obtuse thoughts

Sands of Time

Setting: Two 'career-oriented' friends (protagonists), working in distant locations, meeting up after sometime on a weekend accompanied by their mutual friends. They have half-a-day, one evening, one midnight and until 4:30 am in the morning to spend with each other. You must be wondering what happened to the remaining part of the weekend. Well, not everybody is clinical enough in dodging pain in the neck social commitments arising out of you in general being good to people. ;)

Details so that you get a clearer picture and also get a feel of the characters :)

Man/Woman hours per week in office: 70
Salary: 12-15 Lacs each
Other friends: Who cares?? But they look good in the background, add to the background score with their murmurs, mildly entertaining with some good, some bad jokes; they take care of transport, travel, disc reservations.. blah-blah..

Flow of Events

7 pm: After much of delaying and discussions over venue, happy hour timings, size of dance floor, distance, time, speed (yeah physics' dimensions do come to haunt in real life too..) of traffic, finally find a mutually agreeable place without killing each other..

8:30 pm: Reach the venue which is overcrowded as most places in India are over the weekend; there is so much money and so similar tastes of the young splurging Indians!! The group, especially the protagonists, is off-put by the ambiance being far from the ones described in Times NightLife Guide. Perhaps their reviewers came on Wednesday and not on a bustling Saturday. Despite all odds, the group starts getting warmed up with the assistance of some familiar songs, they rote-learned the lyrics of.

9:00-10:30 pm: Some vodka, some tequila, some strange looking whiskey shots; and the dance moves have certainly become ingenious, their heads moving in full swing, and for some their hair too. While they are enjoying, the people in the group, deep down inside, are aware that they have been lucky enough to buy these 'times of their lives'. They feel young again or refute they were ever growing old.

11:00-11:30 pm: There is this thing with these discs; these are like run-of-the-mill 'masala' flicks. After peppy songs and dance, they come up with really soulful numbers trying to strike a cord somewhere. And, in all their subtleties they can summon, DJs convey - 'Come on you morons! Enough is enough! Get outta here.' But the managers do have feelings of their own and turn Ashutosh Govarikars to elongate the movie for half-an-hour longer than normally accepted.

1:00 am: The group leaves the disc exhausted, kicking the sorry state of nightlife in the city, and comparing it with other cities worldwide, which some of them had chance to sample.

Protagonists (from hereon referred to as boy and girl) wish the clubbing continued for some more time, especially the soulful part. The part when other accompanying friends themselves were too busy, emotionally involved in the songs or some of them busy puking around, and thus leaving them alone for some hard-earned moments.

3:30 am: Girl is flying to the work-location on an early morning flight. The group reaches airport. Yeah! you guessed it right. The whole group is there - the sleepy, the 'pukey', the 'senti after 2 drinks'. Are all there.

Now the lingering act at the airport 'visitors allowed till this point' area:

Boy and girl simultaneously thinking too much and almost present in parallel universe. Seriously, they just can not communicate. They talk about everything, right from boy cursing the truck-traffic on the way this late at night to girl praising the awesomeness of snacks at the disc to boy complaining about the left aligned trolley (yes, like vehicles they too are sometimes misaligned increasing the chances of you inadvertently pushing the trolley against some 'caught unawares' arse).

Scene1: (Suggested background score to go with it - 'Joshua Bell - Dvorak - Songs My Mother Taught Me')

Boy (thinks): "How do I get rid of this lump in my throat? My humor and bad jokes are not helping me get over this."
Girl (thinks): "Why does he not come closer and plant a kiss? Such a dork, does not take clues from my uneasiness."
Boy (thinks): "This time passed in such a jiffy. Feels like some force is snatching her from me. Feel so helpless in stopping these sands of time."

How different had the scene been, had their thoughts and not them talked to each other? They look at each other, one at a time. Atmosphere is becoming heavier only to be arrested by one of the many one-liner jokes of the night. And the group orchestrates: 'Center Fresh lagaye Zubaan pe Lagaam'. Dry humor rocks again, wins the battle against the 'senti-moments' for the time being.

Girl now tries to get back to the group to be with them as long as she can. Her hair which she had kept open after rocking the dance floor, gets tangled with the boy's locket (filmy style) and the boy can not thank God enough for this clumsy yet Godsend moment. Some clapping and some 'Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye!'s around. Both fix their eyes at the locket as if praying for some extra-time.

Scene2: (You get to choose your own background score this time)

Boy (Stupidly, childishly thinks): "Clear signs. She should be with me. What a fine time we had. But, we have somehow sold our time to some inconsiderate bastards. How much do our companies pay? Combined package of 25-26 Lacs."
Boy gets too intrigued in per month per day calculations with his diminishing 'quant' skills while vehemently trying to disentangle the locket-curls combo.
Girl (thinks): "Is my hair stinking? He seems to be in a hurry in disentangling this."
Boy (still busy in his calculations, thinks): "2 Lacs per month. 6k per day. (In arithmetic also, he likes rounded figures). Cost of this night only 6k plus other disc charges. To hell with '6k and other disc charges'."

Locket-hair tangle is disentangled. Suddenly they get over their emotional/sentimental attack; they become practical and return to doing what they are best at. Being ambitious, getting promotions, extracting more booze and hangovers out of their office parties, cursing their managers, HR and numerous others in the office space, and of course keeping in touch on the social network.

Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely their fault.

Labels: Sands of Time

posted by vagrant_vikas @ 2:34 AM