Short Story – Perceptions, Deceptions
Photo credit: demondimum from morguefile.com
It was a perfect morning. Dhruv woke up after a 10 hour sleep and felt refreshed, energized, ready! Best time to get stoned, he thought. He looked at the watch and realized that he had quite comfortably missed the morning again. Time for him was like an obsessive ex lover, he ignored her without a blink, she on the other hand kept hounding him and was always around, never letting go. He checked his messages, there was one from Patrick ‘Gonna come in the afternoon. Keep some hash. Good man’.
Dhruv smiled. Stoners always find other stoners. Guess it’s a group thing. He went up to his neighbour’s room, pushed the door open, went straight to the 2nd bedroom to the left, opened the cabinet, took out the little white box and found the shiny black ball he had hoped to find. Nature’s very own, straight from Manala. “Bhai ye Super cream hai Super cream ! “, he remembered and laughed. He cut out stuff worth 2 joints, kept the ball back and went back with a child’s smile on his face. Drugs do that. Make you happy. They also make you go crazy, but people don’t tell you that.
“Abe boom kar na, bhenc**d kitna bolta hai ! ”, cried Patrick, quite evidently irritated by Dhruv’s constant blabber about something he had heard or seen or read, which he apparently wanted to share at the very moment as he held a marble chillum in his hands. “BAM BHOLE”, he declared, touching the chillum to his head thrice. He squatted down, held it in his hand like those Babas you hear of, and when visiting temples in the north, see in a corner, amid some firangis, and considerable smoke. The chillum came to life with a deep red glow, as Dhruv’s lungs pulled with all their tar-infected might. Patrick took the chillum greedily, took one long pull and returned it . As the THC spread through his blood, releasing copious amounts of dopamine in the system, he relaxed, laying his head back on the pillow.
“Reality is just an illusion created by the lack of intoxication“, he said, as he stretched his hand out for the chillum. Patrick was loyal to Mary, and she had been loyal to him. He knew he would have to end it sooner or later, he just didn’t have the heart to. Dazed, and a little confused, they sat in the room listening to Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast, when they heard a voice, “ KUDA !!! BHAIYA KUDA HAI ????? ” .
Dhruv got up, quite perturbed that someone had disturbed his reverie. He opened his door’s room, releasing the smoke from the room outside, which shone with a tinge of blue in the sunlight streaming in.
Two little boys stood at the main door, each carrying a trash bag, bigger than either of them, and dirtier too.
“TU KUDA LENE AAYA HAI?”
“HAAN BHAIYA !”
“JAA BAHAR BALCONY KE KONE MEIN PADA HOGA”
Dhruv returned to the room, a little suspicious of the boys, “Dude somebody’s been stealing my clothes. I think it’s my maid, maybe she sent the boys here to flick some. She probably hid some clothes and now these kids are gonna take ‘em ”. Patrick listened to the over-imaginative mind of his much stoned friend, “There is no conspiracy here. Just kids who’ve come to collect some garbage. Your clothes are probably in the room somewhere, have you seen the trash lying around???”
Dhruv sat silently listening to Patricks’s explanation of what the actual problem was, but it didn’t strike him as much of an opening statement since the facts were that his clothes were missing, and circumstantial evidence was there to prove that his maid was indeed one of the main accused. BOSTON LEGAL. A smile rose across his face in fond memory, but not before Patrick’s voice shattered the screen, “Oye chu**ye ! Chillum jala na!!! ”. As Dhruv was about to bring it to life, both the garbage boys cried out in unison, “BHAIYA PAISE !!! ”. The flame dies, the chillum cries, as Dhruv must now, rise.
“Kya kitna paisa???”
“bees rupee ”
“To firse aana na, 4 baar aur aana aur fir sau rupee le jaana”
“100 RUPEE ???”
“Haan haan sau ka note denge”, Patrick shouts from inside the room, introducing the visual into the picture. Subtle, yet effective. Patrick waits for a response.
“Theek hai bhaiya !”
As Dhruv entered the room, for a brief moment between him opening his room’s door and slamming it shut, Patrick caught a glimpse of the two boys, one a scruffy looking kid of ‘bout 6, the other a bit older, both with huge smiles on their faces, the 6 year old writing out the number 100 in the air, gesturing to the big guy that soon they would get 100 bucks, poore 100 rupee, khud ke kamaye hue sau rupee.
Patrick smiles, gets all filmi, and starts imagining these two kids, rising up the unfair social ladder, through hard work and honesty. How the boost from getting this first job helps them go to other places, do other things, work their way through. Returning the chillum, he tells Dhruv, “Dude you missed this awesome moment. They were both so happy they got the job. I could see the smiles on their faces, the joy in their eyes. This is a new beginning for them. Probably their first job, and we’ve become an integral part of their journey. I felt nice man, I felt good about helping them.”
His face emerges from behind a cloud of smoke, “I know what you’re feeling brother. Im gonna help these kids. After some time, I’m gonna raise it to thirty bucks for the trash. Will probably give them one of my old t-shirts. Wouldn’t fit them, but im sure they’ll do something with it. That’s what this country needs. Hardwork and honesty. And those two boys are our next generation.“
Both Patrick and Dhruv, happy for the boys, then decide to listen to some Blue Oyster Cult and get more stoned. After about half an hour, Patrick gets up, stretches his legs, tells Dhruv that he’ll meet him in college tomorrow, opens the room’s door and has barely stepped outside into the lobby when he sees it.
Infront of him, at the flat’s entrance, lies a pile of garbage, which obviously wasn’t there earlier. He snaps his fingers at Dhruv and points towards the garbage. Dhruv jumps up and rushes towards the flat door, as an agony filled scream escapes him,
“THOSE F**KING RAT BASTARDS !!!!!.
NOT ONE PAIR LEFT !!!! ”, at which point Patrick’s gaze shifts to the shoe stand beside the flat door, which stands empty and alone, except of course for all the garbage that now lies beside it. He laughs at himself as he realizes the con that’s been played out.
“300 bucks for the Nike”, says the elder one to a potential customer. Turning to the younger one, who has two pairs of Levis in front of him, he says “ what’s the value of 100 bucks these days ???? One plate chicken biryani here, at chandni chowk, costs 40 bucks !!! What idiots !!! And did you notice they were stoned ! What a shock it’d be when they come to know !!! “
He laughs out loud, then returns his gaze to the market to scan interested people and entice them with cheap deals, as the younger one remembers Shahid’s advice –
Paifa kamane ke Do Raafte hote hai… Ek Fort-Cut aur Dufra Chota Fort-cut!
