragile in comparison to the walls I had been
building around myself. I had run away from my friends and the
possibilities of new relationships. Destiny took the one life, the one
relationship that mattered and left me alone to deal with the emptiness and
grief. How then was I supposed to feel close to someone again or let anyone in?
How was I to ignore the knowledge that every relationship had the potential to
fail; that everyone in my life had the power to destroy themselves and hurt me
in the process; that circumstances always had a way of annihilating everything
good, no matter how much of yourself you gave up to save something. I had
tried, but even giving up all of my life couldn’t deter destiny from taking her
ruinous path and taking everything away from me.
Today though, I was trying to change that. As I fidgeted with my
red scarf trying to turn those thoughts off and focus on him, I responded,
"Shukriya, mere pardada lekhak
the....isi naam se likhthe the". Thank You. My great grandfather was a writer, and this was his
pseudonym.
I knew I wasn't forming a relationship with this man. I knew I
wasn’t going to see him again. But I still told him the story of my name. I
told him a tiny part of my story, and made my first attempt at slowing opening
up to the people around me. I was
learning to smile again. I was
learning to let people around me know that I was capable of feeling happiness,
even it meant accepting the fact that I would feel pain, loneliness,
defenselessness, longing, grief, desolation and utter desperation and defeat.
"Visa to arrival pe hi hoga?". Are you planning on getting a visa on
arrival?
"Ji haan". Yes, sir.
He handed my passport and boarding pass back, but only after he
had marked this day in it. I walked towards my flight. I would soon fly over
the highest mountain in the world, to the happiest place in the world! And
destiny wasn’t going to change that.
MIA
"I do"
"I do too"
The ironic thing about traditions, is that while each generation rejects the old, it is the shared experiences that help us connect with people, with communities, to form lasting bonds. These bonds are forged stronger and are more meaningful than those we form due to mere proximity. They too met as result of shared misery, but it was their desire to find their place in the world that bound them. Their desires to be someone, to find happiness, to deserve happiness, to share it with the people around them and to someday, leave behind their imprint in the world.
Their story starts at the Miami International Airport. They flew to Miami from Mumbai, India. She via Paris and Atlanta. He flew to Miami directly from Amsterdam. They first met in the airline's tiny room behind the ticketing office, where lost luggage lived. They bumped heads digging through hordes of lost bags. As fate would have it, his flight arrived late and the airline sent his bags to Atlanta, where they got lost with hers. The airline systems said their bags were sent to Miami, and so they went, every Sunday, to look for them.
The first time they met, they smiled shyly at each other and complained about how irresponsible the airline had been. "I had my prescription medicines in the bag! It's going to take me a month to get another appointment with the doctor! They're so irresponsible!" "I had my father's watch in the bag. He's worn it right from grade ten till the day he retired".
The second time they met, they smiled at each other with recognition and complained a little more about the airline's insensitive staff.
The third time they met, they smiled at each other knowingly, and then got coffee together.
And it went on like this for a while. They never found their bags, but, as cliched as it sounds, they found each other.
Sumit's father grew up in the India before 1991, where things like fancy watches were not easy to come by. But even when they were easy to come by, even when he had traveled the world and had all the money in the world to afford anything he needed, his father still wore the same watch. It was a present he had received when he scored really high grades in school. His father was a self made man, in every sense of the word. He didn't come from money, but had put himself through school and the most elite educational institutes in the country. He started his own design and manufacturing business with a friend in the days of the license raj and struggled like a factory worker to build it into something good. The watch reminded Sumit of his father, the values he embodied, the principles he led his life by, his relationships with people around him, his work ethic and everything that made him so impressive. All of Sumit's friends respected his father and looked to him for advice. His father was emotionally balanced and cared deeply for the people around him. Sumit had cursed himself over and over again for packing the watch in the bags the airline had lost! After all, Sumit had spent his life competing with the man. Sumit knew he had been given a headstart in life by virtue of his father's hardwork. Sumit never had to worry about money for books or the high cost of tuition at Stanford. He was accepted there because of his academic caliber, but he could never shake the uneasiness associated with being privileged. He believed that the only way he could deserve the opportunities and luxuries afforded to him, was, at the very least, being more successful than his father. But that was not the end of his ambition. Someday he wanted to be the CEO of the firm he worked at. And it was this strange desire to be ridden of guilt, guilt that he alone was responsible for, that had brought him to Brickell, Miami's financial capital.
Chanchal had wanted to leave India and go see the world, ever since she was a child. She always wanted to run away from everything and that might have brought her here. She was also very perceptive. She had read somewhere that people who experienced abuse at a young age tended to develop a keen sense of perception. So she always knew the truth without being told. She feared confronting it, because for her, it meant confirming the worst. And this keen sense of discernment made her leave. But she understood this. What she was totally oblivious to, was her profound sense of self doubt. She was confident when it came to matters of procedure. She knew what was right, what was wrong. However, when it came to personal responsibility, she naturally tended to take onus for everything that went wrong, whether she had the power to influence it or not. And so, she left India. First, to escape the abuse. Because running away even if it had been fifteen years after it stopped, was the only way she could truly stop feeling responsible. It was the only way she could right the wrong. She traveled and moved around the United States, and finally settled in Miami. The city's sense of chaos resonated with her. The city's persistent high rise development that forced new roads to close and maps impossible to follow, excited her. She understood the city's drive to define itself just as she was working hard to define herself and find her place in the world. The city was hot, just like her temper. The high rises wanted to be the tallest among the country, even if they were going up against a hundred and eighty mile per hour hurricane winds; just like she wanted to move up and be the best at what she did, despite the storms constantly brewing around her. And just like Miami's high rises stood on some of the poorest soils in the world, she knew her past wouldn't hold her back from having a magnificent future.
And thus their paths crossed because of their shared misery. But then they kept them crossing. They shared more than plain misery. They understood each other's need to deserve, their need to know that they were worth being saved and deserving of the good things that happened to them. They admired each other's ambition and their limitless passion for what they did. Someday, they would learn to be kind to themselves too. But that didn't stop them from falling in love. Neither did it stop them from accepting each other as life partners. Today, in the way of their ancestors, they embraced a life together by making the traditional seven rounds around the holy fire that would bear witness to their union.
AC 691
She was halfway through, but there was no sign of tomato or mozzarella. She paused, sipped her cappuccino and smiled at the thought that her panini had chosen to rearrange itself just like her entire life had, 5 months ago. Asmi had these thoughts often these days. When hurt, the human soul tries desperately, to look for a reason, a deeper meaning or connection to anything that replicates the sense of chaos it experiences. These days, she found this connection in the most random expressions of the human spirit. She found it in the graffiti she saw in a foreign city, where people wrote things like "Freedom" and "Just let me continue dreaming" on the walls of a parking deck. Asmi didn't dream, and all she wanted was to stop thinking or feeling, but she understood what the artist felt as he defaced public property in a manner so bold. He just wanted the world to leave him alone. He wanted them to let him go though his grief and take as long as it took him to feel it, process it and hopefully file it away in an irretrievable corner of his mind. Asmi knew it was grief, because no happy person would choose to express their happiness so painstakingly, in ink, on brick.
You might have called him a hoodlum. But Asmi thought he was an artist, because he was able to connect to her soul more powerfully than some of the most exquisite art she had seen. And she had memories of hiking for an entire day to stand in front of and admire 2500 year old stone carvings in remote and ancient caves. She had paid hundreds of dollars for seats in performing arts theaters around the world, gone to school in a heritage structure and stood on holy ground and bathed in holy waters. All these experiences had awed her, humbled her and inspired her. But the hoodlum's art touched her. It was the purest and most raw expression of one's inner self she had seen, and inanely priceless to her.
As Asmi got close to the end, she finally found the tomato and mozzarella she was looking for. She thought again, if that meant that her life would eventually fix itself. And then she realized how silly that thought was! Life can never be predicted, certainly not by symbols in sandwiches. She realized that the reason these symbols have meaning is because they are how we express our desires. She realized that she had the desire to be more than what she was and was slowly aggregating the willpower to be it. Today, Asmi was on her way to the Shangri-La halfway around the world. She was headed to a place so remote, that only six planes went there and only ten people in the world were qualified to land a plane there. She wasn't going to run away from something as she first thought when she bought the four plane tickets that would get her there, and the other four that would bring her back. She was going there to find the strong person she knew she had been and could be again. She was going there to feel everything that life's crazy turns had prevented her from feeling. She was going there to dream a little, feel a little freedom and be all that her name signified. Asmi. Happy, strong-willed, and in the present. As she thought these strange thoughts, they started boarding Zones 4 and 5 on AC 691. She finished her cappuccino, fished out her passport from her bag, extracted her boarding pass from the book she had been reading, and headed to Gate 8.
#7
Her name was Rupa and she was on a road trip. She had done this road trip 4 times before, or 6 if you count the one-way drives. That meant she had spent over 84 hours on almost the same combination of interstates and state roads. There were other road trips she had done as many times, but this time, something was different. The roads, even after their untiring spates of construction were the same. But she had changed. This time she had her personal DJ on the trip, and as soon as he figured out how to connect his phone to the rental's bluetooth system, they could stop listening to Bruno Mars on the radio! He wasn't the one who made her different by the way. He was on the trip with her, but this story isn't about him. We just need him to play some music so Rupa can sing her heart out. She knew she didn't sound too good, but didn't care. Singing made her happy. When she sang, she could feel the poet's feelings - the pain, hope, happiness or plan simple randomness that was contained within the song.
As Bruno Mars droned on in the background, she reflected on all her road trips along these roads. The first one was to start a new job after finishing grad school. They told her grad school would be tough, and she thought she could handle everything. But then it broke her down. She thought she had hit rock bottom when she had cried and admitted to another human being that she was finding things difficult. She thought it was her parent's divorce that made things difficult for her, knowing that the night she left for grad school was the last night they lived together in the same house. But then she tried to analyze her feelings some and figured it was the guilt of leaving her mother behind, alone. She was never close to the woman, and let's not get into the why of the matter. She cried through her first semester, thought she lost everything, because this was her only shot at making something of herself and screwing up grad school meant she would never get a real job. She didn't know what she would go back to, where her home was, where her anchor lay. She went home for her winter break, realized how much she didn't want to be home, stuck in her old monotonous job and found the resolve to get through grad school - with or without tears. She did well after that and landed this job, which would be most people's dream job. It might have been hers as well, but she didn't think about these things. Graduating with academic honours wasn't an achievement for her, she knew she was good and expected it. And hence getting that job didn't mean much either. Don't get me wrong, she was grateful for the opportunities it afforded her, but she didn't dwell on how lucky she was.
Her DJ finally connected his phone and she instantly knew the song and started singing along, without half a care in the world about what he or anybody else thought about her voice or about how out of tune she was with the music. Rupa didn't care. The music made her feel, and it had been a while since she had felt something other than pain, guilt, regret, sadness, loneliness, helplessness, claustrophobia or utter desolation. The song was peppy, and she was in a happy mood.
As she drove on, she thought about the other times when she had made this trip - twice to run away from a storm, and once to run into a storm! She didn't know that she was running into a storm, but as she drove on, she found herself hopelessly caught in one - and she was the only one on that interstate chasing her personal storm. But she didn't want to think about that either. She was busy being amused about the first storm! She still found it funny how she drove 643 miles because they ordered a mandatory evacuation, which for most people meant a 2-5 mile road trip! But the trip was worth it. The first time she ran away, she went to live with Ash. Or at least, that was what his friends called him. She showed up with 5 hours lead time, and he was still extremely welcoming. He offered his bedroom to her, saying, "You're a woman and you should feel safe, welcome and comfortable" and took the couch for a week. "Feel free to lock yourself in as long as you like, I have everything I need by my couch". Ash didn't know she was trying to run away from something other than a storm. To be fair, Rupa didn't know either. But she felt safe, comfortable and at home. She didn't lock herself in, but she knew he wouldn't venture in. She slept in late, and Ash had already left for work when she came out of her room. He left her instructions on the options for breakfast and she made herself something nice. His kitchen, like the rest of the house was very clean and well organized and she enjoyed cooking. She was young then, not much of a chef, but in Ash's kitchen, she felt like a professional. He came home for lunch to meet her, made her something nice, and then went right back to work! Rupa was married to her job, but she was a slacker compared to Ash.
As she lounged around the apartment, Rupa realized the next day was Ash's birthday. As she silently hoped everyone back home would be alright, she couldn't help but chuckle at the thought that Andrew had picked an appropriate day to make landfall. Looking back, it's funny she felt like that, because Andrew's devastation was symbolic of the devastation that was about to be unleashed in her life. That day though, she was oblivious, warm, cozy and comfortable. She picked up a cake from somewhere famous and then spent the next 5 hours making Ash's favourite dessert. She didn't do that for most people, but Ash comforted her. He was older, wiser and one of her dearest friends. It's funny how she felt so close to him, because she had barely known him for a few months before she graduated and moved away. But she felt an strong connection to him, probably because she sensed in him the internal struggle that was beginning to brew in her heart around the time she met him. Ash was someone she didn't have to share these feelings with, just knowing he was a part of her life allowed her to feel like she wasn't the only one grappling with internal conflicts.
Rupa respected Ash, a sentiment she rarely felt for most men in her life. And it wasn't just because he was older than her. Ash was fearless and quit a comfortable life to literally go save the earth! She had read about people who gave up everything to save someone or something. Rupa knew why people like Ash did these things. They did it because that was the only way they knew how to deal with their internal struggles - by running away from the monotony of their lives. Saving someone didn't make them feel like heroes. It was how they healed their pain of being left alone to deal with unfair circumstances. It was how they avoided feeling victimized by the events in their past. It was how they exerted control over their fate by controlling it's departure from the normal. Today's road trip was Rupa's attempt at running away from the realities of her life. She thought about running further away as well, quitting her job and going to a remote country with no internet. She knew such a place too. But Rupa knew she would never come back if she went. And so she sang instead.
She sang and went on road trips. Today she turned up the volume, brushed aside the thought of all the meteorological and metaphorical storms in her life and sang her heart out. She knew she'd have a sore throat at the end of her twelve hour drive, but right now, singing felt right. It was all the anchor she needed!
Damn you, Rich!
"Well, I am not much of a dancer..."
"That's ok. If you don't know what to do, just twirl me around!"
And so he did, and they danced...
The band played Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the U.S.A' and she told him she wasn't even born in the USA. He told her that he was a Canadian born in Europe. She wanted to ask where in Europe and how he ended up here. But she didn't. Because that would have meant telling him her story as well and she didn't want to.
She didn't think he was untrustworthy, but she just wasn't sure what her story was anymore. She didn't know if it mattered what her story had been. She just wanted to forget, stop thinking and enjoy the music. Dancing made her feel alive. She needed a drink to loosen up sometimes and the right pair of shoes. After three ligament injuries to her knee, two back injuries, one of which was sustained dancing in the rain, she wanted to make sure her shoes were right. She wore boots that night and loved the sound they made on the dance floor. She felt the music and it made her come alive again. She always felt the music. She was a little dramatic and cliched in that sense. Maybe even a little old fashioned. But at 30, she was old!
He asked her her name. Without missing a beat, she replied, "Su". She just knew she was Su tonight. Not Sunaina. She saw Sunaina in the mirror, but Rich told her that she should go by "Su". He called himself Rich, because he thought Richard was too long a name! She told him they all called her Naina, but he told her she looked like "Su". So when this stranger asked her her name, she said "Su", because she was tired of being Sunaina. Sunaina had gone through a lot of pain and she was here to forget. The anonymity that "Su" afforded her gave her comfort, because she was here to run away from her feelings and didn't want to be found tonight. She wanted to ask his name, but then that would mean getting to know him. She didn't want to get to know anyone or feel close to them. She wanted to feel the music and she wanted to feel her body move. She always said her body was made to move. She could never sit still. It might have had something to do with how restless her mind had always been, but she didn't think too much about it. She over-thought a lot of things, but this wasn't one of them.
Su enjoyed herself dancing with the stranger, who by the way, was a real gentleman. She had no way of knowing, but he left his friend alone and danced with her, because she asked him to. So he must either be a terrible friend, or somewhat of a gentleman. Rich told her that guys found it tough to approach girls and wished sometimes that girls would approach them and make it easier. Rich said a lot of things like that and she wasn't sure she trusted him. But that night, she had had two drinks, which in Naina's world was one month's supply. It was in her old world. In her new world, she easily went through a wine bottle a week, all by herself. Wine was the only alcohol she allowed herself to drink alone, and it might have been because she secretly thought wine was a food group. It was when she was enjoying her Merlot and telling Rich about the guy she wanted to ask out at a bar, but didn't, that Rich told her that she should ask guys out and show them some mercy. So after two drinks and an insatiable desire to dance, she decided she would find herself a partner. She got asked to dance sometimes, but that night she went with a friend who was a boy and nobody would ask out a woman who came in with another man. I say boy because he was supposed to be her wingman but was too shy to introduce her to anyone. Maybe that's why Rich got in her head and as she walked back to the dance floor after a little break, she stopped by their table and asked, "Which of you knows how to dance?"
And so, Su danced. And she danced to Born in the U.S.A as well. She had no clue why the band would pick that song, but they did a really good rendition and Su felt herself move. And felt him twirl her. They always liked to twirl her. She looked pretty when twirled. Her dress would flare out, and her hair would fly and she would look free and happy and unburdened.
He asked her if she was about to get married to the guy she came in with. She laughed and said, "Him? Oh no! He's my brother!". She's not sure why she said brother and not, friend-who's-a-crappy-wingman. It might have been because it was a mouthful and all she wanted was to dance. To tap her feet to the music. To know her body moved perfectly to the beat of the music. She was a perfectionist, even when drunk. And so she danced with the Canadian. And then she felt bad for having him leave his friend alone, and after a while, told him to go back. And he was still very chivalrous and gracious towards her "brother", who he thanked for letting him dance with Su. But Su wasn't done dancing that night and she danced with some not so memorable men, a woman who also twirled her and executed a perfect fall! She loved that, because her hair fell back and shined and looked just perfect!
Damn you, Rich! I had a good time. Thanks for getting your bullshit in my head this one time. Only this one time though, ok?
