Rendezvous with someone 'special'

It was sometime between 2:30 and 3 in the night. I was dead tired the previous night and tiny crackers were bursting in my head. I somehow managed to fall asleep(how does it matter if I was still with the same jeans,T-shirt and shoes since morning and didnot bother to take them off,how does it matter if the fan was running full speed and the door was wide open?!)


Suddenly everything was hazy. The sweet fragrance of Cycle Brand 3-in-1 incense sticks permeated my room.Strains of veena and the chanting of 'OM' could be heard in the background.The chants were getting clearer now. And then there was this single beam of blue light emerging through the balcony door. The whole thing was getting eerie.Before I could even think what the whole thing could be, this guy with his hair rolled into a bun appeared out of nowhere. For a moment though, I wonder if it was Shashank playing a prank on me.

I start scanning him with the bottom-up approach followed in hindi movies.How many times have we not seen the hero and the heroine make that typical 'entry'. The hero- start with the shining black shoes a tight black pant, a broad jet black belt with a gold buckle, a black leather jacket open at the front , a T-shirt with a 'puchline', accentuating his abs, and to 'top' to it all, a black helmet out of which emerges our kinght in the 'shining' armour(literally!).Sometimes some great directors like Vikram Bhatt get better of you and instead of the hero it's the heroine. Remember Rani's entree in Ghulam??. But the heroines' entry is sedate and marked by a degree of authority as most movies have the usual rich boy- meets -poor girl-love- father, also the villian -opposes- love wins in the end storyline. She steps out of the Merc, left leg first,ceramic white high-heeled sandals,(legs cleanly 'veet'-waxed!), stockings if she's to be shown as ultra-rich, and then as the camera starts moving up her leg the audiences' pulses begin to zoom up like the BSE sensex and threatens to cross all barriers, the skirt appears where the knee ends and then a 'correction' takes place with a large collective heave from the audience.Then there's nothing much at the top( to see ) because it is fully covered!She gets down from the car, takes off her goggles and then turns around with her 'sunsilk'y her covering the entire screen and her face as well. The repetitive shots of her Fair and Lovely face get lost amidst the shrill whistles and catcalls of the 'hungry' audience.

Now I become the hindi movie cameraman. His toes are as dirtier than mine and it appears as though he's walked quite a distance on the rain-soaked roads of Surat, his legs hairy as any normal male!, and when I don't see any signs of clothing as I move up his legs,it starts to get uncomfortable. More than assuaging this feeling of annoying discomfort, the piece of tiger skin draped his thighs scares me no ends. There's no sign any clothing as I move the 'camera' upwards except for large rosary around his neck which laters occurs to me that it's called 'Rudraksha'(which again reminds me of a horri(bheja-f(r))ying Hindi movie by the same name). His neck had a
bluish patch as if he had a bad throat(aggravated by those wicked khich-khich causing agents!) and needs Vicks urgently. His face was the most striking feature. There was something about this face. Something powerful, something enigmatic. What heightened my astonished state of misery was that I-know-it-all smile on his face. The trishul in his hand made me wonder if he was a Bajrang Dal activist. For five minutes he stands there akin to a statue at the Tussade's and I do nothing but stare at him. Just as I recover and am about to yell out aking him if that was some kind of a practical joke, he broke his smile and with a calm soothing voice called out - "Vaths!". Before I could ask him if he was Shiva- The God, the smile reappeared on his face and he said-"Yes, I am". It was Bruce Almighty redux. Not wanting to be the fool that Bruce Nolanwas in that movie, I let God do the talking!(At the back of my mind, I thought Ramanand Sagar had indeed got it right, Gods do address others as Vaths, even the costumes were accurate to the minutest of the details.

He parks his trishul in a corner, but it falls down. While he's picking it up, I restist the temptation to break out into a giggle which I do whenever the teacher drops the teacher in the class. He replaces the trishul and clasps his hands indicating he means business. I sense he's looking for a place to sit down and I quickly clear the pile of clothes on my chair and dump them in my cup-board. He's certainly out of sorts in DF-7 hostel-6 NIT,Surat far removed from the serene, calm environs of Kailash mountains.

Unmindful of this, he begins."So, do you know John Barry Adams?.He lived in the UK between 1863 and 1927. 5' 8", 73 kgs,comlete family man. Wife and two children. Achieved nothing great in life.Ended up as just another statistic in the register at the city council of Yorkshire."

I just parted my lips and there he went-"Yes, I do know English.Had to learn it with many Hindus praying to me in English. Globalisation, you see!"

I was left wondering why did God 'appear' to talk to me about some good-for-nothing John Barry Adams.He then smiled looking at puzzled look on my face - "No, don't do that with atleast me right infront of you" and this left me with no doubt that it was indeed God infrontof me.What exactly was going through my mind was-"How the *&%^ does this John Barry Adams matterto me now?" and he being God himself couldn't have missed it!.And added-"By the way, you were John Barry Adams in your previous birth.

The puzzled look still continued to be there while he carried on-"Well it was quite disturbing to see you curse me for the last few days and that last outburst of yours was very very unsettling. So I was quite upset with you and ran a check on your antecedents andfound out that there was a mistake on our database. it was found out that John Barry Adams had killed 768 ants more than we'd thought initially. So, to account for that, I had to punish you over the last week.That is wh`y your computer's RAM crashed,your keyboard stopped working, your specs broke, the tube-light in your room hasn't been working since the last 3 days and you had a stye in your eyes. I delayed your specs getting repaired for that outburst. But I found you worrying too much over such small matters,you have bigger things to worry and think aboutin your life.As they say, stop making a mountain of an mole-hill,learnt this idiom recently".

And then he walked away calmly out of my room, the crescent at the back of the bun on his hair clearly visible as was the spring where Ganga originates.Ramanand Sagar got this one wrong though. Gods just don't disappear, they silently walk away!

God was perhaps right.I have better things to worry about.Maybe I should worry if I have to attend the first class tomorrow having been up so late to write this, worry if with the last ten rupee note left in my pocket I should go to the canteen and have samosa and tea or go the gateand have vada-pav and sugarcane juice during the break, or maybe worry if i should clean my room after two months or two months and one day.

Yes,God was right.How does it matter if there was a stye in my eye and I don't have my specs for three days and I have to bunk two labs for that,how does it matter if my RAM crashes and keyboard stops working and that my room is without a tube-light for the last three days.C'mon God, small things?.you must be kidding!

P.S. It's been 4 days since I wrote this. My room is still without tube-light. The new keyboard I bought is giving problems and adding to the never-ending list of woes, my CD-ROM drive stopped working suddenly yesterday. And to my surprise, I'm not cribbing or complaining about what's happening to me. I'm currently flowing with
The Last Song of Dusk. Will try and post the review.