Memories of a Night in Solitude...

She finished the book on a Friday night when it was raining torrents. There were no obligations to get up early in the morning hence she could think in peace. For her there was no greater distraction known in life then the need and compulsion to sleep. It was as if in sleep the person chooses to die out for a while leaving behind all the beauty that life has to offer. What a waste of time!!!

She was stretched out on the bed; the book just finished lying on her stomach –the two of them like tired and delighted lovers who have just finished the act of finding pleasure in each other’s bodies. Likewise her mind was reviewing the book, certain passages that she would refer from time to time, like a lover teasing fingers on the spine of her sweetheart- small actions that differentiate love from lust; post coitus . The radio played the song “aaja guffaon mein aa; aaja gunaah kar le…” in the background. For no specific reason she likes the feel of the song combined with the constant beat of the rain on the window and the violent thunder.

Suddenly she had this intense desire to feel water on her skin….Its the weekend- a time just for self hence she obliges. As she gets off the bed like the secret lover going away, the clock chimes out the bell for 2:00AM- as if reprimanding. The radio station is now playing “Kabhi Alvida na Kehna”. She almost thinks that that the book, her lover for that night; has conspired with the clock and the DJ at the radio station (and maybe her mother who would have gone wild had she got to know of her daughter getting wet in the rains). But then she is decided. Books were her love definitely. She could pick one for each weekend, even more, drink them in, sleep with them and no one could blame her of being a bitch. Besides they are much easier to handle than the guys. Grabbing a couple of chocolates and the half finished bottle of vodka she hums “Dil khudgarz hai fisla hai fir haath se; Kal uska raha, aab hai tera is raat se….” as if arguing with the radio she proceeds to the roof top. No doubt, things do tend to become human like especially for imaginative people who are staying alone. At the door her dog, Pepsi yawns and stares at her. He is accustomed to her Friday night musings and is not bothered about the whole thing.

As if to welcome her the cloud above her burst over with a flash of lightning. As the first few drops of water found a path down her spine she feels drunk. “Who needs this damned vodka in this weather?”; she smiles thinking of her team lead who had gifted her the bottle almost 15 days back on the successful completion of the project well before the due delivery date. The fact was however different. The project completion was just an excuse. The bottle was there because her Team Lead Avantika, a head strong divorcee felt that a woman if she works equal to a man should enjoy the same pleasures. The bottle was among the first few trials that she was taking as a part of the pleasure trip.

Usually scared to death by insects and cockroaches not to mention the phobia she had of ghosts and spirits (plus the add-ins you get in Delhi like the “mooh nochva”, the monkey man, the hammer man….and their lesser versions like thieves, burglars and prying neighbors) she couldn’t have been more daring. It actually seemed as if an ancient spirit had taken residence in her, making a usually calm placid, practical-in-control widely respected, young and successful executive into a wild creature (I purposely refrain from using the word girl or human being. There was nothing sensible about the whole thing)

Then for some unknown reason she started crying. Maybe the joy was too much- the joy of being able to act like a child without any restrain or was it the pain of always having to act the part of a serious and responsible grown up. Whatever it was it gave her a sense of being freed from a dungeon. As the weather calmed down a bit maybe in an hour’s time it seemed to have a similar effect on her as well. Her mind started wandering on the beach of life gone by. The strange part was most of them were totally irrelevant experiences- not the ones that had changed the course of life or earth shattering remember able ones. A few hours earlier she hadn’t even remembered those moments; and here she was crying for the third standard child who didn’t get the first prize in the poetry recitation competition, smiling at the girl who felt the pleasure of wind in the hair the very first time on the cycle, with Chaaya and laughed at the awkward teen who had found her face painted early morning on getting up from bed by hostel mates. A lone girl sitting on the roof alone at 3:00 AM on a rainy night...laughing and crying.

Undoubtedly it was one of the most beautiful night’s she had ever spent. It was as if the current she was time traveling with a younger her stopping and exploring those little moments that have been lost amongst the more important ones or simply amongst the rush of life.

A while later she was thinking, “Am I getting mad?” People have beyond their jokes had always thought of her as a lil’ bit strange- especially for the reason that despite being the head of a successful organization (besides being beautiful and the kind of girl that anyone would like to take home) she loved staying alone for no obvious reasons. No boyfriends, no close friends - nothing. She even stayed away from her own family. She had vehemently opposed them saying she wasn’t the only one. Loads of people stayed that way. Besides work was a good enough excuse to escape from all relationships. Plus she argued that there is a distinction between solitude and loneliness. But then what she did alone, besides reading no one knew. No one had been inside her house, not her parents, not her friends. There were no servants as she insisted on maintaining things on her own.

Solitude; as widely understood is the act of being with yourself, indulging yourself to refresh the mind of backlogs and crowding that happens when some one is constantly drilling their thoughts in your head. Loneliness is the exact opposite, a kind of exile over a failure by self or given over by society to an individual. She was neither in constant solitude, nor lonely. It had been like this since childhood. When her brothers and sisters would play, she would sit and talk to anything that was willing to listen, grass, sky, spoons, books, walls, papers, toys….anything. With age, she found it difficult to confide in a person and over time she retreated back into the world of her own after the working hours. A world as real as any other, full of trees, teddies, books, music, Pepsi and memories. A world where everything talked and smiled, had time for others and no one was angry.

The vodka had by then burnt her throat, thus making the memories clearer. She remembered the first time she had met Chaaya-The only person who had been able to enter her “closed’ world. Her best and only friend from school days. Chaaya who was taken away in a road accident when they were in the final years of college. For her Chaaya had never died; because she hadn’t ever realized her existence. Like everything in her world Chaaya continued to live, smile and suggest thoughts…..

But today, suddenly she felt the need to see Chaaya- the real one, to feel her and hold her. But where was she? In the truest sense of her name(shadow) she was there all the time, but so far off that she could only be felt and not touched.