Nowehere to go...

Baba wasn’t a funny man as much as I could know him. But no doubt he could irritate the hell out of anyone with his snaps and tantrums. For me, it would always be a task to find the underwear every morning under his reign. The undergarment chest would never rest at the same place for more than two days. That day was no different. I roamed twice around the house to see where the chest was and after searching for it everywhere, I found it in the danger zone—where he was sweeping the floor. The clock showed 5 minutes to 8 already and even if I counted 5 minutes slow minute hand, then also I was running late. The moisture was thriving to become my sweat. Somehow, I kept to it and in my heart I knew I’d have to skip the breakfast to catch the only bus to work.

                Missing the chartered bus meant you’d have to either take metro or to drive your hatchback. Over the years I haddeveloped such a loath with driving. There were times I remember I drove withhalf my eyes closed. And the simple reason was the dipping number in the odometerwhich was such a harassment to bear. Anyway I quickly dressed myself, scentedmy underarms, shirt and cheeks and left. I remember I left maa’s eyes hooked ontothe breakfast, decorated as I always demanded.

                A couple of nights back theice-cream bowl was leaking. Maa, tried hard to protect my boxer, but failed. Ididn’t eat it despite my days long crave for it. It wasn’t the only night whenI didn’t eat because of a tantrum. I had inflicted myself a lot of pain by hunger,isolation from everyone else and sometimes by punching, kicking the walls overpetty issues. That’s the loser side of my life in a word.

                When I left home I felt if I hadforgotten anything. I checked my watch… had forgotten the wallet! Now I had nochoice. Going back home meant another spell of arguments and adding to her annoyance.So I left the society main gate and kept walking towards the bus stoppage. Itwas about a couple of hundred steps. I felt the air of oddity on the road.Walking amid the tall towers looking at everything so curiously was a bitstrange too. That road was as usually crowded by the rickshawwalas, newspapervendor, husbands coming to drop their wives and mothers waiting for the bus to send their young ones to school. The ever milling pathway before the T-pointwas barely filled today, felt as if there had been a shootout last night. Orwas this lull indicating a dreadful storm?

                Maa was leaning at the balcony, glancingdown. She wore an inquisitive expression on her face even though she knew I had missed the bus. I glanced at her and looked away in haste. I was pondering on whether to take a rickshaw till the metro station or go back and ask her to drop me thecar keys. I craned my neck, she was gone by now and when I turned back; a small kid just missed hitting me by his tiny bicycle. I kept walking, humming She will be loved running in theearphones.

               Next moment I heard a heavy roar taking over the loud music I was listening to. I unplugged it, it was deafening and it was definitely the roar of an aircraft, I thought. At first it sounded like some air force drill which was such a usual thing to happen. The fighter aircrafts would start from Hindon air base and within a couple of minutes they would cross our sights.

                I packed the earphones back intomy pocket and as I looked up I realized there was a new visitor in my sight. Itwas a passenger plane—unbelievable! I blinked once and saw it again with my fingers shielding my eyes to avoid falling sunrays. Its undulating wings, andits head, tilted more than it would while lowering itself before landing.

                Maa wouldn’t have seen it. Our balcony was not in the line of sight to where I saw it coming from. It looked as if the little space between the edges of the buildings was covered with a tawdry, ripped poster of a dying aircraft. Looking at it that instant reminded me of those airplanes I waved to as a kid. But it was different. Its big windshield, like the eyes of a monster gazing at me and its giant wings looked like those outstretched arms of the teddy bear that looked scary in those years.                I remember when we were kids, Nonu used to scare me with that teddy. It had long arms, stretched fingers, and had those bulbous eyes and a long, pointed, evocative nose. She used to take me to bed after getting home from school and scare with that teddy and I would instantly fall asleep in her arms holding her like a baby cuddling his mother.

                I couldn’t concentrate much onhow it looked.  They were swayingsideways like they were doing an air show. Nonu’s home wasn’t very far fromthere. I wondered if she had realized it was to drop over us. Probably overevery one of us I could see till my sight went. My calculation was about finetoo, if it dropped, it would destruct almost every building along the road, oreven either sides of the road.                 I turned my neck and found maa stillthere, hanging the wet towel which I had left on the bed. Unaware of thetrouble, she looked serene, which she never looked for so long because of ourservice she had devoured herself into. I wanted to meet eyes with her, to askher to go inside and live.

I ran backward. The first few steps I believed I didn’t even take on the road. They seemed to have taken on the air. My run was guided by the obvious danger; I offloaded my shoulders from the laptop and ran with the calculation that if the plane hit the ground, it wouldn’t touch me if I ran north-west, so I ran with all my might and pace. My heart was hammering against my chest, and my whole body drenched, in sweat. The giant was still waving sideways. And as it was growing bigger with every blink of my eyes, its roar was getting even more maddening. My breath was on the brink of betraying me. Yet I hurried on…

                I had covered about six building before I heard the explosion. The pressure in the air was such that it made me unearth by about three feet and dropped me back on the shaken road. My headbanged straight on the broken tar and I befell under the dark clouds of dust.

                I lay there lifelessly before I came to senses. The breathe  Even thoughts had seized in my mind. I was crying dried tears. I didn’t try hard to get up, rather lay there with greed to keep inhaling the little oxygen that was available. Was I the only survivor? To find out that I needed to be up, which inevitably meant to face the truth. It meant to face the mirror. It meant to face the life I’d been living for a while and undeniably ensuring everyone else live the same life, which I hated myself. I was inhaling my own conscience from the little air left for me. I tried to move my hand a bit to see if it was still a part of me as it went dead for over sometime. I moved my fingers; felt the sawdust under me. Wished it was my death bed, I cried within…

                Counting one, two, and three gave me little energy to rise. I coughed and as I fixed myself on elbows, I watched the dark of destruction around me. The whole habitat had been demolished. It wasn’t where I ever lived. It wasn’t where I grew up paddling my red colored, rusted old Hercules. It wasn’t where I played, I ran, laughed, caught bus to work and it certainly wasn’t from where maa used to moisten her heart waving at me, leaving for work. Impassivity surrounded, and haunted me those dark clouds of dust and fallen buildings that had shattered like the pack of cards. I wished someone would rescue me. My wit, despite all my wounded efforts was reproaching me. Thrusting my conscience into reality reminding me of how I cheated death. For a moment as I thought, I wasn’t ready to live all my life dying in guilt. The thought itself was excruciating. Perhaps the right decision was to face the death. Perhaps the right thing was to run up to baba and apologize for not being able to be an ideal son a father would wish for, or run up to bhai to shake hands and say that I always proud of being what he was for me and that he was more than just a brother, or perhaps embrace maa one last time…                Behind me I heard mewls and cries of people, loving and kissing their loved ones, thanking god for saving their lives. Perhaps they didn’t realize me lying barely conscious over there. Perhaps I shouldn’t have run away from death. Yes Perhaps…

                I shouldn’t have. Perhaps my exoneration trapped everyone at home. I was hopeless to hear them anymore ever.Meaningless would be the life ahead if I didn’t catch an ailment and die, I cried but even the tears had retracted from me. Did mother see my cowardice running away to find my haven as the last scene before death hit her? How would it be for baba to die earlier than making things right? How would it be for bhai to die in slumber? And how would it be for Didi to die crying, crying over her life. And there I was, disgusting my blood, breathing life again.

                All the tears in my eyes had been dried. Only some saliva was leaking out. My eyes had set on the giant monster throbbed into the roots of my livelihood. It had plunged into the gardens before the buildings, and the dead aircraft mirrored a lot of stories, a lot of reasons of life and love and the ones who cared—even loss. It wasn’t about happiness or sorrow anymore. It was ethereal. It was something beyond my extents. It was about how to survive without those eyes which gazed and wanted a word, and even about those words that once penetrated my patience and the brotherhood we shared, the love for each other and the hunger to love them craved even more.

                A pool of tears on my death beaten face came out. I opened my eyes and found myself embraced within the arms of someone howling more than me. It was the touch of a woman. She had gripped my living corpse so strongly that her fingers had bruised my flesh. For a moment it seemed as if I was in a nightmare and maa had just woke me up. I moved back and embraced her tightly as I could. I wanted to cry but my voice was gone. She wasn’t maa. She was hailing, weeping, saying words within her cries but all I could hear were some screeches. My arms drooped in fear, fear of losing her again. And slowly I was losing strength and my tense body slowly verged on crumbling. It was Nonu. Her arms didn’t relieve the burning guilt in my heart. It was intensifying with every breath, with every tear I shed, every moment I lived. My heart gloomed, but I was destined with such for I wanted to live, seeing all what I had lost. Wish I was dead, for now it’s just nowhere to go…