Some of the best stories I have been told came from people when their hands were wrapped around glasses with dark liquids. I will always remember the look in their eyes and the rising and ebbing of the vulnerability beneath. I will remember their stories, not just because their stories were noteworthy, but also because the time they told me their stories was magical; a time where for only a brief while, I walked through their worlds, waiting, watching, listening.

In the dark smoke filled room, I heard a story about guilt, the most unforgiving of emotions which found its way into the conversation, as the people at the table became increasingly uninhibited.
As a child, the storyteller had a  friend; a girl with straight brown hair and teeth that were held in place with braces. They played with each other often enough and their parents would coo over how perhaps when they grew up, they’d marry. The storyteller, a rather disgruntled young boy, was offended every time this was said and told his parents he wouldn’t marry someone so strange. “She smells like bananas.” He told his parents, while they laughed at how cute he was. He didn’t mind playing with her though; she played a mean game of Monopoly.

At a picnic, both families decided that the kids could go play while the adults chatted and drank beers from yellow cans. As the afternoon grew warmer and the parents became more animated, he and his friend snuck away to skip stones at a lake. She told him she really liked looking at fish, because “They look so happy all the time.” They sat at the edge, looking at fish and arguing as children do, over something insignificant.

One thing led to another and he told her that should she able to swim to the other end, he’d let her have some book she’d been eyeing for a while. She agreed but said she’d need to check with her mother. He knew he’d get yelled at for suggesting this and told her to “stop being such a baby” and to swim anyway.

The story got pretty predictable at this point, and the storyteller told us about him screaming because her bobbing head disappeared, the livid parents, the accusatory glances, the bloated, lifeless friend whose parents moved homes immediately after and the recurring dream ever since with the bloated dead body and the leaves stuck in her brown hair.

Somewhere in that room, we were part of his thoughts. Although the grief had been dulled by time, there would always be an unshakeable sense of remorse that someone who could have been around, perhaps at this table, died because of a silly bet. As everyone became quieter, I realized that hanging somewhere between the guilt and the regret, was a silent plea to not be judged.

They served large pizza slices and coke at the meeting. There was also salad and crackers for the health-conscious. The people sat through the meeting, biding their time until lunch.

At lunch, there was an unexpected level of chaos. People badgered the staff about the slightly cold pizza and asked if they could change the toppings. They asked if they could get a diet coke instead. The staff wasn’t particularly pleased but hid it under sugary smiles and servile “Let me just check, Sir”s.

A woman was heard complaining that the salad leaves were beginning to shrivel. Another asked if they could get a boiled egg, with the yolk scooped out of course, alongside the salad. She looked rather displeased when they said that would not be possible. She muttered under her breath about how she’ll have to go hungry and moved to the juice counter.

A large number of people had more than one serving of the chocolate mousse. The health conscious temporarily forgot about their dietary restrictions and licked their spoons clean. Some asked if they could have some fresh fruit to balance out the chocolate.

The hour long lunch break took close to two hours. At the end of it, everyone looked full and pleasantly sluggish. Not one of them could properly list out what had been covered in the first half of the meeting.

Take a lie and wrap it with glitter.

She, the one with a big umbrella and dangerously high heels, overbalanced at a crossroad and came down in a heap. All the vehicles screeched to a halt and a flurry of colourful words was witnessed.

She looked sheepish but not mortified and tried to pull herself together while the street watched her.
The man in the black car came out, and amidst loud gasps, helped her up. He offered to hold her bag, a dull pink because they don’t make it any other colour, and her folder. She quietly followed him to his car and got in, nodding at the wonderful man who held open the door for her.

They fell in love, in the confines of his car that smelled of rosewood. He told her he knew that there was something rather special about this day and she smiled while it rained and perhaps little fairies in a parallel universe sang and had a tea party.

They then got married and went on to have two perfectly healthy children one of whom became a state level swimmer. The other became a realist and called out his  parents’ bluff and said this story was cooked up to cover up the fact that they had actually been set up by their own parents because they were getting older and nobody would want to marry them.

They looked like they were caught cheating on a test but they quickly covered that with an indignant tone and angry expressions.

The son smirked and walked away.

Oh Bombay!

Through a dusty car window peppered with raindrops, the city passes us by.

The people, either running along the sea face or sitting with their backs to us hidden behind umbrellas, look strangely determined in their endeavours. The men with caps turned backwards strut around, fish mouthed because of the perpetual whistle.

The sea mirrors the deep orange shade that gets associated with evenings in Bombay. Despite the mild rain, the fiery colours of the setting sun push their way through, onto the water and the sidewalk. The children writing on the sidewalk with chalk look like they have halos, the light playing subtle tricks.

The car stops at a signal and the city rushes at its windows; the increasingly aggressive rain and a fleet of beggars. They knock and beg, pointing at their chapped mouths and concave stomachs. We look the other way, but the keep tapping at the window, the rain water trickling down their gummy faces.

By the time we hit the suburbs, the golden light changes into a dark blue one and the rain comes down in a torrent. The city, now a collage of multi coloured umbrellas, bickers quietly against a backdrop of muddy roads and tired faces.

The rain continues to come down on us, even when we get out of the car, and another fairly typical day is behind us.

Home.

We became who we are in a house with checkered tiles and pale yellow walls. We put away our lego pieces in a blue bucket with a lid. We played cards, the plastic variety with pictures of fruits and coconut trees on one side, sitting cross legged on the bed. We kept our books away in a wooden cabinet with glass doors.

The walls had tiny doodles, our names carved in child-like handwriting and random, disconnected words which may have meant something to us at that time. The wall next to the telephone once had phone numbers jotted with felt pen, because clearly nobody bothered themselves with diaries. It used had a funny feel to it, untidy but comfortably familiar. Then the walls got painted and the numbers found their away into more advanced, and less messy, technology.

The kitchen always smelled good and the refrigerator always atleast one thing that made us happy, ice-candy sticks with the cheap paper sticking to them or leftover pieces of cake with a spoon frozen in it, from a someone else’s mid night snack.

We are still becoming people we want to become in the same house, with the memories of all those years lurking behind doors and lying silently amidst dusty books.

In the nights, we peep from behind the curtains and watch the street slowly wrap up its day; boisterous trees, sleeping dogs and twinkling lights from homes of people who have also probably lived there forever.

The weather is deliciously gloomy. We stand, coughing, in the smoky shop which sells rolls. It rains ferociously behind us. The rain water rolls of the umbrella onto my bare arms while we walk out of the store looking for an auto.

There is nothing particularly noteworthy about the evening, but I know I'll remember it later. In the memory categories in my head, this will come under non specific memories.

There is always a strange feeling at the bottom of my stomach on Sunday nights. Mostly impending Monday morning blues. It is, as of now, mercifully overpowered by the smell of food and the tingling feeling that comes with knowing that I'll look back at this stray memory in the future. And that it will make me smile.

Blah.

There was no rain.

The protagonist woke up in the morning and didn’t meet anyone special. He was slated to go for a movie shoot where a beautiful woman would fall in love with him, but he went to the park instead and sat on a bench. He didn’t read or make conversations. He sat and watched the empty park and left when it was too dark to watch anything.

He came home and made baked beans with toast. He almost cut his finger while cutting the crust of the toast off but didn’t. He was meant to bleed to dead as a haemophilic, but turns out he doesn’t have haemophilia. He watched TV with the volume off with the curtains drawn so no inquisitive neighbour (who’s actually a serial killer with an apron) could spot him and slit his throat later at night.

Before he fell asleep, there was no tap on his window or knock on his door. He slept peacefully and woke up the next morning at a time that was neither early nor late. He did his dishes and went to the park again, missing a book signing this time.

There was no storm or background score either.

That night when he came home, there was a solitary letter in the mailbox that had the potential of being ominous. But even that turned out to be a flier for a local clothes sale.