A FICKLE MIND

Filled with the aroma of sauces, the milieu at The Trident is always a delight for someone who loves to eat. The large dining hall with a view of the pool outside, adorning it and making the hall itself look like a delightful appetite, remains empty often though, because the most beautiful things in the world always come with large tag attached.

Sitting there at the table near the view of the pool was Ajay, a young boy, who used to savour the ambiance along with the food, now devours the lobster with tiresome eyes and a lot going on in his head.

‘Why do you need so much money? Where are you going? Are you going to give this to someone? The last time you did you didn’t get it back.’ he remembered his mother’s questionnaire as a cacophony from that morning.

‘What does she know of what I am going through?’ thinking this he pushes his fork inside the lobster and brings a lump of flesh to his mouth. ‘Couldn’t she just give me what I asked for? I have my reasons but I can’t explain everything to everybody, can I?’ thinks Ajay with some words aloud and some not so much.

‘What reason do I give? Eating delicious and expensive food when I feel sad makes me feel better? She wouldn’t understand it. Instead she might ask me, ‘why are you sad?’ to that I say ‘the girl I loved hurt me’ and she would probably say ‘see that’s why I tell you not to sulk into mobile phones for so long’. The images of his mother in his head haranguing makes him squeeze his fork hard.

‘Why does it have to be so hard? Why don’t people get it that not everything can be said out loud? Oh my head hurts’ he puts his hand on his forehead to soothe himself.

‘All I ever wanted is some peace of mind. I mean how great would it be if I go to mom and ask her mom I need a 5000 bucks. And mom goes ‘OMG! What happened?’ and i say, ‘just need it mom’ and she points me to the money and gives me hug saying, ‘Whatever it is go have fun you will feel better’. But no….. The first thing that comes out of her mouth ‘What did you with the money I gave you a week ago?’, he thinks in his frustration pushing another lump of a lobster down his throat.

Chewing the flesh he glances at the pool outside. Disturbing his view a shiny pair of bare legs stand by the pool, reminding him of someone. He looks up to see who it is and finds a beautiful girl who would kill any boy just by her sight, playing with pool water with her feet. His chewing pauses with his mouth wide open joining his eyes.

She lifts her head up, holding herself, looks at him and smiles. That moment… That exact same moment felt like déjà vu to him. He felt like he has seen it before from another person whom he once loved.

He quickly turns his gaze to the walls of The Trident and thinks to himself, ‘Bitch. May be they all are. She told me holding me in her hands with the same smile ‘I love you and you are all I want.’ Now where is she? Just because someone told her not to, she left me. Whoever that maybe, it doesn’t matter. She left me.’ he thinks holding his tears in his eyes.

‘I don’t care. Am gonna eat and have a nice long ride and get myself better’ he pushes down the lumps in his throat with some juice.

When he was done he asks for the check, which added up to three thousand eight hundred and ninety seven rupees. He, a little taken aback, but wasn’t surprised puts the money on the table and walks out of the restaurant.

Walking towards the bike he came on, he remembers his mother’s words, ‘Do you really have to go on that bike? It’s not ours and if something happens to it am gonna stand by you understand that.’

At this thought, with his rage and feelings running amok inside his tired head, he embarked on the bike looking at the clear road in front him, fired the engine and fled roaring.

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A Shadow, long and lean, casted on a clean sand. A shadow of a man with clean edges, vividly discriminating his hands from his body but his legs seemed like only one, stands still on the shore of the sea. Suddenly the shadow moves towards the water with a great speed, until it becomes invisible in the water of the ocean.

He runs until he couldn’t and drowns into the water. He starts to swim under the great ocean with impeccable force, towards the bed of the ocean. As he moves rapidly his body slowly develops fangs and gills. He isn’t startled by the phenomena. His legs turn into a shark’s tail and slowly he transforms into the predator under the sea.

The predator keeps swimming now hungry, in search of a prey. Soon it realizes that it is all alone in the dark deep sea. Slow like a poison, the fear building inside it. Panicked it starts swimming towards the surface at great velocity. The predator felt it was the prey of the darkness. As it leapt out of the surface, it reached high towards the sky.

Its fangs become the wings, its mouth a small beak. It becomes an owl sitting on a lonely branch in a forest. The trees of the forest are so dark that it seems like they have absorbed the night itself, they are so vivid in two lines on either side of the path when glanced from a distance they seem to intersect at the end. But only one branch interrupts all its serenity cutting from one side to the other, with an owl sitting on it.

Slow and steady the owl turns its giant head all around, but becomes ignorant of the creeping snake behind it. When it finally sensed, before it could flap its wings to elude the death, the snake leaps and catches the owl and starts falling down from the great height of the branch.

As it reached the ground a mongoose catches it and kills it clean.

Then the mongoose starts running away feeling that something is hunting it. It runs and runs into a trap of a hunter. The hunter picks up the trap and walks out of the forest into a tunnel.

The tunnel was a flat wall on one side of the path, standing up straight on the left and running away towards no visible end. The top of the wall and the other side of the path are closed with an arc shaped construction. Around the tunnel was dark, but the tunnel itself was much darker. It wasn’t cutting though a hill or a giant stone, it just stayed alone with no end. The hunter walks into the tunnel feeling something is behind him, hoping there is a light at the end.

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With a leaf falling right into his mouth from the tree above the bench he was resting his head on, Ajay wakes up spitting it out. He looks from side to side if there was someone was looking at him and found people but none of them looking at him.

Relieved, he throws some water on his face from the bottle in the bike and wipes it off. Getting back on the bike, he feels that his head is still hurting.

Flying off on the bike he started embracing the cool rushing wind that soothed his head. He hears a horn from behind and looks at another bike rushing past him.

Seeing that he thought, ‘What if I were to meet with an accident right now? And if I were to survive with minor injuries would my mom show me care and love or will she say, ‘I told you not to ride that bike. See what happens when you don’t listen to me’, with dad going, ‘Should I say something?’ What would happen?’ the image of the one who he loved once flashes before him. ‘Will she come and visit me at the hospital. That woman I held so dear to my heart, at least then will she come and hold my face and shed tears angry at me for not driving safe. Will she do that? Will she go to that some person and say ‘I don’t care what you feel. I love him.’

‘Then will she say to me, ‘I will never leave your side again’? and kiss me. Will that happen? Is life so simple? Can all this change? Will I be loved ever again?’ as his head throbs with all this questions, he reaches a crossroad and stops at the red light.

He looks around, all the vehicles waiting like huge monsters on a hunt. ‘May be I am thinking too much. May be it’s all over’ he turns his head to the left and finds a truck about to catch the signal to his right.

‘Or maybe I should just find out’, thought he and releases the bike’s clutch intending to crash into the truck.