I am early as usual. And trying to familiarise myself with the view.
The summer sun is wearily fading away. From this height one can almost see dark fatigue lines on its face; days are getting longer and warmer. Despite the hard work of the day sun is unusually calm today; tired, but content.
From a short distance away in the west, from behind the hills, maiden of evening is looking at sun invitingly, signalling to come home to her. But, duty bound to the length of the day sun is taking its time in its final retreat.
Wrapped in its dark grey satin, and laden with celestial jewels which are becoming lustrous by ever passing minute, nubile evening is displaying all the lures that only a new bride would have at her disposal. No wonder sun is blushing with reddish glow.
Chirping of birds in the vicinity and diffused hustle of city in the distance are creating a sweet mix of sounds, akin to rustling of satin and clinking of jewels as heard in a new bride’s room.
And, now, I begin to wonder about the one dimensionality of my romantic thoughts where purity dictates that there should be no paramours, but only bride. Conscience is the antidote to fun.
Nevertheless, all this is having a positive impact on my mood; or vice versa. Whichever way it may be, to sun and to me, the prospects of what lies ahead look promising. Like sun, I too have begun to feel calm and content, this evening.
My table is on the edge, just before the railing. Beyond, there is a straight fall of ten stories. Looking down I feel a cold tickle in my spine and lower legs.
They say fear in mild dosages works as a aphrodisiac. Must be true-for having looked down a few times the air already feels cooler to me; and my eyes have become sharper to the presence of female gentry on the restaurant floor.
The view below, amidst the surrounding skyscrapers where light is waning, is of a world situated in a bottomless well, which is slowly sinking with the setting sun.
And, as the sunlight is slowly retreating from those depths, the walls of sinking abyss are becoming porous with light oozing from the house windows.
These windows with leaking light, oddly, bring to my mind the image of discovery of a civilisation
in a valley surrounded by a deep jungle by a pilot flying at night as thousands of dots of fire on valley plain (nightly household cooking, perhaps!), only that in my case these dots are spread vertically.
This is my world! But, from this height, and at this hour, my own world is appearing alien to me. This sensation of being in a strange land is also adding to the sensation of fear a new ingredient
and making the concoction of fear more potent. More aphrodisiac! Air seems even cooler and women even more beautiful.
I feel disconnected with my routine, and bland reality.
My spirit has begun to levitate already, even without the wings of alcohol.
The setting is perfect for the date ahead.
And, I imagine that she arrives like evening walking in to a rose garden dressed in aquamarine, and bejewelled in her smile, and bathed in a fragrance that defines paradise.
I hold that thought, re-run the image in my mind a few times and smile- realising that, drunk on setting, my imagination is on a high. Wondering why, sitting in an urban jungle, I am thinking of water, sky full with constellations, verdant land, and roses, I ease further into the caress of sensual breeze. Its touch on my adrenaline doped body is what magic is made of. I am, for few moments, transported to an island landscaped with lush green hills under a clear summer sky, and valleys below have nothing but roses. I tenderly nurture the thought for a few more moments to prevent receded reality from creeping back. But not for long, for reality mutates faster than imagination (because it is free of medium, unattached, and relentless), and this time it breaches my thought defences in guise of a beep- my phone has incoming message.
She is running late. Another ten minutes before she arrives.
I am eager to see her but don’t mind waiting. Waiting is a form of controlled self denial, it will only intensify my desire to see her.
I signal to a waiter, a dark stocky guy in all black, including his silk tuxedo. By now sun is already in the embrace of his bride behind the hills, and darkness has quickly moved in to fill the space vacated by disappeared light; or, may be, looking at the swiftness with which dark has appeared, that’s just the colour of the void. Lighting in the restaurant is nothing more than a hint. In it waiter approaches like a shadow: two dimensional and featureless. There are a number of them, waiters, moving around in the dark alleys between the rows of table, like spirits in the underworld. His face is revealed to me when he is only couple of steps away from me; first the smile, then the eyes, and then rest of his facial features. I instruct him to usher the person arriving shortly, a lady, to my table; and tell him my name. Nodding he places two hard cover menus on my table and leaves; quickly blending into the darkness, again. Smile on my face is back thinking that how my hyper imagination is handing out magical touch to everything, first to the view and now to the people. And, then, suddenly It’s an epiphany moment: magic is never about what you do, but what happens to you; they are not even aware, it’s all happening to me.
The menus are lying there, on the bar like table. Smaller one over the larger one. If they are black, or dark brown, or dark blue, is difficult to say in the stingy light. But they smell of food, at least the large one, the food menu, of spicy food gone stale, where fragrance has aged into pungency and flavour in to sourness; a pattern mimicking life and its ageing. I open the large one, it is stained, with light brown or perhaps grey marks, marks which I suspect would look brownish yellow in clear light. I quickly close it and put back on the table, the sensation of touching the curry stained fingers of the last person who used it creeps me out. Anyway, I will do my best to avoid ordering food myself and honourably delegate it to my partner. In any case, my interest in food can be easily served by some French fries and a bit of green salad. Food for me is just a periodic nuisance that must be dealt with on timely basis, and with minimal effort. Out of all my senses tongue is least demanding; and eyes are the most. Even with hungry stomach I can go to sleep and not dream of food at all, but when I am surrounded with darkness I start imagining things with open eyes to satisfy them.
“You live through your senses,” said one wise man, “you’re summation of your thoughts,” said the other. And, that is exactly what separates my date and me. She lives in this world, I, mostly, in my head. Senses are mere instruments, signals they generate need interpretation. Magic of sensual joy is in the joyful interpretation of signals, and she is very good at it. She is gifted to be able to draw far more from new cloths, variety in food, and meeting new people; any thing new. She has instinctively discovered that if you don’t pollute the interpretation of these signals with too much intellect you can sustain the intensity of joy they bring to you at high level by generating them through new and varied sources. Like a child, she is blessed to enjoy every new toy . Essentially, she prefers to live life than to understand it. Takes it as it comes, including ‘hurting’ that it brings. Cries when hurt, stands and up moves on, forgets the hurt and remembers the joy, and chases it all over again without worrying about the hurting that invariably comes in tow. Her company is liberating for people like me who, truly of falsely, are prisoners of their brain. Besides, occasionally (perhaps as a favour to your ego), she still allows an intellectually stimulating conversation with her. But, that is only a role that she would play for you. And she plays it well, for she has the brains for it. It’s just that she never empowers brain enough to take control of her and corrupt her ability to happiness.
But, another ten minutes before my liberator arrives! Till then my thoughts have full control of my senses, and using them to search for meaning in everything around me.
Darkness has spread and the view which was continuously changing for last few minutes has stabilised now; and it is not so alluring in its static form. I lose interest in it and look around. People, mostly couples, are there; I also see a few families and two groups of men- friends I guess. Music is reasonably loud, and under it I can hear mixed up and suppressed sounds of laughter and chit chat. Place is largely full already, it’s Saturday. Poor lighting has reduced patrons to only shapes and shadows. I try to observe their broad movements to create an individual thought picture of some of them in my head, but all pictures come hazy and more or less same. Without clearer impression of their faces, body shapes, cloths, and delicate gesticulations, it is difficult to differentiate between them, except for the difference of men and women, with some accuracy. They together look like a separate species to me, whose members I can not identify individually. When you look at people from a distance (physical, or created by restricted observation) their individuality is lost on you and they are reduced to a mass. Your understanding of stranger is based on your ability to project your self on them, which you do by matching their expressed behaviour with your own; if for some reason (culture, facial features and body language, or for that matter because of darkness) your ability to do that is hindered than you can not identify them individually, they all look same to you. I quickly give up, for not enough details are available to observe them individually and engage my brain. And, to observe them as a group I am not far enough from them. However, before I could disengage myself and take a diversion into something else, some activity on the far corner of my long bar-like table catches my eye. It’s at the very end, near the wall, at a place some what better lit, I notice a couple. They are kissing.
Trained on easy access to pornography on internet, most of us do not get uncomfortable in such situations, and are also not averse to some voyeuristic pleasure. In fact, we tend to enjoy such often encountered sightings in bars and pubs with some titillation, and perhaps with a mild pride too - as a sign of open mindedness of our times. But, in such visuals aesthetics is very important; and, its not just the eagerness of desire of participants in the act which gives it a aesthetic look, but participants themselves are part of the aesthetics. When young couple kiss in public they become oblivious to the presence of others around them, a case of emotions over-taking the reality, but when matured people do so they are essentially looking for thrill of a kind which one gets on breaking the law, a case of reality being used for getting a kick-an emotional high, a way of igniting the passion. In first situation display is unintentional and incidental, in the second it is intentional, though in both the case the purpose is to hit a emotional high. Both have their own aesthetics, for in both the passion becomes visible.
What is on display here, however, is not a pleasant sight. Man is short and heavy, and bald; not less then fifty. Even in semi darkness his paunch is prominently visible, starts almost immediately after his man boobs and is visibly testing the strength of the fabric of his maroon coloured silk shirt (Red perhaps, but poor light dulling it to maroon.), of its stitching, and the buttons; one of them will give in shortly if he doesn’t focus back on sucking in his tummy to relieve the shirt of the burden. He is facing me, and his eyes are open and scanning the seating area with a tired expression; as if he is searching something there which he already sure of not finding. He looks terribly bored, someone who has seen passion die long back and has buried it with his own hands. In the passing his eyes meet mine; somehow, and it may be my incorrect perception but what I see in those eyes is a pleading for a rescue. Lady, with her back to me, is little more involved. Her right hand is gently holding left side of his face. And then suddenly it is over. Man goes back to his drink and picks up his mobile, and lady is arranging her ruffled top over her over extended waist line. No pun intended, but I am left with a bad taste in my mouth, and a dreadful feeling. There was nothing aesthetic about last few seconds, and I feel sorry for the man whose fires have extinguished forever, and what makes it sad, yet he is searching for them knowing fully well that they are dead and buried. Though the thought begins to creep into my head but I cruelly force it out, I don’t want to even imagine living without being able to feel passion. How would it be to live like ash in a hearth without fire!
I have resolved not to look back in their direction again.
I am feeling a little depressed now. The idea of a man being without passion seems to generate much pathos, and has dampen my mood. Passion is the life force. It is the fuel on which all emotions in a human beings are powered. Without passion, love, envy, jealousy, desire, anger, will not be what they are: sensation of feeling alive. Intensity of passion is what tests the designed capacity of five senses for every individual. Capacity for passion is capacity for life. Its rise and fall in the nerves is another form of breathing, and more important than respiration as a symptoms of being alive. As passion intensifies, it radiates in form of a glow, an incandescence, that attracts other living beings towards you. Life charms life, other living beings sense passionless man as good as dead. And, I am depressed for, perhaps, I have just seen a dead man.
Fortunately for me phone beeps again, it’s her. “ Where are you sitting?” she asks. I turn around, and there she stands at the entry, talking in to her phone to me. Her left profile is visible to me. It’s a fantastic relief, her arrival, and her profile, both. Away from the bulging and bursting in the visual before my eyes a few seconds ago, her profile is delightfully proportional one. My mood is instantly elevated. She stands there erect, and craning her neck to left and right trying to locate me; her silhouette is an extremely benevolent sight, as if semi darkness has condensed to take shape of head, and bust, and limbs, to form a little gentle being. No details are visible, mere proportions, of upper hand to lower, of tiny nose to the head that it sits on, of upper body to lower. All proportions are so perfect that they are forming the soul of the perspective visible to my mind-eye; and then there are curves, smooth stretched curve of the bare lower leg, and of the upper one which snugly ensconced in the skirt, and others; all curves are petite, yet full; like little flowers in full bloom. And I am thinking, its not the colour, or fragrance, or silk of touch, which makes a flower beautiful, it is the bloom. Beauty is not in details but in desire to peak. Bloom is when you hit your limit for capacity for life. Thinking that biggest of human tragedies is that we do not place enough value on blooming, for we trade it for longevity (men linger around for far too long even after they are past their bloom; flowers don’t!) and soaking in her view for few more moments, I rise from my chair to walk up to her to receive her.
