Friends forever across the Smog Screen!

My hands were barely visible on that fateful December evening. It was a typical Delhi winter evening with a thick envelope of smog with acrid smell of low hanging pollutants threatening to enter my nostrils. We were speeding towards Gurgaon and all of a sudden, we were fogged to our utter shock and fear. The comfortable warm environ of our car gave way to moments of anxiety and fear. I muttered, Meeta, “Shall we go back; I can barely see the steering wheels. How in the world are we going to make it ever to Gurgaon in this dense and opaque cloud of smog?” Not to be deterred one bit, Meeta retorted, “Gurgaon it is that we are heading come what. I am not heading back to home on a 31^st night to watch Doordarshan and its cheap programs featuring grotesque comedians and forgotten artists”. I relented as I quickly realized it is futile even thinking to hit the road back to Delhi. My experience of driving in these conditions gave a glimmer of hope that we might make it if we are not lost in the sea of smog. With prayers on lips and caution as my motto, and a trailer’s tail light we moved along. After few nervous and silent moments, the sleek sedan jumped on its haunches. Meeta blurted, “Prad, there was something on the road and you drove on that.” My heart was in my mouth and I felt like a criminal who has just finished off one of his prey’s. The car came to a screeching halt and those few seconds were the longest of my lives. I visualized being handcuffed, shoved and pushed around by the cops like an ordinary thug!

Should we get down and check for signs of life in that motionless object? Was that a man or a dog? Those seconds of indecisiveness seemed like hours. I mustered strength to get down and check the lump, which was lying motionless. I was alive again, it was a bundle of clothe probably dropped by an oblivious two-wheeler driver who would have been too focused on crossing the sea of smog. We managed to reach Swapnil and Avantika’s place at the stroke of midnight! It was an indeed a new year to us. It was an achievement and I boasted the same to Meeta who shrugged it off by the wave of her beautifully manicured fingers. This was to be my first rendezvous with a beautiful young couple on New Year’s Eve! All the smoldering tensions/anxieties of the highway withered away the moment we were ushered into their cushy pad in a plush locality. We nibbled on some tid bits and a home fixed Blood Mary forever etched in my memory as one lump of thick red viscous something, which Meeta gulped down with great difficulty. Soon the Bloody Mary was beginning to have bloody effect as our spirits soared high…We had made a modest beginning soon to blossom into a close knit bond of friendship. However, the proverbial twist was round the corner as our friends from Gurgaon were to embark a long and arduous journey across the seven seas to seek a better life for themselves. It was a short and delirious period of bonhomie and joy de vivre. As is it said, short and simple is always sweet. Before, the relation could metamorphose into a lasting bond or witness its full bloom, the cruel hands of fate intervened.

As I sit sipping piping hot tea on another December evening, I reminisce about our fateful rendezvous couple of years back. It brings a whiff of nostalgia and a smile to my face and a thought what could have been. A journey pregnant with such promise yet unfulfilled….Oh! our friends across the smog screen!!!!!