Wayfarers...
I didn’t recognize him first, as I entered “Vishnu”. Vishnu is a small restaurant, “Hotel-tea shop” as they call it, and serves food fresher and tastier than any of the much more expensive restaurants around. It was dark inside, and my eyes took time to adjust, so I dismissed the dark silhouette as just another of those unhygienic lost-in-darkness kind, the kind that you see on the road every now and then, the kind that you take extra precaution to avoid. And then I realized he was staring at me.
I almost gave a start when I looked at him. His eyes were completely devoid of any sign of life, face unshaven, hair unkempt, and he wore something that looked like it has been ages since it has seen a drop of water or a pressing iron. I tried to smile, and later corrected myself, when I saw him failing miserably attempting to return the gesture. I sat down by his side, and ordered food.
He went on with his eating, raising his head occasionally to look at me. He seemed like begging, without saying a word. In his eyes I saw the look of a man so deprived, he couldn’t even make himself up to ask for mercy. I tried to make a conversation.
“So are you taking the restricted holiday today?”
He stared at me, puzzled. He obviously didn’t have a clue about what I was talking about. And later, when I succeeded in getting him to talk, I learned that it has been three weeks since he came to office, the first two were on leave, and on the third week, he just didn’t go.
He was a colleague; in fact we entered the company together, and had training in the same batch and all. He was a slightly laid-back personality, but everybody suspected there’s something going in inside his head. His classmates used to say he was brilliant, had very high marks in college, and later he repeated the same performance in training and scored good marks for the tests and all. And then one day, he went down with Chicken pox. In retrospect, I can see that, that incident actually cut the first strand in his relation with the outside world. He couldn’t make it with his batch, and when he resumed, he seemed even more distant. But I knew I always kind of liked him.
We used to see him once in a while, at office, always alone, and barely managing a smile. I don’t remember when was the last time I saw him. I remembered a friend once telling about him, apparently he hated his folks a lot and had stopped going home, too.
“I am stopping it all, I can’t do this job”. He said. For a moment, I had a flickering doubt in my mind whether it was the job alone he was referring to.
“I wanted to study, and my folks wont let me. But now I have decided, I am going to study.” I asked him what his plans are – of course, for ordinary people like me, everything has to have a plan backing it, the money, the time… but he didn’t seem to have a clue about all those details. He said he was preparing for the GATE, but had lost concentration in between due to pressures from home. And he was not going to make it this time. I advised him to go teach somewhere, maybe as a guest faculty, that would help him in his preparation also. He seemed to like the idea. After briefing him about the formalities of resigning, I waved good bye to him, reluctantly.
Before going, I went to him, put my hands on his shoulder, put on my best reassuring smile, and told him, “Just give a try, don’t know, maybe you’ll be able to make it this time itself”. He made an attempt at smiling back, but I saw my words fluttering into thin air. And when I looked in those eyes again, I couldn’t help feeling a bit concerned whether he’s going to make it at all.
And I don’t know whether I should hope he does, too…
I almost gave a start when I looked at him. His eyes were completely devoid of any sign of life, face unshaven, hair unkempt, and he wore something that looked like it has been ages since it has seen a drop of water or a pressing iron. I tried to smile, and later corrected myself, when I saw him failing miserably attempting to return the gesture. I sat down by his side, and ordered food.
He went on with his eating, raising his head occasionally to look at me. He seemed like begging, without saying a word. In his eyes I saw the look of a man so deprived, he couldn’t even make himself up to ask for mercy. I tried to make a conversation.
“So are you taking the restricted holiday today?”
He stared at me, puzzled. He obviously didn’t have a clue about what I was talking about. And later, when I succeeded in getting him to talk, I learned that it has been three weeks since he came to office, the first two were on leave, and on the third week, he just didn’t go.
He was a colleague; in fact we entered the company together, and had training in the same batch and all. He was a slightly laid-back personality, but everybody suspected there’s something going in inside his head. His classmates used to say he was brilliant, had very high marks in college, and later he repeated the same performance in training and scored good marks for the tests and all. And then one day, he went down with Chicken pox. In retrospect, I can see that, that incident actually cut the first strand in his relation with the outside world. He couldn’t make it with his batch, and when he resumed, he seemed even more distant. But I knew I always kind of liked him.
We used to see him once in a while, at office, always alone, and barely managing a smile. I don’t remember when was the last time I saw him. I remembered a friend once telling about him, apparently he hated his folks a lot and had stopped going home, too.
“I am stopping it all, I can’t do this job”. He said. For a moment, I had a flickering doubt in my mind whether it was the job alone he was referring to.
“I wanted to study, and my folks wont let me. But now I have decided, I am going to study.” I asked him what his plans are – of course, for ordinary people like me, everything has to have a plan backing it, the money, the time… but he didn’t seem to have a clue about all those details. He said he was preparing for the GATE, but had lost concentration in between due to pressures from home. And he was not going to make it this time. I advised him to go teach somewhere, maybe as a guest faculty, that would help him in his preparation also. He seemed to like the idea. After briefing him about the formalities of resigning, I waved good bye to him, reluctantly.
Before going, I went to him, put my hands on his shoulder, put on my best reassuring smile, and told him, “Just give a try, don’t know, maybe you’ll be able to make it this time itself”. He made an attempt at smiling back, but I saw my words fluttering into thin air. And when I looked in those eyes again, I couldn’t help feeling a bit concerned whether he’s going to make it at all.
And I don’t know whether I should hope he does, too…
Comments