Running around in circles...

It rained cat and dogs; the city was drowning in the rain water. Sheetal stood by the window sill, staring at the rain battering the window in her cabin, high up on the 9^th floor of a sky rise in Mumbai. The cabin was filled with aroma of fresh and hot coffee, which she held tightly in her hands. She was holding on to something else as well- tears.  

The city & her mind had a similarity that day. Both were drowned it its own sense. The former in merciless rains and the latter in, well you will know as you read along. She took a deep breath as if it were her last; secretly she did wish for the same. There are days in your life when you feel that nothing is right. And then there are others when you feel that the whole universe is conspiring against you. Today the universe was playing its naughty games with Sheetal.

As her name indicates, Sheetal was Ms. Cool. If she was perturbed one can safely conclude that may be world is coming to an end. So, was the world coming to an end?

When the mobile phone rang it was as if she came out of a trance. But now nothing mattered that much. Not after something so colossal. Her father used to say, “When there is a war of mind and heart, listen to the brain.” With a deep sigh she attended the call.

Life is mundane when you are all grown up and a job as a training manager, just personifies the same. She muttered something into the phone and headed out of her cabin. She had to address a batch of new trainees. It was not on top of Sheetal’s list of favorite things to do. Every time the same thing told just that the faces are different.  It surprises her how batch after batch people have different faces, names, background but almost the same predictable nature and reaction. They always seemed eager to learn. She knew this business enough to understand that most people were acting like they are interested and the rest didn’t even take that effort.

Humans just hate change. It frightens the hell out of us. We may claim that we shift cities and countries in search of adventure. But it is just an attempt to run away from our frightening past. A past that we feel will die when we move away. Mind is the fastest transporter. It needs just nano seconds to travel to a parallel universe and back all this in middle of driving, talking to your boss and signaling your kid to wear the seat belt. So no matter how far you run and where ever you try to hide, the past won’t leave you. The good memories leaves you longing for it and the bad ones make you beg for it to die. So running away is no solution.

Sheetal learnt it the hard way. She too had tried to run away from it all. She ran 6,708 km and yet her memories followed her close like her shadow. She was born in Dubai, a shopper’s paradise. Her parents were the typical culturally confused NRI’s. She had done her UG from BITS in Dubai. Her first instinct was to leave the coup and head back to her country.

There were two reasons for that: her lust for India with its bizarre and free lifestyle. Next,   she wanted to go away from the insane habitat that she lived in. For her the monsoons of Mumbai were never a burden, it was an expression of freedom that she enjoys. But soon the magic of the city was waning. Lust doesn’t last long, does it?

Past one week she regretted she childlike solution or leaving home. Just because you leave home it doesn’t mean that you have complete freedom. That is an illusion and if you believe in it then you are as naïve as a kid waiting for Santa on a cold Christmas night.

There was no great family bonding in her house. It was more like everyone fend for yourself. Lately, the fact was more evident. Her parents were in love and eloped to Dubai in search of new life when they were young. Love too dies, may be out of boredom or may be because it just has run its full course. The reasons seem complicated but it all fall to one point- boredom.

Man as a social animal was not meant for monogamy. God didn’t intend to make him that way. The social norms that are imposed on us shape us against nature. However cultured we might be at times the monkey in us rises. Her parents now did indeed seem like monkeys especially when they were fighting.

It was this fights that she ran away from in hope that when she goes back in a year or two their love would rejuvenate itself. But, she was wrong, very wrong. It so happened that the fights became louder and sourer, because the child was no more in the house. It came to a point in which they wanted to part.

Her parents were coming to India to apply for their divorce. They say that young minds are impressionable. After years of being nothing but a silent spectator to domestic unhappiness, Sheetal lost all faith in love or marriage or any such relationship.

With all this running in her mind, she completed the address to new trainees and answered the banal questions from fresh batch of eager faces. She tried to up her spirits to give the best smile possible and with a soulless all the best, she left to the airport to meet soon to split parents.