7 minutes means a lot in a daily
routine. By 7 minutes one can miss the metro, one can alter the
morning schedule, one can mix the faces of the fellow passengers;
Life can change. Most of us do not like missing those 7 minutes. We
don't like being late; we don’t like having our well prepared lives
altered in any way. There is some sense of soothness in the daily
chores, a kind of rhythm which reminds us of the world around. To be
sure it is still the same place we last checked in; we need the
boredom. It is difficult accepting change in anyway.
I am a daily passenger and I travel for
hours for daily commute. One needs hobby to spent these hours. I
somehow never developed the habit of listening to music. It never
made sense to me, having the blast coming from tiny little things. I
would see thousands of people getting lost in this noise. I somehow
could not get myself into this.
Most of the people don't notice things
happening around. Some say nothing special ever happens. I cant argue
with that. There is always a sense of uniformity in everyone in the
metro. Everyone wears clothes, everyone has a bag, everyone is tensed
and everyone is rushing. Nothing exciting ever happens.
Maybe we don't look enough.
I spend hours staring at the sky; the
sky is always lot more calmer than the crowd inside the metro. I love
the way how colours of the sky always have a story to tell, There are
scores of birds diving in and out of sky creating beautiful aerial
shows. If I am not gazing at the sky, then I am sometimes listening
to conversations. Conversations sometimes tend to be boring, most of
the times repetitive. It's amazing the amount of mundane and
repetitive conversations human beings are trained to deal with on a
daily basis. As an observer most of the times, I don't get to chose
my performers. I become their observer sheer out of luck. Some people
enlighten me, most disappoint.
I have been reading Harumi Murakami for
last few weeks. This was a desperate attempt to slow down my brain's
deterioration in the metro journey. A flat hard bound black book
helps me cut of from the rest of the noise around me. These noises
are neatly divided into two source: the humans and the non humans.
Both of them are without aim and mostly nuisance. As someone had once
rightly stated “I wish I could control my hearing devices and go
off on mute mode”. Murakami 's book is currently playing the role
of mute device. I start reading : and before I know I am reaching the
destination. Time and Noise both lose their significance or as stated
in the world of Murakami, they lose their essence. It keeps
travelling in two and fro movements.
Going and Coming in and out of Murakami
is bit of harrowing experience . I am engrossed in his work, am going
though his journeys and then out of nowhere, I hear a sound at the
far end. And slowly my brain starts tracing the source of it. And
then zapped into the real world. I used to get sad, an immense amount
of sadness would dawn upon me on this realization. In the crowd one
could not look sad, even though nobody really looked on the faces.
Slowly got used to this time travel or even better as Aisha would
say: this was my entry point to my third level. I could get in
whenever I felt like and get out whenever heard a noise at the end
of the tunnel.
7 minutes where about to change,
something. Reading Murakami has its own defects. The magical realism
starts spreading into your parallel lives. One starts craving for
those things , even starts justifying the imaginary world created. I
start looking for miracles.
7 minutes and I was late today.
Everything behind time, I was no more interested in the sky. I was
pissed at the birds for not getting the formation right. Passengers
looked uglier and noises became unbearable. Murakami smiled at me
from this world to another. I refused to enter the third level that
day. I just had him next to my body.
Staring at people, I realized another
soul staring at the sky. People don't stare, people look at things.
Their eyes are always drifting. Its as if eyes always are in a hurry,
there is so much to see. I have sometimes caught people staring at
me. I don't mind that. But they always revert their eyes. Eyes are
always moving from one place to another. But she was staring,
regardless of time, regardless of space. The whole profile looked
peaceful. Her hair long and curly,refused to be calm. Her eyes lost
and her lips as straight as possible. She looked like lost in trance.
I could not help but check her body, her feet, her hands and her
beautiful little hands. It grasped my attention and I was awaiting
for a big surprise. A fellow Murakami fan. She was reading one of his
works; work I simply love. I really wanted to make sure I was right.
I really stared hard at her book, I could see the grasps of her
fingers getting tightened around the book. She was nervous and I was
excited. Was it really possible ; a fellow Murakami fan looking at
the sky at the same moment as I was involved in the same process.
Maybe not in my world, but in Murakami's world it was totally
possible. Maybe it only happened in Murakami's world.
I struggled to keep my nerves
under control. I really wanted to know if she liked the book, did she
like the protagonists, what did she think about it? Could she sing
for me the song in the novel? I was bubbling with questions, unable
to control my stare. With my body getting excited, my stare did
become incomprehensible. I could see her pupils staring at me and
increasing in size.
7 minutes late that day and I was
standing face to face with a Murakami's fan. In ordinary world this
was no miracle, nothing extra ordinary happened, there were no magic
moments. But I could not help feeling excited about the prospects of
talking to her. She was some metres away and it felt like miles away.
She suddenly had this immense power over me, that I could feel my
feet going numb.
I gathered all the courage of the world
and went and dropped in a hello. It is not easy saying a Hello in the
world of metros. One has to manoeuvre through a lot many faces, a lot
many thoughts. One has to side away one's own thoughts,the thought of
encountering a stranger. It is tough in its simplest way. It is no
easy job talking to a person.
So hello it was, and she still did not
smile. She thrust her book inside her bag and awaited my reply. I
continued my monologue, How I loved that book, How I am a big fan of
Murakami and how I had to drop in a Hello. It would not make any
sense in this world, but as Murakami fans know,it did make sense in
his world. That was the only driving force I had myself going.
Murakami would have made sure that his characters dropped in a Hello.
My rambling eased her tensions, She
smiled, she understood my craziness about the book. She smiled
further and let me unnerve my fears. She was a patient listener and I
could say she was glad that someone spoke so long about Murakami. She
confessed how the book had left a mark on her, how she was trying to
re-read the book in every sense possible. The part of staring at sky
was an attempt to understand his world. I was only glad to hear her
version of Murakami.
We had a total of 7 minutes for all
this. It never occurred to either of us to ask each others names. It
was not important. The discussion was about Murakami and somehow it
was complete in its own way. She got off the same platform as mine. I
had never seen her on this platform and somehow I had the intuition
that I would never see her in future either. We continued our
conversation fully aware of the fact that we might never see each
other.
She ended the conversation on the note
that it was wonderful meeting someone who was equally in love with
his worked. I fully agreed with her, in my heart of heart wishing she
would ask my details. She did not. I did not feel the need to ask
her contact details, this is how Murakami worked. You had to give
coincidences some credit, serendipity had its own role to play.
7 minutes and that day felt so
different. In a way beautiful and complete. I had done things I would
have normally not done. Talked to a stranger and had a beautiful
conversation about an author. I did not make a friend , instead found
a beautiful soul.
It's wonderful to realise that there
are more beautiful souls out there somewhere.
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