Leaving early today... Sala dimakh kharab ho gaya hai. Nobody has got any right to question me about leaving early once in a while. When I stay back late at night does anybody tell me to go home?

But two o’clock in the afternoon is a bit too early.

So what ? I have stayed back till 3 o’clock in the morning when work demanded it!

Company me kitni gadiyan ho gayi hai aajkal... jab maine join kiya that time u could count them on your fingers...

I take a left to come out of the company premises on the main road of Software Park, and stop at Mama’s ’tapri’.

I need to reduce smoking, man....! Nadiya has warned me several times... she absolutely abhors smoking and the smell of cigarettes.

Mama talks so loudly that every time he opens his mouth he blows out my brain. Sometimes I just watch his toothless mouth opening and closing producing high frequency high amplitude sounds. Many times I imagine what will happen if I slap him while he is talking to me. Apart from talking loudly there is no problem with him at all.

I buy a cigarette, light it and get in the car... it’s hot outside; staring at a distance, even for a few moments, hurts your eyes. It’s still the end of February. I can’t turn on the AC because of the cigarette fumes... Sala aadmi kitna badal jaata hai.... Four years back when I was in college, even the ceiling fan was an amenity... aur aaj AC has become a must.... Sab maya hai.... Software ki!!

I hit the highway. I can see hot air near the surface of the road, making the image shaky. I can even see a mirage at some distance where the road is uneven.... It looks so much like water.

Sala what a painful day at work... kisiko bhi baap banana padta hai. Merely working sincerely never pays, harping about it is a must... People write mails singing eulogies about themselves even if they do stupid things. If you don’t do that, everybody will start wagging his tongue at you. This appraisal is going to be a nightmare...

I pass the white building of Hotel Sadanand to my left... Its brightness seems so harsh in the afternoon sun, that I cannot even read its name, written in contrast colored neon tubes. I had come here once with Nadiya. She didn’t like it much. She’s very picky about food and I tend to like anything that lands in my plate.

So what if I’m a Bengali… I’m well educated, I have a good family background, I own a flat, a car…. what else do you expect from a guy at 27.

But they want her to marry only a Rajasthani Rajput. I asked her if I could convert to one, she says there is no such thing in our religion... stupidity!

Life is really going nowhere.... No progress in either my professional or personal life. Where am I heading to... an emotional and psychological crash-landing?

But to land you have to fly first... beta… You really have wrong notions about yourself as Nadiya always says...
Bloody kal ke chhore... do baar US jaa ke aye... thoda paisa aa gaya haath me to hawa me udne lage... think what will happen if your client closes the account or if you get kicked off…? You’ll be nowhere… you don’t even have enough money to pay six months’ E.M.I. What will you do…?

I’ll sell off my flat and car and go back to my native place...

And… do what… sell chana?

C’mon, I’m an electrical engineer....

Abe jaa be! Tere jaise hazaro pade hai... and if u go back what will happen to Nadiya…?

I’ll take her along with me...

Oh give me a break... when u have everything, her father is still not agreeable to let you marry her, and you think when you lose it, her father will beg you to marry his daughter?

Loser sala, instead of living like this, it’s better to live the way Milind says…
Take your CDman with you, carry an unlimited supply of batteries, all the Pink Floyd CDs and head out for the Himalayas…
In his words… "Listen to PF, eat fruits from the jungle, roam around in the hills, smoke grass and be merry".

Away from all the dumb-heads at the work place…away from the appraisal woes…away from being answerable to ’ma, baba’ about ‘where I was when they called me’ or ‘why I switched off my mobile on Saturday night’..… away from Nadia, from her father, from everybody...

Oh..ho… I let out an audible cry and turn on the radio... “Radio radio radio radio Mirchi… 93.9 FM”, with a marked emphasis on the last ‘M’.
I slip into thoughts again, listening to some boring Hindi film song... passing the Soos road overbridge.

Staring at these barren hills in the afternoon is hypnotizing. Once, while sitting in the smoking lounge of our module, Ashwin and me had discussed this. There is only one adjective, which can describe afternoons… ’Serene’.
In the afternoon, when you stare at a distance in an absolutely motionless and quiet countryside, your vision gets attracted to details, which you have never observed before. You can feel almost inconspicuous movements of cattle, a subdued flutter of a flag atop a faraway temple, the coolness of the shadows of trees being put to sleep by the somnolent hum of its leaves…
Afternoons are serene...

My trance is broken by the shrill words of the Radio Jockey… "So tell me Ajay what’s your problem..." Ajay tells about his problem..… About how he has a crush on a girl who is couple of years older than him and how it’s a taboo to marry an older girl in his caste, he says, "I am confused, I don’t know what to do".

Does anybody in this world know what he or she should do…? Or is it only Mr. Ajay and I that have such problems? Is everybody else in absolute control over his or her life… Is it correct to have such angst…? In a movie I heard a term ’existential angst’, that term confused me… Dictionary meanings of existential are either related to existence or related to experience.
So is this angst of the former type, meaning just because you exist, you have this angst and all those who exist have similar angst. In that case it’s absolutely trivial. Then Ajay and me can breathe easy because we are not at all in trouble. But if it’s not…

I need to talk to Milind about including me in his plans…

I have put my cup of coffee in the microwave and am standing in the balcony, waiting for the beep. I see Nadiya on her scooter, I rush back and put one more cup in the microwave. I wait for the doorbell to ring and think of narrating the whole chain of thoughts that I had while coming back.
All about existential angst…

The door bell rings, as soon as she comes in she starts talking about some friend of hers, I don’t understand a single word she’s telling me. I try to toy around with the idea of bringing up the subject. Now she’s telling me about a new restaurant in the suburb, she says they serve real good Thai food. I get ready to go out with her. Leaving the house I ask her "Where is this restaurant you were talking about?"

Two cups of coffee are still steaming on my microwave carousel…