Home Run

There are few moments in everyone’s lives where you feel liberated; One step away from flying happily through the sky. It was one such moment for him. He felt like a porter who had loaded the luggage on to the train. He was at the final end of his journey back home - the local ST bus which was the only connecting mode to his village, his home.

He put his head out like a dog popping out of a rich-man’s car to feel the air. Drops of water splashed across his face. He thought the rain God was celebrating his freedom too. He looked inside and in the front seat he saw a kid spitting out water, cleaning his mouth. It suddenly felt like he lost his wings mid-way through the flying experience and he was falling down at greater than 9.8ms2. Like one of those dreams when you are about to wake up. And therehe was, sitting in the bus like a loser. He remembered sitting on the park bench, thinking about the conversation he had with her. He almost threw his phone into the pond. But then he realized that he would be killing his personal secretary and kept it inside his trouser. The voice from the other side was striking his ears like a spear, “I have decided to marry him. I could not think of a reason to say no”. He wanted to cry. But tears never came to him unless he was in the middle of a group of people. She was always his. Although neither of them spoke about it, both knew that they had to be together all life. The whole village knew it. May be it wasn’t that evident for her, he thought.

He saw no point in continuing to live in Gurgaon, in the madness of the city and that too in a job which he did not give a rat’s ass about. He went to his desk and opened the email and wrote to his manager.

“I quit. No ‘what a good time I had here’ stuff. No ‘I haven’t hated anything more in life than this job’ stuff. Not even ‘I haven’t seen a bigger manipulator or rather a bigger manager than you’ stuff. I am done here. Please forward this to the HR. I don’t know that cute looking dumb blonde’s ID. I have no intentions of coming back. Please do not try and reach me. I am going to help my father in doing his farming. You can mail my experience letter and all those crap to my permanent address, if you would like to. Have a wonderful software life ahead! Without love, Dhananjay” He pressed alt +S and then Windows + L on the same stroke and rushed out of office.

More waterfalls from the kid’s mouth made him stop the rewind and brought him back to reality. And reality was that he had to go explain to his dad why he had quit. And what he plans to do with his life. One of the skills he had was to lie at will. But this time around, he lost that skill too. He couldn’t think of anything. If he said the truth about ashi, his bapu would slap him. And then slap him again. If he said he did not like the job he was doing, bapu might just throw his luggage out and ask him never to step in again. He kept thinking for a while. Then he found himself in the middle of a gang war -may be a political one. He escaped from a thousand protestors clashing against each other holding signs which read “Dhananjay, Go back!” and “Dhananjayki jay” and “Dhantenaan”. He was woken up by the furious whistle coming out of the conductor’s mouth. There he stood at the bus stop of Jinpur. He never could understand the meaning of his village’s name. May be the British gifted the Maharaja with a bottle of pure Gin, he thought. He saw a tractor rushing through the perpendicular road. He shouted “Hanumant chacha. Main bhi aaraha hun”. He ended up explaining how a computer works on the way back home to hanumant chacha, who was curious to know how on earth one could spend 15-16 hours of one’s life looking into a dabba and earn so much money out of it.

He reached home. And after the usual love, “Gabbu tu aagaya” affection, rona-dhona of amma he sat down for lunch. He almost forgot all his miseries when he had the aam kaa char and rotis drenched in butter. He had to wait till evening to be court-martialed by his bapu. The scene was not as bad as he thought it would be. His bapu started the flurry of questions. The first question stunned him. Bapu spoke in his rusty voice, “Kab wapas jaana hai”. He had prepared the answers for other questions like how are you, how is the accommodation there, how is work etc. But this one stunned him. “Pata nahi” was the only thing he could blurt out of his mouth. His bapu kept quiet after that. Not a single word after that for the whole evening.

Two days later when his bapu saw that Gabbu was happily whiling away time playing kho-kho with the neighborhood kids, he had to bring him to the stand again. D had taken the easier route. He told everything to his amma, who later did the passing the secret game to his bapu. So by the time the second round of talks occurred bapu was well aware of his genius son’s intentions. He started by saying, “Kal se aaja mere sath. Kheti badi karenge.Socha tha mera beta sheher jaake bada binness ka maalik banega. Ye nahi pata tha ki maine ek ghade ko janam diya tha”. D smiled sheepishly. “Hans lo. Kal jab khet pe utaraaoge saara hasi nikal jayega muh se”

His bapu was right. Being in the field was no fun. It was worse than playing a whole day of test cricket when the opposition is batting at 600 runs for the loss of 2 wickets. He played around with the tractor for a while before his uncle came and gave him a tight punch and asked him to get on with it. He looked at the bullock and it nodded in approval of his pain. The next day he said he will go to the market to buy pesticides. On his way to the market, he thought he saw ashi. But then he realized that she would be there somewhere in Hyderabad working on some code. He cursed himself for not looking out for another job out there, saying he could not eat rice all his life. On his way back he stopped at the riverside. He thought about going back and begging his manager to ignore the mail. But then he knew it was a far cry.

“Mujhe pata tha yahi aaoge. Aur kidhar jaoge”, it was ashi’s voice.

“Tum yahan kya kar rahi ho. Jao na apne US visa chapwane”, he was furious.

“Jaungina.Pehle ye bol kitne din keliye hai?Phir main ek aur khush khabri sunaungi”

“Maa bhi banne wali hai?” his tone was mono.

“Pata nahi.Bolna.Kab tak hai?” she sounded curious “Will you stay back for my engagement?”

He remembered the first time they spoke in english and then rolled over the floor and laughed. But the thing which she said in English this time around was no fun.

“I don’t know. Main kahin nahi jaara ha hun. I have put my papers” he said, coldly

“What? Kya bol raha hai? Why the hell did you do that. I just found myself a job in Gurgaon. That was the news I wanted to tell you” she screamed at the top of her voice.

“Kyun?Wo Gugaon se hai kya. How does it make a difference to my life?”

“Tumhara bapu theek hi kehte hain.Gadheko hi janam diya hai unhone. Are you really that dumb Gabbu? Maine keh diya or tum ne maan liya? That I am gonna leave you and go marry some fool in US?”

“Nahi karrahi ho?” He smiled from ear to ear.

“Nahi! Ullu ke pathe. I just wanted you to realize how important you are for me”

He kept smiling and smiling. Eventually she smiled too. It was like in the movie where everything looks happy in the end. But then suddenly the smile disappeared from his face. “Oh shit. The mail. Gyani ne pad liyahoga. Shit! Shit! Shit!”

He reached the office the next Monday. He had tried reaching Gyani, but he would not answer his phone. And the one time he picked up his call, he said, “Dhananjay, I am on vacation. Will talk to you on Monday”. He was thinking of ways of hacking into his Boss’s laptop and deleting the mail. But then he knew that he was too bad a software engineer for that. He reached office at 9 and he found Gyani already at his desk. He went over to his desk and started the speech he had prepared. “Yogesh, I am really sorry. I don’t know where to begin”.

“It’s ok yaar. I can understand. Shikhar told me everything. So did you elope with her to get married? Did your folks chase you and all?”, said Gyani.

D kept thinking. Is he playing around with me? Is he gonna have security come up and throw me out of the building? That could be embarrassing. What the hell is he talking about? Who got married? Shikhar got married?

“Did you see my mail?” He asked gyani eventually.

“Yes. And I was so disappointed. I did not expect this from you. You could have done much better” Gyani said.

“Done it better? Done what better?” D was almost fainting.

“Wohi. The map interface analaysis. I expected some out of the box thinking from you on the design” Gyani said.

D just turned around and ran to his desk. The sprint could have won him a gold medal. In his school days at least. He ran knocking down a few people who came on his way. He reached his desk, unlocked the machine and checked his mail.

The first thing he spotted was the Mail Delivery failure notification. It read ‘Your mail box is oversize and this mail is saved to your outbox’. He couldn’t believe his luck. He just immersed himself into the chair. Things have a peculiar way of falling into place, he thought.

A message popped up asking, ‘would you like resend the message?’. He said, “ya right” and was about to click No. “Gabbu tu aagaya”, yelled shikhar from behind. And without even realizing, he clicked ‘Yes’. “Oh shit!” he exclaimed and ran for his life ..