An unfinished story

Those days I was working in Pune and was travelling at weekends to Mumbai, to be with my wife. The three hour bus journey on the Mumbai Pune Expressway was always a very exciting one for me. I liked it especially during the monsoons, when the entire Western Ghats springs up to glory in all its entirety. The vibrancy of fresh vegetation masks the dull grey crudeness of the rocky outcrops. I always cherished these three hours of ‘Me-only’ time. Not that, I was plagued by need for space amidst the crowd of Homo sapiens; in fact I stayed in a PG room all by myself.  But just like the kite that cannot fly inside a room, my mind too would find it easier to break away from its reins; with the cool air rushing in through the window of the bus; and fly away, far, far away. I would sit by the window and look out while my mind would be flying outside, like Harry Potter riding his witch’s broom… Wooooohoooooooooo….

On such trips, which were plenty considering I travelled almost every week , I would either read a book, listen to music, observe people, or simply look out of the window and let my mind fly. I was never really a great ‘fellow traveler’, so I would never strike up conversation with any of the other passengers.

On one such occasion, I was reading a new novel by a young author (If it’s not for ever… It’s not Love, by Durjoy Datta). I started reading it without much expectation (It came in free with a couple of other novels at a Landmark sale), but as I went from page to page, I liked the story better and better. It was about the protagonist who survives a bomb blast. Incidentally, he finds a half-charred diary at the blast site, belonging to an unknown young man (presumed to have died on that fateful day). The contents of the diary form the backbone of the plot. Numbed by his own near death experience, after reading the contents of the diary, the protagonist is agonized at the thought of having to pass away without a good bye, dying without having said the right words, dying with unsaid words buried within the heart. After going through 50-60 odd pages of the novel, all of a sudden I realized that I was shedding tears. I looked around; it was my good fortune that all the seats behind and beside me were empty; luckily no one bore testimony of this weak moment of mine.  I went back to reading as the protagonist with the love of his life, set out in search of the people mentioned in the diary, with the hope of conveying the untold words and unprofessed love of the dead young man. I could simply not stop the tears that rolled down my cheeks as I read through the lines, and I couldn’t stop reading either.

The narrative had invoked a powerful surge and opened the flood gates to numerous memories. Memories long repressed, those that have become a part of existence, a dull pain that I have gotten used to, a dampened throbbing that never really ceases.

I realized then that Life is just like a ball of yarn. It is made up of numerous relationships. They come in various forms, duration and stature; small, big, close, distant, long, short and many more; each bearing a different name. These relationships are crisscrossed, rolled over and across, round and round, to make the ball of yarn that is life.

I have seen kittens playing with a ball of yarn. When we are young, we are immature, restless and impulsive. Just like a young kitten, we paw the ball of yarn, play with it, now kick it, again bite it, then scratch it. Within a short time the ball becomes a loose mass of yarn, with torn threads hanging out all around. By the time we learn to take notice of this and try to set everything right again, it becomes too late. The erstwhile ball of yarn becomes a soft floppy mass of torn and entangled yarn, the torn ends hanging loosely. These torn ends are the numerous people, the relations that lost their way in the maze of our busy lives. These are the relations that unceremoniously petered out, without conclusion, without even a ‘Bye’. By the time we realize the importance of these interactions or rather lack of them, it is too late in the day. There is no alternative to bearing the weight of all these unfinished, unconcluded relationships in ones heart forever. I felt as I read this book, the importance of a last word; every relation, every interaction deserves a conclusion, a decent good bye. Sigh!

As I resumed reading the book, after a long break, poignant with heavy thoughts and sweet and sour memories, the protagonist and his lady love had already started meeting people mentioned in the diary. By the time the bus crossed Khalapur Toll Naka, I was already at Page 108. But then something very frustrating happened. I flipped the page to reach directly to Page 129. Twenty pages were missing from the book. I wax vexed at my bad luck. I tried to continue reading, but then I felt that it won’t be fair to read such a good story in an improper manner, I dint want to continue without reading those 20 lost pages. I will have it exchanged I thought, I still had the bill.

After reaching Mumbai, I went to the Landmark outlet where I had bought the book and asked for an exchange. But the book was not available in the store. Then a thought occurred to me. Why not wait for the book to come to me. Maybe someday, I will get a copy of the book, without my trying for it, and then I can finish reading it. At least as long as I have not read the end, it can be anything. There’s still hope for an ending that according to me would be the most fitting. Thus, I have been waiting for the book to fall in my hands so I can finish reading the story.