Difference

Well, it's definitely been a while since I've been here. I don't even know if anyone is going to read this, really, so who am I talking to? Anyway, here's a story I wrote in a desperate attempt to do something constructive with my spare time (I've had a lot of that lately), and to make myself feel worse about life in general. Here's your chance! Please criticise, rip, tear, and bite into this stuff. Cheerz! :)

Difference

I

“What am I going home to?” thought Gabriel as he walked back from l’Alliance Française to his dirty, overcrowded apartment, on the sixth floor of a dilapidated building around a kilometer away. It was nearly seven in the evening, and the sun had just about snuggled itself between two distant hillocks. Gabriel, treading carefully on the pavement, couldn’t help but wonder if this was it. It was one of those moments in time when everything came to a sudden halt; the sun fell asleep in the arms of those conniving hills, the traffic ceased to rush by, bicycles froze and people stopped marching away. At that very moment, to himself, it was only he that was alive. For once, it was only his troubles that mattered.

“There are too many people I live with,” he told himself. They were all different, all terribly human; it was difficult to understand where the dilemmas actually arose, and who had resolved it all. Sometimes, the problems themselves faded away into the darkness, the void that existed between and separated them; and every once in a while, they just lay forgotten, for there wasn’t enough time! The people he lived with were all men, of course, all twenty years or so of age; had they been women, they wouldn’t have lived through it for two whole years. That was one of the first things Gabriel had learnt in college – no man can remember, resent, and hold a grudge like a woman can.

“Why should I be the one to realize that it’s just because we’re different?” he nearly shouted into the stillness. Indeed, he was aware of the fact that not everyone considered an opinion to be a mere ‘opinion’, a judgment only a ‘judgment’. Only if people understood that disputes stemmed from differences in human nature, and that it was useless to grudge someone their own identity! Therefore, Gabriel often found himself feeling exceedingly foolish and let down when he’d forgive in expectation of reciprocal clemency, and of course, be the recipient of only hatred and mockery. No one is mature anymore in the true sense of the word, he told himself. If people were mature, they would forgive, they would forget, and they would not hold on to things past.

“And that is why modern society will crumble!” Gabriel found himself whispering rather shallowly to the still passers-by, hoping that they, at least, would understand his plight. He, who of his own accord, as one in over a billion Indians, had figured it all out! “But you cannot do anything,” he told himself sternly. It was useless even thinking about it. No matter what one did, there would always be someone to blame another, someone to hold another guilty for his opinion, someone to kill another over a mug of beer. And there would be only one Gabriel.

And so the young man trudged along, the world around him slowly coming back to life. He shook his head, wishing he could be like the others – wishing that he could resent, hate and not forgive; perhaps then he wouldn’t wonder what he was going home to, for he would be a part of it.

II

Rajeev puffed and panted as he climbed his way up six stories, the darned electricity having gone yet again. “Why can’t Pune housing societies have power backup?” he asked nobody in particular, glaring most ineffectually at the elevator grill. Yes, it must be said that Rajeev hated Pune, a Maharashtrian city as famous for its educational opportunities as for its cultural diversity. And then, of course, there were the bad things it wasn’t famous for, as Rajeev loved to discuss time and again – how about the orthodox landlords? And then there were the crazy motorcyclists, who weaved in and out of cars piled on top of one another; the tiny strips of roads in between potholes that appeared each monsoon, and grew by the day.

No, he really didn’t like the city. And one out of five years of his legal education was yet to be borne! How would he pull through another year of the madness, the pollution, the drinking binges, and all the other crazy things law students did? As he panted his way up the final flight of stairs, he realized that he had had enough of it all. His own lifestyle had begun to drive him up the wall; the others, of course, didn’t help. Why were things this difficult? All the house music that he loved seemed to echo his existence and lose its rhythm.

“Five years for a law degree is too long,” he decided, as he pushed open the door to his apartment, untying his shoelaces. By the end of the second year, one had seen all the discotheques, drunk one’s self unto embarrassment, smoked up several hundred joints of the most mediocre marijuana, and often fallen in love as well. And that was it. What had he done during his third and fourth years? He simply couldn’t remember. There had been more alcohol, more clubbing, but his heart hadn’t been in it. It had become mechanical, a sort of a social necessity.

He took off his shoes, found his way to his bedroom, and collapsed on his bed in the utter darkness. “Gabriel should have been home by now,” he thought adding, “Why does he do all these things?” He was always running around to get to some class on time; and then there was social work, and general socializing that had nothing whatsoever to do with social work. Was this sensible? Rajeev, personally, couldn’t understand it. Why not choose one thing and deal with it properly? It was a sign of weakness to him, to be unable to choose; to be unable to appreciate something completely, to tear it apart for what it was worth, and to derive the utmost benefit. And that is why Gabriel was exceptionally good at most things, but the best at none. “It’s sad,” Rajeev thought, shaking his head. It must be difficult.

And what was so urgent anyway? What had Gabriel wanted to speak to him about? It must be one of those things. Gabriel was the pacifier, he always had been. He always chose the middle path, always tried to sort things out, and had that rare ability to be on each one’s side, though siding with none. Rajeev, suspicious as he was of everything, believed this to be hypocritical. Indeed, he believed that Gabriel was in fact a yes-man of the worst sort. He was too weak, too scared to retort or grudge or resent. He always bowed his way out, avoided the worst. He sat in a corner, and eyed everyone beadily; taking everything in and never revealing what went on behind his large brown eyes. And then, when the storm had passed, he slowly rowed over to all sides, and attempted to sooth everyone. Is this really not instigation?

So yes, Gabriel would have called him (Rajeev) home to pacify him. There had been a fight a few days past, an obscure event that one couldn’t even remember. It was hazy; Rajeev could see it in his head as if through smoked glass. In spite of its obscurity, it had left things dry. That was the thing about unresolved differences – they had this strange stench, and they sucked all the joy out of the immediate area, leaving behind a strange lurking blackness that couldn’t be seen, but could be felt. It was like there was a sudden vacuum, as if everyone had suddenly frozen inside. One suddenly felt like one was miles away from everyone else, even when in the same room. These feelings, Rajeev realized, could not be described, or even understood. And Gabriel hoped to understand all of that, and pacify him.

Rajeev smiled to himself, wondering how different Gabriel would be inside, overlooking the fact that these perplexing thoughts were, after all, human.

The sudden buzzing of his silent, vibrating mobile phone extracted him from his deep thoughts. Sid was calling. Why was he calling? They hadn’t spoken in days.

“Hello?” Rajeev was skeptical as he placed the mobile next to his ear.

“Dude? It’s me, Sid,” said the voice, sounding shaky and tearful.

“Yeah, I know it’s you. What’s been up?”

“Uh…dude, something terrible just happened…”

III

As Gabriel lay in the middle of the road, his destiny bleeding him dry, the wheels of the motorcycle that had hit him still whizzing, he couldn’t think of anything in particular. There were curious faces gathered all around him; he could see Sid crying on the phone, a few beggar children peeped at his messed up body through a maze of legs, their eyes wide with discomfort and confusion. The wheels wouldn’t stop turning, and the whizzing sounded hollow inside his head. He could see the blood flow from his side, finding its way through the gravel and potholes, ultimately meeting a little stream of water at the mouth of the gutter. He closed his eyes, trying to think of something, but disconnected images flashed through his head; the beggars’ eyes, the motorcycle approaching, a bouquet of lilies, a fight, his father laughing, Sid crying. And slowly, as the siren of an approaching ambulance beat around his head, the images slowly faded away into darkness; Gabriel lay motionless, dying, and wondering if he was dead yet.