(I don’t know how it began. And I don’t know how it’s going to end. So this is just the middle part.)



He looked up to her, in a fake attempt to disguise his sadness, “So?”

“So? So what? You know what’s your problem? You think a lot. A lot more than it is really needed. It’s unhealthy, that’s what it is. The more you ponder over something, the more you’re letting that thing or situation confuse you. Because at no point in time, you’ll know exactly what to do. It’ll always be a choice between what you could have done and what else you could have done and what you are going to do... It is that complicated. And you can’t always sit and think over it. It’ll not ...” the telephone rings and She turns to take the call.

He goes back. To think. This is just one of those things that make you an individual – the right to think all sorts of things. Wrong things maybe, but so what. If you’re living your life through your mind and if everything you experience is a function of what your mind perceives it as, then what’s the harm in thinking?

I’m sure those great Indian sages who sit on thorny chairs or daggers Think that they are sitting in a Jacuzzi. And then they levitate. How do you think they do it, huh? You’re undermining the importance of thinking just because you don’t think much. Or is that what you want me to believe? Maybe you also think. Think all the wrong things. The decision to not think is also conscious thinking. And I’ve noticed that it’s not as if you don’t think. You think and you tell your mind, “No, I don’t want to think about it. I want to think about something else now.” So in essence you run away from your own thoughts. “This thought is bothering me, therefore I’m gong to go to that other thought.” Just like you’d stand in front of your wardrobe and decide, “Umm which one, today?” Which tells me, if you could generate dresses like you generate thoughts, I’d never go out with you, forget it.

So you run away from one thought and take respite with another. Because, yes I know, “There’s no point thinking about it.” See, that’s the difference between you and me. You are closed. I’m open. You don’t want to think because the possibilities don’t matter to you. You’re done. And I’m about possibilities. And it’s never too late.

You don’t start. I don’t end. And I have a very strong reason why I am this way. Because I don’t think about world peace. I don’t think about hungry children. And I certainly can’t think of winning the Miss Universe pageant.

There are just a few, very few things worth thinking about. And what I’m doing with you happens to be one of them. You react one way to a beautiful flower, and you react one way to a bud that enters and blooms into an orchid inside your mind. Its existence becomes an integral part of your thinking. And then what you...

“Sorry, long call. Winding up, you see. Good things coming to an end...” What She said didn’t register, but He came back from his zone and looked at her. He wanted her to listen to all that He’s been thinking. As if the voice she was speaking to on the other side of the telephone, by some miracle said the exact same things that he’s been thinking. There were days where telephone lines would get mixed up. And you’d hear strangers talking. Why can’t that happen between two telephone lines and a person external to this network?

That it didn’t happen, was evident from her face as she gave him another quizzed look, “You look dazed. Want some coffee?” “Coffee, what a noble idea, coffee,” he thought, “ever since I quit smoking, I’ve been on this diet of twelve black coffees a day. Nicotine. Caffeine. Divine.”

“Yes coffee. Great. Let’s walk to the vending machine, I’m tired of sitting around.” He lied though. He could never be tired of sitting next to her. Just sitting next to her. Without any rhyme or reason.

Sometimes without even talking to her, just outside the line of her vision. It was his way of meditating and finding something he had no clue he was looking for.

He knew exactly who he was looking for - Someone who’d, someday, just stop him. Break him down. And build him over. Someone who’s universe was bigger than his. And deeper. And there she was as if not just two-third, but the whole Earth’s one ocean. Where everything could live. And when he sat next to her with his whole world of desert and sand, it coexisted with her whole world of waves and water. As if to become a much bigger world of beaches and seas. This world always overwhelmed him.

He hadn’t felt anything like this since the day he discovered he could sing. Life’s deepest discoveries happen out of blue. One moment changes everything before and after that moment. Till another such moment arrives. And life is what happens in between.

This moment had also come unaware. It suddenly crept and jumped at him, scaring and comforting in the same breath. He always believed that you don’t really have to spend a lot of time with a person to know him or her. He had always been a reader. He had practiced and mastered the language. He had read her too, or so he thought.

Till this moment arrived. And she read some pages from his book, pages that she had been carrying not knowing they were his. Destiny! Yes. But what next?

“Get up! You look dazed and stupid. What’s it about me that brings out the moron in you,” she yelled. He was looking at her, so he just smiled and said, “You’re too cute.” She frowned, she didn’t get the connection, and the reply wasn’t logical. “Okay, let’s go before another phone call comes.”

The coffee was nothing special, besides, he thought, maybe this was the last cup of coffee He was having with her. The thought unnerved him. He always knew that a situation like this would arise some day. And not just her, it could be with anybody. Anybody he liked. And he had prepared to handle this situation and was confident because he had full knowledge of this situation.

He got scared, “does this mean the bricks that I’ve laid in my defense, my spiritual immunity - they are on shaky grounds? All the hard work, restrain, practices, all of that don’t mean a thing?”

“Or is there a force so strong that what you have and what you don’t have don’t matter. It’ll just come and blow you away. Sometimes it takes you and makes you travel with it. Sometimes like a twister it just takes you and drops you at some point. And if you survive that, you wonder. He resigned to the fact that this was one such twister.