An Interesting Outing

It started to rain. The road was deserted. It was quite a sight. Black tar road cutting its way through the green bushes. It was almost like a painting.

The battered bus-shelter offered little resistance to the downpour. I was drenched in a minute. It wasn’t very bad. Once drenched, it cannot get any worse than that anyway. So I decided to make the most of that situation. I stepped out from the shelter and let the rain loose on me. Neither my expensive Arrow shirt nor my prestigious pair of Nike shoes could stop me from enjoying my date with the rain Goddess.

It was a peculiar situation. I didn’t know if there was a bus plying in that route. I didn’t know if anybody used that road. I just stood there waiting for any vehicle to pick me up. I had all the time in the world to myself.

An almost pollution free environment coupled with a nice thunder shower with no living thing in the vicinity to spoil the fun… It was an ideal case for anyone to embark on an introspecting cruise down the memory lane.

“Rain Rain Go Away
Come again another day
Little Johnny Wants to Play
Rain Rain Go to Spain
Do not show your face again.”

“Why would you want to part with such a wonderful thing as rain? I don’t understand. It is perhaps the best thing happened to humanity… after of course the electric bulb.” She was quite a bubbly electronics engineer from Jamshedpur. She would get soaked whenever there was rainfall. That was how she enjoyed the weather.

“Cats and Dogs! Now I don’t know why only cats and dogs. Perhaps because they don’t care whether it is raining or not.” She badly needed a refresher course in etymology but I had no problems accepting her argument. If she wanted it to rain cats, dogs and Pavanis, I would let it rain cats, dogs and Pavanis.

A sudden gush of wind and a loud squeak of wood somewhere down the road, brought me back to the deserted road. It was four in the evening but it had become completely dark already. Pavani would have loved this set up. She would do a Pavani if she were here now.

I went back to the bus-shelter and sat on the wooden bench. Most would find it creepy to be in a deserted bus-shelter when the night fell. However I didn’t think much of it partly because there was nothing I could do about it and mostly because I didn’t care anyway.

“Why don’t you show some interest for Chrissakes? I’ve been talking about the movie scene for… what is it? Half an hour? And all you did was to nod your head in a complex trajectory.. sinusoidal perhaps. Now who taught you that? That is not how you’re supposed to nod! When you nod, it has to be pretty clear to the observer that you are nodding.” She went ballistic at times. I couldn’t help it. By nature I was quite disinterested in most of the Earthly affairs. I found solace in the most unreachable corner of my personal computer. If it was Tetris, you got my attention. But movie scenes? Give me a Quake!.

Cigarette! That should be wonderful. I searched my bag and found a dry cigarette. Pavani didn’t mind my smoking like what.. two hundred cigarettes a day? Something pretty close to that at least.

“Hey! It’s your life and your lungs. You do whatever you want to do. I don’t mind.” She was firm in her eccentric beliefs. She believed that God had no business in this world after the seventh day of Creation. She believed that India needed dictatorship. “Musharraf will be pretty effective if he were ruling India instead of Pakistan”. Now, don’t ever commit the cardinal sin of asking her why.

Her political knowledge was warped. She subscribed to a radical school of thought as far as Indian politics were concerned. She would follow NDTV 24 7 quite literally 24 by 7. However if you asked her what exactly was the portfolio of Dr. Manmohan Singh in 1991, she would draw a blank face. Things just wouldn’t stay in her mind forever. Short term memory to be precise.

There was a bus horn… quite clear and distinct. I looked up. There was light at the end of the road and Siddhuistically that of an incoming bus. I checked my airbag if the contents were spoiled by the incessant downpour. Thankfully the bag was waterproof. I stood in the middle of the road so that the driver would have to stop.

That it was not a bus but a Mahindra Jeep could not dampen my spirits much because I had made up my mind to hop into whatever came along that way. It rolled into a complete halt just a few feet from my dripping body. A man in his Sherlock Holmes attire got down.

“Are you Venu?”

Now, that, I must say, had surprised me first before scaring me to death. Imagine yourself in a situation when a certain Holmic character gets down from a creepy looking Jeep with probably a gun in his pocket shouting “Are you whoever you are?”

My parents probably did not foresee such a situation as this when they decided to name me Venu. Otherwise I would have been Seenu or Subbu. Anyways, that’s far from the point of discussion. Let us not venture into that.

I had a choice here actually. I could say that I was not Venu and give way to the Jeep. I could then find solitude in the company of my thoughts revolving around Pavani. Or I could admit the fact that I was Venu and go along with the flow.

Well, there was this factor which influenced my decision unilaterally. If I said I was not Venu, there was no guarantee that Mr Holmes would be satisfied with the answer and let me go on my way. The very fact that he was looking for a particular Venu on a deserted country road at five in the evening when there was water water everywhere and a whole lot of them to drink, told me that I should handle this situation carefully.

So I spoke the truth. I admitted that I was Venu. I prayed God that if ever Mr. Holmes shot me, I would be spared the ordeal of crossing Vaitarini.

Nothing of that sort happened of course. Mr Holmes just walked to me and handed over the key of the Jeep. “Your turn.” Was all he said.

“My turn?” I was perplexed. Probably confused is a better word.

“Go down the road looking for Mr. Seenu. And hand over the key to him.” He said.

It didn’t make any sense to me. Why should I go down this road looking for Mr. Seenu? What was in it for me?

“You will realize it later. Just do it.” Mr. Holmes obviously knew his Nike.

I cleared my throat. “I am sorry Mr Holmes.. err.. Mister.. I don’t think I want to do this. You see… I am waiting for my bus here.. and” I abruptly stopped my rather incoherent speech when Holmes took out a butcher knife from his pocket. “It is your destiny. Follow your mind. Follow your spirit. You will know what you have to do.” Holmes couldn’t have put it more clearly. Actually he did not have to speak at all. The butcher’s knife told me everything I wanted to hear.

I got into the Jeep and stepped on the gas quickly. Within seconds, I was gone. The road was straight, plain, boring and wet. I could see only about ten meters ahead of my Jeep. The rest was covered by the blanket of night.