Indian Ameri

Standing on the track of a bullet’s unknown ricochet, as the broad amorally intrigued greenhorns riveted their unsullied and uncertain young eyes on me, a sense of fidgeting doubt flourished deep from my grey matter. A sense of distressing emotion of the insidious months, accompanied by the ‘sighs’ of the plausible blatant future, tightened a few fibers on my muscles as I waited eagerly to get the sensation out of me. A few seconds later, as the guys cheered and jeered in fascination at the white quaffle sailing past the bottled boundary, I realized not that I had bettered in the game, but that, for a moment in the love for fright – in ‘phobie phyllus’, I succeeded in achieving blankness in thought and heart. Six hours later, with a man-of-the-match 43 of 34, a lightened retirement from captaincy, a few muscle spasms, I was relieved to coast back into obscure normalcy with a new partner of two wheels in travel.

A tired feet’s huff and puff cramped up an arc of an effort from the lower back, as I enjoyed the cool breeze of the late-winter’s-evening-dream, hitting the parched eyes, inducing a certain sparkle of a seasons-tear from the right eye. With Soft’s, “Can’t get no rest… Now you really got me HIGHERRRR” plunging a relaxed resonance into a thoughtful smile at the occurrence of a long sought sunset, I flashed a few smiles at the oncoming curious traffic. With the bat bagged as a quiver of momentous lucidity, and with the physique pumping out a few calories at the cool breeze; forging the pain of confusion into a sun-setting reality, I’d guess, I’ll be much more satisfied in bicycling back and forth the practices and games than being with the team during travel. (It’s interesting that a few things of solitude shunting do go beyond points of isolation).

A quarter hour tired floatation on bed, listless and slightly annoyed par amuse, in half sleep by the whispers of a faintly audible self set divine blues of a bio-alarm, set the next few minutes of a slumber shadowed dream. Paused the phyla of whirling into the whorls of memoirs, I showered hot, soothing the pangs of the non-psyche and hitched a boyish walk to return an untypical book to a friend of mine. Though I watched the screened version of ‘He’s just not that into you’ alone, I never understood the real reason for my friend to offer me the book version penned by the writers of a female based audience. Although I went curiously dallying around by her imprudence, I managed to read the whole book in a period of about 3 weeks. She spent a major discussion on the aspects of the various virtues of relationships as enlisted by the authors. Finally, with some prior laugh riot establishing the vividness of exemplary confusion in any relationship, she and a few of her invited friends, decided to call me the ‘Bones - King of the lab’ and confirmed an editorial position for their imaginary book penned as “She might be into you”. :D

A two month hiatus broken finally by the availability of a common friend, led to the meeting with Jay finally. His sullen mindset of missing me, made me wonder the things I too missed from isolation. But then, the news of his extended stay in the forthcoming India trip with his grands, my parents, led to a sequence of jittery discussions of comfort with the family as such. By the end of the comfort I had to provide to a ‘gonna miss my kid’ dad, ‘is it gonna be safe for my kid?’ mom, ‘will he be okay in India?’ grandpa, and ‘will he stay with us after you go?’ grandma, I realized, that I have a sour crack to whiff out from the clutches of my family to live Charlie’s life. Don’t know if it had been a combinatorial effect of me watching “Two and a Half Men”, my plans for the future and my nephew’s three month visit to India, I day dreamed after a low slept, highly detailed meeting in my lab. The dream in brief was a modified version of K2H2, minus the heroines, plus an 8 year old Jay with an IQ of 200+ trying to set me up. Sheesh! Of all the movies my brain can process, I got this one??? :o

As the ticker went past a full 3 hours of 200% concentrated work, I lost track of my playlist reeling shuffles of new songs even under rambunctious conditions. But then, a sequence of words from the beginning of ‘this’ jolted me from my iron cushioned rocker and I checked my back, if by chance I lost my sight too in concentrated work. A slight smirk followed after the songs realization, and after transferring concentration towards the music, it was time for me to take an invite I’d been avoiding for a while. With the ipod repeating the jolter, I decided to walk the next 3 miles for an invitational lunch.

After the initial surprised welcoming, Dr. Zizou (:P) had let me deal with his wife. While Mrs. Zizou had been a friend for nearly 3 years, I haven’t met or spoken with her for nearly half a year. With the Zizou’s expecting their first born in 9 weeks, I’ve clearly directed her prenatal second trimester hormonal anger towards my absence from their family gatherings. The end result was a lambast of anti-cathartic words shot intermittently in sarcastic tongue at me, a few grunted puns back at her (while Dr. Zizou was giggling like a girl at the way I rolled high), a feast mostly fasted (only by the two men) for the mothers cravings, and a really hard hit of the kitchen’s largest wooden spoon on my knee roll. ‘Ouch!’ I cringed in pain. A few seconds later, I and Dr. Z witnessed the wailing of Mrs. Z. While it was quite usual for Dr. Z to witness his wife have prenatal tears flooding his shoulder, it was a tad too confusing for my pain reeking brain. A brave lie of “I was just joking” turned into a pathetic attempt to stop her crying, as she whacked again on the knee roll. An aggravated “Stop hitting me! I was trying to help you” finally put some sense in her head, while Dr. Z rightly dragged my limping ass out into his car and drove me home. Mrs. Z decided to offer me the position of changing her daughters diaper as a token of truce. :)

And finally as I walked for work today observing the newly sprung white flowers, Mrs. Z’s collection of pianos struck my ear. While I loved the note of piano matching, “You don’t know me, and you don’t even care”, a few back-from-migration birds cuckooed on a scale high enough to be heard through the ipod’s earpiece, a back-from-hibernation squirrel and a hopping rabbit paralleled out with my walking steps. And then in an instant everything went strange with the song pacing up to blare. That’s when I checked the title of the song, got surprised and thought, “……………..

Boogying with Rey in excitement of getting more than what I’d asked for, via tax returns, I ended up attending the anonymous phone call. A minute later, I started walking with 50% more than my usual pace to reach home. About 5 minutes later, I, my roomie and a guest of us was helping me out, to pick things of importance. We trashed the things unnecessary. Then with a citizen smile, I bid farewell, and said “Thank You” to this old muscular grandpa who drove away in his truck along with my stuff.

Inside the house, I separated the quarters from the dimes and the dimes from the nickels and dropped them in the respective shot-glasses of piggies as the Turtles happy’ed together. A sense of normalcy shadowed me quite long enough after this and I decided to hitch back to the lab. My funny roomie was strangely caring and sober as I wore my shoes and started to the lab. The electric music rolled away to a cool fusion smoothie in the new warm weather. Things went usual. Then came the law building crossing and I stood there waiting for the traffic to tend to zero. Like the usual, I waited to cross the road without even minding for the red hand to show the green stick man. I saw more cars, more traffic and then it hit me like a meteoric anvil. I walked besides the summer smooching teen couple in a disturbed state and sat in the Lextran bench.

For a few minutes, the world just passed as I realized that I’ve returned my car once and for all. Although I was ‘acceptably’ prepared to give the car as means to save money for future studies, for concentrating on current studies, and a few surprises I need to throw in a year and two; somehow I fell stampeded by its loss. Pressed 2-8 in the speed dials and never allowed the call to patch through. But then, finally I broke down and spoke to 9. She consoled me the same ironic words I gave the night-before she sold her car for her marriage reasons – “It’s all for good. You are not selling it coz you are in debt. You are doing it for a better future.” She even added the (now non-meaningful) last statement in the series of consoling words I gave her then – “Here’s my keys. Go for a long drive.” I gave her a smile and cut the phone after thanking her.

Three walk signals later, I regained posture and snailed out of the location. As I walked the next two minutes, I was caught in a web of memories, I shared with Mach7. 36K miles covered in a span of 15 months – that’s about 600 hours of memories. I was doomed to go gloom. But then, I saw a guy holding a 5’ scale as I crossed him. I realized that I am in the way of the architecture students who do their land measurement studies. The next 30-60 seconds was all about sneaking past the laser beams of architectural syllabus maze. As I crossed the last student, I had a smile of achievement. With the same smile, I saw Rey back in the lab, and said, “Hi-fi Rey! Just gave my car for good” I hi-fi’ed the blank faced Rey, and went back doing my work.

I guess what I’d go through in the next few months, would govern the effectiveness of this decision.

And as I was about to post this event, Rutsy calls me. He just enquired if I can lend my car for his driver’s test for tomorrow. How ironic? And now the random playlist has Rihanna going Shut up and Drive!! I just looked at the ceiling of my lab and said to the so called God, “Nice practical joke. Now go screw Yourself!” And now am laughing, as Rey still continues his blank look at me. =))