Moving On – Part I

 Authors Note -

This is the first half of the last in a four part series of short stories both independent & inter related to each other.

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The faded yellow jeans were somehow managing to keep everything together.

They weren’t worn in four years since its purchase back when its owner bought clothes two sizes smaller and considered himself one size smaller than what he was. Over the years it served the function of the butt of some jokes than actual clothing. A latent acceptance to his five year old son’s call for change in his usual choice in fashion, the jeans only served its horizontally expanding master in the two by two trial room of the uptown lifestyle store he bought it from. That is until today.

At that moment, if you were to ask Amrish whether he was sitting or standing. The precise answer would be somewhere in the ballpark of leaning like plywood plank inching away slowly for its eventual horizontal fate, courtesy gravitation. His actual answer, in normal circumstances, would be somewhere between quiet boiling rage to a small groan. But a tight pair of faded yellow jeans is not worn by thirty five year olds under normal circumstances.

It was the kind of case most people surf over if and when such stories find their way in their weekly crime show. The kind of news that makes people go “Lagata Hai Aaj Kuch Mila Nahi”, when they see it on news channels. The kind of thing where everybody knows the steps involved and no ending is ever really a surprise. It was the case of simple extortion.

There was the first call which had started as if they were selling insurance. There was a point where Amrish almost asked for a brochure to be sent but the tone changed when someone was referred to as the “Bhai”. There was a squabble which assured Amrish that he had made a nice argument as to why he wasn’t interested in being extorted. He was expecting a second call from someone of the higher ranks but his wait was interrupted by call from his wife with a broken leg.

They had cornered her in the nearby mall’s parking lot, where she was getting into her car. Then came her call. Rasika sounded almost mellow but then again she was always a hard nut to crack, unlike her leg. What she was describing and her tone were in such contradictions that Amrish didn’t immediately correlate but confused thoughts were clouding his minds; which is why he avoided driving to the hospital. He went out, getting more light headed as the moments passed and tried to hail a cab. After a while, as sketchy links were being established he was screaming at every passing cab, car, rickshaw, truck. When he finally reached the hospital and after some loving inquiries were made, he blurted out about the extortion call. A night’s deliberation concluded with them being agreeable on being extorted.

The day after that came the second call. The date (three days after the call), place (the old temple at George’s Circle), amount (or atleast what would be the first instalment) and most uncomfortably the easily identifiable attire was communicated.

Amrish’s lean against the wall was now progressing towards an awkward angle so he elected to stand now but it wasn’t long before the feet started to sing. It was almost two hours since half past eleven which was the agreed time and there were no chairs here. One could sit on the ground but not in those jeans.

The stars in the sky had deemed today auspicious, which is why the crowd was in no mood of thinning. Amrish had picked a nice quiet corner (which in this place meant somebody won’t constantly walk over your foot) after His darshan was done and the Prasad was licked off. But his belly floating loosely over the rim of the jeans was demanding real food in no subtle terms, his shoulders were aching from bite of the heavy backpack and his head spinning from constantly going back and forth, looking for the man.

“Wait would it be a man” Amrish thought out loud. These gangs always had some girls in the background. Even that Abu Salman or whatever his name was had that heroine girl with him. They even made a film about that.

In parallel to remembering the film, his probing fingers checked the chains of his backpack as they did every minute. Then they took out his phone turned the screen on as they did every other minute, Rasika had called an hour ago. He would have liked to continue that call endlessly now, it was almost like they were on a secret mission. It was the most fun he had in the decade long marriage even when with her broken foot and related troubles. But as ten minutes turned to twenty, he realised he didn’t have anything new to say. A touch of sadness was starting to pollute the excitement so he cut her monologue short and said bye.

He sniffed his hands. They smelled of sandalwood and sweet milk. The Prasad’s smell had still not left. He rubbed his sticky palms on his jeans and smelled them again, no change.

His mind drifted away to what he remembered as the Abu Salman film and started feeling nostalgic about the time when he wasn’t being extorted which is when his gaze fell on a larger than life framed photo of Lord Krishna. There were many such photos hanging on the walls. But what caught his attention was that this photo had the lord draped in yellow cloth which brought him back to his crotch crushing reality.

He tried bringing his legs closer and closer but no relief was in sight. The sewn claws were digging into his thighs. He engaged in a slight of hand to extend the crotch cut downward without anybody noticing; which my dear madams and monsieur could be a dramatic moment for some action to start. The universe at that moment demanded to experience an action comedy of a man in tight faded yellow pants and the universe usually gets what it wants. As I said it usually gets what it wants, and thus it was an action comedy till the time bullets were fired and a man in yellow pants died but that comes afterwards.

If Amrish had looked at his old gold platted Titan watch, he would have seen that the second hand had just waved over twelve and started its journey for a new minute. But Amrish couldn’t check his watch at the moment as he had stretched his arms up and then back to throw off the stiffness that the heavy backpack was biting into his shoulders.

It was at this exact moment that a strong tug from back made him lose his balance. He tried to bring his arms forward but the force pulling him by tugging on his backpack was too strong. Amrish tried going sideways and started to hit some passer-by’s in his struggle. The people around him were confused about the situation and stood to see the circus in motion.

Amrish was running in a small circle, engaged in reverse fugadi with the unknown thief. He could make out that he was a thin young fellow and saw a fog of green every time he craned his neck but nothing more. He had now lost most of the control over his backpack which had slid around his elbows. The assailants grip was unshakable and Amrish finally remembered something important, which is when he decided to let go.

As he forced ahead the tug from back got stronger and Amrish’s arms gave way and snapped backward at an unnatural angle. He felt the weight of backpack leave his shoulders but such sensation was mostly blocked by the pain of making rubber bands out of muscles and bones.

During the struggle that lasted ten seconds, his adrenaline level was high and the backpack’s straps had increasingly tightened which cut off the blood supply and asked the nerves to go offline for a while. After the backpack was lifted, the floodgates opened and blood vessels and nerve impulses started their job; and the pain started its course with a set of cramps around his biceps.

The second hand of the Titan didn’t stop to ask about his master’s well being as it marked off the first quarter of the minute. Amrish lifted up his head and wrapped his arms around himself. People had now started to realise what had transpired before them and rushed towards Amrish to confirm. He dodged all questions and tiptoed to look over the heads of a gathering crowd.

Inspite of his aching arms and newly throbbing back, Amrish had an amused look on his face as he saw a thin young boy, in the most green coloured T-Shirt he had ever seen, swim his way upstream through waves of people moving against him.

Amrish had used the old ‘Its-bunch-of-newspaper-and-magazine-instead-of-money’ trick and the knowledge of him tricking his enemies was like Zandu Balm for his pain. Not quite stopping the throbbing pain but helping him along the way. He held that smile till the Titan watch’s second hand marked the beginning of journey through the wilderness of second half of the minute.

The thin young thief’s head, which was bobbing up and down, wrestling through the forward march of public who were trying to make sense of ancient history of thirty seconds ago, was knocked down by an invisible force. A scream and shifting shape of the waves diverted his attention to left of the thief’s original path.

Amrish eyes were scanning the entire area where people had now started to gather around forming a make shift fight ring. He couldn’t get there himself as the crowd around him was still pressing for answers about his brawl. Some yells and screams were coming out and Amrish could make out that the thief was now engaged in a fight with someone. Probably a good Samaritan trying to return his bag, Amrish thought. But the actual action was buried deep near the ground which was made opaque by the people gathered around. Amrish could only see the people now looking down at the fight and a definite blood lust which was forming in their eyes.

‘Damn, it must be one hell of a fight.’ Amrish thought.

As the watch’s second hand was five stroke away from signing off the third quarter, a gun-shot blasted away. The bang was doubled by the enclosed marble structure and echoed back over, mixing with screams of terrified people.

The makeshift fight ring broke apart and the blood lust dissolved into fear. Most of the people bolted towards the exit over these remaining five seconds. Some remaining including Amrish who were too scared or confused to look for the exit, had scattered and began his pilgrimage towards the walls or the sanctum sanctorum of the temple.

When the last quarter of the minute started, Amrish had made it to the wall and was feeling himself (unmindful, one might add of any of his pain) for any unwanted bullet holes. The woman standing next to him was calling out for someone.

As the first five seconds of the last quarter ticked off, he diverted his attention back to where the commotion started and it all looked like some bizzare Satanic ritual to Amrish. Everyone who was too scared or confused to head towards the door had taken to plaster themselves on the wall as if too dissolve and not be visible to whoever was wielding the gun. And slightly off centre in the middle of this gathering lay the half dead body of a man.

He was shot in the throat and blood sparyed out of the hole, nay crater, for last five seconds of his life. The slightly obese man had the look of a gutted pig, his face changed from rigidity of dealing with the pain to a slow acceptance of the finality of the moments and then it was plain. A face with no fear or concern that its owner was dead. The red sprayed on his clothes gaining more and more territory till it reached his midriff which is when Amrish saw it.

The man was wearing bright yellow pants. Something straight out of the 80s. The unrealness of all the action of the last fifty seconds compounded with the colour of pants that he shared with the dead man made him feel like he was in the twilight zone. A time warp. He felt as if he had breached the fourth dimension and the past, present and future were indistinguishable things. All his memories were infront of him and some images he had never consciously experienced till now were floating around him. It was a feeling truly awesome in force. It was the mother of all déjà vu.

But then his mind went back to the pants of all things. Yellow pants. And it made Amrish think,; and thought he did over the last five seconds of the minute ‘If they had my name, my phone number and even knew my wife well enough to break her leg; why would they need me wear something to identify me. It was the pick up man. The pick up man was going to wear yellow pants.’

At the last micro second when Amrish had realised his small misunderstanding which made him wear those good awful tight faded yellow jeans, the adrenaline rush from the past minute had started to fade away to give way to pain. The pain around his thighs from running in these pants and the aching torn arm muscles and back were spreading at a rapid rate.

Amrish didn’t notice him when he arrived, but a man with a small boy on his shoulder was now hugging the woman next to him. The man let the boy down, landing him on Amrish’s foot.

And so began another minute of pain.