A day with the ruins

I have this need to be able to speak and learn about things where I have to use majority of my brain. Majority of the conversations I have had with men, it was all about conversations on the surface level. They just kept floating on the superficial level and never went below that. Things changed with Varun. We were able to have conversation about what bothered us in the world of politics, things happening in the world which mattered to us, stock market, entrepreneurship, and most importantly about our feelings. I have learnt about useless machines from him and he has learnt about all useless philosophies from me. I have started to use my brain more than I have to use to solve a sudoku. 

I took the opportunity of being alone in a new city to explore the ruins. I was looking at one of the ruins in the Qutub Minar complex, just admiring the beauty of the place. I was imaging how it would have been years ago. The Jain and Hindu temples in the place, now there are just ruins of them. I was imagining how would the jain temple looked, the idol in the temple, people visiting the temple to worship. The drawings just started to float in front of me as though I was walking through the place wearing a VR box. The whole experience just took me into another trance. 

“I have never seen anyone this excited at any of the historic place!” I heard a voice which made all the drawings disappear.

“Are you talking to me?” I confirmed. I also felt foolish after asking question seeing no one else around.

“Nope, I am asking this stone who cannot respond to me” his attempt to be funny was very successful and I ended up laughing whole heartedly. That reminded me that I hadn’t had such a laugh since a long time. Even the funniest videos of Anubhav Bassi couldn’t make me laugh anymore. “Oh, I didn’t know I was funny!”

“Yeah, you should consider stand-up comedy as a career, if being a tourist guide doesn’t work for you”

“Haha, advice taken. By the way, I am Varun, a mechanical engineer and a part time tourist guide”

“I am Aarzoo. a social science researcher and a part time tourist.” I never thought I would let a stranger break my solitude. But, he looked cute, I couldn’t ignore the handsome face.

And we starting showing each other our imaginary drawings of the ruins, we started to walk into each other’s worlds. We spoke about everything between the land and the horizon. Started with religion, because of the place we were in, moved to history, then swiftly to politics. For some reason I felt relieved when he turned out to be a libertarian. I wanted to know more about him. And so I invited him for lunch. Suddenly, I didn’t want to eat food alone. And the picturesque rain had made the place more beautiful. I was nice to have a partner to walk and randomly stroll around the city. The whole transition from a peaceful Mehrauli complex to the chaotic Parantha wali gully in Chandni Chowk was a little heavy for me to comprehend. He knew the locality very well. The whole noon passed in just like a second. He didn’t feel like a stranger anymore. 

We spent the evening at another ruins. He did know the places and the history. For one moment I felt like he was reading out from those blogs on the internet telling the stories about the places. His perspective was different from what I had read till now. It just felt like I was reading a Manu Pillai book which was taking me back to that time, travelling back in time. If I had the chance to take the trip through the time machine, I would go back in history and want to experience the life back in 14th and 15th century. I want to experience that royalty and loyalty to people they loved. Walking through the history with Varun did give me a surface level experience of it. 

Coming back to the present, we next went to a lake. Watching the sun set at Hauz Khas lake was another serene experience. We sat by the lake in silence watching the colour of water changing with the changing colour of the sky. I loved that the silence between us didn’t become awkward. This evening reminded me the imaginary conversation I had with the mountains while spending a nice evening at a dam in Pune. There weren’t any mountains around, I guess I was associating the memory by the water body. And I realized that only one thing was missing in that beautiful moment, beautiful music. I pulled out my earphones and started my playlist sharing one earbud with him. Now that moment was perfect, sunset by a water body, someone to share the silence with, and Jagjit Singh. Right when Talat Mahmood started singing my favourite part of sham-e-gham ki kasam, my phone rang and broke the beauty of the moment. And suddenly the place felt empty and chaotic. With Varun no where around and one earbud in my hand, I realized I was sitting there alone. I left the lake checking the distance to Varun’s favourite restaurant, to savour his memory one last time before I leave the city.