The Bitter Coffee

This corner side cafe occupied a special place in my life. I discovered it when I moved to the city to start my professional career. This was on the way to my workplace. One quick skip and hop to get a coffee once in a while. As time passed, this gradually developed into a routine. Somewhere over the course of the first year in this locality, I developed a personal bond with this café.

She joined my office a year after me. And as someone who was of almost same age as her but had a year or so experience in the group, I was assigned to mentor and on-board her. The frequent interactions initially were professional. And as it invariably happens in a lot of such situations, somewhere the professional barriers got breached and we encroached into each other’s personal spaces. It was during one of our initial interactions in office that I suggested to head out for a coffee at this café and she came along. Slowly, as our relationship blossomed, the café and its corner table became a very usual setting.  We shared out thoughts, aspirations and dreams over countless cups of coffee. We dreamt about a dream wedding, an unforgettable honeymoon and a happy married life sitting under the roof of this coffee shop delightfully savoring lattes and cappuccinos.

Somewhere along, the world of idealism gave way to the pragmatism of real life scenarios. There were wedges between us, the clashes became one too often. And at last, yesterday, the Sunday before Christmas, at the entrance of this very café, this very location that had become a part of us and our relationship, she said goodbye and good luck to me one final time. Around us, as the melodious Christmas carnival drumbeats echoed, she walked away from me and from us, the final time.

Yesterday is over, and I know I won’t get over it anytime soon. I came up to the cashier as usual today morning and ordered a cup, tall and black. This cuppa, this Joe in my hand, is my last from this café. The coffee today tastes particularly bitter, and the reason is not the sugar I failed to add. Too many memories clog my veins, too much nostalgia lingers enclosed within these walls. Goodbye, dear café. Maybe our paths might cross someday in future. I, for one, wouldn’t bet on it though.

The Linguist

I was assigned to man the classifieds section of the newspaper that day. It was a peaceful setting, and one, where I thought I could work on some ideas for an Op-Ed piece that I had promised my editor I’d deliver within the week. As I was writing and striking off ideas that were popping in my mind, I was interrupted by a group of youngsters who appeared in front of my desk.

The guy in the center introduced himself and his friends to me and said to me that he wanted to post an obituary in the next day’s newspaper about his grandfather’s brother who passed away a few hours ago and he inquired if I could direct him to the right section.

“You are at the right place” I said. Pushing a pen and piece of paper towards him, I said, “Do write down the matter to be published and hand it over to me. You can pay the fees at the counter on the ground floor.”

No soon as I had pushed the pen and paper towards the group, their faces lost the ring of purpose with which they had come in. His face switched to reflect a confused state and his peers were looking at the ceiling and floor of the building with a new found esoteric interest.

“I do not know how to compose in Malayalam sir. I studied in an English medium establishment.”

Aah so this explained the tectonic behavioral shift of the group.

“Not a problem. You can compose it in English, I will translate it into Malayalam for you and give it inside.”

Now, the expression on their faces switched to chaos. One of his friends muttered from behind, “Hey man, do what they want and then come back down. We’ll wait outside, near the car park.”

Before the young man could open his mouth, his friends around him vanished. And he was back to staring at me, with a flushed look at my face. It was starting to dawn on me the reason for this unique group behavior. Neither himself nor any of his mates was confident enough to draft the same in English as well, the language over which they supposedly command over!

As he stood before me coyly, with his feet drawing imaginary circles on the floor below, my face betrayed no emotion. “What’s the matter?” I asked, feigning innocence.

“Please excuse me sir, I just remember I have an urgent chore to attend to. I’ll compose the matter from home and be back shortly.”

Saying this, he turned back and almost ran away from my presence.

I caught the back side of his T shirt when he retreated out of sight. It read “I was born intelligent but education ruined me.”

Somebody

  

Yesterday it was,

that I sat by this window.

To write something special,

for that somebody who I hoped

would turn to be my somebody special.

I was stumbling,

at a loss were words.

My hands were trembling,

at a loss was a heart.

Yet for all it was

deep inside I knew

That the stumbles and trembles

were all of a bubbling heart.

Of a mind that wanted to scream

my feelings for you.

An ode,

a verse

or a chapter

I didn’t know what to write,

the word unwritten speaketh louder.

Today I find myself,

sitting by the same window sill,

the green fields that they were outside,

stands all parched.

The fury of God it seems

not just landed the curse on me.

It spread everywhere I went.

I still want to write,

though I’m still unsure what to write.

All I know

is that person

did want me no more

as her someone special.

I was stumbling,

at a loss were words.

My hands were trembling,

at a loss was a heart.

Yet for all it was

deep inside I knew

That the stumbles and trembles

were all of a broken heart.

Of a mind that wanted to scream

my hatred for you.

The feeling for you,

masqueraded  as much to the world,

as much to myself.

Not an ode,

not a verse,

nor a chapter,

all that flashed in front of me

Was one word of hate.

The one expression of hatred.

Inside I knew,

I was lying to myself.

But always was I a deceiver.

The letter lies unfinished,

Burned to a pile of ash

In my mind and soul.

Sinner

The smell of gunpowder was nauseating. As her pace got her closer to the gates of the ammunition manufacturing unit, the stench seemed to magnify manifold. Her husband never seemed to have an issue with the smell. The very thought of her husband caused her already not-so-promising outlook towards the day meander southward.

Peace and tranquility were two feelings she had given up on the day they were married. She and her five-year-old son was most often on the receiving end of his fury on many nights. The problems were so intense that she used to put her five-year-old to sleep by seven in the evening so that he is spared from the volcanic fury of his father. He was an alcoholic but he never came around to admitting that. Her pleas and cries would often be drowned in his incoherent and outrageous remarks of his alter-ego in his semi-permanent inebriated state. He used to come home seldom before ten. After his shift at the company, he and his friends would head to one of their usual joints and drink themselves to senselessness, following which he’d head home. Logic didn’t often go well with an intoxicated state of mind and he invariably used to pick a fight with her for even the most trivial of reasons. And then, he’d fall to bed, and sleep off immediately. She’d often stay back in the living room for a while, cursing her bad luck, her husband’s alcohol addiction and contemplating her and her son’s bleak future. Her tear glands were almost paralyzed, it did seem she had used up an entire lifetime of tears’ supply in the eight years after their marriage.

Things would attain a completely different hue in the morning. He would wake up sober and they would talk sensibly, like a husband and wife are supposed to. He’d occasionally help her in making breakfast and he’d be all eager to please her. “Leave the job here. Your job involves gun manufacturing, it is a sinful task. Let us find a job elsewhere, let us not work at a place where they profit when men kill each other.” Her suggestion would be brushed aside, she knew. “Yes yes, it is something we should think of. The company is doing well now, they will handout our bonuses in the next month. Manager saab was telling that this time they’ve made record profits and we employees should expect hefty bonuses. I’ll work till they pay out the bonuses for this quarter and then once that is done, I’ll start searching for another job,” he’d say, a lot of warmth and affection exuding from his eyes. And then the conversation would taper off.

She sighed. All these conversations, all these seemed to have happened eons ago. He had died six weeks ago, of lung cancer. By the time he was diagnosed, the cancer was at an advanced stage. The doctor opined that it is most likely caused by all the chemicals that were involved in pellet manufacturing since his job involved continuous and careless contacts with all those carcinogenic substances. In those few weeks since the tragedy, she had thought of multiple ways to start earning and knocked on various doors. But none of her efforts panned out. So here she was, making her way towards the gate of the factory as his replacement at his job. During the walk, she contemplated the sins that she was about to heap upon herself. The sons and fathers of men who would die from a gun that she would help manufacture. The wives and daughters of men who might stay alive if she were not going to work at this place. True, all this was real but equally real was her son’s school fees she had to pay. The grocer and vegetable vendor who had given her provisions for the past month but would stop free lines of credit sometime soon. She had no other option. A tear escaped her eyes as she crossed the gate.

“A month or two,” she thought to herself. “I’ll probably work here enough to pay off existing bills and then I shall look for another job.” She mentally cleansed her feelings of guilt that were washing ashore in her mind and made her way to the interiors of the factory complex.