The Marriage Fever

The Marriage Fever

Out of nowhere, it turned chilly. Though everyone felt the unexpected drop in the temperature, for him it was a bit more than just that. It seemed that in the month of April, the ghost of winter that just went recently decided to spring back and shock him like a jack-in-the-box.

Toying with his pen, he looked outside; the rain was splashing hard against the windows, making them tremble. Drr drr brrrrrrr, drr drr brrrrrr. The trembling was quite rhythmic, he noticed, realizing he did it subconsciously. Drr drr brrrrrr….

With a bit of difficulty, he dragged his eyes away from the window. He felt irritated to be transfixed to something as mundane as watching rain splatter against closed glass panels of a window. But he thought it must be because he was not feeling like working today at all and his mind was actively looking for a distraction.

Thinking about nothing in particular, he opened the cap of his pen and started scribbling in his work diary. He gazed at the shiny, steely nib of his fountain pen. Seven months ago, he decided to write only with fountain pens and since then he never touched a ballpoint or gel pen again. He loved both the fountain pens he owned; one that he brought to work and another that he kept at home. Staring at the nib affectionately, he realized he didn’t just love his pens, he was quite obsessive about them.

The dark royal blue ink occasionally dripping from the nib, smudging his thumb and index finger, and the fragrance of raw ink wafting from the paper when he writes fresh on it - it is kind of exhilarating for him, making his mind spin in a soothing manner. Maybe it is because he travels back in past to those days in the fourth standard at Holy Cross when the students were allowed to use only fountain pens as a rule. Maybe because when he breathes in deeply the aroma of ink, he finds himself back in the classroom, sitting on the wooden bench, even if it is quite momentarily.

   

“You done with that article?” his team head, who sits behind him on the opposite cubicle, asked. “Already mailed,” he replied nonchalantly. Everywhere around him the keyboards were consistently hit. Pitter Patter pitter patter. Again, before he could have helped it, he noticed there was a rhythm to it too. How the hell on earth, he thought. Can’t be remotely possible. A dozen teams working on at least 50 different projects. Coders, designers, and content writers like him, all working on a set of tasks assigned to them specifically. How can there be any rhythm? How can there be any sync to the entire thing?

He looked at the clock. Must sleep early, must get up early, must exercise a bit. He said to himself. He has been doing it for the past seven months since he joined this office. Not that he never succeeded. He did sleep early, wake up early and exercise. But that was a handful of days in all those months. “Doesn’t really count, does it,” he said to the Van Gogh’s picture that was his desktop’s background image.

Wishing the day would pass sooner, he opened Facebook on his phone and started to browse through the posts. While scrolling down insipidly, he stopped at a post. Another schoolmate getting married.

These days, 7 out of 10 times he goes online on social media, especially Facebook, he sees a wedding post of some classmate, college mate, or a friend. This guy in particular, whose latest post he just watched, was a rather peculiar one back in school. He had this weird and annoying habit of grabbing students’ balls in the morning assembly queue, for no reason at all. He had been warned several times and once almost got expelled too, but it seems he was just obsessed with grabbing guys’ balls. Ball Grabber – they had nicknamed him.

What lucky girl got to marry him, he thought, looking at the picture of the Ball Grabber, grinning at the camera cladded in a heavily embroidered Sherwani. The girl, in equally heavy embroidered saree, was standing beside him, trying her best to smile at the camera. They both were drenched in sweat as if they just came out of the shower in those clothes. Why they even marry in summers, that too wearing those clothes. The mere sight of their picture made him feel suffocated all of a sudden.

He looked at the AC; a perfect 22 degree Celsius. Must be in my mind, he thought, loosening his crisply pressed shirt’s collar. He looked back at the picture again, at the girl. She must be around his age, most probably younger than him. Of course, if it’s an Indian wedding, chances are, the girl is going to be younger than the groom. But I am not the groom, he said to himself. Well, the guy is almost your age. You were together in a couple of grades, remember? He answered.

The girl seemed to be stooping by some weight, some kind of unseen burden. Is it the weight of the society’s expectations she is carrying that made her stoop that way? Is it the weight of the responsibilities that have been bestowed upon her at such a young age that she didn’t even ask for but that came nevertheless as a package for entering the life of a traditional Indian wife? He sipped the metal-tasting machine-made coffee and put the cup near his snail figurine.

She is just tired of all the wedding procedure and must be longing for some spare time to rest for a while. Stop being a philosophical ass all the time, he answered as the bitter, bad-tasting coffee slinked into his stomach through his throat. What a waste, he thought of both, the coffee and the institution of the Great Indian Wedding.

The pitter and patter of keyboards continued, so did the splattering of rain against the windows. Now both the sounds were working in harmony to create a third kind of rhythm. It seemed the clock on the wall behind him also decided to join them with its wearing hands tick toking their way. This, he thought, is not everyday shit, not at all.

"Auto!" he shouted, trying to stop an autorickshaw for the umpteenth time, but it seemed none of the auto drivers was willing to drive anywhere in this downpour, and the ones that were on the road were already packed with the passengers.

He never liked rains much. It’s not that he hated it, but unlike most of the people his age, or any age, was not much enthusiastic about it ever. Yes, it makes the climate better, he admitted, but apart from that, rains held no joy in his life. With a screech, an auto finally stopped.

Trying uselessly to brush some water off his shirt, he entered the auto, which surprisingly, was all empty. “Laxmi Nagar metro,” he said, and the auto jerked into action in full blast. To great annoyance, he noticed the dirt smudges covering his shoes and water droplets all over his chrome watch. Fucking rain, he thought, trying not to think of his shoes and the watch but without much success. He is an absolute sucker of shoes and watches. He just can’t explain this obsession, but it feels so elating whenever he buys a new pair of shoes or a watch.

It was not like this always. Now he thinks of it, this obsession started shortly after he got divorced. When his wife of six years left him for someone else and he was unable to find anyone to replace the gap that she left not just in his life, but his home too. As the auto sped against the needle-like streams of rain, he looked at his watch again. Time has been one thing that has been odd to him more often than not.

Suddenly, there was a flashing thunder that echoed for quite some time, followed by an unusual silence. Even with all the traffic jostling around his auto, it all seemed to stop for an instant. And then, it was back to normal. Much to his annoyance, he now realized that even the raindrops were falling against the canvas roof of the autorickshaw in unison. “What?” he was taken aback by the strange sound the driver made. "Nothing sir, I have some problem with my nose. So sometimes my breathing sounds like this." Till he reached the metro station, the driver kept making those noises at regular, coordinated intervals.

The moment he entered the station, his phone rang with his favorite Star Wars theme. “Yes mom,” he picked up the call. “You heard about it?” his mom’s familiar voice came from the other side, making him miss home like every time. “Heard what?” he asked, a bit annoyed in the lack of the question’s context. These days, he feels annoyed at even tiniest of things. His doctor warned him to maintain his calm otherwise he might have to start taking medicines to control his blood pressure.

“Mehtaji’s son married a girl against the wish of his parents and in rage, Mehtaji kicked him out of the house,” his mom said. “Tinku?” he asked, trying to sound interested, “Isn’t he 20 or something?” “That’s the thing, why he needed to get married at such an age, especially when it was time to focus more on his career.” He didn’t say anything. Since his divorce, he tries to avoid such conversations, but it seems that the universe smells his conspiracy and keeps throwing these to him.

“Well, his life. He is old enough to marry whom he wants,” he said. “It’s not about that!” his mom sounded a bit offended, “Are parents’ consent on it nothing?” He had no answer to it. “Can you please talk to him once? Try to persuade him to return home. Mehta uncle and aunty are really distressed,” she asked, sounding not so sure, knowing her son better than anyone else. “Ok, I will,” he lied. “Great. That would be nice,” she said, knowing that he had lied and won’t call Mehtaji at all.

This train was too packed. He decided to wait for the next one. It seemed every day, the number of people was increasing tenfold. Are there more people coming to the city and settling here than ever before, he thought. People cramped together in each of the bogies. So much population and still people just love to get married and breed indefinitely, he thought. Better I got out of it before it screwed me up good, he found some solace for his bitter memories that never stopped haunting him.

He saw a couple. Amid all the chaos, they were trying their best to squeeze out some moments of love for themselves, holding each other’s hands, smiling, gazing into each other’s eyes lovingly. All this while people were hitting people with their elbows, trying to stand stiffly like cactus plants, ignoring the commotion around them. He noticed the thin line of vermillion on the girl’s forehead. Newly married, must have been a few weeks, or months. Certain memories of days gone tried desperately to flood his mind, but he knows how to control it now. He has trained himself for long. He knows how to willingly create a distraction in a matter of seconds.

As the train moved ahead, he heard it again. Why, he thought, why today? I have been hearing it all for ages, since as long as I can recall. Why these random sounds are drawing my attention suddenly? It was not a joke; he was seriously pissed off this time. The more he tried not to think of it, the louder the sound seemed to get. Dudder dudder, durr durr, dudder dudder, durr durr. What kind of rhythm is this now? Damn, it is giving me a headache. All of a sudden, he started to feel suffocated, second time in a day.

Though he was never claustrophobic, it seemed that the train compartment was closing on him. “Excuse me,” he said trying to keep the crowd away from him. “Can you please just… just stay a bit away…” This is unreal, he thought, feeling his heartbeat racing rapidly and sweat drops trickling down his forehead. Are these people trying to squeeze me to death, he thought fanatically. “Next station is Indraprastha,” the automated voice of the metro lady boomed out of speakers and he felt things returning back to normal; the compartment expanding, people getting farther away from him. He hurried towards the door and got out as soon as they opened. Panting, he looked at the leaving train.

With a shock, he saw the couple, the very same couple who were making all those loving gestures to each other, were staring at him and smiling oddly. It sent a chill down his spine. Unsure, he tried to look at them but the train had already passed. Must be mind playing weird tricks, he said to himself. Slowly walking towards one of the steel benches, he sat on it and waited for arrival of the next train.

“Next train in 8 min.” He looked at the glowing electronic sign board. There was a pigeon sitting up it. It was dancing in a circle, trying to catch his tail with its beak, just like a dog. In circles. It was going round and round and round. The train slowly came to halt and he realized he was watching the pigeon for the last eight minutes.

“There is something not usual,” he thought, grabbing one of the supports linked to the roof of the train, “what exactly is going on?”

“Next station, Praga…”

The windows blackened, the coaches became empty. Even though he could see people sitting and standing around him, there was no one anymore.

“Man of habits, man of materialistic obsession," a voice came somewhere from the back of his mind.

He looked at the blackened windowpane and saw his reflection, a much darker version of himself.

“Man of everything that he can control with utmost preciseness,’ the voice said.

Was it the reason he ultimately left her? Wasn’t there absolutely no control that could have made her stay? Despite her repeatedly cheating on him, he tried to control it all by painfully ignoring the situation, and what it got him? More pain, more suffering, more trauma…

He has always been like this. Either he is crazy about what his heart desires and does whatever it takes to get it, or he just kicks it out far from his life. Comic books, video games, bikes, love of his life… There was never a middle path for him. His existence has always lingered on both the extremities. He only stopped obsessing over her when his mind finally accepted that she was gone for good. That's when he began obsessing over watches and shoes – the more materialistic ones, which won't leave him out of anywhere.

And this very obsession has prevented him to consider remarrying. Despite his parents pleading to him numerous times, he has always very stubborn when it comes to the subject. “I am not falling into this useless spiral of society again,” that’s what he always tells them.

“What the hell,” he found himself in a bit shock, “What happened? Is the metro moving?” he narrowed his eyes and tried to look outside. The train seemed to be moving but he didn’t feel it.

The door opened to the ultimate void. He could see the silhouette of people but why they appeared so ghostly? He slowly touched the arm of a woman who, naturally, looked at him in an aggressive manner. “Surely they are here,” he thought and exited the metro. He thought it was just the darkness, but no, it was actually a void. From where he was standing, there was no ground or sky, just a very solid nothingness. Trying not to panic, he turned back to enter the metro but too late, the doors were shut.

“This is bullshit,” he nervously swiped his sweating forehead with the handkerchief. Unable to think of anything, he tried moving towards a direction that he hoped would be the right one.

“Being a part of the society is inevitable.”

“You want to live here? You have to follow certain norms.”

“Go and be a Baba in the mountains? Why even bother?”

“Everything happens by a design.”

“Sun rises from east, sets at west.”

“12 months in a year.”

“There is a pattern to it all.”

“A system.”

“A harmony.”

“Rhythm.”

He knew the mild tremor was no more an incoming train. It was his own heartbeat.

“What I am supposed to do?” He pressed his chest hard, hoping to suppress his heart’s efforts to break out of the ribcage.

“Compromise? I don’t know how long I am going to live. How can I compromise on this thing!”

This was killing him. He knew it.

Gradually, even the memories began to become distant, when he tried to think of them, it felt like they belonged to a previous life, where he was someone else, something else.

Tik tok tik tok, his newly purchased chrome watch, he could see it amid the thick darkness, all of a sudden.

“What the…”

It moves.

It finds a way.

There is always a way.

Another way around.

“Well.” A gush of wind filled his lungs, uplifting him in the air like a helium balloon. He felt lightheaded, after a long, long time.

His black leather shoes came into the vision. And then his well-ironed black trousers, the black leather belt with its shiny metal buckle, and the bottle green full sleeved shirt buttoned to the collar and nicely tucked in the trousers.

“Yes!” he felt in joy.

“I won’t close my doors forever! I will find a way around!”

He felt clear in above, able to work on a plan, to think something, anything.

Gradually, everything else came back to vision.

As he boarded the next train, coming into existence one tiny particle at a time, he felt a mild suffocation, again. Worriedly, he looked around.

“Oh,” he sighed calmly.

It was the collar button. He loosened it, just like the way he always leaves it open. His usual style.

When a pretty looking girl standing a few paces away smiled at him, he didn’t feel feverish anymore.

The yellowish, sickening thoughts, he left them at the previous station. Hopefully.

Fin.