Conversation at Bandra Beach, Mumbai

Hi friends, following is a chapter from my new novel, which i'm writing. It's not a full story, just a chapter. Wanted to share with all of you to see how do you guys like it. Do Comment.

CONVERSATION AT BANDRA BEACH, MUMBAI

“ When was the first time, you started feeling that you’ve committed a mistake by coming here?” Ritu asked Jas. Her eyes were fixed at the darkness of sea. She wasn’t looking at anything.
Jas looked at her, surprised with the question that had broke the quietude between them. He thought for the answer for a while, and then he said, “ When my best friend Rishi got a job in a multi national company. He and I stayed here for two years and when our careers didn’t move a bit ahead, he decided to go back and prepare for MBA.” Jas spoke very slowly. “ You know, he told me the day he was going back that we need to have connection with big politicians or we need to have good money to get a chance but I didn’t believe him that day.”
“ And now you are sitting on the same boat.” He nodded. She continued, “ Didn’t you ever feel that this was not the right choice for you. I mean this career.”
“ Never.”
“ Never!”
“ Never.” He looked into her eyes. “ Why?”
“ Because I’ve started feeling as if this modeling was not the right choice for me, although I had worked for it a lot.”
“ Hey…are you too a dieting freak?” Jas asked.
“ Well…” Ritu hesitated in nodding but she decided to be honest, “ Yes.”
“ I think, my coach would have been into some beauty contest sometime. All the time, he was after our diet. Cut down…cut down…cut down. His words still reverberate in my ears.” Jas smiled.
“ Hey, you’ve a cute smile.”
Surprised by the comment, Jas looked at her, “ Have I?”
“ Nobody told you ever?”
“ No one except my mother.”
“ See, I’m not wrong.” Ritu said. “ No…indeed, your smile is like my dad’s. He has dimples in his cheek. Although, your dimples are cloaked under your beard but still anyone can make out, they are there.”
“ You really scrutinized me…thank anyways.” Jas was surprised. Ritu smiled. He continued again, “ You’ve a nice smile too…and I’m sure many people would have told you that.”
She smiled, “ Ya and most of them had been men.”
“ We can’t resist speaking truth.” He said.
“ Ya, I know.” She smiled again. “ You’ve a girl friend?”
He looked at her, “ Your questions attack straight at heart.”
“ That means you had a girl friend but you guys broke up.” Ritu guessed.
He looked at her, “ Are you spying on me?” Ritu laughed at his question. Her laugh made some people around look at her.
“ Well…Psychology graduate, remember?”
“ You are a dangerous person. I’ll have to think before saying anything.” She laughed again.
“ So tell me, why did you guys broke up?”
“ A strange reason, I really don’t understand. She says she doesn’t like north Indians.”
“ What the hell?” Ritu looked at him, “ You didn’t tell her earlier that you belong to north India.”
“ I told her.”
“ Then?”
“ Actually, we broke just today.”
“ What!” Ritu was astonished this time.
“ When I told her that I was going back. She got angry. She straightaway told me that if I wanted to keep any relationship with her, then I’ll have to live in Mumbai.”
“ What logic?”
“ Then I realized that she wasn’t the right girl for me.”
“ Exactly. How long you guys had been together?”
“ Not much, just one year.”
“ I’m surprised, how did you tolerate her for one year…I mean, one year means twelve months, it means three-sixty-five days!” Ritu said.
“ I know I committed a mistake.” Jas said loudly.
“ You know something Jas, hey can I call you Jas?”
“ Ya, everyone calls me by this name.”
“ Ok. I was saying that this place is really strange. People here are absolutely different. What I feel is that, people here think of us as if we belong to another India, of which they are not a part. These people think, we are north Indians and we are different from them.” Ritu said.
“ Hey, I agree totally. As if we were Pakistanis or Americans or Negroes….”
“ But I don’t understand, why is that so?”
“ May be because, they have never been to north or perhaps the life here is so busy that no one bothers to leave Mumbai and go somewhere else and thus they fall in love with this place.” Jas replied.
“ Sometimes I think that this is a sort of patriotism. We north Indians just don’t like where we stay, we need a change, quite often.”
“ It’s because of climate mainly. And moreover like I said, people here don’t get time to get out of their busy schedules.”
“ May be.”
“ Why are we bothering for this stupid thing?” Jas said. She looked at him. He looked at her too. They looked into each other’s eyes for a while. “ Now what?” Jas asked.
She giggled. “ Nothing. I was just wondering if I were at your place and my boy friend had dumped me like your girl friend did and for that silly reason, then what would I have done?”
“ What would you’ve done?” He asked.
“ I think, I would have slapped him in public and would have left him with people to do the remaining work.”
“ It’s easy to say. When it comes on you, you feel disgusted because for all these days you had loved a person who doesn’t even respect you for what you are. At that time, you’re not full of anger, you feel pathetic and you just want to run away from his presence. It appears as if he is laughing at you. You feel so defeated that how easily you got betrayed.” Jas said. Ritu stared at him. He looked at his side, “ Now what?”
“ You love her so much!” She said.
“ I loved her too much but I’ve realized that that was my mistake.” Jas said, trying not to look feeble in front of Ritu.
“ Is it easy to forget?” She asked.
“ You cannot forget such things ever in life. But it is easy to ignore thinking about them. I still remember the girl I liked when I was in sixth class. I still remember the day she left the school and I wept so much.” Jas looked at her, “ you cannot forget anything. Living in this world with variety of people around you, won’t let you forget such things. Everywhere, either in people or in movies, either in words or in songs, either in faces or in pictures you’ll find one or the other glimpse of your love and that time you’ll remember him…it just happens and doesn’t let you forget.”
Ritu kept staring at him. “ You’ve experienced lot of things.”
He chuckled. “ Not really.”
“ I feel as if you are a psychology graduate not I.” She chuckled too.
“ I always wanted to.”
“ What? Studying psycho?” Ritu asked. Jas nodded. “ Many people say that but very few really go for it.”
“ I know. Today, it really doesn’t offer a good career.”
“ Hmmm…that’s true.” The conversation between them came to halt. Ritu was surprised by the sudden gush of feelings by Jas. She thought about what he said about ignoring thinking about people you had once loved. Whereas, Jas was thinking why was he unfolding his life’s secrets to a stranger.
Ritu started the conversation again, “ Hey, I was thinking about your comment about it is easy to ignore thinking about such things.”
“ What about that?”
“ I mean…how? How can someone ignore thinking about someone you love when you cannot forget it? I mean…”
“ I know what you want to ask. Listen, what I meant was, more you try to forget someone, more you remember him and more you get hurt. So, just don’t try to forget. I mean, whenever the thought comes to your mind, just think about something else…coz you can never forget. Got it?”
“ I’m not sure.” She smiled, innocently.
“ Never been in love?”
She shook her head, smilingly. “ But I want to.”
“ If you are a person who can endure feelings of love, it’ll come to you someday. Don’t wait for it. It can come anytime.”
“ I don’t think so I’m the right person for love strike on me.” She said, chuckling.
“ We’re usually wrong about ourselves. You know what is the strangest thing in this world?” She shook her head, Jas continued, “ That a person doesn’t know anything about himself. Usually you think, you’ll behave like this in a particular situation but when it really comes to you, you don’t behave that way. Don’t you sometimes feel after doing something that how could you do that, you were not such type of a person?”
Ritu thought for a moment, “ Ya…it has happened many times.”
“ Now, what does that mean?”
“ What?”
“ It means that you don’t know about your own self.” Ritu kept wondering to his words. She was confounded by the bizarre conversation she was having with this stranger. Usually she would have aborted such a conversation but she didn’t know why she was letting it go on. It was introspection, she thought.
“ You’re a strange person.” Ritu said.
Jas was surprised. He looked at her. “ Why?”
“ No one says such things…and no one really has time to think so deeply about human personalities.” Ritu said.
“ See now you too are doing that.”
“ What?”
“ Thinking deeply on human personalities.”
She giggled. Silence conquered again. But this time Jas broke it. “ Tell me about your family?”
“ We are three siblings, two girls one boy. Brother is the youngest and I’m the eldest. Parents and grandparents at home. That’s all.”
“ A big family.”
“ Not really.”
“ You belong to Haryana, so are you Haryanavi?”
“ No, I’m a Punjabi but I can speak Haryanavi equally well.”
“ So you know Punjabi, Haryanavi, Hindi and English. Four languages. Great!” Jas said, appreciating.
“ Marathi too.”
“ Oh ya, how can we forget where we’re sitting.” Jas said, “ You know Ritu, the truth is that, I too love this place. I mean this city. When I was in Amritsar, I used to wonder how would Mumbai be like. I wanted to conquer this city with my name and fame. There in Amritsar, I used to dream about coming here one day, living here a life like that of Sachin Tendulkar. Everyone dreaming to be like me.” He kept looking at the boulders while saying. He didn’t have any expression on his face but seeing his face Ritu felt as if he was filled with pain. He continued, “ but when I came here, I realized that my dreams are dreams of millions of people. I never dreamt of living in one room sharing with two room partners, I never dreamt of traveling in local trains, I never dreamt of having most of the meals roadside.” He looked at her now. Looking into her eyes, he said, “ But you know, slowly I realized that the actual life was nothing but this. Struggling for making your own space in this city was the main thing I learnt here. I forgot my dreams because I knew that no matter how much I labour and no matter how much hard work I do, I knew that what I had thought earlier in Amritsar was not going to come true. I should have actually left this place lot earlier but something inside me persuaded me to stay back. And now I feel that that thing which stopped me was love for this city.” Ritu nodded. She understood what he meant. Jas continued again, “ This happens with every newcomer here. Everyone falls in love with this place. No one cares for the humid and sweaty weather of this city, no one cares for the ongoing noise, no one bothers for traffic and rush, and no one bothers for anything. Everyone just fall in love with this city because it has power to fulfill what you have dreamt all your life, it has this beautiful ambience where you can sit for hours trying to efface all your tensions, it has this number of people like you who have come here to attain something, so you don’t feel alone…it’s a lovely place…I never thought that one day I’d be leaving it.”
No one of them spoke for time. Jas asked her, “ What happened? What are you thinking?“
“ I felt as if you gave words to the feelings of my heart. Everything what you said, is true. I feel exactly the way you do. At present, I feel pathetic and defeated that I’m leaving this place…because…just because, I have failed…I’ve failed in fulfilling for what I dreamt whole my life…I feel pathetic.” Ritu said, full of discomfort.
“ Don’t worry Ritu. Everything happens for a reason. Today we’re leaving this city because we have learnt the truth. And may be it was just meant to teach us a lesson so that we wouldn’t do any such mistake in future.” Jas looked at him, touched her shoulder to face her to his side, “ Ok, tell me, what will you do now, after going back home?”
“ I haven’t thought about it.” She replied.
“ You have informed your parents that you’re coming back.”
“ No.”
“ Even I hadn’t. Why didn’t you?”
Ritu looked at him, “ Because now after being defeated, I feel as if they have won the battle, which was going on between us for so many years.” She went silent. Jas waited. “ You know Jas, what is the first thing I’m gonna do when I reach home?”
“ What?”
“ I’ll cry. I’ll cry in my mom’s arms.” She looked at him. Jas felt as if she wanted to cry thereon but she needed a shoulder.
“ I’m worried how will I face my parents, my relatives. Everyone will make fun of me. I think, I’ll go to America to my brother and settle there.”
“ Why?”
“ I really don’t have guts to face people.”
“ I understand.” Ritu said keeping her hand over his hand to console.
Both of them smiled. Similar thoughts have conquered them. Why have they met? Did destiny wanted them to meet?
Jas asked, “ So you had never been in love but any boyfriends?”
“ What do you think about me? You think I need guys for fun?”
“ Hey, no, don’t misunderstand me. I meant to ask any crush, which you later on broke up with.” Jas clarified.
“ None. I mean, there had been many guys who were good, some even proposed, I even dated some but feelings just didn’t come.”
“ Why? Do you have a very particular desire?”
“ The true thing is that I really don’t like people who show off, who just need women for a company, who need a girl to make her a girl friend but not for marriage. There are no genuine men here in this city and in the profession where I was; you can hardly find a true person. Everyone is selfish. If someone talks to someone it just means either some favour or sex.”
Jas chuckled, “ Favour or sex, one and the same thing.” Ritu looked at him, he clarified, “ in your profession.” She nodded and smiled.
“ You got any such offers?” he asked.
“ So many that I don’t even remember the number.”
“ Really!”
“ And it felt terrible each time.” Ritu looked at his face, “ every time I cried after returning to home and the worst part was that I couldn’t even share such thing with anyone, because I had no one who could listen to me…who could comfort me.”
“ Hey…why didn’t we meet the day we came to Mumbai?” Jas asked.
Ritu laughed. “ Hmmm…it’d have been different, really.”
“ Why are you sharing these things with a stranger?” Jas asked, again smilingly.
Ritu looked at him, “ Ahhh…I…coz…you are a stranger and we’re not going to meet again, so it doesn’t matter…Perhaps.” She said, unsure of what she was saying was true or not.
“ Are you sure, this is the reason.”
“ Why? There should be some other one?” She asked.
“ I don’t know…but for me, actually, I just felt like sharing with you my feelings, though I don’t know why but something just coerced me to say all these things to you. May be you are different from other people I’ve met.”
“ It’s actually because we have similar problems.”
“ Perhaps.” Jas said. He wanted to say something but he hesitated. Although, his heart stopped him from saying that, but he couldn’t resist, “ You said, we’re not going to meet again. What if we became friends? Won’t you like to meet me? Won’t you like to share your problems and feelings with me like you’re doing now?”
Ritu looked at him. She didn’t know what to answer. She just faced the other side and looked at the moon, deliberately drifting away from what her thoughts were drifting her to.
Silence prevailed again, this time for quite a longer period.