He tried to shake it off...actually shaking his head at times..but the feeling just wouldn't go away.
It had been four days since he had landed in this godforsaken corner of Bundelkhand. It would be a learning experience, Navin had said. " A first hand experience at an actual site would do you good ,my friend.". Navin, his immediate boss fancied himself to be a hardened, battle scarred veteran..a "field guy" who had earned his pips and stripes in hard fought battles, at actual sites. This exalted self image, coupled with his compulsive urge to give long pep talks to his troops, got on everyone's nerves." Go out there..get some dust on your clothes...some sweat on your collars...this is your only chance to see how the organisation operates at a nuts and bolts level. Get out of your cubicles..leave your air conditioned comfort behind ..and hit the road guys. I want you to go out there......brave the discomforts..like we did..in the old days." A girl ,sitting next to him tried her best to suppress a yawn...failed miserably. Navin went on nevertheless, " its time to put on your boots and walk the talk". The hapless captive audience..the management trainees were getting restless but there was precious little they could do about it. They were at the bottom of the organisational food chain and thus had do grin and bear it. When Navin finally ended his hands on waist ..Patton impersonation, almost all of the assembled trainees were desperate to leave the conference room and rush to their respective field assignments. Nothing the field will throw at them could hurt them more than this one hour of mind crushing torture meted out by Navin.
So here he was..one hundred miles from Sagar..a town he found to be a glorified village when he spent a night before resuming his journey by road. Sagar, he thought now, was Beverly Hills in comparison to the dump he was in now. The hundred kilometer journey had taken four hours , roads, if they could be called roads, had craters which could easily swallow whole Marutis. and then there was the heat. Heat which sucked out not just the moisture and energy from the human bodies and but looking at the wretched people around him, it dried out the souls as well.
Something was amiss...... it was this strange feeling that Manas initially attributed to his mood and to the wretched setting he was in. He was in a place called Tendukheda, deep in the bidi manufacturing belt and had spent the better part of the last one hour looking for a shop that sold bottled water...without success. The population seemed to be consisting of small traders and bidi workers , most of them desperately poor.
His brief had been to persuade a bidi company to install another diesel generator set , in addition to the one they bought last year, and was utterly insufficient for their needs, as assessed by Navin . As it turned out, the Company was not even remotely interested in increasing their captive power facility , which would have powered the fans on the shop floor. Their workers were used to the heat, they said, and of course the power supply came for a couple of hours everyday , so no point in spoiling them with luxuries.No amount of sales pitch could move the manager even an inch. Manas felt dejected, and he had a reason to have felt so. Apart from another bout of tongue lashing from Navin, he was set to loose his sales cut and God knows he needed the money. The loan he had taken for financing his MBA from a B class institute from Gaziabad needed to be paid. His parents, both Government servants could no way afford the EMIs , already burdened by the home loans taken to buy a small DDA flat in Sarita Vihar, their only asset.
Manas cursed his luck...his job..his whole life..No fun..no parties..no girlfriends..and no money. He wondered if he could just opt out of this life..not commit suicide ..just opt out.. quit and restart. He really wanted that and fantasized about it often.
So here he was waiting for a bus to take him back to Sagar , from where he was supposed to embark on another pointless pursuit the next day. It had been an uneventful day, where the hours were seemingly fusing into each other. He was trying to while away his time , again fantasizing if he could metamorphose into someone, something else.
It was then that the feeling suddenly erupted.
There was nothing that could have triggered the fluttering of the butterflies in his stomach. Yet the feeling was there, rising in waves from his guts and becoming stronger as the time passed.
Something will happen today.
There was no no sign of the bus. He could see that even the people who seemed to be regulars on the route becoming restless. It was already half past six and the journey would not take less than four hours, given the roads. The heat too was in no mood to relent , despite the sun going westward. He was sitting on a battered bench at a makeshift tea stall, trying to muster courage to savor a cup of suspicious looking tea.
Manas was not a particularly religious man, not even "spiritual". He had a tangential relationship with God, limited to bowing in front of a temple, or celebrating festivals , which was more of a cultural thing rather than religious. He absolutely despised astrology and any other kind of illogical belief. But today, the strong feeling of some impending and inevitable occurrence though having no logical explanation, was so strong that it was more than an emotion . It was sneaking into the physical plane....his shoulders were stiffening and he could feel blood rushing in waves in his veins . He would have thought it was an heart attack , but for the fact that he was an extremely fit young man, all of 24 years. a long distance runner and a gym regular. He had never experienced anything like this before, and it felt that someone had suddenly flicked a switch inside his brain and activated a receptor. It was becoming unbearable.
Another hour passed , and the stars appeared in the sky...more stars than you ever see in the cities. Only a few lights , powered by car batteries were on at a few stalls around the bus stands. His mobile phone gave up and died...even after being on power saver mode. Manas was now thinking of hitching a lift on a passing truck, which was a pretty desperate measure to consider. These were dangerous parts..not as notorious as Chambal , India's Wild West, but dangerous nevertheless and thus hitching a ride from a stranger would always be a bad idea. Hell..people could be murdered for a mobile phone or a laptop here.
Suddenly , He saw a pair of headlights on the road, still far away....judging by their size, it was a bus.
his spirits lifted up a bit. He stood up and mentally prepared himself for the struggle that would ensue among the wary would be travelers , who had been awaiting for the bus for hours. He looked around, and strangely no one seemed to have noticed the headlights till now and were missing the restless energy that ripples through the commuters in India, on the sight of a long awaited redemption in form of a bus or a train. " Good riddance" , Manas thought...hoping and looking forward for a seat in the bus , which would be already crowded and rickety. The headlights were still some distance away..so Manas walked to the edge of the road and stretched himself. He only had a small backpack with him, as he had planned to be back in Sagar for the night. The headlights appeared to be travelling towards his position at an even pace, although the road was full of potholes.
They appeared to be fixed yet moving.
Manas , standing at the edge of the road , looking eastwards...suddenly realized that the feeling had subsided. He was now feeling strangely calm and fixated on the headlights. He also realized that the place had also gone suddenly quite. Although some part of his brain found this very strange , this sudden shutting of all white noise..he was now fixated on the headlights..rest of the world..the dusk..the dust..the town..sky ..seemed to be dissolving into each other..he could register only the headlights.
Then feeling of dread completely disappeared.
Manas felt headlights were only a few yards away..but were so bright that he could not really see the vehicle they belonged to. Still he felt the urge to start walking towards it. The vehicle halted and before his eyes could adjust again, and he could register the shape or make of the bus, a door opened. again a rectangle of solid white light opened up . He automatically proceeded to board the vehicle. he could now sense that something extremely strange and uncanny was going on. His brain had shut off all other stimuli and it seemed that now the Universe only consisted of him and the bus. His brain was working..he could think.. he felt extremely calm ...but he could not stop himself from climbing the stairs into the bus. Some rational part of his psyche tried to figure out if he had inadvertently consumed some mind altering drug...he also tried to wake himself up in case it was a dream. He was in a trance but his brain had not shut off,,,it was asking questions,,,it was not a dream either.
He was now inside, only he was not inside any bus. In fact he was not inside...not outside either.
He was at a place which could not be defined in physical terms... there was no light..but it was not dark. It was like what he had imagined the outer space to be like...no sense of up or down...he could feel the infinity and he could see the eternity.
He was now convinced that he had died.
He also realized that his natural sense of time...the sense of time passing..had gone or at least had completely altered. Rather than the flow of time, that his was accustomed to..time was now winding and unwinding like a spring..or moving in a loop. It was like having a feeling of deja' vu , again and again.
He was not moving or falling..neither was he suspended...
He was clueless about what was happening..but was not afraid..?
what was happening....was he dreaming ?
how could he board a bus and just sign off the universe he knew...the physics ..the sense of space..
it was something
It had been four days since he had landed in this godforsaken corner of Bundelkhand. It would be a learning experience, Navin had said. " A first hand experience at an actual site would do you good ,my friend.". Navin, his immediate boss fancied himself to be a hardened, battle scarred veteran..a "field guy" who had earned his pips and stripes in hard fought battles, at actual sites. This exalted self image, coupled with his compulsive urge to give long pep talks to his troops, got on everyone's nerves." Go out there..get some dust on your clothes...some sweat on your collars...this is your only chance to see how the organisation operates at a nuts and bolts level. Get out of your cubicles..leave your air conditioned comfort behind ..and hit the road guys. I want you to go out there......brave the discomforts..like we did..in the old days." A girl ,sitting next to him tried her best to suppress a yawn...failed miserably. Navin went on nevertheless, " its time to put on your boots and walk the talk". The hapless captive audience..the management trainees were getting restless but there was precious little they could do about it. They were at the bottom of the organisational food chain and thus had do grin and bear it. When Navin finally ended his hands on waist ..Patton impersonation, almost all of the assembled trainees were desperate to leave the conference room and rush to their respective field assignments. Nothing the field will throw at them could hurt them more than this one hour of mind crushing torture meted out by Navin.
So here he was..one hundred miles from Sagar..a town he found to be a glorified village when he spent a night before resuming his journey by road. Sagar, he thought now, was Beverly Hills in comparison to the dump he was in now. The hundred kilometer journey had taken four hours , roads, if they could be called roads, had craters which could easily swallow whole Marutis. and then there was the heat. Heat which sucked out not just the moisture and energy from the human bodies and but looking at the wretched people around him, it dried out the souls as well.
Something was amiss...... it was this strange feeling that Manas initially attributed to his mood and to the wretched setting he was in. He was in a place called Tendukheda, deep in the bidi manufacturing belt and had spent the better part of the last one hour looking for a shop that sold bottled water...without success. The population seemed to be consisting of small traders and bidi workers , most of them desperately poor.
His brief had been to persuade a bidi company to install another diesel generator set , in addition to the one they bought last year, and was utterly insufficient for their needs, as assessed by Navin . As it turned out, the Company was not even remotely interested in increasing their captive power facility , which would have powered the fans on the shop floor. Their workers were used to the heat, they said, and of course the power supply came for a couple of hours everyday , so no point in spoiling them with luxuries.No amount of sales pitch could move the manager even an inch. Manas felt dejected, and he had a reason to have felt so. Apart from another bout of tongue lashing from Navin, he was set to loose his sales cut and God knows he needed the money. The loan he had taken for financing his MBA from a B class institute from Gaziabad needed to be paid. His parents, both Government servants could no way afford the EMIs , already burdened by the home loans taken to buy a small DDA flat in Sarita Vihar, their only asset.
Manas cursed his luck...his job..his whole life..No fun..no parties..no girlfriends..and no money. He wondered if he could just opt out of this life..not commit suicide ..just opt out.. quit and restart. He really wanted that and fantasized about it often.
So here he was waiting for a bus to take him back to Sagar , from where he was supposed to embark on another pointless pursuit the next day. It had been an uneventful day, where the hours were seemingly fusing into each other. He was trying to while away his time , again fantasizing if he could metamorphose into someone, something else.
It was then that the feeling suddenly erupted.
There was nothing that could have triggered the fluttering of the butterflies in his stomach. Yet the feeling was there, rising in waves from his guts and becoming stronger as the time passed.
Something will happen today.
There was no no sign of the bus. He could see that even the people who seemed to be regulars on the route becoming restless. It was already half past six and the journey would not take less than four hours, given the roads. The heat too was in no mood to relent , despite the sun going westward. He was sitting on a battered bench at a makeshift tea stall, trying to muster courage to savor a cup of suspicious looking tea.
Manas was not a particularly religious man, not even "spiritual". He had a tangential relationship with God, limited to bowing in front of a temple, or celebrating festivals , which was more of a cultural thing rather than religious. He absolutely despised astrology and any other kind of illogical belief. But today, the strong feeling of some impending and inevitable occurrence though having no logical explanation, was so strong that it was more than an emotion . It was sneaking into the physical plane....his shoulders were stiffening and he could feel blood rushing in waves in his veins . He would have thought it was an heart attack , but for the fact that he was an extremely fit young man, all of 24 years. a long distance runner and a gym regular. He had never experienced anything like this before, and it felt that someone had suddenly flicked a switch inside his brain and activated a receptor. It was becoming unbearable.
Another hour passed , and the stars appeared in the sky...more stars than you ever see in the cities. Only a few lights , powered by car batteries were on at a few stalls around the bus stands. His mobile phone gave up and died...even after being on power saver mode. Manas was now thinking of hitching a lift on a passing truck, which was a pretty desperate measure to consider. These were dangerous parts..not as notorious as Chambal , India's Wild West, but dangerous nevertheless and thus hitching a ride from a stranger would always be a bad idea. Hell..people could be murdered for a mobile phone or a laptop here.
Suddenly , He saw a pair of headlights on the road, still far away....judging by their size, it was a bus.
his spirits lifted up a bit. He stood up and mentally prepared himself for the struggle that would ensue among the wary would be travelers , who had been awaiting for the bus for hours. He looked around, and strangely no one seemed to have noticed the headlights till now and were missing the restless energy that ripples through the commuters in India, on the sight of a long awaited redemption in form of a bus or a train. " Good riddance" , Manas thought...hoping and looking forward for a seat in the bus , which would be already crowded and rickety. The headlights were still some distance away..so Manas walked to the edge of the road and stretched himself. He only had a small backpack with him, as he had planned to be back in Sagar for the night. The headlights appeared to be travelling towards his position at an even pace, although the road was full of potholes.
They appeared to be fixed yet moving.
Manas , standing at the edge of the road , looking eastwards...suddenly realized that the feeling had subsided. He was now feeling strangely calm and fixated on the headlights. He also realized that the place had also gone suddenly quite. Although some part of his brain found this very strange , this sudden shutting of all white noise..he was now fixated on the headlights..rest of the world..the dusk..the dust..the town..sky ..seemed to be dissolving into each other..he could register only the headlights.
Then feeling of dread completely disappeared.
Manas felt headlights were only a few yards away..but were so bright that he could not really see the vehicle they belonged to. Still he felt the urge to start walking towards it. The vehicle halted and before his eyes could adjust again, and he could register the shape or make of the bus, a door opened. again a rectangle of solid white light opened up . He automatically proceeded to board the vehicle. he could now sense that something extremely strange and uncanny was going on. His brain had shut off all other stimuli and it seemed that now the Universe only consisted of him and the bus. His brain was working..he could think.. he felt extremely calm ...but he could not stop himself from climbing the stairs into the bus. Some rational part of his psyche tried to figure out if he had inadvertently consumed some mind altering drug...he also tried to wake himself up in case it was a dream. He was in a trance but his brain had not shut off,,,it was asking questions,,,it was not a dream either.
He was now inside, only he was not inside any bus. In fact he was not inside...not outside either.
He was at a place which could not be defined in physical terms... there was no light..but it was not dark. It was like what he had imagined the outer space to be like...no sense of up or down...he could feel the infinity and he could see the eternity.
He was now convinced that he had died.
He also realized that his natural sense of time...the sense of time passing..had gone or at least had completely altered. Rather than the flow of time, that his was accustomed to..time was now winding and unwinding like a spring..or moving in a loop. It was like having a feeling of deja' vu , again and again.
He was not moving or falling..neither was he suspended...
He was clueless about what was happening..but was not afraid..?
what was happening....was he dreaming ?
how could he board a bus and just sign off the universe he knew...the physics ..the sense of space..
it was something
