I rarely take a bus to any place. I've earned enough to avoid that torture. Of course, I used to travel by buses when I was younger. In fact, I used to travel bloody every day. From one side of Delhi to the other side. It used to take me a good 50 minutes on one of those godawful Blue Line buses. You remember them? Those Blue Line buses used to run over so many people in a day that a joke went around that the safest place in Delhi was to be inside a Blue Line bus. Why did I travel in a bus? I had enrolled in one of those coaching classes because my parents thought that teenage life wasn't torture in itself.
I was in Kashmir a few years back. Nice place. I don't remember why I was there though. Does that happen to you? Where you forget the key information from a memory and all that remains are bits and pieces? It happens to me often. I should get it checked. Or maybe not. I have started liking my memory loss now. I remember walking towards a hill in Kashmir. Alone. I didn't know where I was going. All I remember is seeing that hill and that I was going towards it. I often do that, so it's not as weird to me as it might come across to you. I go for long directionless walks. Sauntering. It's comforting and makes me realize I am an animal, after all, just a really, really structured one.
And I was walking and walking and walking. There weren't many people on the road. In fact, from what I remember, there weren't any, but that seems highly unlikely so let's just say there weren't many. Suddenly a bus came from behind, honking. I remember thinking about why it was honking as there was neither a person nor a vehicle in sight. I turned around to see that it was honking at me. I stopped and looked at the bus conductor. He was an old man, wearing lots and lots of sweaters. If I had to guess his name, it would've been Ramlal Winter Collection.
He asked me if I wanted a ride. I said no and started walking. Bus ride? In a different city? Never. The bus driver was this tall guy with a scruffy beard, and he looked familiar, though I don't know how. I tried to stare at him, but he drove the bus right past me. As if he was furious at me for rejecting his offer. I managed to take a quick glance inside the bus, and it was empty. And by empty I mean it felt like nobody had stepped a foot inside it for months. What a strange bus; good that I didn't get on it. The next day, I was going back to Delhi. On my way back, the cab driver informed me that a bus had fallen off the cliff the previous evening, two dead. I wondered about the incident from the evening before and thought about it for the rest of the journey. Strange. Anyway. That was the end of it and I didn't think about that evening again.
A few months back, I was in Coorg. Nice place. At this point, you should assume that I only go to nice places. Haha. This time I went there with a couple of friends. We went hiking and stuff. A good weekend. Except for the hiking part. While coming back from a restaurant there, I asked my friends to drop me off 200 meters from our hotel. Our hotel was located on a small kind of hill. I wanted to walk and also click some pictures. It was evening-ish. I started climbing towards the hill. There was not a single soul in sight. So peaceful. I should come here every month. Lost in my thoughts, I kept walking. And then a certain sense of déjà vu hit me. It felt like I was walking in Kashmir. That same evening. I knew these were different places but they looked exactly the same. Déjà vu is creepy some days. I tried to distract myself from spiraling. And the view helped. It was gorgeous.
The property we were staying at was chosen by a very rich friend of mine. Frankly, it was way out of my budget and I was kinda hoping that by the end of the trip, the guy would say that the stay was on him. There were orchards and fruits and coffee and stuff like that all around. You could literally see the horizon without a fly in your way. I clicked and clicked and clicked. All of the pictures were Instagram-worthy. To remember this moment, I decided to take a selfie with the fields in the backdrop. I opened my front cam and that's when it hit me. I looked exactly like the driver I saw that day in Kashmir. Literally the same. The thought gave me chills. For a moment I started wondering if that was real or if this moment was real. Is it even possible? Was that a sign of something which was beyond my comprehension? Was I even alive? I couldn’t tell for sure.
I walked quickly towards the hotel and met my friends. This moment indeed was real. I didn't say any of this to them. That would make me seem crazy. That night the hotel staff made a bonfire for all the guests. It was so pretty that I almost wanted to flirt with it. We sat around the bonfire, some of us were on our phones, and some of us were just lying around, looking at each other. And at the sky. At some point in the night, my friend, who had recently lost a closed one in a freak accident, looked me in the eye and asked me, “Does this grief ever end? Will it ever end?”.
My friend somehow hoped that I might have the answer to his question. Sure, I don't talk much, but not every introverted guy is a deep thinker. Some of us are hollow from the inside. Maybe we just don't have anything to talk about. I thought about his question for a bit. And then a few minutes later I asked him, “Do you want it to end?” I think that was the best I could do at that moment. Because really, isn't grief what makes us human? Makes us stronger? Makes us sort of vulnerable, but in a good way? Is it really a bad thing?
As I was thinking all this, the night grew darker. People started singing songs and shit. I don't like this part of the party. Not because people are bad singers, but because they force you to sing. I am terrible, and I am running out of excuses now to not participate in this sort of activity. After my repeated "no's," they gave up. Right before going back to our rooms, my friend asked one of the guests the same question. “Why do we feel sad sometimes, for no reason at all?” I don't remember what the guest answered. I was too busy thinking about my walk towards the hotel earlier. “Maybe we are grieving for ourselves,” I muttered. I took a bus back to Bengaluru the next day. Nothing strange happened. Or maybe everything did become strange after that day in Kashmir. Nobody knows.
There is so much of uncertainty in this ....but one thing that I'm certain is that rich friend is tanmay
I am an introvert who is a deep thinker but not a intellectual one. I mean I do ponder over things a bit too much but that doesn't mean I have answers to all those 3 am questions. Maybe I'm thinking about how would I save the world from alien invasion.