The Disintegration

All three of them were defective and incompatible but they were a family. They had no unison, no common hobbies, no hilarious moods, and nothing for which a man would work hard in office to have it in his life. Now they were separating; two of them were going their own way; one was surrendering to a solitary life. Did you ever see an office that had three incompatible, non-interactive departments under one roof. Then one day one department should preferably shift elsewhere in a different location.

So he was left alone in the house. The old , now not useful, papers that were in the past cursorily looked at and retained for 24 long years lay there in bits, tatters on the floor of the room. On a card board box, he kept some snacks that were meals for him , unwilling as was to walk to restaurants. To keep these snack packets from flying off, he found the stainless steel strip with embossed letters ‘ research techniques published by …….. in Europe’ ; and presently he used it as a deterrent to inhibit the snack packets from flying off. There were time when this strip used to remain nailed atop the pinned original reprints of his overseas published research papers. The words ‘ research techniques published …. “ appeared arrantly out of place now and sort of affronted; pained also at the turn of events. These word appeared like birds which were awed by felling of the tree they lived on, and were considering desperately to fly off the felled tree.

He was sitting on a table in a restaurant; he had not eaten proper meals for days on end. The waiter, an oldie, took his order and looked at him a bit. He didn’t need looking any further; the waiter knew only too well how many days this customer had survived without proper meals. He, sort of, read the stretches and distortions on customer’s visage that the waiter knew full well. He knew full well as he, the waiter, himself had suffered from these stretches and distortions since he was a child. It was, for the waiter, like recognizing at once older day photograph of a film star who was favorite of him in the waiter’s younger days and who, the film Star, was now no longer in any news.

This day he was leaving for his anonymous life. He while leaving for good stopped by near a temple but found no beggars there. He went to the railway station where some beggars sat in a line. He open a bag and started distributing his used clothes to the beggars; one pair of clothes apiece. Was he making visits to all blood banks of the city and donating equally divided parts of his allowed two bottles of extra blood to all these blood banks of the city.

He left it in between as his train was being announced and ran to the platform , leaving his donation half done.

He had planned to go to Kalka from where he could start his paripetetic life from Himachal Pradesh.
He was travelling in a mini train from Kalka to Shimla. On Kalka- Shimla road route, when the meter gage train with it’s track running parallel to road, would be about 13 miles away from Shimla, one could espy from the train a motel named “ 13 Miles” standing besides the road. Now he thought what this possibly could mean. It Shimla is unlucky for you , then stay at “ 13 Miles” and don’t go beyond. On the contrary( perhaps not thought by the hotelier), if “13 Miles” motel is unlucky for you, then don’t stop by here and go straight to Shimla. Amusedly the motel “ 13 Miles” stood there like a double meaning obscene Hindi film dialogue.

He had disembarked the train temporarily at a station for taking some breakfast and a wash. He sat with the plate at a stool and looked cursorily at the 2’x 2’ cardboard packets stacked one above the other at some 10-11 levels. The packets were stacked in a cube shaped arrangement. He thought these might be fruits or some thing of the eatable sort. Then suddenly he espied through small circular holes in cardboards very obscure movement of little infant chicken inside the packets. He was almost shocked and amused both at his misunderstanding the contents of the packets. It looked like classrooms of a multi-storied building in a cube shape where every class was humming with playful activities of lower/upper KG students.

Under evening alpenglow, the mini train trudged ahead of " 13 Miles" on it’s tracks. After every few kilometers, a group of trees, examples of exemplary pulchritude and artistic symmetry differing only a little in shape and dimensions, would appear in the middest of the boscage. In old times in India, a family used to have 11-12 children. If the nature would bless them, they all would be extremely beautiful and handsome with familial similarity of little differing features on their face. One could tell that they were siblings without inquiry. These groups of trees told one the same.
In the market of Shimla , he was eating in a restaurant and was planning to go to Kalka when it happened. It was a queer sight. A girl in her twenties and an old man in his mid fifties were holding together a walking stick as they remerged from the clinic of an orthopedic surgeon. In the first glance, it appeared to him that the girl was the patient and the father was escorting her as they both gingerly held the stick. But in the next moment it became clear that it was the father who had consulted the doctor. You hear a noise of an accident between a Utility vehicle and a scooter on the road and reflect immediately from a distance that scooter was badly damaged. On getting closer, you find that it was the utility vehicle which got hit against some pole in close vicinity of the accident site and barely touched the scooter., old as the big vehicle was with worn brakes; however the new scooter had smart brand new brakes.
It was his first day in the engineering college; he was here to teach mechanical engineering. Whole day discussions ragging would inevitably pop up in any kind of conversation, be it a talk between two women lecturers or a casual conversation of registrar with parents of the newcomers or a formal talk of a group of young senior students. As punishment for ragging would come from several corridors- college, police, court and so on- so fresher could breathe freely in the college air. Ragging incidents were fast disappearing, though a senior student would still have urge to “ welcome and enjoy” this long pending and awaited opportunity. However, when the multiple illnesses of this would crookedly smile at the face of his urge, he would reluctantly shy away from such a misadventure. He want to have a joy ride in his new sports car but toll plazas had lined up on the highway. Every 5 km, a toll plaza would break his speed, bring him to a standstill and charge a hefty fee to let him pass.
He was sitting on a waiting bench of a multi-speciality clinic in Solan. He had a tooth ache for the last two days. Consulting rooms were tiny with doors open or no door at all. One could overhear what the doctor and patient were talking inside. He overheard one husband insisting the doctor on knowing the sex of his pregnant wife’s child. The doctor was warning him not to even talk that; it could end up as serious a thing as police arrest of the man. It could make the doctor bereft of his license. The couple evidently rural folks as evidenced by their bucolic dialect and attire, came out heavily disappointed. The man looked as if the 8 months wait was going to be as anxious and tortuous as the time of anxiety of the last in a queue ahead of a railway ticket reservation counter when the time is fast approaching 8 PM.

Today he was returing in the mini train from Solan to Kalka.He sat beside an old retired man. He was as if talking with the old man sitting beside him in blocks of conversation each ending with a redoubtable question mark. The old gentleman would always admit that there was indeed no answer to the question of the block. Have you chanced to see a long tall steel structure manufactured and modified in sections with which it rose high as the time formed the situation for modifications. The old listener man in his life span had done the same in his pursuits. He, the question mark man was just opening and removing the fastening bolts one after one between the sections of the tall steel structure at different elevations of the old man’s years. At the end, the old listener defeated right off the bat, accepted a plenary defeat. The tall structure fell and razed as none of it’s joints had a contribution to render it erectness.