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An engineer after 20 years of active life, was at this moment finally preparing to forego all his credentials and identities to step into the life of a commoner- a commoner in India may be anybody; a shop keeper; a retired person surviving on rentals of his property; a man in some small business of transport or real estate or simply a post office agent. He was already a commoner if his resources were counted, though he had fought his best to block this decline. He was fading in his pursuits that continued for months together, so this day he was decidedly sitting in the internet cabin. He then started unsubscribing from various job sites one by one. He removed his ids, passwords, and resumes in his mixed pain and reinforced determination as these details being erased had 20 years old roots and the software would repeatedly ask “Are you sure?” He would overlook and press yes. In about an hour or so, he had uprooted himself from the internet, and modified blocks of his identity fell off the sphere of internet as cancelled tickets. Had the internet services been manned, the operators would have remembered this event and watched for few days the voids created by claiming back the now useless superior material of his data. Have you ever traveled in Bombay locals if you been to Bombay? Commuters of a compartment know all others in their vicinity as they have been seeing the same faces for decades together. It is hard for them to believe that the seats in front of them occupied by same people for decades of their train travel are going vacant for initial few stations now for the last few days. Then they gradually believe that the seats have been permanently vacated.

He had done the above after a long hunt for survival in his profession. During these months of unbroken efforts, he would see blankly the aged people and the people about his own age. These moments of blank observations would send chills in his heart. He would envy people in seventies and would become scared as well at sight of people in fifties. He would envy old men because like them, he had none to look after him in fragile old years. He would be afraid of younger men because inevitability of taking recourse to unprofessional jobs now for a further living and his loneliness would torment him if he lived beyond a limit. He would sit at a bench at the solitary railway station of this town of Himachal and would look at two taps of drinking water. One of the taps, faulty, would remain open all the time. Adjacent tap was ok. People would come and ignoring faulty tap would open the good one with their filthy hands. The one open all the time was better off that way, he would think.
He tired of his unsuccessful attempts in Metros, had been living in this Himachal town for last two months. This time monsoon had deceived the hopes of everybody.

The monsoon months had gone dry this year as never before; drought had killed crops, mounted costs of food grain; unfading heat had infused disability into the systems of cities, towns, and villages to maintain supply of basic needs like drinking water and electricity. Then there was global slowdown already inflicting stings on life to drain away energy. Masses would think that it was all set for the doomsday. So human beings had now resigned and approved sickness of nature and fate. Then without a hint, the life on this part of earth negotiated a U turn and there were rains allover. Rains- softening, overflowing, cooling, inundating, raising hopes for next plantation, solving problems of water and electricity. Like an American science fiction, forces to destroy and sicken nature were overcome. Gods of nature like the ones awakened at a last moment were trying medicine after medicine in the form of continued downpour without caring for stocks and variety. They had to cure this sick part of the earth, come what may.

He would be woken out of his sleep at nights by seeing dreams. He would sit recovering for sometime; but little would he gain. Then he would read his Hanuman Chalisa and let the words of the powerful prayer sink into his scared soul; as if he were falling down a precipitous cliff and the words of the potent prayer would each become a redoubtable spring which would take the impact of his fall.

This night he was feeling much better after the prayer. He came near the front room’s window and sat there. The downpour could still be heard that had continued into 3rd unabated rainy day this day. Sometimes dry monsoon and sometimes this! Had rain gods kept hordes of rain masses from falling in the manner of protecting the newborns, he thought in amusement, and were the masses of rain now shoved out of a closed gate as they had grown up. The amusement of this thinking lessened his fear and he went back to bed.

Then at 4 AM, the rains had stopped a bit but the valley was allover laden with white clouds. The white invisibility outside was suddenly broken by loudspeaker of a temple somewhere down in the well of the valley. It was, however, something tangible. The prayer’s words pervaded the entire white ether of clouds in a split second, like a rolled carpet covers in acceleration the entire cleaned up white tiled floor of a big room in a jiffy.

Not all the time he had suffered here. This was a large flat, and only 1 or 2 % of the space was covered with his belongings. Earlier he used to live like a power supply cable wire running in between the unseen slots of a factory jam-packed with machines.

Here he joined a college for sometime for teaching some subject. Whole day ragging would inevitably pop up in any variety of conversation; be it talk of two women teachers or a group of young students. As punishment for ragging would come from several corridors- college, warden, court, police- ragging was fast disappearing from the air of the college. A senior student would still have leftover urge to ‘welcome’ this coveted time of ragging. But when the much reiterated warnings would encounter his urge, the senior would reluctantly shy away from such misadventures. The joy ride in the new car was all spoiled up by toll plazas every 5 km as they charged hefty amounts at every stop.

Readers- don't buy it blindly. Even this might turn out to be an immitation.