The plane

The boy could be best described as scrawny with an ujala stained, dust-covered, supposedly white shirt and navy blue shorts. Standing on the terrace of his house, he drew an imaginary paper airplane in the air and then gently blew it, willing it to carry himself. And, it set off at dusk that day, gliding through the orange sky, through the temporal plane where time acted like space and the spatial plane where space acted like space as well as their intersection where both danced with each other.

It curved its way deep into a building which had surrendered itself to midnight. Loud music blared out from the speakers, ignored by everyone, who had paper cups in their hands. Full MH bottles stood proudly and empty coke bottles lay around defeated. The air surrendered to humidity and drops of perspiration died down slow deaths on smooth faces as it flowed down. Somebody yelled pointing to the cemented floor."I am not drunk at all. Look. I'll walk on that straight line marked there."

Roy dropped himself onto the floor, beside Raghu, silently watching the unfolding drama. The in-house, boys-only-because-it's-the-boys'-hostel party was the aftermath of the successful completion of the college cultural fest. The challenger did a duck walk, his cheerful butt dancing sinusoidally.

"I don't exactly think he is walking on the line." Raghu commented through the din of the shouts and music. "No. That is obvious from the way, people are hooting at him." Roy replied.
"Drunk idiot. He is pointlessly embarrassing himself."
"I don't know about that. As far as he is concerned, he is walking straight. Seems pretty happy and proud about it too."

Raghu's airplane and the drunkard zigzagged their way through the straight line. At the end of it, nobody even knew what the challenge had been and they all toasted to all that they had done together. The plane twirled a bit, flashing strobe lights and whisked itself away.

February 1, 2003 was a Saturday. Both Raghu and Diya usually tucked themselves in the bed with a splattering of brunch and dinner on Saturdays at his apartment. That day was supposed to be no different. However, at around 11 AM, Diya still in her pajamas, rushed to the bedroom and shook him up from his sleep.

"Raghuuu" she screamed. He woke up alarmed and groggy.
"What?"
"Come. See the telly."
He put on his spectacles and shuffled behind Diya towards the living-cum-dining room. A waft of whatever she was cooking, floated towards him from the kitchen. He looked at the television and saw the images of a spacecraft burning up. The ticker announced that the space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated, killing all seven crew members, including Kalpana Chawla.

"She means something to me." Diya whispered.

He glanced at Diya. She seemed transfixed. Partially here. Partially over in those skies. Her eyes had moistened slightly. He went towards her and embraced her in a tight hug. The kind that can't be described by a writer using weird similes and metaphors. The airplane encircled them, letting out a warm glow and orange-red hues.

Raghu was gazing through the glass door of the ICU. There was nothing symmetrical about heart beats. And, yet the already irregular heart beat could apparently get even more irregular. Roy's mom lay huddled inside. That was pretty much the only family Roy had.  The doctor came outside to talk to him. He was looking grim. Raghu always had the trouble of expressing emotions at the right moment. Anger. Grief. Panic. Happiness. Everything came like the credits at the end of a movie after all the drama got over. As the doctor spoke to him, he felt like he could hear a confused but mild movement in the air around him. It almost felt like somebody had sprayed something to nail a bug and it was stuttering back and forth in its flight.

People expect a relationship to end like cricket world cups. There is a final, there is that one point where that final run is scored, or the final wicket falls. There is a winner and a loser. Everything happens in a definite manner and with clarity. But, mostly it's just muddled up like the insides of a washing machine that's doing what it is supposed to be doing. Smelly with lots of dirty water mixed with slimy and greasy detergent, circling in loops. And, then there are odd times when even that doesn't happen. People just fade and fade and then one of them decides that not only should the clothes be washed but it should be positively bleached, whether quickly or slowly. The colour leaks out of memories and then the black leaches out. The outlines blur and then it's just white. That had been what happened to him and Diya and it had mostly happened without his knowledge.

Colourless. Oddly at around that time, a paper airplane limping around suddenly started becoming translucent. Whereas it had emitted colours earlier unseen, now it had become more visible in a dull, grey manner. And, it's existence was attributed by random people including Raghu to unidentified kids.

The darkness was split open by a single line of light and it widened very hesitantly. That December morning had been particularly cold and Raghu was finding it difficult to wake up. It had been two months since he was fired from his last workplace. The floor was littered with cigarette butts and other waste. Summoning whatever reserve of strength, he had and went towards the balcony of his apartment. He looked at the people milling in the streets below. It did not evoke anything in him. In fact, it almost appeared as if everything was pressing against him. It reminded him of Roy.

"Plath once compared depression to being inside a glass bell jar, you know. As if suddenly, you are gasping for breath and you cannot reach beyond that glass wall and make contact. You are trapped. You are constricted. Everything outside seems distorted when seen through the thick glass wall."
"Must be tough."
"Very." Roy paused for a second. " But, you know, sometimes I think depression has made me more human. Being able to understand grief and pain. And, understand it when it happens in others. It's almost like you can touch it and it's like jam or jelly gone wrong."
"You should have let me known about what you were going through. I never imagined.."
"..that I could go through that. I know. Somehow, I didn't want to tell anybody. Not a really good move. But, I am opening up now."
"So, what exactly are you doing to tackle it?"
"I am taking professional help, yes. If that's what, you mean. No drugs though. But, more importantly, I am trying to see again the things that I took for granted. If you reach the rock-bottom and summon enough courage to stand up and look around, it's very different from what you see from above and much better. And, even when you look behind, it's different. People like me tend to have tattered memories initially because of all the things you feel like blanking out.  But, work your way around the holes and you have scraps of things that you had never paid attention to before. And, before you know it, what you thought was tattered mends itself and becomes visible albeit in a different way."
Roy paused for some more time and continued "But, you know the best thing. At one point of time, you positively want to rebel. Like you want to gather all the scraps and whatever you have going for you and make a last stand."

Memories of long ago are sometimes so effective that you almost feel like the real person is standing beside you. Raghu glanced sideways to make sure that it wasn't the case and that's when he noticed the paper airplane lying on the floor of the balcony. He smiled. Ever since he was little, he always had a thing for planes, rockets and space shuttles. He took the plane and looked at it carefully. It was not in a very good condition. He closed his eyes for a few seconds. And, then he launched the plane against the wind. It went up vertically and he almost immediately lost sight of it. That's weird, he thought before going inside.

The plane meanwhile vertically shot up. All the layers of air pressing down on it was heating it up. It was burning and becoming almost incandescent. Yet, the flimsy thing held itself together. And, it soared higher and higher to an unknown destination, as if to prove a point to some unknown entity somewhere. 

Face-to-Face

The beach winds usually made Raghu's hair dry, frizzy and unmanageable. What was left of his hair, that is. He was sharing roasted peanuts with Diya. They were sitting somewhat close to what Raghu called the Sea-Lick line. Behind which, they were somewhat safe from a frontal assault from the creeping waves which would have gotten their asses wet and sent them scrambling backwards. Right now, only the finely grained sand possessed any threat to their jeans.

"Ey. The ape-to-man picture right. The one that starts from the monkey and ends up in Sapien Sapien." Diya suddenly pricked the ballooning silence against which the sounds of the waves were making little effect.

"Yes. What about it?"
"It's odd that they can see the backs of their evolved versions. I think they should all be looking backwards and wondering at their previous versions. Not one of them should be able to see their future versions. That's not how it works."
"I take this to be the starting point of something else."
"No. Nothing. It's a fascinating picture, that's all. I look at you and I can see six of you."
"Myself and my past selves?"
"Something like that. In parallel. Almost like Trivandrum itself."
"How?"

Little tanned boys in uniformed shorts were playing in the sand at a distance under the watchful eyes of oily haired, saree clad and underpaid teachers. They seemed to be from a Govt. school. None of that christianised, private school-ish illusion of sophistication.

"Look at Trivandrum now. It's almost like a cultural clash. You have a generation putting their feet into two boats. Weed is abundantly available and so is pre-marital sex with no semblance of any sort of emotional relationships. International Film Festival of Kerala flourishes.."

"IFFK flourishes and attracts even non-cinema lovers because of the nudity. I wonder whether the vast majority can make any sense otherwise of those movies and I certainly do not think it is flourishing because we have, overnight, developed impressive art analysing skills."

"Anyway, I think the new generation is more casual and accepting about a lot many things. And yet, while they seem to be almost swinging all the way to that end..You know, one of my cousin's childhood friend called him up to ask about this girl who studied with my cousin during his graduation. I think it was a marriage proposal or something for that guy. My cousin promptly told him that she had more than two relationships during their college days. And that was it."

"I see. An eerie foam of orthodox morality beneath the mattresses of testosterone and estrogen."
"Yes. Not only that. Try visiting the Museum and Park during the evening. It's populated by the grey haired. Or families-with-bubbly children. Our generation is absent."
"Hmm. Diya. It's not like they can find any jobs here."
"I know."

"I do not mind hypocrisies and absence. The former is probably due to the fact that we are that generation where entrenched ideals are slowly changing. It's never a smooth transition. And, absence. Well, there is something about Trivandrum. I don't feel the same way about this place like I once used to. Familiarity and all. I have been away from this place for long. But, this place still calms me down. I think our generation may not like the idea of living forever around here but they will always return, once in a while. The city will always pull us from the distance and push us away when we stay around here too much."

Diya looked at Raghu as he was talking. Dilating pupils. A distant look. One that was scanning the faraway orangish-bluish boundaries.

"But, something is bothering you." She ventured.
He nodded.
"Sometimes, I get this idea that we are ageing at a more accelerated rate than what is actually happening physically. As compared to the generation before us for whom a stable job and family were more important, I think we really want to make an impact on life. And, because of that as well as all the multiple difficulties our generation has to deal with, personal and otherwise, I think we are getting mentally grey-haired."

Diya smirked.
"You just miss us back then."
Raghu turned and faced her. One side of his lips slightly taut.
"Anyway, it's not like you can make people rewind experiences or forget them." He commented.
"I think you can. Momentarily, anyway."
"Huh?"

"I don't know. You realise that we don't keep in touch, in the conventional sense. It's not like we call each other every day or every week or even every other month. But, we do try to meet up whenever possible. May that be twice or thrice a year. We have some coffee or watch some distant birds or people milling around like bees and we talk. We catch up. And, I get this sense of satisfaction, you know."

"As if time's like a washed piece of cloth, neatly pressed. So that what should be distant, dirty and wrinkled, come together and touch each other."

"Weird way to put it, but yeah. The moment we really talk, it's like every bad thing that ever happened lightens up a bit. Some of them even seem downright silly and others, survivable."

The day had faded and it was beginning to darken at Sankhumugham, the beach where they were sitting. Raghu could hear the vague sounds of aeroplanes taking off from the airport at a distance. He looked ahead. At a distance in the sea, the fishing boats turned on their lights one by one. Points of light stubbornly resisting the invasion of night. Points of light at a distance in the sea in a horizontal line and a curly, moist wind wafting through the beach. Points of light like parallel versions of themselves, each by itself illuminating and yet at a distance not easily touched. But, visible to the two of them who were sitting and ruminating so much.