I was Speechless

As I was trying to save him from being taken away, his fingernails dug into my forearms, dragging, leaving marks that time might heal but would scar my heart forever. His palms were not helping his case either. Try as I might, I too couldn’t seem to get a strong grip on his slick forearms.  Droplets of sweat rolled down my wrinkled forehead, making their way through my furrowed brows and blurring my vision of my best friend. The two black-safari-suited, heavily-built men were holding on to him by his waist and chest, and the sheer force of their pull was enough for me to loosen my grip on my friend’s arm. “Leave him, you bastards!” I screamed, almost losing my voice.

His wide-open red eyes were glued to me. It seemed all the blood in his head had rushed into his eyes. I felt like we were never going to meet again. “Help me Mohit! They will kill me!” His scream for help came loud and clear through his eyes.  When our hands parted, his favourite silver bracelet came off in my hand. The bracelet had been a gift from his girlfriend, now his wife, during our college days. By now, his eyes had become as expressionless as that of a dead fish. “Let me come out Madhav.” I turned around and opened my car’s driver side door. “Why am I not able to move? Oh God! Help me, help my friend!”  My initial thrust of voice had turned into pleading.  Unable to move out of the driver’s seat of my car, I helplessly watched my best friend being taken away by these well-dressed thugs.

But why would Madhav have come to meet me at this strange hour? Why in the middle of the road? Who were these well-cladded goons? My mind was exploding with questions.

That’s when I was jolted out of my slumber. I woke up to the sound of cars honking and people yelling behind me.

**********************************************************************************

“Mohit, when are you going home?” Rahul asked as he stashed his things away, ready to leave for the day.

“Just need to send the status report on today’s successful release. Should be off soon.” I replied, while keeping my eyes on my laptop and my fingers running on the key board. “You carry on.”

“Go home soon. You have not slept since last morning.” Rahul replied while leaving the floor.

“Just finishing.”

“And thank you for all the hard work!” I raised my head and looked at him when he had reached the exit door of the floor. He turned back, returned a smile, and said, “Anytime sir!”

On this empty floor, both of our voices echoed.

Rahul was an excellent Java developer in the project that I was managing.

My entire team had already left for home and was working tirelessly through the last couple of weeks to make this website for our client go live on schedule.

My eyes wavered from the laptop screen as I heard a click and then the next. I raised my head to see that the security guard was switching off the lights. “Bhai, don’t switch off the lights around my desk.”

“Absolutely sir!”

In the next five minutes, I sent the project release status report to the client. I was so relieved, I shut down my system and stretched my arms. I bent forward and backward to relax my back muscles. At that point I felt even this tiny relief was bliss.  I stowed away my laptop in my backpack, hitched it on to my shoulder and made my way out.

I looked outside the glass wall as I was walking across the aisle, curious to see how the world may have changed in the last 48 hours. It was pouring heavily. All through today and yesterday, I had been too busy to notice the weather outside. The road outside the office main gate didn’t have an inch of free space; it was covered with a long line of stationery vehicles. The road had turned red. The lush green leaves of the big trees across both sides of the roads were shining like stars under the influence of the streetlights and were dancing elegantly to the tune of the wind. The beauty of it all was a little lost on me. I was a tired man with two full days of work behind me. “Oh! No, not at this time.” I gasped. This was the last thing I wanted. All I needed was to crash in my bed but the weather clearly had other plans for me.

As I took my brown Ciaz out of the basement, I was welcomed by torrential rain. I got stuck at the exit gate. There was no space for me to get my car on to the main road.

“Hari, since when is it raining?” I rolled down my window and asked the guard at the exit gate.

“Sir, it has been raining continuously since the morning.” His reply came muffled through his raincoat.

“Damn! It had been raining all day and I had not even realized.”

 The last two days in the office had been all consuming. When projects are to be delivered in an IT company, then one is left with no sense of day and night. And over that, this Delhi rain made it a nightmare to commute. I left my office at 9 in the night, and at 11, I had just moved about a kilometre away from my office! Usually it would take me just 30 minutes from my office in Connaught Place to reach home, which was in Preet Vihar, East Delhi. The roads seemed more water than tar. At few places, it had just caved in after just a day of rain.

I was stuck on Barakhamba road. For last 30 minutes, my car had not moved even a single inch.

“Hey what’s going on here?” I rolled down the window on the passenger side, leaned sideward to question a cyclist. Attired in a security guard dress, the man seemed to be in his fifties. His head was covered with a transparent polythene bag but his uniform was completely soaked. He was coming from the opposite direction on the pavement - probably going back home.

The man applied a sudden brake and his old, rusty cycle screeched to a halt. He stood on the ground with his legs running across the top tube of the bicycle. “Saheb, a tree has fallen down just 100 metres ahead of you.” He shouted from a distance, taking his head out of the polythene bag.

“Oh God!” I grumbled. I knew it was going to take a long time to get home.

I thanked him and raised the window, slouching into my seat.

In all this mayhem, I was saved by the FM radio. I was, at least, able to relax a little by listening to some old melodies. And this song just aptly described the moment. It was one of my all-time favourites, by the great Lata Mangeshkar. Raina Beeti Jaaye, Shyam Na aaye. Like the Shyam in this song, my home seemed ever more elusive that night.

The traffic had started moving but at a snail’s pace. My feet were moving from the accelerator to the brake and then to the clutch like a drummer in a band.  The two windscreen wipers were behaving like fighting lovers; running after each other, but destined never to meet. I wondered what a treat it would be if I could get hold of a cup of tea at this moment. My eyes were wandering across the road, trying to scan through the rain for a trace of a tea vendor.

The song on the radio station had changed now. Kishore’s everlasting song, Nadiya se dariya, dariya se sagar, sagar se gehra pyaar. But the New Delhi Municipal Corporation had proved this song wrong. In Delhi, the deepest things are the pot holes on the roads.

I spotted a tea vendor on the other extreme of the pavement, the poor man struggling to keep his tent intact against the strong winds.

God had been kind to me in this Indra – the rain God - mayhem. I waved my hand from within the car, hoping the tea vendor would see me.  Just when I thought that the potential of a beverage would remain a mirage for me, his eyes caught my waving hands. He grabbed his umbrella, struggling to open it, and ran towards my car. I was so relieved to see him running towards me that I rolled down the window on the co-driver side and leaned over the seat even before he got to my car. It was enough to soak my co-driver seat, which I didn’t even realize at that moment.

“Bhai, can I get a cup of tea?” I screamed over the wind.

“Saab, I have one cup of tea only but it’s cold now.” He replied.

“No problem. Heat it up a bit and give it to me.”

I closed the window and leaned back to my seat. My fingers were dancing on the steering and I was humming to the same Kishore song, Jo na piye who kya jaane peete hain kyon hum deewane yaar, jab se humne peena sikha, jeena sikha, marna seekha, yaar!

The tea vendor came back. Bringing his hand forward, he held the cup of tea in front of me. I raised my hand to take the cup but then, I stopped suddenly. The mud sullied finger nails covering the paper cup were asking me to throw it away at once, but then the urge to feel the tea going down my throat, getting collected in my stomach, and providing the warmth to my body, which I so wanted, coaxed me to forget the Swachh Bharat Mission for a while. With my brows still furrowed and face scrunched up, I reluctantly took my hands forward and trying to avoid touching his fingers, took the cup and kept it in the glass holder of my car. In contrast to those mud-sullied hands, I took out a shiny new 10 rupee note from my wallet kept in the glove box of my car. I placed the shiny new note in the dull and filthy hand of the vendor and thanked him.

I slurped the hot tea in delight. “Wah!” I took my head back and rested it on the headrest of the seat.

Suddenly, my car got jolted by a sudden thrust of force. A man crashed to the front of my standstill car. The thrust was enough to make my precious cup of tea jump out of the tender grip of my hand and spill the whole tea all over my blue jeans.

“You jerk! What are you doing? Are you out of your mind? You broke my two minutes of devotion!” My vocal cords had expanded to their maximum capacity. My voice, of course, was not able to pierce through the car and wreak havoc on this man’s eardrums as I had wished.

As I started to brush away at the tea on my jeans in vain, I turned my face to the hard knocking sound on my window. The man was completely wet. His face looked familiar. I kept staring at him for a few seconds to clear the haze in my head.

My heart quite literally skipped a beat as realization dawned. “Madhav, what are you doing here?” I almost screamed seeing Madhav here and in this condition. Since college days, he had been my one true friend.

He was a slim boy in the college days and had not put on much weight even after so many years when I had last met him. But now, he was more gaunt than ever. His collarbones jutted out painfully. His eyes seemed to be fixed into cavernous sockets. His shirt seemed way too large. I pushed the button on the window hand rest to roll down the glass and started questioning him mindlessly, flabbergasted as I was at his sudden appearance, “What are you doing here? What have you done to yourself?”

He had a full-grown beard; his moustache completely covering his lips. His clothes were threadbare around his shoulder.

“Get inside the car!” I rolled up my window, unlocked the doors, and coaxed him in.

“When did you come from Mumbai? You didn’t even inform me.” I held his right thigh tightly.

“Mohit, I am in a very big trouble. I want your help. Can you help me please?”

Madhav was talking to me but his eyes were looking outside, all around. I had never seen so much fear in his eyes. I had always known him for his calm but strong approach. He had always been a courageous man, ready to rise up to every challenge that life could pose.

“You don’t have to ask me for help, Madhav. Just tell me. You seem to be very bothered.” My hands quickly moved to hold his right palm (mostly reduced to bones) tightly.

Just then, few safari-suited, well-built men came, opened the passenger side door of my car, held Madhav by his waist, and started pulling Madhav. I didn’t even get the time to lock my car doors.

“Mohit, please help me! They will kill me!” Madhav screamed as the goons started pulling him out of the car.

He grasped at my forearms tightly. I grappled a bit and caught his forearms, in return, as tightly as I could. I started pulling him towards my side. The force I was applying was equally proportionate to the extent of my mouth getting twisted and my teeth pressing against each other.

“Hey! Where are you taking my friend?” I yelled at those goons.

Madhav’s body was completely drenched in rain and I could not hold on to him for long. His grip on my forearms was also loosening. I was feeling helpless and I didn’t know why I was not even able to move out of my seat. It was feeling strangely paralysed hip downward.

They took my best friend away from me and I was not able to help him. Punching the window glass in despair, I started crying and cursing myself for not being able to save Madhav.

“What the hell are you doing? Why are you not moving?” As I was mourning, suddenly, these screaming questions started travelling through my eardrums, ringing my brain nerves like a train moving on rails. I shook out of my deep slumber, feeling lost about my longitude and latitude. With great effort, I opened my eyes to realize that I was on the driver seat of my car. My back was stiff and straight, pushing against the backrest. My shoulders were tensed and my hands were running straight like a scale, gripping the steering so tight like somebody trying to snatch a child’s favourite toy from him. The darkness of the night was hindered by the blurred red lights, as far as my eyes could see through the rain draped windscreen of my car. The silence of the night was punctured by endless honking of automobiles and those screaming questions. I turned my head to my right and looked out of the window to realize where these screams were coming from.

There were two to three men, trying to keep themselves dry holding an umbrella and hammering away at my car window to wake me up. These people would have sucked the blood out of my body, if given a chance. I had blocked their path by dosing off in my car. I quickly corrected my posture and put my car into gear, thanking God for having spared me from the thrashing I would have received from these gentlemen. The traffic was still not moving at any great speed.

I didn’t realise when I fell asleep. I touched my jeans to see if the tea that had spilled over it had dried or not. My jeans were completely dry.

“Oh shit! All that was a dream! I didn’t even order a cup of tea!” this realization released a lot of tension off my head.

And crazy as it might seem, why would Madhav come into my dreams asking for help and get dragged out of my car. Probably, all the tension during the last two days of project delivery had culminated into a fantastical dream. 

The song had changed on FM, a favourite again, “Zindagi ka safar, hai yeh kaisa safar.” The traffic was moving now. After 10 minutes or so, the traffic had cleared and I reached home in about 20 minutes. All the way back home, I was not able to hear anything other than the sound of my friend Madhav asking for help. I was still thinking why such a crazy dream would ever come to my mind.

It was 12 when I reached home, a two-room apartment in Preet Vihar in East Delhi, the so called trans-Yamuna area. I was feeling very tired. I threw my backpack onto the couch and slouched right beside it myself.

But I had to get my daily dose of news. Lazily, I picked myself up and reached for the TV remove lying on the mahogany finished round centre table. I switched on my 55 inch LED TV hanging on the opposite wall and tuned into my favorite news channel. I was always just interested in news. This was the repeat of the 9 PM news show. But the news I was going to hear today was going to change my life forever.

I kept the TV remote back on the table. “Good evening, and welcome to News at 9. Among many top news, today, we are going to bring to you a unique case of sexual harassment in the workplace.” Donning a crusader-like look on his face, the black-suited bearded male anchor on the TV looked excited and was jumping on his seat. It looked like there was a spring under his seat.

“A wife held her husband, Madhav, guilty of sexually harassing his colleague. The wife’s name is Aakarsha.” He continued.

“What?” A big wave of shock coursed through my body. I pinched myself to confirm that I was not dreaming nonsense again. I grabbed at the TV remote and increased the volume. I sat on the very edge, my body hardly touching the couch.

The voice on the TV continued. “Aakarsha is a perfect example of the modern woman. Not only was she doing much better in her career than her husband and was the boss of her husband in the same office, she was also the head of inquiry committee constituted by the company to investigate the sexual harassment complaint filed against her husband. She is a woman who loved her husband without a doubt but when it came to professional ethics and justice, she rose above all personal bonds and served justice to the complainant. Madhav had, in the meantime, applied for anticipatory bail, which he has been granted.”

My whole body was shivering. My dream had not been unfounded. I was amazed how my dream gave me an indication that my best friend, Madhav, was in trouble. I sat still in front of the TV and didn’t know how to react to this news. By now, I had slipped to the floor.

Madhav was not that kind of a person. I knew Madhav and Aakarsha so well. The three of us had been thick as thieves since our college days in Mumbai. Madhav and I were like brothers. We were roommates in the hostel. We used to share almost everything except our girlfriends, though I never had a girlfriend. After college, I had to shift to Delhi owing to my new job as an IT professional. Madhav and Aakarsha got settled in Mumbai. Madhav and I were still in frequent touch and used to share a lot of stories about our life. Though I had met Aakarsha only a few times after the college, Madhav and I would meet almost every six months.

In our college days, the three of us would watch almost every new movie first day, first show. In those days we didn’t have multiplexes. And the ticket for the first two rows would be no more than 10 rupees. Once, I remember, in our third year in the college, we had planned to watch Barsaat, the debut movie of Bobby Deol and Twinkle Khanna.

The weather was perfect. It had been drizzling since early morning. The breeze made the tree branches dance elegantly. The smell of the wet earth wafted with the morning breeze. Mumbai was looking greener than ever. The three of us reached college early, one by one. After getting together, we slipped out of our college immediately. We didn’t have much money, so we decided to hitch a ride and reach the cinema hall. Our college was just beside the main road where lots of vehicles used to move. The cinema hall was about 2 to 3 kilometres from our college straight on that road; not close enough to walk down. Madhav, as always, taking the lead, started waiving at passing automobiles to hitch a ride. Aakarsha and I sat down on the pavement, watching Madhav in action. The automobiles passed Madhav one after the other but none stopped. He failed miserably.

Aakarsha and I were enjoying the scene and were trying to suppress our laughter behind our pressed lips. After one last failed attempt, Madhav turned towards us with his narrowed eyes at us. His lower lips pushed up in dismay. Aakarsha and I, put our palms over our mouth to control our laughter from coming out but in vain. Both of us burst into laughter and kept laughing until our stomachs ached.

After settling down, the overconfident I, stood up, pulling my shoulders back. I adjusted my backpack and stepped forward by a meter to get us a lift. Meanwhile, Madhav took my seat. I tried every possible posture and sign asking for a ride. I too failed miserably. This time, it was Aakarsha’s and Madhav’s turn to laugh at me. I could not help but feel embarrassed. I challenged Aakarsha.

“You are laughing so much! Why don’t you try? Let’s see how much caliber you have? If you are able to stop a vehicle, your lunch for today will be on me.” My outburst could have embarrassed me further if Aakarsha won because I didn’t have enough money to afford Aakarsha’s lunch. My parents having limited means of livelihood, I used to get very little pocket money. I had just 50 bucks in my pocket.

As I took my seat beside Madhav, Aakarsha, oozing with confidence, stood up like a lioness going for her hunt. Aakarsha was a very confident and smart looking girl. A very distinct trait of her appearance that oozed with confidence was her walking style. She knew about this and at vulnerable times, she very smartly used her confident walk to pass a message to people around her. She flicked her bag to Madhav’s lap. She twisted her lips a little upward, glanced down, and looked up at Madhav through her eyelashes. Then, very elegantly, she unbuttoned the top button of her shirt to show her cleavage. Madhav’s mouth was wide open. He put his left palm over my eyes so that I did’t get to see anything. I pushed his hand away .

Taking a couple of long strides, facing the direction from where the vehicles were coming, she leaned on her left leg, took out her left arm, and folded it to make that classic thumbs up sign.

One after the other, the automobiles went past her but none stopped. Aakarsha was trying to avoid eye contact with us. Meanwhile, Madhav and I were sailing on the same boat. With our left elbow resting on our thighs, and our crookedly hook-shaped, curled index finger trying to hide the involuntary curls in our lips, we were trying very hard to be silent. The force to contain our laughter within ourselves was causing our cheeks to swell momentarily. Then in her trademark way, Aakarsha, tilted her head a bit on the left. With raised right brows, she stared down at us. This sight of her face was enough for Madhav and me to let go all our inhibitions. Our laughter erupted, we were slapping our knees repeatedly. The force was enough for us to stand up and go round and round, with our hands on our hips to control the pain that was erupting in our stomach. With her brows low on her eyes and clearly knotted, flaring nostrils, and compressed mouth, Aakarsha, pounced on Madhav furiously to snatch away her bag from him. Nothing could come in way of our laughter and we continued. Trying to hide her embarrassment with her fake anger, Aakarsha started walking away in the direction of the cinema hall. I poked Madhav asking him to stop Aakarsha from walking away. He, still trying to control his laugh, ran up to her and held her hand. Aakarsha turned back, gave Madhav a grumpy look and then burst out in laughter.

“Hey! We have already lost half an hour. If we want to watch the first show, we have to do something.” I drew their attention to the task in hand.

“See that small tempo. It seems empty. If this doesn’t stop, we will run and get onto it. Ready?” Madhav suggested pointing towards a small white, rusted tempo that was approaching us at a very slow speed.

As expected it didn’t stop. Madhav was the first to hop on to it. He then pulled Aakarsha in and at last, I jumped onto it.

“Eeeeaahhhh!” Aakarsha screamed in agony. She squeezed her nose and covered it with her handkerchief, which she took out from her bag.

A buffalo was calmly sitting in the tempo and chewing her fodder. Its urine and dung was spread all over the tempo. It was impossible to withstand the smell there. Madhav and I immediately picked up our handkerchief and covered our nose. It was a 5 minutes ride, but it seemed like eternity. All that while, we were pushing each other to remain as far away as possible from the filth.

As soon as we reached near the cinema hall, we jumped off the tempo and took a long breath of fresh air. We saw each other and after a second of silence burst into laughter.

“Come on, we are getting late.” Madhav said while trying to control his laughter.

When we reached the hall, we were welcomed by a huge crowd at the box office. The ticket counter had still not opened and as usual, there was no sign of a queue for the front row tickets. People were all over each other. Those days, the counter for front row seats used to be at a separate place than the counter for other seats and this was a very usual scene at such counters. We had to get in somehow and get ourselves three tickets. Madhav and I started pushing the people at the periphery of the crowd. As I was busy pushing, I turned to my right to check Madhav. I could not see him. My eyes were wandering around to catch hold of Madhav when I saw Aakarsha standing at a distance. With the right corner of her lips curled up, she gestured with her eyes to look at my legs. She was enjoying the scene. I realized that I was actually sitting on Madhav’s shoulders as he was trying to work through the crowd. In all this mayhem, I didn’t even realize that my feet were in the air. In a few minutes, Madhav, taking advantage of his lean built, worked through the crowd and emerged right at the ticket counter. He made perfect use of the leg space. Meanwhile, I worked my way through the crowd to reach half way to the counter so that when Madhav got the tickets I could pull him out. After about 10 minutes, the moment the counter opened, dozens of hands, holding money, fought with each other to get to the counter, just like millions of sperms vie with each other to reach their ultimate goal of impregnating the egg. This time Madhav, the sperm, won. He got our three tickets in his left hand and extended his right hand towards me. I caught hold of him by my right hand. By then, Aakarsha had joined the crowd at the periphery to lend her hand.  I extended my other hand to Aakarsha. She started pulling me with both of her hands and I started pulling Madhav. After a herculean struggle, Madhav and I came out of the crowd. By now, the effect of this wonderful weather was nowhere to be seen on our body. Our T-shirts were wrinkled and wet all over with masonry sweat.

These are some precious moments of our friendship that I still cherished.

My mobile phone began to ring just as I emerged from my reverie.

With my eyes still stuck on the TV, my mind still hovering in those lovely college days, my hand was driven by the ears towards the phone kept on the center table.

“Hello! ..... Hello” I was still lost, my eyes still stuck on the TV.

“Hello!” I screamed, the phone was still ringing.

“Oh! I didn’t press the answer button on the screen!” I realized, shifting my eyes from the TV to the phone screen.

“Not now, Abhishek!” I muted the phone and kept it back on the center table.

It rang up again almost immediately.

“This bugger will not let me live in peace!” The index finger of my right hand slid over the call receive button on the phone screen, with my eyes almost turned away from the phone. I didn’t say anything. I walked towards my bar by the balcony.

“Hello…. Hello…..hello!”  His feeble voice over the phone, was enough for my finger to zip away and tap the phone’s speaker button. I kept the phone on the bar counter and made myself a Patiala peg of black label blended Scotch whisky, on the rocks.

“Hello!” My burning eyes cast a red shadow over the phone.

“Hey, did you shee the newsh?” he asked excitedly in his typical style. He always spelt “s” as “sh”. We used to pull his legs a lot during college days but he could never correct that pronunciation.

“Hmmm.” I was still wondering why I picked up the call. I bottomed up my glass.

“I knew thish guy would do shomething like thish shometime.” His smirking voice was enough to push the adrenaline through my tired mind and body to let my legs support my torso.

“Of course you are his best friend and you know everything about him!” I said, tearing a paper from my notepad kept on the counter and squeezing it into a ball.

Abhishek was a guy who always was jealous of Madhav because Madhav would get a lot more attention, than him, from the fairer sex.

“Hey bro, don’t get angry. You know how flirting he wash in the college daysh. It wash jusht a matter of time that he would entangle himshelf in shuch a shituation.” He said, controlling his excitement.

“Enough Abhishek. I know Madhav more than any other friend else does. I agree, he used to flirt with girls but he never crossed his limits in college when he could have easily done so. He always loved Aakarsha more than anybody and he never betrayed her.” I said emphatically, squeezing the paper ball as if it were Abhishek’s neck.

“Ok, cool down. I am jusht mentioning what I thought. But tell me, you met Madhav recently. Did he mention anything of thish short? Both of you are very close friends and you share almosht everything till now.” He asked.

“No, he didn’t say anything about this. Listen, I need to go somewhere. Let’s talk later.” I said, disconnecting the phone, not providing Abhishek the chance to respond.

Abhishek’s last question, though, rang a bell in my mind. I met Madhav recently when he had come to Delhi, especially, to meet me. He said that he was missing me and that he wanted to meet me. He stayed overnight with me at my house. At that time, it did look to me that Madhav was not in the kind of frame of mind I usually used to see him. I had tried to find out why he looked so lost.

“Hey Madhav, you look very lost today. This is not the Madhav I am used to seeing. What happened? Do you want to share something with me?” I asked Madhav that evening holding my favourite Chivas 18 year old glass at the bar at my home.

“Nothing, buddy. I am just very tired and I wanted to relax. That’s why I came here to visit you. You know how good I feel when I am with you.” He said, his eyes wandering and his lips quivering, a fact he tried to hide behind the glass as he sipped his scotch.

“No, I don’t agree. I think you want to share something with me.” I could see how his eyes were shifty, not wanting to look at me straight.

“Nothing, buddy. Believe me, I am fine.” He tried very hard to look into my eyes as he said this.

“OK, as you wish.” It disturbed me.

“You know that I am always there for you. Right?” My hands could feel his cold shoulder.

“Yes, Aakarsha and you are the only ones in this whole world on whom I can trust without thinking twice.” He said, pushing his empty glass towards me to make another peg, as his tensed brows relaxed and the corners of lips curled up for the first time that day.

He left the next day. After that, he had called me couple of times recently and said that he wanted to share something very important with me but was waiting for the right time. I never imagined that he could be in such a big trouble.

I knew Aakarsha also very well. She was a very confident and smart girl. She knew exactly what she wanted in life and would put all her effort to get it. She loved Madhav very much. At that moment, I was really confused what to believe. Shall I trust my gut feeling or shall I trust Aakarsha, who held my friend guilty?

I dialed Aakarsha’s number immediately because I thought Madhav would not be able to attend to his phone. But Aakarsha didn’t take my call. I could understand that with all this happening she would not be able to talk to anyone now.

I had decided that I had to go to Mumbai and visit both Madhav and Aakarsha and get to the bottom of this. I called my travel agent and asked him to get me a seat on the first flight to Mumbai the next day.

I got a call from the travel agent after an hour.

“Sir, we don’t have any tickets available for next 3 days.” the agent said.

“What? Not even business class?” I asked.

“Sir, I didn’t check the business class because you always travel economy.”

“Sir, you should at least give me the full information. It’s very urgent and I have to travel tomorrow anyhow.” The words were flowing out of my mouth without much control. I have never been so expressive in my life.

“OK sir, give me 10 minutes. I will call you back,” the agent said and disconnected.

Not being able to talk to Madhav, and even Aakarsha, at this moment, was taking a toll on my mind.

The agent called me after 10 minutes and, thankfully, I got my ticket confirmed. I apologized for venting my anger on him. I had never travelled in a business class not because I could not afford it but I always thought that for a short journey, it was a waste of money. Though I was also entitled to travel on business class on my company’s budget, I never thought it was necessary.

That night I could not sleep. All my old memories became so vivid that I almost felt like crying. I had never missed Madhav so much. I remembered one incident from our college days.

It was a wonderful day. The first rain of the summer. The road was wet but, thank God, it was not flooded. It was drizzling, and the gentle breeze was a blessing. enough to make the sweat glands relax, opening up other channels to loose unwanted body fluids. Madhav, I, and a few more friends were going back to the hostel from our college in the afternoon. We took the road behind the college, which was mostly desolate and covered with a lots of trees.  We were walking down the lane when Madhav shouted suddenly.

“Hey!, See, our Mishra sir is peeing in the open.” Madhav said, pulling my arm to guide my attention towards his line of sight.

We saw a person peeing in open on our college wall. The man had a very familiar look but we could not see his face. He was middle aged, bald, pot-bellied and had a stooping posture, loose trousers and shirt not tucked-in. He had couple of books tucked in his left underarm.

“No, it can’t be.” I replied in a shaky voice yet with strong arm pulling Madhav. But after looking at that person for some time, I was sure that it was our Mishra sir. Mishra sir used to teach us Physics.

I thought the pleasant weather was playing its part on the bladder muscles of Mishra sir. I decided to overlook the incident. But Madhav had other ideas. He said that we needed to teach Mishra sir a lesson.

“He just can’t pee in the open. What will students do if their teachers do such kind of things?” Madhav said, moving towards Mishra sir.

Before we could say anything and stop him from doing any mischievous deed, the next thing we saw was that Madhav was standing beside Mishra sir. He started peeing too. I almost covered my full face with my palms at this sight.

Madhav started talking to Mishra sir.

Mishra sir, with wide and rounded eyes and eyebrows and slightly opened mouth, raised his head and turned towards the direction from where the voice was coming.

The outflow went erratic, changed direction, and stopped suddenly. Mishra sir hurriedly put all his belongings inside and literally ran away.

We were watching all this from a short distance and could not hear what was happening.

After Mishra sir left, Madhav came to us running and laughing aloud.

“What did you say to him?” I asked, pulling Madhav towards me.

“Nothing much, I just asked him to set easy question paper for the finals.” Madhav said, still trying to control his laugh.

“What?”

“Come on! Actually, I had a question in my mind for many days and I was not able to find out the answer. Not that Mishra sir gave me the answer.” Madhav said, putting his arms around my shoulder.

“What was the question?” I was getting impatient now, getting a bit apart from Madhav. We were looking at Madhav like children waiting to unwrap their birthday gift.

“I asked him, why didn’t Newton discover the law of gravity by seeing his pee falling down to the ground and not flowing up in the air?” Madhav’s expression held the seriousness of an obedient and studious student asking an innocuous question to his revered teacher.

The air was reverberating with the sound of drizzling rain droplets  for an extended second, until a big burst of laughter broke out and continued until our diaphragm started to tense up. I was sure that Mishra sir wouldn’t have peed in public ever after that. This was the kind of Madhav I knew. He never accepted anything wrong and would do his every bit to put his point across.

This incidence, playing vividly on my mind, had stopped the monstrous waves in the sea of emotions splashing hard against the shore of my heart. 

It’d been a very tumultuous evening for me in a very long time, and now I needed to go to sleep because I had an early morning flight to catch. I quickly 

packed my bag and went to sleep.