a regal affair

Anish and I had been living in a live-in relationship for six months. We had rented this apartment in Mumbai as we wanted to be close to each other, but last month, he got a job in Pune.

As he was not in town for the weekend, I decided to run some errands and planned to watch a movie in Colaba at the Regal Cinema. I like watching a movie alone. Looking at people, just being an observer. I walked into the metro at Andheri station and stood at the center of the bogie as there was no space on the sides. Generally, I stand towards the sides as the center feels weird. It feels as if all of them are watching me, and I am about to break into a dance routine.

"Excuse me!"

A man looked at me from behind, signaling me to move aside as he wanted to shift towards the door. He was well-built with a small belly curve. I smiled humbly and gave him some space. He too smiled and moved ahead to stand right in front of me. It was quite intimate. He had a charming beard. Quite my type, so to speak. Not that I was attracted to him, but at one point, we were breathing the same air. In the warmth of our breaths, the AC felt like a myth. At one moment, he looked through my eyes, and I looked through his.

My thoughts started wandering around in an attempt to avoid acknowledging the tension between us. Where were all these people going? Was there an end to this? What was I thinking? How would it feel to be in the same bed with this man?

;

The film was good. It had promised to take me somewhere and had succeeded at it. I had been looking forward to just escaping somewhere anyway. Just then, I saw someone outside the cinema hall who looked exactly like Neel. His arms, to be precise. It had happened many times. On many days in this strange city, I had seen glimpses of Neel. A look somewhere, a smile elsewhere, a hand gesture. It wasn’t like I missed him or anything. It was rather the opposite.

But this guy WAS Neel. The moment was magical. Not because it was actually him. It was magical because it, in a way, proposed a strong case that maybe it had been Neel all along. The glimpses that I had seen for the last six months in this absurd city were maybe actually, really, his. The timing was insane, I thought to myself.

Neel had traveled to Mumbai as he got time from his screenplay writing course that he was doing in Pune. As we recognized each other outside the Cinema Hall, he immediately told me that he needed to get fresh somewhere as he had just reached Mumbai. The AC in the Shivneri bus mustn’t have helped his bladder. "How much?" I asked. "Can freshness be measured?" he must’ve felt weird giving that reply.

"No, but do you want to go to my room or is a Starbucks ok?”

;

Being in a room with each other where one of us was shirtless had been a normal thing for us. He knew Anish very well. Actually, they had been friends before he met me. They were schoolmates. I had met him through him. He removed his shirt as he was quite sweaty. Mumbai’s weather was not helping. As usual, I opened my phone and started scrolling through Instagram. Something that most would do when a half-naked body is standing in their room.

Now that I think of it, these obvious failing attempts at ignoring the hormonal presence in the room are mostly seen by the naked eye. The half-naked person in the room senses the tension. The not-naked person in the room senses it too. But still, we do these things. We open a book. We look outside a window. We play with the Rubik’s Cube as if we care about those things.

After a while, I put my phone aside and started playing with the fidget spinner. I didn’t know why I took it, but it felt like a better choice than just being awkward. “So, how are things with Anish?” he asked curiously. “Great. We are actually thinking of shifting back to Pune. He has a job there, so. And that way, I’ll come closer to you!” Saying this, I gave out a fake laugh.

Why had I said that? What was I thinking? Obviously, I was sure of myself that I had said ‘closer’ as a ‘friend’. But I doubted what he must’ve thought about it.

“Are you guys still in an Open relationship?” he asked while wiping his face with my towel. The mole on his neck had never been more prominent.

“Almost,” I replied.

If you asked me, I wouldn’t deny that he was attractive. If one were to see objectively, he was of a certain 'type'. The first time we met, I had looked more at him than he looked at me. It was only later, when we became ‘friends’, that things cooled down.

“What do you mean by almost? Is it open or not?”

I decided to ignore this question and went straight away into the bathroom. While walking past him, I unknowingly inhaled the smell of his body. I walked inside the washroom and exhaled, where it got mixed into the smell of Anish’s body. It was weird, but still, I found myself aroused.

;

Throughout the day, we roamed around the city as if we were a couple. At least, the city was looking at us in that manner. Or at least, I thought that the city looked at us in that manner. I took him to the Nehru Centre Art Gallery, where we looked at some nudes. A French artist had captured the essence of the male body in his new nude series called les hommes ressemblent à des Hommes. We savoured the whole exhibition. It could not have been more dramatic.

At one point, it felt as if the day had been written.

;

In the evening, we had to take the local while we were going back to Colaba. The crowd was insane. Laughing and smiling, our bodies touched each other like objects as we got into the train. Holding the bar above us, we stood very close to each other.

“You remember the moment you came out to me?” he asked, knowing that it would take me somewhere. “Obviously,” I replied.

I always find it interesting that things work differently between us than in the straight world. Maybe it's the similar life experiences that we go through, but we bond with our kind more intimately. For each queer person I have met, the boundaries are blurred. Friends are not friends but more. Maybe these knowing glances that we share with each other solidify the possible intimacy that we carry in our minds.

The train crossed station after station, and yet again, I smelled Neel’s sweat as he stood across me, touching my body. He too smelled me. I could feel the rousing effect we were having on each other. Inhaling and exhaling in a certain rhythm, we both unknowingly decided to give in to the movement of the train. In no time, he let go of his lips, which were near my neck. I was unable to say if it was him or the train movement, but his lips landed on my neck. They were warm. Similarly, in no time, my lips too landed on the other side of his neck. His neck was warm near the mole. I felt an intense sensorial rush inside me.

“Oh! Neel!”

Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice in my ears. For a moment, I could not guess the direction from which it came. We both straightened up.

“What a coincidence!” Neel said, looking at Anish, who just happened to be in the same Local as us. It was his voice. He had come back from Pune. He had his bags with him. He recognized Neel and was happily surprised to see us. I moved back a bit, giving him some space between us, and cleared my throat.

He looked at me as if he knew. He just read me like an open book. And I let him. Somehow, at that moment, I was unable to close myself off. Rather, even with all the shame and guilt, I realized that that was the beauty of us. That was the reason I was with him. Suddenly, I felt immense love for him.

“How are you here?” he asked Neel after he was done reading me.

“I just came to visit someone from work. I met him by coincidence in the morning, and then, we just chilled together,” Neel replied.

Anish smiled and looked at me. “Great! At least someone was here to give him some company!” he said to Neel, referring to me. His intervention was amusing. He had this smile where he just twitched an eye and looked right through me.

My arousal was quite evident on my face, and Neel noticed it. Suddenly, his face turned pale. The whole thing was baffling. Neel getting affected by sensing the hormonal tension between me and Anish was a new thought for me. It got translated into a newer, inexplicable feeling. It felt like I was cheating on him. As if the center had shifted for a while. As if now Anish was the affair.

But Anish was the present. He was standing there, right in front of me. Being my ‘partner’ who had just intruded into the situation. Giving me the sense of stability. Would it be like this all my life? Without a fixed person to go back to, would my romantic life always keep shifting its center?

We talked more, and Neel decided to part ways with us at the next station. I don’t know how, but things changed. It felt as if Anish and I had been together throughout the day, and we had just met Neel in the local. As just a random coincidence.

The next station came, and Neel got down. As the train started moving, I felt a heavy feeling in my stomach.

;

I hugged Anish tightly and kissed him on the neck as I always did. He, too, took me in his embrace with his beautiful arms. Then, hand in hand, we walked toward Regal and decided to go for the 9:30 show of Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, which had been re-released last week.

A kind man

He was a kind man. Or at least, he thought of himself as one. Among his family and friends, he was known for his humble nature, sometimes even for being selflessly helpful. Picking up his niece from school, helping his ailing father, letting his friend stay in his apartment until he found a house, he would do everything. Even at his workplace, he carried himself with this same humility. Everyone loved him, and more importantly, he loved himself for being that way.

Until one day, when it all shattered.

That was no ordinary day. At work, he had to correct a mistake in a presentation before his manager found out. He and the team had worked hard on it the previous week, and it was very important to him that things went according to plan that day. On top of that, he was going to meet his wife in the evening. They had been having issues in their marriage, and she had been staying at her mother’s place for the past two weeks. After postponing the meeting twice already, he felt he must not delay it any longer.

Trying not to overthink, he drove steadily. At one crossing, he stopped at a signal on a relatively empty street. The footpath was sparsely crowded. He kept staring at the signal, willing it to turn green. As the red timer blinked down, he heard a thud. A truck had hit a speeding biker, and in a split second, the biker collapsed on the ground, severely injured.

Before he could grasp the situation, the signal turned green. Engrossed in an entirely different chain of thought, his hands started the bike, and his foot shifted gears. The bike accelerated forward, not stopping to check on the man. He had no immediate reason for not stopping. He just kept going and reached the office.

;

The presentation went well. He corrected the mistake, and everything was fine. He didn’t tell anyone about the accident, but the image of the injured biker lingered with him. He kept wondering whether he should have stopped. The thought led only to guilt. To stay sane, he kept telling himself that the couple he had seen walking from afar must have stopped to help the man. The biker must be fine now.

‘What if he’s not? What if he had died and would have lived if I had helped him? What if the couple never stopped? Were they even there? Was I the only one on that road? How could I be so selfish? How could I not help him? Am I guilty of his death?’

Before lunchtime, his self-image as a kind man began to implode. Whether the biker survived or not no longer mattered. What mattered was his own action (or inaction), which screamed selfishness back at him. On any other day, he would have helped. He knew that at his core. That day, though, was an inexplicable exception. He was under stress. He was lost in thought. And, right now, he was hungry.

;

After lunch, he was less harsh on himself. Surely there had been people walking by. He also remembered a shop nearby. He comforted himself by imagining a scenario where others rushed to help as soon as he left. Normally, he would have been among them, but that day, he wasn’t. That’s okay. There’s always someone who helps. The world is a kind place like that, he thought.

;

That evening, he met his wife. Things went smoothly at first, but soon an inevitable fight began. She accused him of being “too kind,” saying that it only served his image, but didn’t reflect his true intentions. Although he partially realized this to be true, he argued back, saying that kindness was something he truly believed in as a person.

;

Riding home, his mind went haywire. Most people who knew him would defend him, he thought. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Others might say he could at least have asked someone to help before leaving. They might try to frame a win-win solution, but he knew for a fact that it simply wasn’t possible that day. If it had been, he would have done it. And then, a small percentage would definitely say: “You are selfish. None of your personal concerns should matter when it comes to helping a dying man.”

Even if, without being concerned about any facet of his life, he had helped him, people would have called him a cynic or a madman. No one would have understood him for spending half a day to save that person. And yet, deep down, he wondered if being called a madman was still better than being haunted by silence and inaction. Perhaps true kindness was never meant to be understood by others, only lived. He wasn’t sure if he had lived up to it.

But that day, the pressure had been too much. If his manager were so kind as not to judge him a bad professional for being late; if the foreign investors were so kind as not to misjudge his company’s reputation for his mistake in the presentation; if his wife were so kind as not to judge him for postponing their meeting because he spent half a day saving a person’s life; only then would he have done it.

But there will always be reasons.

The implosion that began in the morning was reaching its end. He realized that being kind is easier when there is nothing to lose. True kindness emanates from those who practice empathy despite their reservations. Was he one of them? Or was he just another “kind” person who wouldn’t go the extra mile?

He arrived at that question - and at the same signal where the accident had happened - at the same time. He looked at the ground. No trace of the accident. He looked around, only to find a Hijra (transgender person) begging him for money. The signal turned red, but he stayed still, pulling out his wallet. Honking started behind him. He took out some cash and handed it over. The Hijra gave him a blessing and walked away.

Ruminating on that blessing, he started the bike and drove home.

Hoping

It takes a total of five rupees and two local train changes to travel from Malad to Chembur. This journey, considering the station changes and foot traffic along the way, takes about one to one and a half hours. Thousands of people take this route daily for their routine work. Nitish, who had just shifted to Mumbai for work, was doing the same. Until one day, he met with an anxious choice, followed by an accident. Naturally, he thought a lot about what happened to him that day, and his thinking started with a simple question:

Was saving those hundred rupees worth all that followed?

When he was done with his work in Malad, he had two options. One was to go from Malad to Andheri by local and then from Andheri to Ghatkopar by Metro. Then, from Ghatkopar to Chembur, he would have to take an auto, which would cost him more than the local and metro ticket combined. His other option was to change two locals (Malad to Vadala Road and Vadala Road to Chembur) by paying five rupees and travelling for about an hour. Although Mumbai was proving very expensive for him, he could’ve afforded to go with the first option. After thinking for some time while having a Vadapav, he took the second option.

As fate would have it, he met with an accident. He fell down from a local train at the station just when it started and broke his leg. It was a big scene at the Vadala Road station, and he felt immediate regret for not taking the first option. The whole affair cost him a lot more than a hundred rupees, the approximate value of the first option. His leg was fractured. Upon the medical expenses, he also had to be on leave for several days.

In the recovery, he kept thinking about his luck. Finally, after some futile ifs and buts, he reached a point where he blamed the power of choice and the middle-class anxiety of saving and spending his hard-earned money.

If he were a rich person, he would’ve booked a cab. The choice was obvious. There was no thinking twice, there was no looking at the right side of the menu card page, there was no smelling of strangers’ armpits in a local. Worst case, the roads are jammed and he reaches late, which he thought was a great problem to have.

And even if, as a rich person, under some unfortunate circumstances, he ‘had to’ travel by the local, it was cool. At best, he would’ve been nostalgic about the city and felt the ‘real spirit of Mumbai'. At worst, it will be a bad travel day for him. Still, those were good problems to have, he thought.

And even if, as a rich person, under some unfortunate circumstances, he ‘had to’ travel by the local, and under more unfortunate circumstances, he would have met with the same accident, it would’ve still been cool. He wouldn’t have the guilt of spending money on medical expenses. Blaming the unfortunate circumstances, he would’ve recovered soon. He wouldn’t need to think about the ‘other choice’ while being in recovery, and the almost non-existent dent on his bank account was still a good ‘problem’ to have.

If he were a poor person, he would’ve no other choice but to travel by local. At least then, he wouldn’t have indulged in this thought experiment and accepted his reality. Being truly devoid of the power to choose, his own poor version seemed less confusing to him.

The poor version’s lack of freedom of choice was obviously not comparable with the current anxiety he was facing as a middle-class man. There was no denying that his reality would indeed be a dark one. Nitish would never want to be poor. But he couldn’t resist the thought that, as a poor person, he would know what to expect from life. Realizing where his fate had landed him, he would have more clarity of life as the choices would’ve been fewer to none. Moreover, the incidents that would’ve happened to him on that journey would match his expectations of reality.

On the other hand, being a middle-class realist, he always had the anxiety of not taking the ‘other’ choice in his mind. If he takes the metro and an auto, there is the guilt of spending. If he doesn’t take that option (and also does not fall from the train), there is still the weird feeling of not spending. The irritating journey in the local along with the two hundred rupees in his pocket would’ve made him wonder whether he should’ve taken the first option and saved all this sweaty trouble.

This perpetual confusion can only arise if one is somewhere in the middle of the ladder, he thought. This tug-of-war between comfort and economy, between the fear of waste and the fear of loss, is inevitable. For the rich, the choice is invisible, and for the poor, it is already made. But for the middle-class, it is always there, almost taunting.

Lying in bed with his leg in a cast, Nitish thought that he was maybe asking the wrong question. Maybe it was not about the worth of saving those hundred rupees. After all, by apparently saving those, he had bought himself months of pain, lost salary, and a limp that might follow him for life. All of this in pursuit of winning a game where the rich never have to play and the poor don’t get a turn.

The whole thing weirdly reminded him of his father. Laughing to himself, he kept thinking about the real question that would articulate his dilemma. Hoping that rephrasing it would get him to an answer.

He is still hoping.

Discussion on happiness

“It is very hard to be happy after you wake up in the morning, every day.”

One of my dear friends was going through a transition in her adult life, which she chose to explain like this. She firmly said the last two words of that sentence, wanting to let me know that it’s really a daily struggle. When this happened, we were sitting in my room and had nothing better to do. So, we indulged.

Being constantly happy is a hard thing to do. But what bothered her the most about it was the conscious efforts. Every day she woke up, she had all these thoughts in her head, but still, she consciously chose happiness.

It was interesting to see that she was looking at happiness as a choice, whereas the moments we feel the happiest are always the most unaware ones. Conscious Choice is the most thought-out, planned, and ‘aware’ phenomenon in our minds. In choice, we are not only aware of the options to live life but are also acting on them. It's one of the things that makes us human. This made us think about these two distinct ideas. Being happy and being aware. As we pondered over more, we saw that both are not mutually exclusive from each other and rather overlap all the time.

If being happy were a choice, one would have always chosen it, and to make that conscious choice, one would’ve to be constantly aware. But as it is impossible to be constantly aware, that choice cannot be made. Does that mean that it is not a choice? But that can’t be true because we are seldom completely unaware. Moreover, we are making choices all the time, every minute of our lives. Hence, being happy must be one of the major choices to be made.

Taking a detour in this paradoxical question, we contemplated the concept of awareness. At best, we would’ve gained some knowledge about ourselves for it to be percolated in our choices, and at worst, our friends would’ve called us boring. After all, the happiness that we would’ve gained from sounding intelligent was of the best kind.

If we look at the awareness scale, from least to most, only the extremities can give us the certainty of being happy. The least aware being is not affected by judgment, nor does it have any doubts about its actions or intentions. The acts are only morally wrong or right if they are looked at from the outside. This outside is nothing but awareness of the world. On the other hand, the most aware being exists only in imagination. Different faiths and belief systems have taken varying approaches to reach there, and the idea is indeed profound. But very few or none of us have actually reached there. Where most humans truly reside is the middle part of this scale.

This middle of the scale is annoying but fascinating at the same time. Being somewhat aware of ourselves makes us perfectly imperfect. Even in that, the scale is dynamic. We are more aware of certain aspects of our lives than others. We don’t always choose this, and sometimes we are even unaware of this categorization. It may be nature or nurture, but we have our preferred zones in life to be aware of.

Something as major as a war can affect someone deeply, considering they choose to be well-aware of the situation and empathize with the victims, but the same person can be completely blind when it comes to being aware of how their partner is feeling. Someone might be very hyper-aware at their home, sensing what every family member is feeling, but the same person can be completely blind when it comes to attention to detail at the workplace.

Whatever the reasons may be, being partially aware has made all of us a bit anxious at some point in time. Most of us have at least once felt that it would have been better if we were not so aware. For many, it also reflects in their inability to choose. Empathizing with both sides of an argument makes them indecisive. Only if they could somehow choose not to empathize with one side, it would have been much easier. Only if they could convince themselves to be deluded by the other side’s story completely, it would have been so much easier.

We are all partially aware beings. Hence, to be happy seems like a partial choice. It’s not as easy as ignoring whatever makes you unhappy and only focusing on the positive things. But neither should it be as tough as being very hard on yourself for a futile or irrelevant reason. It’s not absolute, it's very personal, and it is definitely a daily struggle.

After all this talk, I was tired, and I could tell that she was too. We realized that we had pondered the idea for a long time, and nothing had come out of it. It felt like we wanted to get out of there and just wanted to be happy. We headed out for a tea and forgot all about this discussion when we reached the chai tapri. We met our friends there and had our usual fun.

To be honest, that made me happier than the discussion on happiness.