The Penance...

It could have been a happy Sunday with the winds on the beach ruffling his hair. It could have been a time off from studies and an evening stroll with Vinu. It could have very well been one of those days when his culinary escapades made MJ laugh as if there were no tomorrow. It could have. But it wasn’t.

At least an hour had passed, standing in the queue. “Three more to go...” He took a mental note. He craned his neck to watch what was going on behind the gate. It was the exit gate of the building. A few men squatted outside the building, on the floor, some eating with both their hands. There was a lot of food remaining from last night’s party. May be someone got married… a bachelor’s party, maybe… or someone’s birthday. It dint really matter to him, did it? He was standing amidst laborers, beggars, rickshaw pullers and street urchins. Amongst them, he was just another beggar... just another hungry man waiting to get his hands on some good ‘restaurant food’. His stomach rumbled as he smelt the aroma of soya sauce. Noodles... He smirked at himself.

“Chinese? Oh come on Vinu! I’d rather chew marbles and polythene for the rest of my life!”

“Angad, you better stuff that napkin into your mouth and shut up. MJ loves Chinese and I am hungry enough to eat a Tyrannosaurus Rex! Majority wins, understand?”

He read the sticker on the open white plastic cans that lay amongst the pile of rotting vegetable peels on the roadside. ‘The Crazy Cuisine Restaurant’.
It takes a lot of mental conviction to gormandize on someone’s left over food. But today, he simply wanted to.

It had been almost eight months since he had left his home for good. And there had not been one day he dint wish that it was all just a nightmare and that he would get up the next morning, laughing at himself. Everyday, without fail, he played that day in his mind like a record... again and again and yet again, fancying one moment, one last glance by Anju Di into his room, maybe just one phone call from his Ma in Ahmedabad that would have stopped him from taking that damned decision. He was so sure, now, that he would have stayed back. He was so sure that it would have rekindled the urge within him to live a decent life, sans the deadly addiction that he had sold his soul to. Why did he feel then that it was too late to confess? Why did he feel that there was no way out of it? Rehabs could have helped. A simple, honest effort would have helped. Di would have stood by his side.

A Honda Accord honked loudly and the people standing behind him in the queue pushed each other to remain off the road. The smell of dried perspiration, dust and rotten food remains nauseated him. Suddenly, the security guard opened the gate and he was crushed from all directions by the crowd trying to get inside in a mad frenzy. He ran inside and took his seat on the floor with the others. And when he least expected it, down came a merciless blow of a cudgel on his right thigh .
“Running for a medal or something, you bastard?” the guard hollered at him.

“Hey MJ! Running to catch the next moon to the train?”…. “Oh! Hahah!... I mean next train to the moon?”

His mind was still full of Vinu and MJ. Vinu had been his best friend since school days and they had met Manek Jaishanker in college. His Ma never liked MJ. “He always smells of cigarette”, she would say with a frown. But she would still prepare the best dishes when they were around, she would still give them ample money for their frequent outstation trips.

Ma... He still dint know how she would have coped with his act of cowardice. And it was still painful when he thought of Anju Di. In spite of all the trust, the love and the freedom they gave him, this is how he had repaid them. And as he had wandered through the streets weeks after that incident, with nothing to own but his uncherishable deeds, he had decided the penance for the crime he had committed. To live in penury till death.

He begged for bits that kept him alive to suffer the excruciation. At times he would deliberately starve himself for days. He would sleep on pavements with vagabonds and smoke with hippies in some unexploited corner of the city. He tortured his self esteem deliberately. He never tried to commit suicide. Not because he was afraid of death... committing suicide meant taking his life at one go. He wanted to kill himself a bit everyday... gnaw himself to death every second he breathed.

The pain still stung his thigh badly. He rubbed his palm on the muscle and inspected the plate in front of him. The noodles were stale but the curry with it made his mouth water. He mixed them up crazily and stuffed his mouth with a huge ball of the mixture. And then he cried.

Over the past eight months, a deadly cacophonic drivel within his mind had dried him of emotions. The hatred, the shame, the guilt, the failure, the love that he could never give, the love that now he may never ever get... everything... everything that had piled up in the dirty, cobwebbed corners of his mind, came out as huge droplets of warm salty tears that fell on his plate as he slouched further to prevent the food from spilling outside.

Then he let out a contemptuous laughter... and said to himself scornfully...

“Happy Birthday Angad Minocha…”

***********************************************************************************

"If fate doesn't make you laugh, then you just don't get the joke."
- Gregory David Roberts,
Shantaram