A dazzling array of light lay before me. A blinding phenomenon which served as a pretext to ignore the void within me. It was a cold, rainy November evening in Calcutta. The sky was shimmering with a deep sense of melancholy as it can do only in this part of the world. The sound of the rain falling on the cold metal body of my car spread an exquisite calmness inside me. A feeling induced only by such evenings, an emotion specefic only to November rain. As I sat there in my car, stuck in the traffic, I switched on the radio, as the waves of Pink Floyd washed over me, a turbulent flow of memories rushed through me. The soft murmurs of Roger Waters echoed around me. I began to think about the young rebel who had set out to change the world, that impressive man full of dreams and aspirations. Aspirations, which were yet to be ignited. Those dreams were lost somewhere deep inside me, newly promoted chief marketing analyst at the world’s top consultant agency. A spider like web of emotions formed a cold knot in my stomach; in my soul. In this haze of emotion, I turned the car around towards the outskirts of the city. I was driving towards nothingness, going further and deeper into the darkness of the night. Screaming red stop signs, flashing blue power lines; I passed by in a blur, unnoticed . The darkness was significant compared to the pain within, the silence in my heart was dreadful. I stopped the car and got off. The air had a chilly rush about it which accentuated the ravages of my mind. There was a cliff ahead of me. I walked on the wet mud up to the very precipice of the jagged structure.
There exists a fine line between life and death. I was on that line. An intense emotion aggravating every fibre of my being, rushed through me. Perhaps it was the first time in a decade that a moist film found its way from the depth of my mind to my tired eyes. I stood there, a lost soul in the darkness. Beyond the steep drop ahead, lay all of Calcutta set against the horizon. A city that tells a story of dreams both shattered and realized. A ‘City of Joy’ and of sorrow. A city where so many lives are intersected and intermingled to result in a saga of an incomprehensible scale, underlined my passion. My story seemed to have lost this underlining as the waves of this saga ebbed and flowed. The Mercedes replaced the bicycle, the crème brûlée replaced Ma’s chocolate cake, the Rolex replaced Titan but somewhere along the way of Calculus problems replaced the cricket matches, Economic classes replaced the late night parties and endless paper and files had replaced 'friends’. I felt like I had sold my soul without even dealing with the devil. I felt as if I could never fly again. My wings of fire had been well and truly clipped. It was at that moment I felt a hand clasp my shoulder. A cold breeze rushed through my hair. I saw a man beside me. He was wearing a single breasted suit, measurement perfectly tailored. I saw the Ralph Lauren insignia on the right shoulder. I looked at his eyes. There seemed to be a cold fire flowing through those green pupils. An eeriness so wonderful and yet so intimidating. Those green eyes seem to see right through me a brain dead robot of society who smiled and laughed at the right times but felt no emotions. A puppet whose hollowness could not be covered by all the clothes in the world. They say that the subconscious mind builds a dam like structure to store all painful thoughts and experiences. A single memory escaping the hypothetical constuction is followed by a blast of negative energy that comes at you so fast that the person is stripped of all his defines.
On that November night, my dam broke. I poured my heart out to those eyes whose light blinded my darkness. Time seemed to have lost its very essence,as it flows by at a stunning pace. For hours and hours, a decade of pain, disappointment and sorrow flowed out of my heart, until the dam held no more. All this while he just looked at me as the storm within me quitened as calmness was restored to my mind; the man got up abd turned away. There was a little puppy strolling alongside him. Something which had escaped my admittedly wavering attention. I watched the man fade away into the horizon. With him, went the blackness of the night and that of my heart. As the first rays of dawn streaked across the sky, painting it golden, I thought about the mysrerious happenings. In my universe a supernova had just happened. Did i meet God that night in a Ralph Lauren suit ? I don’t know. All I know is that I left all my troubles and worries with the man and his dog. I sat there as the rain continued into the early morning; watching their footprints being washed away.
Because in the end, nothing lasts forever: not you, not me and not even the Cold November Rain.
