“I want to do everything humanly possible in one lifetime. I want it all. I want to think to my self that when I die, I would have lived a fantastically vivid life!” said Arjun, unknowing of what it really means to be dead. Of course none of us has the slightest idea; even if we did we’d have no ways of proving it or even sharing it. Death as a concept overrides the whole purpose of meaning. Anyway, thus Arjun responded when Kadambari said “I thought you were clean. Why do you want a joint?”
Bewildered by the 15-year-old’s reply, she agreed to roll him one. Arjun left for a nigh tapri. The walk from the tapri to the tree underneath which they were sitting was a modest one but it gave Arjun a high, one that creative people call a moment of clarity. In this moment he could sense everything around him, he felt the ocean-winds as they brushed against the hair on the back of his left ring-finger. He saw funny men selling colourful balloons and he saw his reflection on a soap bubble just before it popped at his nose. He heard the snap of the beetle nut chopper as he asked for a Davidoff and a Classic Mild. He knew Kadambari well enough by now to guess that she had more ‘stuff’ on her than what was sanctioned for him. And that it was going to be a long, romantic night.
The walk back was equally invigorating. He was certain that this was the day when he finally got a chance to open up more intimately with a woman whom he knew and adored for almost a year. Kadambari was a teacher at a local school for the underprivileged. She was as tall as him and six years elder. She sought no love affair with the boy but only needed a friend. She lived alone in her Dadar apartment and talked to not many people. She had a degree from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, but chose to follow her passion and taught the kids at Colaba. She barely was able to make ends meet and lived off cigarettes and alcohol supplied by friends. Such passion for doing what she wanted was her terrible weakness. With all her 3000 rupee paycheques she just couldn’t let go of the weed. She always had some stuff on her and never smoked alone. She paid for some with cash and others with clandestine favours of flesh. Promiscuousness and void a sense of independence are often seen as the same thing, often.
Arjun returned and held a cigarette. “I hope you just bought one,” grinned Kadambari.
Weed is a terribly misunderstood and misrepresented product in the media. Even the dope movies and rock music videos get it wrong. He understood this only when he took his first drag of the joint that she prepared. He had waited five minutes and made sure to tap out all the tobacco from the Classic Mild — her brand of choice — and watched with full concentration as she stuffed the crushed leaves into the empty tube. His eyes followed her tongue roll over the joint and longed to hold sess stick between his fingers and on his lips.
She lit it up and puffed on it twice before handing it over to Arjun. The tube was still wet from her lick it was as much a pleasure to his fingers as to his lips. He sucked in a tiny dose and gave it ten seconds to kick in. Then he puffed again.
“That’s it?” Arjun voiced his disappointment.
“What were you expecting?”
“Well, you know... this is an intoxicant and I thought it would at least get me slightly pleasantly intoxicated.”
“It makes me feel sleepy.” laughed Kadambari and rested her head on his shoulder.
By now Arjun dragged so hard that there was a little flame emerging from the opposite end. In his mind he thought ‘smoke up with beautiful woman by the sea, check.’ as he ticked off the thought on his imaginary things-to-do-before-I-die list. Next on the list was ‘make love to beautiful woman’.
“You sure I am doing it right?” enquired Arjun.
“What did you expect?”
“Mm... I thought we were gonna have sex. With all the things they say on TV and the movies, I thought we would wake up in some abandoned house on Wednesday afternoon.”
“Mad or what?” she laughed and took the joint from his fingers.
“Bah. Make me another one.” He gave her the longer Davidoff.
There’s something about smoking up that’s uncannily bonding. It’s like being on a nude beach, stripped off of every worldly possession, everything that connects you to a bigger melting pot of people. Exposed for every naked scar on the pure flesh of a human conscience, Kadambari and Arjun bonded like never before. Before the evening, they had talked mostly in cyber chat rooms or blabbered through lazy nights and lonely afternoons on five-hour-phone-calls. These are times of a communication revolution and physical meetings are a rarity between even the closest of chums.
“Tell me why do you smoke weed?” asked Arjun, not so much because he really wanted to know, just to break the silence which Kadambari had funnily grown comfortable into.
“All you want is for me to keep talking eh?”
“No, I really want to know, because here I see this wonderful woman, trying to inspire a generation of people who were left to fend for themselves. Left out by the government and forced to work at a young age. I ask what could be more satisfying than watching a whole class of beaten down kids looking up to you as their guardian angel. I ask what better drug could there be than the faith in the eyes of a stranger.”
“Well, if you put it that way, I smoke up because it reminds me of Gregory. I don’t know if you’ve read Shantaram...”
“I haven’t.”
“Do read it. Gregory is the greatest, most romantic guy in the world today. He is what I want to be. He is my role model and I could marry the guy without thinking twice. Of course he was a drug dealer, a Mafioso, a man who could do anything. But he is a free man in a world where most of us pretend to be free. To be chained to a sea of market statistics and to not even know about it, is what gives us the illusion of safety, the illusion of freedom. Reasons and alibis abound in a world where what you pay is what you get. But who sets these prices and what good would it do to you are questions left for the answering machines of corporations that only want to sell you stuff that they have in stock, as opposed to things that you really need. Things like weed.”
“How poetic!” interfered Arjun, just to show that he was listening.
“Yes. And Greg is a person who’s escaped prison, travelled half way across the world and found peace in a place most people see as hell. Colaba jhopadpatti. And every time I see my kids, I see their souls touched by the Gora who spent years living among them, as one of them. I see distant scars of wounds healed by his soothing hands; I see my mind flip through pages of the novel — so passionately penned by him — every time threads of smoke rise before my eyes.”
“Rise before my eyes, Wah! Your poetical prowess proves progressing per para.” comic timing was one thing he had no control over. He would crack a quack every time he found himself in an odd situation. As for this situation Arjun was jealous.
“Shut up! I thought you really wanted to know.” sighed Kadambari, “It’s getting late, I have to go.” There was a moment’s pause where they were gauging every change in each other’s facial expression. Neither spoke but both were looking intently for any signs of unassumingness. This was the closest they’d been all evening. Sitting next to each other, staring wordlessly into eyes which hid nothing because they were too busy spotting signs of mistrust in a face-to-face mindreading contest. Before normalcy kicked in, they burst out with a thunder of laugher.
And this is how they opened up. The conversations that followed were illogically nonlinear and innocently unfeigned.
Bewildered by the 15-year-old’s reply, she agreed to roll him one. Arjun left for a nigh tapri. The walk from the tapri to the tree underneath which they were sitting was a modest one but it gave Arjun a high, one that creative people call a moment of clarity. In this moment he could sense everything around him, he felt the ocean-winds as they brushed against the hair on the back of his left ring-finger. He saw funny men selling colourful balloons and he saw his reflection on a soap bubble just before it popped at his nose. He heard the snap of the beetle nut chopper as he asked for a Davidoff and a Classic Mild. He knew Kadambari well enough by now to guess that she had more ‘stuff’ on her than what was sanctioned for him. And that it was going to be a long, romantic night.
The walk back was equally invigorating. He was certain that this was the day when he finally got a chance to open up more intimately with a woman whom he knew and adored for almost a year. Kadambari was a teacher at a local school for the underprivileged. She was as tall as him and six years elder. She sought no love affair with the boy but only needed a friend. She lived alone in her Dadar apartment and talked to not many people. She had a degree from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, but chose to follow her passion and taught the kids at Colaba. She barely was able to make ends meet and lived off cigarettes and alcohol supplied by friends. Such passion for doing what she wanted was her terrible weakness. With all her 3000 rupee paycheques she just couldn’t let go of the weed. She always had some stuff on her and never smoked alone. She paid for some with cash and others with clandestine favours of flesh. Promiscuousness and void a sense of independence are often seen as the same thing, often.
Arjun returned and held a cigarette. “I hope you just bought one,” grinned Kadambari.
Weed is a terribly misunderstood and misrepresented product in the media. Even the dope movies and rock music videos get it wrong. He understood this only when he took his first drag of the joint that she prepared. He had waited five minutes and made sure to tap out all the tobacco from the Classic Mild — her brand of choice — and watched with full concentration as she stuffed the crushed leaves into the empty tube. His eyes followed her tongue roll over the joint and longed to hold sess stick between his fingers and on his lips.
She lit it up and puffed on it twice before handing it over to Arjun. The tube was still wet from her lick it was as much a pleasure to his fingers as to his lips. He sucked in a tiny dose and gave it ten seconds to kick in. Then he puffed again.
“That’s it?” Arjun voiced his disappointment.
“What were you expecting?”
“Well, you know... this is an intoxicant and I thought it would at least get me slightly pleasantly intoxicated.”
“It makes me feel sleepy.” laughed Kadambari and rested her head on his shoulder.
By now Arjun dragged so hard that there was a little flame emerging from the opposite end. In his mind he thought ‘smoke up with beautiful woman by the sea, check.’ as he ticked off the thought on his imaginary things-to-do-before-I-die list. Next on the list was ‘make love to beautiful woman’.
“You sure I am doing it right?” enquired Arjun.
“What did you expect?”
“Mm... I thought we were gonna have sex. With all the things they say on TV and the movies, I thought we would wake up in some abandoned house on Wednesday afternoon.”
“Mad or what?” she laughed and took the joint from his fingers.
“Bah. Make me another one.” He gave her the longer Davidoff.
There’s something about smoking up that’s uncannily bonding. It’s like being on a nude beach, stripped off of every worldly possession, everything that connects you to a bigger melting pot of people. Exposed for every naked scar on the pure flesh of a human conscience, Kadambari and Arjun bonded like never before. Before the evening, they had talked mostly in cyber chat rooms or blabbered through lazy nights and lonely afternoons on five-hour-phone-calls. These are times of a communication revolution and physical meetings are a rarity between even the closest of chums.
“Tell me why do you smoke weed?” asked Arjun, not so much because he really wanted to know, just to break the silence which Kadambari had funnily grown comfortable into.
“All you want is for me to keep talking eh?”
“No, I really want to know, because here I see this wonderful woman, trying to inspire a generation of people who were left to fend for themselves. Left out by the government and forced to work at a young age. I ask what could be more satisfying than watching a whole class of beaten down kids looking up to you as their guardian angel. I ask what better drug could there be than the faith in the eyes of a stranger.”
“Well, if you put it that way, I smoke up because it reminds me of Gregory. I don’t know if you’ve read Shantaram...”
“I haven’t.”
“Do read it. Gregory is the greatest, most romantic guy in the world today. He is what I want to be. He is my role model and I could marry the guy without thinking twice. Of course he was a drug dealer, a Mafioso, a man who could do anything. But he is a free man in a world where most of us pretend to be free. To be chained to a sea of market statistics and to not even know about it, is what gives us the illusion of safety, the illusion of freedom. Reasons and alibis abound in a world where what you pay is what you get. But who sets these prices and what good would it do to you are questions left for the answering machines of corporations that only want to sell you stuff that they have in stock, as opposed to things that you really need. Things like weed.”
“How poetic!” interfered Arjun, just to show that he was listening.
“Yes. And Greg is a person who’s escaped prison, travelled half way across the world and found peace in a place most people see as hell. Colaba jhopadpatti. And every time I see my kids, I see their souls touched by the Gora who spent years living among them, as one of them. I see distant scars of wounds healed by his soothing hands; I see my mind flip through pages of the novel — so passionately penned by him — every time threads of smoke rise before my eyes.”
“Rise before my eyes, Wah! Your poetical prowess proves progressing per para.” comic timing was one thing he had no control over. He would crack a quack every time he found himself in an odd situation. As for this situation Arjun was jealous.
“Shut up! I thought you really wanted to know.” sighed Kadambari, “It’s getting late, I have to go.” There was a moment’s pause where they were gauging every change in each other’s facial expression. Neither spoke but both were looking intently for any signs of unassumingness. This was the closest they’d been all evening. Sitting next to each other, staring wordlessly into eyes which hid nothing because they were too busy spotting signs of mistrust in a face-to-face mindreading contest. Before normalcy kicked in, they burst out with a thunder of laugher.
And this is how they opened up. The conversations that followed were illogically nonlinear and innocently unfeigned.
