Finding Love | Epilogue | A dream

I am a dream. A recurring dream that Ragini experiences. Ever since she met Luv's friends, i have been   part of her sleeping experience-if not everyday but certainly periodic enough to qualify as recurring. Even on that Sunday when Luv went missing and she fell asleep holding their photo album in her arms, i moved into her sleep unannounced. Did i arrive on my own due to her agony or was i invited exclusively by the sedative effect of the curd rice she consumed. I am not a psychoanalyst and certainly as a dream i do not have the luxury of humans to read the most incisive book written on me ever-Interpretation of dreams- by Freud.
I open with the outdoors of a school. There is a reunion that is taking place. Guys in their mid thirties- some with their spouses and some with their kids and spouses are sitting inside a classroom. A teacher comes and everyone stands up to wish her. There is laughter and humor in the air. Some are bragging about their achievements in life. Ragini is sitting with Luv and next to them are sitting Ank, his wife and kid and Amir and his wife. She can also recognize Prabir the class topper and his family sitting ahead of them. Suddenly Luv stands up and excuses himself for going out of the class. Ragini looks towards people around her. Age has put a time stamp on these once young and restless people. They have put on weight and most have puffed eyes and receding hairlines. However its peculiar that most of them are looking outside the window. She turns to her left to see what others are so eagerly seeing. She sees Luv talking to a girl- a teenage girl wearing a school uniform. They are not aware that a class full of middle aged people are staring at them. She sees that Luv doesn't quite appear the same as he was just a few minutes ago when sitting next to her. He looks as if he came straight out of his school farewell photograph-a restless teenager who gives a damn about the world. She felt she is witnessing two people in a time warp-as if time had stopped for both of them.



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I would like to thank Ankur for being the inspiration and source behind this story.
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Finding Love | Chapter-5 | The invoice of love

Love is a strange thing. More i think about the events that unfolded on that Sunday, the more i am convinced about the strangeness of love. Luv always said that love is around us- we just need to see it. He would be holding my hand and talking to me while walking across the crowded Brigade road but still he would be looking around. He would usually speak in metaphors and i was a women of literals.It was difficult for me to relate to what he said. But then i was in love.

I had planned for a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Luv's company. First a two course meal-lemon rice followed by lots of curd rice and then watching the most successful movie ever in my vernacular language. Although till that time he was not completely conversant in my native language but for him language was a non determinant in a relationship. On the day he proposed me sitting on a drop vehicle at the end of a night shift, he said that love only understands one language and that language is the language of heart. I thought he was talking about the acoustical patterns we hear while using a stethoscope on a person's chest but he made it clear that he meant emotional connection. So with my expectations soaring high  i called him a day before that fateful Sunday. But my hopes were shattered when he told me his schedule was already set for the next day. He was invited by his friends Ank and Amir for a lunch. If ever anything annoyed me more than non vegetarian food was Luv's friend circle. He along with his friends were part of the great human migration from north India to Bangalore that took place during the early stages of  the IT bubble. Before Luv introduced me to them my understanding of north Indians was that geographically they lived north of Vindhya mountain ranges and spoke Punjabi. However to my utter amazement it turned out that his friends were from various parts of India like West Bengal, Assam and even Kerala . Their parents had emigrated to central India during the socialist era to get into government jobs as there was a scarcity of skilled labor in those parts. And like past repeating itself, these immigrant population was again migrating to Bangalore to overcrowd our streets. They would make lewd jokes and swear openly with utter disregard of the neighbourhood. But what annoyed me most that they would make fun of Luv. Specially the two cousin brothers -Deepu and Jeetu who would spare no expenses in ridiculing him. I do not why Luv S Chauhan who belonged to a respected Rajput family would take crap from such people. Each time we went to meet his friends, he would do a lot of explaining later to  make me understand that they don not mean anything seriously. Also in his circle was JJ who due to no particular reason always competed with Luv. Then there was Amir who was obnoxious and tried hard to appear smart. Ank was the one who was most intelligent among the pack and i conversed with him more often than others. Every time these guys would get together they would indulge in drinking and smoking and making fun of each other.
Due to all these reasons I was enraged at the idea of Luv spending an entire Sunday with this company instead of being with me. This resulted in a heated altercation over the phone followed by heinous name calling and stereotyping . I told him i would never call him again and ended the call. I thought he would call me in the evening or at night but he did not. Next morning i could not take it anymore and decided to call him. His phone was unreachable. I redialed his number repeatedly in the hope that it would connect once but it did not. I called up Ank thinking maybe Luv was with them as he was supposed to be according to his schedule. But when Ank said he was not there yet, i was alarmed. Did he went somewhere due to the fight we had yesterday? Did something bad happened to him on the way? Is he purposely doing this to make me feel miserable. I wanted to find Luv but did not want to tell these guys about our fight yesterday as it would make our pair a constant source of amusement for them for the next two months. In an emotional voice i said that i feared something bad could have happened to Luv. My appeal worked and Ank and Amir launched a manhunt. I was being updated timely regarding the pursuit by the duo. I opened the photo album and kept looking at pictures of us and thinking how could i have avoided the fight. The curd rice that i had prepared for consumption by both of us was entirely consumed by me and due to its soothing effects i  do not remember when i fell asleep, still holding the album  in my hands. My slumber was broken by the monotonic ringtone of my Nokia phone. It was Luv. I grabbed it and instantly broke into tears.

Where were you?
What happened? Why are you crying?
Where were you? I was so frightened. I am sorry and i promise not to fight with you again.
Well honey i was coming to meet you for breakfast-to sort out our differences.But my bike broke down midway and i had to go to a mechanic where the carrier signal was not available.
Please dont ever do that again. I was so terrified at the prospect of loosing you. We kept searching for you everywhere.
Dont worry dear. I love you and i forgive you for the fight we had. Why were you looking for me all over the city? I am always with you. Love is always inside us. We just need to look within.

Finding Love | Chapter-4 | The testimony of a second chancer

The Whitefield police station was about five kilometers from Prem's rented residence. We debated on waiting for a bus or taking an auto rickshaw to reach there. We went for the auto rickshaw as time was slipping from our hands. Although the auto rickshaw driver complained of his broken meter and charged us ten times the bus fare, still it was not the thing that preoccupied our minds. Each and every neuron in our brains was only consumed in figuring the possible reasons of Luv's sudden disappearance from our lives.None of us spoke for sometime. Suddenly the uncomfortable silence was broken when my cell phone rang. On the screen an unknown number flashed. I did not wanted to be reminded of a missed credit card payment or enlightened about a new(and better) connection plan at this crucial moment. The uncomfortable fact of the moment was our dear friend Luv Singh Chauhan was missing since morning and as the time went from AM to PM the chances of seeing him again appeared bleaker to us. So i cut the incoming call. It rang again and i repeated the action i did last time. En route we decided to file a missing persons report although i knew Ank would have loved to report an alien abduction.My casual mention of a facility for the mentally insane in the vicinity of the police station might have acted as a deterrent and hence he never spoke of such a possibility. Still there were lot of questions on which we could not reach a common conclusion-like:
Should we mention about the old monk to the police?
What if the policed surmised us as possible suspects in his disappearance?
Should we tell Ragini about the police report and police about Ragini?
What do we eat for lunch and where once the reporting was over?

Although i was with Ank on our decision to report this to the police but my heart kept telling me that nothing had happened to Luv, that he was around us somewhere just waiting to be found. I always believed in second chances and wanted to give ourselves a another chance to find Luv or Luv to find us.

As the wheels of auto rickshaw kept spinning and my stomach kept churning from the after effects of the Dosa and Sambhar we consumed at Majestic Bus Depot  i reckoned life for me was always about second chances. The reason probably was that i was never able to accomplish something in the first chance itself-be it matters of materialism or matters of the heart. Also in most situations those second chances were more painful than having no chances at all.I still remember clearly the day Ank made me propose a girl from my graduation days whom i admired mostly due to her peculiar way of talking. We hardly met after graduation and i would only talk to her sometimes on telephone. But Ank thought otherwise. He believed that like our friend Luv who although being an avid philanderer, would never give up on a girl once he had his heart fixed, i too should give this girl a second chance. He was in the city due to summer break and offered to help me in all possible ways in doing so. He had recently unearthed that i was the one who had emailed the girl of his affection as i was the creator of his email id. It was his heart wrapped up in the form of my text in the body of that email. I thought maybe he wanted to return this favor as a friend and succumbed to his coercion.  Those days cell phone technology was not widespread and i did not want to use my home corded landline- a Beetel B11 due to reasons of privacy. Most people used a calling booth to communicate. Due to some reason beyond my comprehension they were popularly known as STD booths although you could also make a local call too. Ank decided to use the calling booth in a particular neighborhood whose call rates were standard and more importantly it had a parallel line. He said he would stand beside me through all this and listen and provide immediate feedback should i be slipping. The booth was smaller than what i expected and when we both stood inside we could feel each others breath. As i punched the numbers and the call connected, Ank picked up the receiver of the parallel connected line. Maybe it was the heat or the suffocation caused due to the booth door being closed for privacy, i could not utter anything for half a minute, all the while the girl kept saying hello. Ank gestured me to say something and whatever came out of my mouth did not collude either in form or intent to what i had been rehearsing with Ank for the last week or so. Her replies were monosyllabic-yes,no, OK,hmm. As drops of sweat as big as hail in a hailstorm kept falling into the receiver from my face, she said the only sentence which comprised more than one word-
I am kinda busy now.
And then she disconnected the call. We looked at each other and both kept the receiver on the cradle at the same time. I paid the bill quickly without discussing anything with Ank as the booth owner was getting suspicious. Outside Ank kept a hand on by shoulder and said-
I know it did not work out as we had planned but you should give another chance to this second chance.

My string of thoughts were broken by Ank's voice. The auto rickshaw had stopped at the police station and it was my turn to pay the fare. As i was paying the fare, my cell phone rang again. Ank said me to cut the call and walk towards the police station. But i wanted to give this persistent caller a second chance. As soon as the call connected, to my amazement it was Luv's voice on the other side. He sounded angry.

Where are you guys? I kept calling you but you never picked.
But you didn't turn up on time and neither were you reachable on cell phone. We thought something might have happened to you.
I could not muster up the courage to say we were at the police station and were on our way to report his disappearance.
Are you guys drunk already? The handle of my motorcycle went bad and kept pointing to wrong directions. I thought i should get it fixed and then join you guys.
Really. But don't you think it took a long time for you to get it fixed. And on top of that you never called to inform us.
Man i forgot to recharge my cell phone and the cheap motor cycle mechanic shop was in a place where i did not get the service providers signal.
But Ragini said...
Just forget all that and tell me where are you guys now? Coz i am at Ank's place and there is no trace of you guys.  I am very hungry and thirsty.
We are at your place. We thought you might have fallen ill and hence came to your place.
After a few seconds of dead air Luv said-
Man you guys are crazy. Ok lets do one thing. Since we do not have the time for cooking now lets meet at Biju's place. It's midway for both of us and more importantly those guys have a cooking maid and usually there are leftovers. But you have to bring the old monk with you as i am not going to pay for that. If you have forgotten, i was the one who was invited.

Finding Love | Chapter-3 | The voice of love

If  you love me you will regret,
If you can't be a crow, be an egret.

Never take counsel from a person in matters of heart whose journal's introductory page starts with the aforementioned couplet.  I made that mistake once and paid a heavy price. Ank and Amir had called me for lunch in the December of 03. And where there is lunch in a bachelor accommodation, booze is sure to be accompanied. Imagining the prospects of surrendering my sanity to the wisdom of an old monk made me delightful. But on the other side of this arc there was a girl-my girlfriend. The rules of love made it mandatory to keep your partner updated about your coordinates. In this state of dilemma i decided to call up Ank and discuss the matter. Although he had no prior experience in matters of heart except that he was proposed by the most gorgeous girl in his college days, he was one of the wise guys. In a discrete manner i asked him about his opinion on sharing-it-all with girl friend topic. He said we should be open in sharing information with girl  friend. But he also said he will take a second opinion from Amir. Ank had opted for the conference call facility from his service provider and this would be a good time to test it. He brought Amir in conference. Amir's view was that all information to a girl friend should be provided on a need to know basis. I decided to go with Ank's opinion considering Amir had no prior experience with girl friends. The closest he came to be friends with a girl was when he returned a lost basic language program sheet to a girl during the first year in college.
I called up Ragini and told her i would be busy the coming weekend due to a lunch at Ank's place. She said she had planned for a movie date this weekend-a movie in her vernacular language. Although i had no bias against her vernacular language but watching a movie in her language was altogether a different ballgame. The reason was the vernacular movie industry was going through a lean patch at that time-particularly in terms of content and production value. All you got to see was mindless violence, gravity defying action sequences and song and dance sequences involving pelvic gyrations. In no time we started to snipe each other with arguments and counter arguments about the greatness of our language, culture and cinema. Seeing that love was loosing to regionalism i decided to back off and told her i would talk to her later. Due to increased work pressure i was not able to call her back through out the week. Instead i was busy talking to unknown people in the US using a fake New York accent and referring myself as Patrick. So were Amir and Ank. They were busy fixing some ones printer or fax machine in US by being Jim or Harry. Maybe we all had become different people who were indifferent to people around us.
On that Sunday morning when i woke up, i was still undecided. However sitting in the toilet for an hour not only cleared my bowels but head too. I made up my mind to give a surprise visit to Ragini and have our differences sorted out over a cup of coffee and a bowl of upma. I was sure if i had breakfast with her she would allow me to have lunch with my buddies. As soon as i fired up my bike's engine i heard someone calling my name from the first floor. It was my landlord reminding me of missed rent payment. If anything i hated more than my landlord's face was my landlord calling me from behind while embarking on my journey. Bad omen i thought. I dissembled not hearing anything and drove on. Hardly i had reached the next signal, my  cell phone started buzzing. I picked up the call. It was from a colleague of mine who said he had got new kinda weed and wanted me to try some. Although one part of me wanted to say him no and proceed to meet my love but another part of me wanted to puff the magic dragon. I thought a slight detour to reinvigorate myself would cause no harm. Instead it could make me more accommodating of Ragini's whims.In the end, before the traffic cop could give me ticket for talking on cell phone while driving, the mysticism of dragons reigned over yearning of love and as if a magical force turned my bike towards the home of my colleague and in  no time i was seeing people walking over buildings and hear distant birds singing Bollywood tunes.
I don't know how much time passed, but when i came to my senses i saw my cell phone had no network coverage and the clock on the cell phone showed 1:57 PM. I removed the battery and put it back again on the cell phone. Still no network I went out and looked for the nearest one rupee coin payphone box. I wanted to dial Ragini's number but i feared a heavy backlash. So i put the coin in the slot and punched Amir's number. Each ring made me anxious and my ears just wanted to hear the beautiful sound of the coin being released.

Finding Love | Chapter-2 | Ank's predicament

The year was 03 or maybe 04 . I can’t say for sure. Can i say anything for sure?  Maybe not. On that Sunday morning all i wanted was to wake up late and eat a sumptuous breakfast of butter dosa. Amir had pledged to finance the breakfast and later during the day we had planned to cook lunch and also invited Luv for it. Amir would do the cooking and I would provide the supplies. However the call from Luv's girlfriend had unnerved us and what looked like inevitability was the change in itinerary. In an outburst of uncontrolled action I had called a dozen or so common friends just to locate Luv. In an age of missed call flashes and high call rates I had done an unthinkable act. At a time when people mostly flashed in order to get their friends call them back I had called a dozen or so people. However I did not regret it then as I was immersed in thoughts of Luv's well being.

Instead of thinking about where Luv could be or what could have possibly befallen him, Amir was talking about cell phone mannerisms and his vast knowledge of dosa types. I had to bring him back on track. He immediately announced that we have to launch a manhunt. We have to find Luv. He was like this since the time i knew him- willing to help immediately-even though the outcome most of the times were disastrous-particularly not to him but certainly for the person whom he intended to help. For instance, while I was in college I was smitten by a fellow batch mate. I did a terrible mistake of telling Amir about what i felt about her precisely and openly. At that time internet was just picking up and Amir being a student of computers introduced me to the amazing world of internet chatting and emailing. Although the girl sat just next to me in class, we barely spoke. Amir helped me create a yahoo id and hooked me up to chatting with her.  He would sit with me and tell the chatting lingo. The only connection I had with her was the internet connection. We became chat friends and she would occasionally tell me her schedule and when she would send the smiley and flower emoticons in the chat window I would be so happy that I would pay for my roommates cigarettes. Amir helped me write my first ever email and that too addressed to the girl of my dreams. It was about a project about micro-controllers which I had perceived and wanted her to be part of. When I clicked the send button, it felt like the first kiss. However things did not move any further than that and Amir would always ask me to take the relationship to the next level.

After a few days she stopped talking to me and would avoid me in college. I felt disturbed and discussed the situation with Amir. His clunky and uptight response on this issue made me even more paranoid. Only when i made him swear on his bootlegged copy of Let Us C, he divulged that feeling empathy for me he took the liberty of writing to the girl, off course using my email address. He opened his heart or shall I say my heart in his words to her. And the result was showing.

Anyways now was not the time to crib about past failures. Now was the time to find Luv. First we wanted to go to his house which was a rented accommodation as quickly as possible. We had no wheels with us. The only wheels we had seen until that time was the Wheeler book stall in railway stations. We took two daily bus passes and boarded a bus to reach Luv's house. Mid way I started feeling hungry and hence we had to get down at the Majestic station and we ate Masala Dosa. Then we boarded another bus and after one and half hours of journey reached his home. We rang the door bell. No one answered. I started feeling uneasy and so was Amir. But his uneasiness was because of a nauseating cocktail of Masala Dosa and a long bus commute. He puked his guts out. We rang again and still there was no answer.

Wiping his mouth Amir said- Maybe Luv is asleep. Let’s go to the rear window and shout.

Ok. Yeah maybe he got drunk or something last night. What if he suffered some kinda attack. Shall we call an ambulance?

Man let’s see him first and then based on his appearance decide the next step.

We went to the rear window. It was opened. It was the kitchen and offered limited view to his bed room. We tried all kinds of positions to get a glimpse of his bedroom. But there was not a trace of Luv. Suddenly we heard a voice from the first floor and we both looked up like birds looking for a hint of rain in a distant cloud in summer.

Finding Love | Chapter -1 | The search begins..

The year was 03. Amir was new to this bustling metropolis named Bangalore. He came here from a nondescript town in central India to realize the Indian IT dream and also to find true love. A few months later and a dozen walk-ins old he realized it was hard to get any of those. Standing in a never ending serpentine queue at a walkin interview in which nobody was actually walking, he reckoned that it was not just him but a million souls like him precisely looking for those two things in life. He lived with Ank on the fringes of the city and civilization. Ank worked in a renowned support center for a major international printer manufacturer and he had realized one of those dreams. He lived nearby his office in electronic city due to the low rentals and preferred finishing his majority of daily chores in office, even during weekends. However on the subject of love, Ank was still struggling and sometimes under the tutelage of old monk * he would pour his heart out about the horrendous experiences in his search for love. Both were unawares about the series of events that were about to unfold in the near future which would have them change their views about finding love.

Some days later, a typical lazy Sunday morning slumber was broken by the monotonic ring tone of Ank's mobile. Ank picked up the call and the person on the other side was Ragini. She was girlfriend/future wife of their common friend Luv Singh Chauhan who incidentally was an early Bangalore migrator. She sounded concerned .

Has Luv come to your room.

No-said Ank.

But wasn't he supposed to.

There was a dead air from Ank's side for a few seconds as he tried to reconstruct the events of previous night. Exposure to old monk can result in haziness in thought process but surely there are no hangovers. He looked at Amir and keeping his palm over the mic area of his mobile said in a muffled voice-

She is asking about Luv.

Before Amir could think about Luv, he was thinking that although mobile phones had a mute button, people were so much used to handling landline phones that they still used the palm gesture in order to mute the line. This brought a strange smile to his face much to the annoyance of Ank. They both had invited Luv to have lunch with them and it was possible he was on his way. He carried himself on a motorcycle which was credited by his friends and colleagues as the reason for his success with finding love so soon and so often. Ank unmuted the phone and said-

We had planned for a lunch. Maybe he is on his way to my place.

Ragini said-I knew about the lunch. We spoke about it last night

Ok. Let me call him.

I am trying since morning but it's out of coverage area.

Hmmm... Let me try from my phone. He might be travelling through such places which had no network coverage.

Although it did not make much sense to Amir as to why Luv would deliberately travel through such places which had no network coverage and moreover the technical feasibility to selectively travel through such places was next to zero, still he nodded in congruence to what Ank said out of his respect for Ank's degree in telecommunications engineering. Now Ank dialed Luv. He got the switched off message from the other side. There was definitely some issue. Why would Ragini get an out of coverage area message and Ank get a switched off one. The phones were not smart enough at that time to give messages based on whom you wanted to keep in touch. Ank called back Ragini and said-

His phone is switched off.

In a deeply concerned voice she said-Is it possible he left for your place and something unfortunate happened to him mid way.

By this time she was almost sobbing. Ank said-

Calm down.

I can’t calm down. Can you guys look for him? I fear something untoward has happened to him.

Untoward? OK let me think towards what can be done.

A gloom had covered their faces. In a flurry Ank and Amir dialed in all the people in Bangalore who were common friends with Luv along with them. None of them knew about his whereabouts. Out of their obligation to friendship and their empathy for a suffering woman they took a conscientious decision to find Luv no matter what it takes in terms of effort.

* Old Monk is a cheap rum.

Drone Acharya

He doesn't do penance high in the frozen landscape of the Himalayas nor does he wear scant clothing and live the life of an ascetic. He is not the cool guru (Kul Guru) of the Pandavas and Kauravas who shaped their destiny nor does he bear the stigma of unfairness to Karna and Eklavya. On the contrary he has a degree in aviation engineering from a renowned Indian technical university and weighs a little over 80 kilos and uses his i phone only to call his mom (for those of you people who are clueless- ‘i ‘ is mother in Marathi). He was in the team who developed the first predator drones. Although his real name is Sid Acharya, his colleagues call him Drone Acharya.
Some say he was part of the brain drain from India but he insists that he came to the US for making his country proud and as a natural byproduct of that noble work, earn in dollars and buy real estate in rupees back home. Moreover he valued his individual freedom and this was a land that guaranteed it. When he was headhunted, he was told that the flying machines they were building were for the sole purpose of unmanned reconnaissance. He gladly took the offer believing that his work is going to prevent wars. Later as the war on terror expanded, he got the orders to see the possibility of attaching some kind of payload for targets. By that time he was already famous as Drone Acharya among his colleagues and he took as a matter of respect to look into such possibility. When the initial trials were successful, his friends in Pentagon and White house appreciated him for the work he had done to save countless American lives. The drones were killing terrorists without having to risk the lives of fellow Americans in combat.
Later when the new President assumed office, the number of missions per year also increased. Some douche bag journalist published a report of civilian casualties in drone attacks. Droneacharya was concerned but his mentors quickly provided an antidote for this sudden rise in conscience. It was a word called collateral. It was a beautiful word that had the ability to absolve anyone of anything. Those civilians-men, women, children were collateral for the war on terror. Droneacharya and his team had no personal animosity with them and slowly the drones would be upgraded for precise attacks. These dead civilians provided vital test data that would help in precisioning of this weapon system. Sometimes he thought he owed a lot to these dead people. They died an unsuspecting and impersonal death. One moment you are doing your daily chore, the next moment you are struck by a missile without any warning. All because your next door neighbor had featured up in somebody's most wanted list.  It was like the wrath of the biblical God striking the immoral in Sodom and Gomorrah. Sometimes he would get nightmarish dreams. He would see dead people-their limbs splattered and blood spewing out of their exit wounds. Probably this was because of too much CNN.  He would then turn online to Facebook for seeking a way out of this melancholy. Once he went to a nearby Dunkin Donuts and met his old friend Ankur. He discussed about his condition and his desire to move to some other project or go back to India to his family and start some new business there. Next day when he reached office he was surprised to see a bottle of champagne and a letter from the director of his department stating that he was a valuable resource and that they cared about him. They would also increase his paycheck.
He was moved by this warm gesture and had already started feeding numbers to the currency converter software to measure his increase in wealth. However something felt amiss. This expediency of his department in understanding his expectations was unnerving. It took him few hours of grueling interdepartmental phone calls and accessing some restricted documents to unearth the information that drones were now also being used for doing civilian surveillance for homeland security. This was a being beta tested by another unit of his department. He went to the nearby window and looked up at the sky, as if he can see one flying by.