Three Mistakes Of My Life Part 14

'1 don't want to study this,' she said.

"Vidya, as your teacher my role is...'

'Yeah, what is your role as my teacher? Teach me how to reach my dreams or how to be a drone?'

I kept quiet. She placed her left foot on her lap. I noticed the tiny teddy bears all over her pajamas.

'Well, I am not your teacher. I am your tutor, your maths tutor. And as far as I know, there are no dream tutors.'

'Are you not my friend?'

'Well, sort of.'

'Ok, sort-of-friend, what do you think I should do? Crush my pa.s.sion and surround myself with hydrocarbon molecules forever?'

I kept quiet.

'Say something. I should lump these lessons even if I have no interest in them whatsoever as that is what all good Indian students do?' I kept quiet.

'What?' she prodded me again.

'The problem is you think I am this geek who solves probability problems for thrills. Well, maybe I do, but that is not all of me. I am a tutor, it is a job. But never f.u.c.king accuse me of crus.h.i.+ng your pa.s.sion.' Too late I realised I had used the F-word. 'Sorry for the language.'

'Cursing is an act of pa.s.sion.'

I smiled and turned away from her.

'So there you go,' she said, 'my tutor-friend, I want to make an admission to you. I want to go to Mumbai, but not to cut cadavers. I want to study PR.'

I banged my fist on the table. 'Then do it. Don't give me this wish-I-was-a-boy and I'm-trapped-in-a-cage nonsense. Ok, so you are in a cage, but you have a nice, big, oiled brain that is not pea-sized like a bird's. So use it to find the key out.'

'Medical college is one key, but not for me,' she said.

'In that case, break the cage,' I said.

'How?'

'What makes the cage? Your parents, right? Do you have to listen to them all the time?'

'Of course not. I've been lying to them since I was five.'

'Really? Wow,' I said and collected myself. 'Pa.s.sion versus parents is a tough call. But if you have to choose, pa.s.sion should win. Humanity wouldn't have progressed if people listened to their parents all the time.'

'Exactly. Our parents are not innocent either. Weren't we all conceived in a moment of pa.s.sion?' I looked at her innocent -looking face, shocked. This girl is out of control. Maybe it isn't such a good idea to get her out of her cage.

CHAPTER Nine

26 January is a happy day for all Indians. Whether or not you feel patriotic, it is a guaranteed holiday in the first month of the year. I remember thinking it would be the last holiday at our temple shop since we were scheduled to move to the new mall on Valentine's Day. Apart from the deposit, we had spent another sixty thousand to fit out the interiors. I borrowed ten thousand from my mother, purely as a loan. Ish's dad refused to give any money. Omi, even though I had said no, took the rest in loan from Bittoo Mama.

The night before Republic Day, I lay in bed with my thoughts. I had invested a hundred and ten thousand rupees. My business had already reached lakhs.

Should we do a turf carpet throughout? Now that would be cool for a sports shop.

I dreamed of my chain of stores the whole night.

'Stop shaking me mom, I want to sleep,' I screamed. Can't the world let a businessman sleep on a rare holiday.

But mom didn't shake me. I moved on my own. I opened my eyes. My bed went back and forth too. I looked at the wall clock. It had fallen on the floor. The room furniture, fan and windows vibrated violently.

I rubbed my eyes, what was this? Nightmares?

I stood up and went to the window. People on the street ran haphazardly in random directions.

'Govind,' my mother screamed from the other room, 'hide under the table. It is an earthquake.'

'What?' I said and ducked under the side table kept by the window in reflex. I could see the havoc outside. Three TV antennas horn the opposite building fell down. A telephone pole broke and collapsed on the ground.

The tremors lasted for forty-five seconds, the most destructive and longest forty-five seconds of my life. Of course, I did not know n then. A strange silence followed the earthquake.

'Mom,' I screamed.

'Govind, don't move,' she screamed back.

'It is gone,' I said after ten more minutes had pa.s.sed, 'you ok?'

I came out to the living room. Everything on the wall -I alendars, paintings and lampshades, lay on the floor.

'Govind,' my mother came and hugged me. Yes, I was fine. My mother was fine too.

'Let's get out,' she said.

'Why?'

'The building might collapse.'

'I don't think so,' I said as my mother dragged me out in my pajamas. The street was full of people.

'Is it a bomb?' a man spoke to the other in whispers.

'Earthquake. It's coming on TV. It started in Bhuj,' a man on the street said.

'Bad?' the other man said. 'We felt the tremors hundreds of kilometres away, imagine the situation in Bhuj,' another old man said.

We stood out for an hour. No, the foundation of our building, or for that matter any in our pol had not come loose. Meanwhile, rumours and gossip spread fast.

Some said more earthquakes could come. Some said India had tested a nuclear bomb. A few parts of Ahmedabad reported property damage. Stories rippled through the street.

I re-entered my house after two hours and switched on the TV. Every channel covered the earthquake. It epicentred in Bhuj, though it affected many parts of Gujarat.

'Reports suggest that while most of Ahmedabad is safe, many new and upcoming buildings have suffered severe damage...,' the reporter said as tingles went down my spine.

'No, no, no...,' I mumbled to myself.

'What?' my mother said as she brought me tea and toast.

'I have to go out.'

'Where?'

'Navrangpura ... now,' I said and wore my slippers. Are you mad?' she said.

'My shop mom, my shop,' is all 1 said as I ran out of the house.

The whole city was shut. I couldn't find any autos or buses. I decided to run the seven-kilometre stretch. I had to see if my new store was ok. Yes, I just wanted that to be ok.

It took me an hour to get there. I saw the devastation en-route. The new city areas like Satellite suffered heavy damage. Almost every building had their windows broken. Those buildings that were under construction had crumbled to rubble. I entered Navrangpura. Signs of plush shops lay on the road. I reasoned that my new, ultra-modern building would have earthquake safety features. I gasped for breath as I ran the last hundred metres. Sweat covered my entire body.

Did I miss the building? I said as I reached my lane. The mayhem on the street and the broken signs made it hard to identify addresses.

I retreated, catching my breath.

'Where is the building?' I said to myself as I kept circling my lane.

I found it, finally. Only that the six storeys that were intact a day ago had now turned into a concrete heap. I could not concentrate. I felt intense thirst. I looked for water, but I only saw rubble, rubble and more rubble. My stomach hurt. I grabbed it with my left hand and sat on a broken bench to keep my consciousness.

The police pulled out a labourer, with bruises all over. Cement hags had fallen on him and crushed his legs. The sight of blood made me vomit. No one in the crowd noticed me. One lakh and ten thousand, the number spun in my head.

Unrelated images of the day my dad left us flashed in my head. Those images had not come for years. The look on his face as he shut the living room door on the way out. My mother's silent tears for the next few hours, which continued for the next few years. I don't know why that past scene came to me. I think the brain has a special box where it keeps c.r.a.ppy memories. It stays shut, but everytime a new entry has to be added, it opens and you can look at what is inside. I felt anger at my dad, totally misplaced as I should have felt anger at the earthquake. Or at myself, for betting so much money. Anger for making the first big mistake of my life.

My body trembled with violent intensity.

'Don't worry, G.o.d will protect us,' someone tapped my shoulder.

'Oh really, then who the h.e.l.l sent it in the first place?' I said and pushed the stranger away. I didn't need sympathy, I wanted my shop.

Two years of scrimping and saving, twenty years of dreams - all wiped away in twenty seconds. The 'Navrangpura Mall's' neon sign, once placed at the top of the six floor building, now licked the ground. Maybe this was G.o.d's way of saying something - that we shouldn't have these malls. We were destined to remain a small town and we shouldn't even try to be like the big cities. I don't know why I thought of G.o.d, I was agnostic. But who else do you blame earthquakes on?

Of course, I could blame the builder of the Navrangpura mall. For the hundred- year-old buildings in the old city pols remained standing. Omi's two-hundred- year-old temple stood intact. Then why did my f.u.c.king mall collapse? What did he make it with? Sand?

I needed someone to blame. I needed to hit someone, something. I lifted a brick, and threw it at an already smashed window. The remaining gla.s.s broke into little bits.

'What are you doing? Haven't we seen enough destruction?' said someone next to me.

I couldn't make out his face, or anyone's face. My heart beat at double the normal rate. Surely, we could sue the builder, my heart said. The builder would have run away, my head said. And no one would get their money back.

'Govind, Govind,' Ish said. He screamed in my ear when I finally noticed him.

'What the h.e.l.l are you doing here man? It is dangerous to be out, let's go home'

Ish said.

I kept looking at the rubble like I had for the last four hours.

'Govind,' Ish said, 'we can't do anything. Let's go.' 'We are finished Ish,' I said, feeling moist in my eyes for the first time in a decade.

'It's ok buddy. We have to go,' Ish said. 'We lost everything. Look, our business collapsed even before IT opened...'

I broke down. I never cried the day my father left us. I never cried when my hand had got burnt one Diwali and Dr Verma had TO give me sedatives to go to sleep. I never cried when India lost a match. I never cried when I couldn't join engineering college. I never cried when we barely made any money for the first three months of business. But that day, when G.o.d slapped my city for no reason, I cried and cried. Ish held me and let me use his s.h.i.+rt to absorb my tears.

'Govi, let's go home,' Ish said. He never shortened my name before. He'd never seen me like that too. Their CEO and parent had broken down.

'We are cursed man. I saved, and I saved and I f.u.c.king saved. And we took loans. But then, this? Ish, I don't want to see that smug look on Bittoo Mama's face. I will work on the roadside,' I said as Ish dragged me away to an auto.

People must have thought I had lost a child. But when a businessman loses his business, it is similar. It is one thing when you take a business risk and suffer a loss, but this was unfair. Someone out there needed to realise this was f.u.c.king unfair.

Ish bought a Frooti to calm me. It helped, especially since I didn't eat anything else for the next two days. I think the rest of the Ambavadis didn't either. I found out later that over thirty thousand people lost their lives. That is a stadium full of people. In Bhuj, ninety per cent of homes were destroyed. Schools and hospitals flattened to the ground. Overall in Gujarat, the quake damaged a million structures. One of those million structures included my future shop. In the large scheme of things, my loss was statistically irrelevant. In the narrow, selfish scheme of things, I suffered the most. The old city fared better than the new city. Somehow our grandfathers believed in cement more than the new mall owners.

Compared to Gujarat, Ahmedabad had better luck, the Ty channels said. The new city lost only fifty multi-storey buildings, They said only a few hundred people died in Ahmedabad compared to tens of thousands elsewhere. It is funny when hundreds of people dying is tagged with 'only'. Each of those people would have had families, and hopes and aspirations all shattered in forty* five seconds.

But that is how maths works - compared to thirty thousand, hundreds is a rounding error.

I had not left home for a week. For the first three days I had burning fever, and for the next four my body felt stone cold.

'Your fever is gone.' Dr Verma checked my pulse.

I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

'You haven't gone to the shop?'

I shook my head, still horizontal on bed.

'I didn't expect this from you. You have heard of Navaldharis Dr Verma said.

I kept quiet.

'You can talk. I haven't put a thermometer in your mouth.' 'No, who are they?'