Travel is like Love

I’m sure you’ve been in love. Yeah, you have. What does that word mean? Is it about nailing (alright making love) the same person for the next one year & then get so bored that you give up on nailing all together or finding someone else and rinse-repeat. That’s one way of looking at it.

Two greatest questions humankind ever faced: Why do girls become sluts & men become studs for doing the exact thing and what on earth is this love we all keep talking about?

Love, I’ve felt it in my life. It is visceral, sudden; all-encompassing that we lose our minds. Some lose so spectacularly, they end up married. Oh, boy.

And whosoever says it only happens once is clearly ugly, fat, and broke. Because love is also shallow, it is for the young, pretty & rich people. 100 thousand Bollywood films are the living proof.

You know what I want to do this moment. I want to watch this movie, Definitely Maybe, with her. But I’m out & she’s out. At different places. So instead of going home from the station on my return, I will drop at her place. I will be dirty & looking like a pig but I will take my chances. And we will watch that movie. Sitting down with her like we’ve sat so many times before. Yet every single time I find something more, something else about her, about us, about the movie. Is that love, I don’t know. And even if it is, it ain’t forever. Nothing is. So instead of thinking that I will be stinking from the 33-hour marathon train ride, I will still go & ring her door bell. And I will hold her till she whispers in my ear ‘If I hold you any longer I may pass out or……. die’ I will smile, let go & let her live.

Till that moment I’m away with people who still don’t want to murder me at sight. I just left Ahmedabad, said goodbye to someone who’s so different to me, yet close. It wasn’t easy but I had to leave. He asked me several times to cancel Bombay & stay on. How amazing to hear that from a lad. It is heartening to hear such words in the time when I’m in the middle of a great tragedy in my life. I have been served restraining orders by the wife & the family of the person I love the most. It breaks my faith in humankind which constantly sides with hate & flushes love.

I will be in Bangalore soon & I will be hanging out with my dear old friend’s pregnant wife. That’s what dreams are made of. I fell down & now I’m back on my chair. I think I will also watch TV soaps with her & listen to her crib about the family-in-law. On second thoughts I should have cancelled & stayed on in Ahmedabad.

Anyway I’m already in Bombay. Here’s the funny thing, I got cancelled on by my close friends & the people who aren’t really close to me stood up, went the distance to meet me over & over.

I met a friend who just finished reading my second book. She said she loved it. This almost killed me as even I haven’t read my book. She gave me a fat book to read as gift. It is so big, it scares the crap out of me. I plan to use it as a weapon. She is a vegan. She’s a Nazi, kills people who kill/eat animals. I don’t feel safe.

We lay looking into the skies at an expansive park in Marine Drive & almost got shat on by promiscuous pigeons & run over by the burka-clad ladies who were blind as sober Salman Khan. Did I hurt any sentiments or are we no longer behaving like three year old thin-skinned bitches.

I was out today at this joint called Candies in Bandra with my incurably virgin buddy. It is a huge, swanky, bohemian place with some of the most awful food & awesomest atmosphere in Bombay. Then we went to Carter Road. There were chics so pretty; it is impossible that collectively they would have read one book.

Next day I started slow & then it took off. Two of us entered Café Mondegar in Colaba. We ate less, talked more, drank a lot more beer & went to the loo even more like we had a secret dirty date in there. I enlightened her about the legendary traditions of glory holes, tea-bagging & sword-crossing (while peeing).

Then we moved out to eat some food but ended up at the best bar I’ve been in this country: Social. Food got dumped again for vessels of long island ice teas. We shared four of them & then I was back in the loo-queue. Upon the request of my friend a just-arrived Canadian bloke let me use the loo with him. Then I chatted him up till it was appropriate for two blokes to in a darn bar.

We left the bar at some unearthly hour. It got shut. We ate at some wee-hour joint around the corner. Then we did something no one can dare to do in the capital city of incredible India. We held hands & walked the streets at 3am. We walked for an hour & then got a Taxi. She went home, I caught the train. Fell asleep & missed my station. Eventually I reached home & slept at about 7am.

I missed my 11am alarm & my meeting with a friend. She waited for two hours. She is hot & well-endowed. She must have felt rotten. I felt like a bitch when I woke up. I did damage control by meeting her next day at her place. She made lunch of various meats. Oddly, she was solemnly observing Lent. It’s a Christian thing; in short, no meat.

Then she dropped me at the train station. I almost missed my train to Bangalore as we couldn’t find auto rickshaws as most were off-duty & drunk due to Holi.

As I looked out into the city I was leaving behind from the window of my moving train. I was like why the fuck the trees look so blurred. Then it dawned upon me. I had forgotten my spectacles on my friend’s dining table.

Unlike the trees my memories of Bombay are crystal. Good or bad or boring, I’m grateful to have lived in the city, met it’s people & the darn stink that never stops like the ray of hope that floats in its skies.