Earth on heaven

A man goes to a shrink to check if he has gotten over his ex.

Shrink: Do you get jealous when you think of her with another man?

Man: But I have always wanted to see her with other men.

You get the drift when the jokes go like this. We were three guys, slightly drunk or stoned, or both, all of us caught in challenging phases of relationships – jilted, starting off or in one. Connected by different aspects of filmmaking, we used to bump into each other at various production houses and post production studios around Delhi. Occasionally meeting at each other’s pads for a tipple, we finally made a weekend off for a short road trip – armed with barrels of cold beer, truckloads of potato chips and nitrogen-flushed nuts, a few joints and a drone camera, we hit the road. One had a wife whose illness drove him to hookers but her unwavering affection and loyalty made him a remorseful fucker, the other was in a facetime relationship with a newly single woman whom he hadn’t met since school and me harrowed by the spectre of a perpetual breakup.

In the democracy of daybreak, life’s little tribulations were allowed to sleep on, hangovers were overlooked. We exited the national capital region leaving behind the halo of the dusty haze surrounding the construction going on in Noida that never seemed to get done. The inordinate delays were apparently caused when the builders awaited booking money to see through their projects. Too many billboards announced properties with ‘Green’ on them – a pointer to what was missing. We were all pretty kicked; hitting the road has that quality. It is like meditation on horsepower – change is immediate and forthcoming. There is a lot happening you can look forward to. Like Julia Albu, the stupendous 80-year old from SA who set out to meet the Queen in her old Toyota, a little anger helps but it is largely the adventure. Nobody awaits the return of the new you like yourself. When I am alone, I have my rites – I park the car at dusk and see the sun to its home. When I hit the road first thing morning, I howl like a wolf. My friends joined the howling creating a Ferris wheel on the highway.

The guy who hadn’t seen his girlfriend for three decades was finally going to. Due to her politician father and the brother who indulged in related badassery their meeting was going to be held aboard an airplane flying between Raipur and Mumbai.

“She wanted to know if she could bring along her son too,” he said.

“What did you say?” Having been a stepfather once I knew the significance of the request.

“I told her there would be enough time to meet the boy later. Right now we should focus on remembering each other.”

“You might have blown it,” I remarked faint in the whoosh of the wind through the windows. We were on the Yamuna Expressway.

Still, for their long-planned airborne meeting, the woman came with her son. My friend was too caught up peering over his shoulders to take note of the boy. His behaviour might not have been a model of gallant fearlessness, he rued later. She went back to the States where she came from, where she lost her husband to an exotic maid. She wasted no time blocking my friend on social media which had brought them together. Slightly antediluvian when it came to handling sorrows, my friend took to the bottle with a vengeance. Some hope to douse dumpster fires with alcohol.

There is a name for ‘insensitive and moronic by nature’ – it is ‘ex.’

We took the exit to Mathura as we decided to head to Vrindavan on a whim; the lassi shops near the Iskcon Temple served fare as delish as Malu Trevejo churned in a cup. Mathura, being Sri Krishna’s birthplace, brimmed with pilgrims. You just had to slow your car and touts swarmed your windows. I remembered travelling here for the first time years ago with a friend. By the time I picked her up from the railway station during the wee hours of the morning she had offers for the best weed, cheap rooms, company for the night – from both sexes, and of course, great lassi. All from a guy who claimed to be attending evening college. She said if I were any later than I was she might have taken him up on some of the services on offer. These backpacking NRIs! Well, the sanctity of railway platforms as education hubs was just dawning.

Subtleties had given way to more direct approaches. Guys approached our car and introduced themselves as students; the tour-guiding was for fee-raising.

On the way to the lassi shops, we passed by Pagal Baba Mandir modelled after the Disney castle. We debated on our favourite temples in Vrindavan – there were 1,000-odd around the holy town. I voted for the Prem Mandir – psychedelic when the whole structure was lit up with multi-coloured lights at night. My two pals, I suspected recently religious by dint of life’s curveballs, opted for the powerful Banke Bihari – where Sri Krishna stood on folded legs and played his flute. The approach to this famous temple featured some of the most mouth-watering sweetmeats made from the freshest milk.

As we neared the ancient structures flanking the Banke Bihari, well-fed monkeys gambolled about with a gay abandon, their asses glinting pinker in mischief. A few hapless pilgrims were pleading with some sneering simians to return their sunglasses – cola and chips were offered in exchange. The monkeys themselves strutted about the high walls with their goggled noses up in the air like minor celebrities. Visitors held on to their shades firmer than they did their wives or children; I tucked my Prada deep into my underwear. At the temple my friend who visited the massage parlour hub of Delhi, Defence Colony, prayed for an eternal dilemma – he loved one but made love to another. His forays into the many decrepit massage places were his staple mirabile dictu as well as his encounters with masseurs from different parts of India. He would imitate the false coyness and communication gaps with elan. At the holy city though he followed a more poignant line.

“My Father chose my wife for me,” he said as we sat later surrounded by sweetmeats. “She is a great woman, the best wife anyone could have. But a guy has his needs too.” Their unceasing efforts to have children bore no result and surgeries only complicated things.

Had my ex known ‘baldenfreude’ was a joy she wouldn’t have left me for the guy with thinning hair.

Being on the road gives you iftar-like appetite which you realise only when you pass by a dhaba signboard featuring delectable dishes or when someone burps or brings up the time. My windscreen was a canvas transcribing the colours of the evening sky. The coral tracing a flame through ruffled magenta had us all in a trance and we forged on. The air was pregnant with humidity of the first monsoon showers round the corner, stretches of farmland green with canal irrigation extended on both sides of the road between strips of barren earth gasping. Shrunken men led their shrivelled oxen, beedi smoke trailing. We were all exhausted from the exertions of the day including a tyre burst along the concrete Expressway. Loquacious mornings had given way to laconic afternoons. Our eyes were glued in different directions but met occasionally. When we did, we smiled happily, genuinely grateful for each other’s company.

It shouldn’t be just the impermanence of things that should make you cherish them but how you were also chosen to experience them. Whether it is youth, loves or heartbreaks, a film made well or losing a job, having to go hungry sometimes but being able to afford an occasional Laphroaig, glorious sunsets, hitting high speeds, a bunch of good friends or freshly cut paneer.

“Guys, keep an eye out for a good dhaba.” 

(All the photographs are taken with my DJI Phantom 4 Pro between Delhi and Agra, along the Yamuna Expressway.)