When they walked together

‘Chai?’

A friend asked the other and they left the stasis of their rented apartment to walk in a relatively calmer alley around their building. Different shades of blue and purple were scattered all around the evening sky. Orange tints in between. The alley was wide, giving both of them enough space to walk comfortably. They started talking as they walked at a moderate pace. The tone and topics were simple at first and their feet landed on the ground in a similar fashion even though their heights were no match.

As those feet moved, their minds ran off to different places on a shared imaginary ground. Places that have no names and can only be accessed by walking on the physical ground. It’s not like they had not discussed ideas or shared personal moments when they were static. But movement offered them a sense of possibilities which the static did not do.

At first, they ran around that imaginary ground like children lost in an amusement park. The alley was indeed very large. It became hard for them to contain the possibilities of their next steps. That wideness helped them play more frivolously. They jumped from topic to topic, frequently using the trampoline of humour.

As the alley narrowed down, their minds did too. Not in terms of perspective but in terms of specificity. After taking an impulsive turn into a more calm and cleaner lane, the amusement park vanished into thin air and a specific place started to take shape on that imaginary ground.

The place was empty at first. They walked and talked vividly, one countering another, to fill it up with concrete. They did not know what exactly they were building but the base was built and slowly, one could see something new was taking shape. An idea, a thought, an intangible construction.

The physical geography shaped the geography of the imagination. Streetlights were turning on as the evening turned from early to late. The construction was growing toward a definite shape. But as the lane ended, they crossed a vegetable market. There was chaos all around. Naturally, they split and walked individually, one walking ahead of the other. And just like space, they got individual time. Time, to renovate the construction on the imaginary ground in their own ways.

Both of them tried to reconstruct it differently as they walked alone. Different renovations of doubt, counter-arguments and antithetical ideas struggled to shape the thing in its own way. The speed and intensity of the construction also varied. One of them loaded bricks of self-indulgence and ego-trip while walking alone. He felt intelligent to have constructed the thing. While the other tried to reimagine the base by digging it with self-doubt. The concrete was scattered all around as the place went in confusion about its identity. Was it a new idea? Or just another verbal exercise that goes nowhere?

When they passed the market and again joined each other, one of them asked,

‘Where were we?’

Without looking at each other, both of them kept walking. Their eyes mostly led their steps, looking down at the symmetrical but sometimes broken pavement pattern. One of them looked for beauty in it while the other felt uneasy. One by one, both of them tried to make sure that they were building the same thing, but neither the ego-trip wall nor the self-doubt pit helped them land on a single blueprint. Tensions rose as the noise from the market seeped into the imaginary ground. Now, no one knew where they were.

For some time, they did not talk. Unlike their moving bodies, their minds went into a stasis. Now, the road was wider and there was a footpath to walk on. A silence followed which was bearable and unbearable at the same time. Abruptly, one of them blurted out something. The sentence was not pre-formed and took shape live in time. Taking that in, with an even unevenness, the other replied. Slowly, more sentences were formed and the duration between two sentences lessened more and more. and more.

Like a khayal unfolding, they found their own rhythm. There was a garden on the side of the road. The greens helped them argue more honestly. Not realizing it, they even crossed the chai tapri where they had planned to go. The faster they walked, the more intense their conversation got. Finally, the wall crumbled down and the pit filled up. A strong mould of an inexplicable construction was successfully built by those four uneven but constantly moving feet.

‘Exactly!’

One of them yelled as they finally felt in sync.

But just when this mould was constructed, their feet hit a dead-end. The road ahead was blocked due to the removal of a drainage blockage from the underground pipeline. This was a usual thing around their area. They turned around, both inwards, one from his right and the other left.

Step by step, they walked back. Even though it was the same road, it looked different when walking back. As they talked more, the mould evolved into something more substantial. They still kept moulding it. Sometimes agreeing, sometimes not. But mainly, constructing. Now, even if they disagreed on the placement of a pillar or direction of a window, the construction felt constructive. The turning at the dead-end had put them into an unstoppable creative momentum.

The walk back had no duration. They realized that they had reached the apartment only when they actually reached the apartment. And then, it suddenly hit them. One looked at the other, just for a micro-second, to acknowledge that the construction was still not complete and would never be. It will keep shifting its shape till the end of time. And rather than feeling cynical about it, they felt relieved.

Relieved, that they would not have to carry the burden of completing it. Relieved, to be in the present continuous tense as it offered them never-ending possibilities. Relieved, to be able to keep walking more and more. and more.