Crossroad

© Vinay Nagaraju

(...a short story)

Prajwal sat there sipping his espresso at uneven intervals. He had never tasted espresso earlier. He had always enjoyed coffee with cream. Today was different. And he wished that it would be so, hereafter. He was distressed. An impulsive urge to change the predictable ways of his life, had prodded him to even have espresso, which did not fit into his fixed ways of being.

He stretched his crossed legs, with hands locked behind his head. He twitched his fingers releasing the tautness hidden in his knuckles. There was a certain weariness concealed in every corner of his body. And he resisted it. He resisted it because it reminded him of the conflicts in his mind. He protested himself, for adding meaning to these banal actions of his body. But somewhere, deep inside, they were all entwined. And he knew it.

The silences between his sipping were pregnant with thoughts. Thoughts, which he later classified as gibberish. There was hardly anything worth discerning in the cacophony inside his head. He closed his eyelids, vainly trying to erect barriers between himself and the world. Images of Bush, Iraq war, a coffee cup, Milosevic’s funeral, long lost girlfriend, soccer goal post, Jonathan seagull, a margosa tree on a hillock, Ayn Rand and all passed by his mind’s screen like the first reels in a movie hall. He experienced helplessness. In that moment there was a certain numbness in his experience. He opened his eyes. The only thing in control was the half-empty coffee cup in his hand. His impuissance in all other areas of his life was camouflaged, as he kept staring at the curve of the coffee cup’s handle. The waiter passed by wondering what profound thought must have engaged this young man. Prajwal’s imperviousness to the blaring music in the café was evident.

The setting in the café was perfect or rather not imperfect. Towards one end of the café, two chairs across a little round coffee table overlooked a busy street. He had last visited this place with Shreya, exactly a month ago. That was before she flew off on her first onsite assignment to Brno. What an unearthly place for software development he had thought then. He had started missing Shreya. Her round curious dilated eyes punctuating her animated conversations were no longer there across the table. They were now searching their owner’s destiny in Brno. How he had beseeched with her not to take up this assignment, before giving her a Good luck card. A card, a symbol of his disagreement of her choice. A card that was ordained to adorn her cubicle in far away Brno in Czech Republic. She had left with a huff, leaving behind a taste of her annoyance for Prajwal’s company. As he stared at the emptiness in the opposite chair, it slowly occurred to him that it was not a few moments ago that he had sipped the last cappuccino with Shreya. She had left him over a month ago. She avoided calling him or even writing an e-mail, for she thought she will be able to erase all her memories by doing so. She had failed miserably in that endeavor and she did not know that.

Prajwal tilted his head to cast a glance onto the street through the glass wall. He was fond of this table at the café. He did not know why. The view from the first floor of the café onto the busy street was always inviting. It put things in perspective. He liked to see life from a distance. And he intellectualised his outlooks. It gave him a sense of intangible control over life. A view of life that he construed to as the view of life. He could see his car parked against the curb at arm’s distance. He had this strange habit of keeping an eye on his stuff over and over again. He was on the fringe of being labeled as having obsessive stress disorder by his friend who studied medicine. He suddenly felt the weight of his laptop bag against his leg. He looked down at the bag with a sense of possession. And then he turned to see the car again. The footpath had started teeming with people. It was seven in the evening on a Friday. The time when software professionals in Bangalore, came out of their self-imposed hibernation to begin enjoying a weekend of unintrusive freedom. Some people were sticking smiles on their faces walking merrily on the pavements while there were many more who took frantic footsteps as they rushed to their next destinations. He could not stand that sight any longer, as if something inside him was provoked. He asked for the bill, paid up at the counter, picked up his bag in one hand and the jacket in another and took long steps towards the exit, not noticing the ‘have a nice evening Sir’ smile on the waiter’s face.

He reached his car, religiously buckled up and sped away onto the busy street to the next traffic island. The red digital countdown clock read 133. He switched off the engine leaving the radio alive. A young girl in ragged clothes was at the window. She curved her palms around her eyes with her wrists supporting her cheeks, blocking light and as if imitating a horse, as she tried hard to see through the tinted glass. Then she took a step back and started knocking on the glass with a rhythm that expressed her abandoned hope. He set aside his judgments and evaluations on why people ask alms and wound his glass down. He picked up a few coins from the ash tray and filled her small dirty hands. This was yet another instant that evening when he defied his usual way of being. Prajwal’s grandpa used to say “When you are happy is when you ought to be generous.” He smiled to himself at the paradox. The girl returned the smile with her own sweet one and a gratitude that she expressed as she raised her folded palm to her forehead and walked away.

As Prajwal parked his car at home, he heard his dad’s footsteps and the clinging of the garage keys in his hands. Even at odd hours, his dad used to wait for him, to lock the garage and the gate behind after the car was parked. Prajwal, picked up the bag, flung the jacket on his shoulder and walked into the house. As he walked across the drawing room, he gave a quarrelsome look at his younger brother who continued to munch chips as he sat transfixed to the television screen. Prajwal’s anger was not palpable to his mother who stopped by to give him a glass of cold water. Without a hint of what was coming he started yelling at his brother. “How many more days do you have before your exams ? Why the hell do you keep watching some nonsense movies on TV all the time ?”. The younger one, pushed the red button on the remote, flung it hard on the table and walked away to his room. That was his way of exhibiting rebelliousness to his elder brother. There descended an eerie silence at home soon after.

Satisfied with his moral victory, Prajwal climbed the stairs to his room. He did not know if it was his arrogance at play a while ago. It was rather his untamed disgust at his own life that kept erupting at regular intervals. He was always an emotionally guarded guy. He had barriers between himself and others. He rarely allowed anyone to peek into the realm of his emotions. He loved looking stoic and this pretense had ruled for long.

Prajwal’s room faced the intersection of two roads. On the inside, it lead to the staircase on one side and opened up as a balcony overlooking the dining hall on the other. Prajwal changed into his pajamas, came out of his room and looked down at the dining table. His mother sat there, waiting to serve him dinner.

He said “Amma, make some tea for me.”

“What about your dinner son ?” she asked.

“I am not hungry” came a quick reply.

She took to the kitchen uncomplainingly.

It was half past 10. Prajwal sat there crouched on his chair. His fingers locked in front of his face, supporting his goatee chin and his elbows firm on the smooth, polished teak table. There was stillness in the air. The laptop sat waiting for his commands. The only sound was that of the sultry air, being ripped apart by the blades of the ceiling fan. There were tiny ripples in the tea cup right next to the wires of the laptop. He cast a glance on that, picked up the cup and sipped in a spoonful of tea. The warm caffeine flowed down his throat into his body. It made its feeble attempt to pump in some life. He moved a bit, as if from deep slumber. He sipped another time. He clicked open the internet explorer and logged in to his mail box. There were no new e-mails. His eagerness to connect with people was unanswered. He thought to himself that all his friends were in their own worlds. Toiling and struggling hard to make meaning to life. He derived a sense of pleasure at these meanings that he attached. He opened the chat window. Some of his friends were online with a ‘Don’t disturb me now’ or ‘Busy’ message. He signed off, closing all windows and shutting down his laptop.

Taking calculated steps towards his bed, he looked around his room. The clock said 11:55 pm. There was a backpack lying on the floor. A small distance away was a bookshelf. The bottommost rack had a line of his college text books and the topmost row a collection of spiritual texts. There was a collection of Maslow’s essays too on that rack.

He moved his eyes onto the opposite wall. There hung a deep blue poster that read from Robert Frost, ‘Miles to go before I sleep’. Prajwal, smiled to himself. There was a certain glow in his eyes as he stood at a crossroad.

~ o ~

PS: All characters, settings and events are a figment of the author’s imagination. Any semblance to reality should be construed to the contrary.