Vicky and Vidya - Chapter 2: Sky is the Limit

 

 

‘So you did not even care to talk to her when you first saw her?’ I asked Vicky doubtfully. ‘Trust me. I did not. It took me another two months to meet her again at another function. This time I had a brief chat with her. Even on this occasion, I must clarify that there was only a tiny bit of attraction but I had not fallen in love with her completely. Fate presented me with yet another occasion exactly after one year when she came home with Adi uncle. This time we got to spend a long 1 hour session with each other almost in private and when she was about to leave I felt as if I will be missing someone very near and dear to my heart.

I knew I had met the love of my life. I could hear Elvis sing right into my lugholes “Then suddenly I saw Vidya….and I was caught like a moth in the flame…..Vidya is her name”.’ ‘Interesting!!!’ I did not have any other reaction to offer since I always deem it a sin to disturb the flow of narration. Esp. when a lovelorn chap is brooding over the positive revels of his past and for certain, having known the climax, I knew that his high-spirited state would not last too long. Not even in the narrative!!!!

‘Then it was time for action bro.’ He continued with the same vigor. ‘I immediately started devising means to get close to Vidya for which I knew Adi uncle was my only channel of communication. Without much ado I could easily gather that we had common interest, which I had developed newly, of course, in Indian classical music, old Hindi cinema songs and Ghazals. Nothing could have brought us as close as these interests.

I sought an appointment on a Friday morning to see his collection of music, totally forgetting about the lectures and lab session in the college, on that day. If you remember I used to be a regular absentee during first year of engineering, ha ha’. He made the last statement with the pride of an old man boasting of his teenage love adventures (or misadventures!!!).

‘To know whether you attended the class or not, there is a basic requirement that I must have been present in the college. Dude, having known my history, how could you assume that I knew you were absent?’ I issued an equally sharp rebuke without giving away my bragging rights of being the most notorious character in the college. ‘Oh. I am sorry. I forgot that I am talking to the legendary Deepak Paramashivan, who in his first year had won NSSR, NSAR and many more accolades, in addition to the wrath of many a psychomaniac professor.

Anyways, I bunked the class and went to Adi uncle’s house bang on time. This was the only occasion I could not say ‘Heaven can wait’. Adi uncle being a retired person was sitting in his reading room leisurely cataloguing his personal collection of over more than 1000 audio cassettes, which in my opinion is the most magnificent mélange of many musical genres, arranging them in the racks assigned to each genre. He welcomed me cheerfully and asked his wife Annapoorna maami to give me something to eat and make tea for both of us. I said ‘breakfast venda maami, ippo than saaptuttu vandhen. Verum tea porum’ (I just now had breakfast. So tea is enough).

I was already busy planning how I should convey my love to Vidya and convince her that I am the best guy for her. I somehow had a premonition that this relationship was going to click and a zillion thoughts rattled my brain with all the futuristic plans such as which hall is ideal for our marriage? Where should we go for honeymoon? What should we name our kids? Etc. I was on cloud nine bro. I was feeling restless. I was asking myself ‘Do I really want tea and music now?’

In no time Adi uncle called Vidya to the reading room, as if he heard my mind speak!! Or if under the spell of restlessness I had spoken it out loudly, I am not sure. “Vidya kaNN. Vicky is here. He is also interested in classical music and old hindi cinema songs. He has come to see my collection. We might spend some time till noon listening to some of these tapes. You could join us if you are free”. The very thought of beholding her was already giving me horripilation. ‘I am coming maama. Please give me a moment’. I could hear a honey sweet voice reply from the adjacent room.

Bro I just cannot verbalize how I felt then. I was about to behold MY Vidya with whom I am going to spend the rest of my life. I had fixed my gaze at the door when she walked in like the angel of MY dreams, sheen of MY soul and a virtuous…..’. Vicky continued his narration, but I did not pay attention to it, because his usage of “MY Vidya” had already given me enough uneasiness and the qualifiers that followed, that were very counter intuitive of the character of this guy who I had known for many years, made my uneasiness only worse.

I have experienced this kind of shocks many times. I have figured out the reason for it too. It is mainly because I usually do not judge people and be careful with them, unless of course they are of national importance like Pappu, Modi et al  ‘If love can make a man behave like a monkey, it can as well make a poet out of a pipsqueak’ was the only justification I could come up with for this precipitous poetic prowess of our buddy Vicky.

It occurred to me that our dude had gone too fast and furious and had messed up all his future plans because of his haughty indifference to the wisdom, which I remember a famous mathematics professor at IISc would invariably throw in his class, “You might say if I had a million dollars I would buy a house, a car and do this…that. But before you prepare this ‘to do’ list you must ensure that you have a million dollars to make sense. In the same way to make sense of our claims we must therefor ensure that we have a vector space, a linear transformation defined on it and Eigen vectors that…” Sorry. For a moment I forgot that our interest is Vicky not vector spaces.

Anyways, this professor’s wisdom may make perfect sense to ordinary people who have resigned to their fates and buried themselves deep in the mundane, vicious cycle of life: “Work/writing codes, earn, eat, feed, sleep with…procreate..” and have no time for imagination, vigor and romance. But our buddy was impractically romantic. His plans for his future with Vidya were just like that of a man who is unable to manage two meals a day, planning his day hoping he would soon become Donald Trump’s son-in-law!!!

But that’s the beauty about dreams isn’t it? You are not smitten either by pain or pleasure that you experience in your dream state since you remain only a witness to it and do not directly partake in all the churlish adventures, courteous canoodling or any such surrealistic activity that constitute dreams. When you take a leap of faith and convince yourself that the so called ‘realities of life’, of which, because of illusion (Avidya is the word for it), you think you are an active participant, is also nothing but a BIGGER DREAM (Maaya as it is called in the Advaita philosophy), you are hailed as a realized soul. Let us leave the details for philosophers to fill up. In any case, what’s the harm in dreaming? When you are dreaming why limit yourself within the realm of possibilities of the visual world which you live in? Your inspiration should be Harry potter and LOTR not Johar or Bansali. Declare the sky as your limit or even beyond and state your desire. Let the lady luck decide the consequences for you. After all, it is that, in which you can only desire but cannot dictate, you call ‘Life’. Note of Caution: When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part