Leader of the losers
The sun yawned at the horizon, calling it a brand new day. It was Monday and today I had been in this sleepy town for two months. Life had still not answered my question; my aim still eluded me, my mind still not at peace. When I had come to this place I had believed that one day soon I shall be able to get the answers that I so desperately seek but they were just not there.
They say you build the walls around your own imprisonment. My mind had seized functioning, all that remained was hope. The mountain Gods were angry. They had shifted and turned, a rock had changed the course of the river for ever. The mountains kept shifting and bleeding, the wounds very much evident in the snow. My heart felt sad. The mountains were awake as if trying to say something, trying to make us humans understand that they no longer stood by us. The morning sun was bright and brought back hope. I decided to go for a walk.
I slipped thrice before I was able to get a solid footing on the ice. It was a sheer miracle that I had not broken any bones. Maybe it was that I was wearing too many clothes or sheer luck. As I walked in to the town I saw familiar faces. Newly weds gobbled ice cream and chat alike. It was an interesting sight; they seemed to be happy or were they? They were still to discover the truths about life but it. they were happy unlike me who didn’t know what to do with my life. A story of a newly wed came to my mind that had discovered how tough life was. She had made a great impact on me and I had decided not to get married after that.
"Take care beta, don’t fight, he is your husband." A man had told his newly wed daughter as I entered the compartment on the Delhi bound train. His sentence hooked me as I looked up to see a girl crying and her father trying to console her .Now she was no diva ,extremely fat, fair and nice features. She was probably married because of the fat dowry that had exchanged hands. She covered her face and was crying pretty dramatically giving those amazing sound effects .As the train started to snail out of the station, her father kissed her. No goodbyes, no thank you, no parting notes.
Staring in to the oblivion she looked depressed. Now I was sure that she hadn’t had a great first night, of course that would have been impossible with all the girth that she carried it would have been impossible physically but that surely wasn’t the case. As soon as the train pulled out of the station, she pulled out a mills and boon novel and started reading it, imagining her prince charming, tall dark and handsome, in reality a mediocre businessman who was not really interested in her or so it seemed at that time.
As she read, I stared, trying to analyze whether what I was thinking was true ,was it that book she read had disillusioned her, it had seemed so very much the case. Fed on a healthy diet of tandoori chickens and Mills and Boon she had become sick in both mind and body. What was it all about? Marriage a reality, prince charming an illusion . Now I was on a train where meals were served but she declined to have those, as a matter of fact she didn’t ate a morsel during the sixteen hour journey.
As the station drew closer she went back to her crying mode. The journey coming to an end or was it a new beginning, an answer which only she could provide. As she stepped off, a man approached her, her husband or so it seemed was a man of small stature, simply dressed, he had come to pick her up.
I had got my answer when she had looked at him and slipped the novel in to a near by dustbin.
The sun was bidding farewell, the mountains first turned orange and then pink, some kind of communication seemed to be occurring here only there were no words being exchanged. The lights of Shiv Shakti guest house guided me as I walked on the treacherous path which led to the guest house. The restaurant was relatively empty and in a corner sat Randy with Jindu who was rolling a joint.
"Where were you?" Randy asked, his eyes dropping, his peculiar smile in place. Jindu looked up and went back to his business of rolling.
"Ah, was at the town, checking my mail." I replied.
"So how was the day?" I asked.
"Nothing much." Randy answered.
"Just rolling and smoking, Jindu got this stuff from you know who and its rated as the best stuff in the world." Randy added.
"Humm… enjoy, I am tired and going to sleep now." I said.
As I lay in bed my past came haunting once again, I was a chef once more, being abused chopping that never ending heaps of onions, feeling lucky that no one could make out that those tears were real or were onion induced.
"hey get on the range." My chef had shouted one day. For six months I had been doing the potato and onion routine.
"Yeah you Siddhartha, prepare crepe suzette table nine." The chef had barked instructions as I washed my hands. The crepes were passable but I had finally arrived.
Over the years I had mastered the art.
"I want to leave." One day I had told the chef who was rather surprised to hear this coming from one of the hardest working guys in the kitchen.
"I cant explain." I had said.
I don’t know when I went to sleep. A knock on my door woke me up, it was all a bad dream. My past haunting me, my future\ full of uncertainty I ordered breakfast that was a standard forty rupee affair.
Randy was already awake, strumming his guitar he sat in the sun, his face making more movements than his hands , a crowd of local kids had gathered to enjoy this freak show free of cost.
"Hey Randy, those kids are making fun of you." I said as I sat down next to Randy.
"Ah, tell them to take a chillax." Randy replied.
"last night I met my guru in a dream that was so vivid it seemed to be real, he said I was going to achieve success pretty soon and there fore today I am going to practice." Randy muttered. Making no sense whatsoever, he got up and went to his room.
"What’s wrong with him? " I asked Jindu who walked in with my breakfast.
"Oh nothing I asked him for rent this morning and he is upset since then." Jindu replied.
"How much does he have to pay now?" I asked although I knew Jindu would never tell me the exact figure.
"Not much, I was telling him that the neighbors are complaining about his music and he kind of got angry threw money at my face and told me to shove it up my arse. I mean what kind of behavior is that, you don’t talk to your innkeeper like that." Jindu said.
"Relax Jindu, he is not really a bad guy, and besides he pays of his dues on time, he is just a little frustrated for not being able to make it big." I explained, although I wasn’t sure if he really understood any thing besides the language of money, my only concern was that Jindu did not throw out Randy who had grown close to me as a friend.
"Well, tell him to watch out. Next time I am not going to take any shit from him." Jindu said.
"Sure, I will do that, will you be going to the town today." I asked Jindu.
"Yes what do you need?" He asked.
"Some paper, news not rolling." I said as Jindu smiled and some tension was lifted from the air. I knew that this was going to be a very long relationship although at that time I didn’t know how long it was going to be.
"Hey mother fucker how are you doing today?" I asked Randy.
"Upside down." Was the reply. He was a rock star or so he called himself and had been struggling in the music world for a long time. Staying at the Shiv Shakti guest house, he had been trying to make music . Dope according to him stimulated his mind inspiring him to create while all that I could make out was noise or music heard elsewhere. His name was Randy and he had been staying at the Shiv Shakti guest house for some time now he had arrived a month before I had and was occupying the room on the ground floor for some strange reasons as there was no sunlight in that room. It was cold dark and strange. Randhir aka Randy would smoke whole day rolling joint after joint, discussing john Lennon , breakup of beetles and end of hippies.
"A sad case." I thought.
Life was unfair, but was it ever fair. Shiv Shakti guest house seemed to house all kind of loosers.Be it spiritual seekers like me or music lover like Randy.
"So dude what’s up?" I asked
"Nothing" he said as he pulled the last drag of a joint.
"You know john could write some amazing stuff after he smoked this stuff, some of his best works have been written after smoking this." He said as he prepared to make another joint.
"Yeah right" I said as I tore of some rolling paper to get it to the right size.
"Humm…you know Siddhartha what I like about this place ." he said.
"What?" I asked him
"Nothing bothers you….." he said as he lit up another joint.
Randy had passed out early in the morning at nine o clock. It seemed to me he had been smoking since last night and finally his brains had given up.
I got up to get out side and his last words haunted me "nothing bothers you." Was it true in a place away from civilization where the night sky lit with zillions of stars you could see with your naked eye, here were two men, one in search of his soul, the other for his music, but then music was his soul which meant we both were searching for the same things only the mediums for this search were different.
Was I running away from the civilized world, I guess I was. I wandered if I died in my room, surely Jindu was going to call the cops or maybe he won’t for the fear of getting caught in the drug trafficking case, so maybe he will throw my body off a cliff to make it look like an accident. Prospect of dying a mountaineers death was pretty exciting and I smiled at the thought.
"Hi are you the owner of this place?" The voice surprised me as I looked up.
"Uh…no up there." I pointed to Jindu’s house.
"Thanks" she said as she kept her backpack down.
"You can easily get a room here, the guest house is only fifty percent occupied." I said trying to make conversation.
"how did you know?" she asked.
"Well there are four rooms and only two are occupied.’ I said as I smiled at my own joke.
"Are you a rocket scientist?"
"No" I said.
"Well I could have never figured that out, good bye" she answered as she walked towards Jindu’s house.
I got up and ran to Randy’s room to inform him of this new development in out lives The news of having a female at our hotel excited Randy.
"Jolly good, now we can screw too…." Randy passed out again.
The idea did excite me as it had been a very long timesince ihad gone out with a girl, not in the last twenty seven years and I was twenty eight now and before that I don’t think I could have possibly have managed it physically. So I was a virgin and I thought about it all the time and this seemed to be right .Just like in the movies. God and spirituality came back with another jointand it was evening when I got up, hungry and thirdty I called Jindu who could be heard talking to some one.
I climbed down those steps which were surely a death sentence for some one care fully, I saw Jindu and our new nieghbour drinking tea.
"The bastard is going to charge ne ten bucks for that." I thought.
"Hey Jindu can you get me something to eat." I asked him waving at that new girl.
"Butter and toast." Jindu suggested.
"Fine." I ust wanted to eat and I knew that this was the best Jindu could do for me at this hour.
"Hi there, what’s your name?" I asked as Jindu left to make a quick forty rupees.
"Linny" she replied.
"I am Siddhartha ,like in herman hesse Siddhartha the famous author." I said trying to sound nice.
"Yes I have heard of that" she said.
"So why do you call your self by that name?" she asked
"huh… Well my parents named me that." I couldn’t come up with a better answer then that.
"Would you like to smoke?" She asked me.
"Well, Sure why not. " I said. I knew that this was going to be a fruit ful relationship. Friends made while smoking dope generally remained friends till there was more pot to be smoked ,more crpets to be burned As I rolled she watched me, studying my face.
"So what do you do?" She asked me as I neatly gummed the paper.
"Nothing now, I used to work at a hotel. Kind of retired now." I answered.
"What about you?" Iasked her.
"Same thing only a different department." She said and I knew she was lying. Maybe she didn’t understand what I was saying I thought but then mabe she was just hiding some thing she didn’t want to share with a stranger.
The sun yawned at the horizon, calling it a brand new day. It was Monday and today I had been in this sleepy town for two months. Life had still not answered my question; my aim still eluded me, my mind still not at peace. When I had come to this place I had believed that one day soon I shall be able to get the answers that I so desperately seek but they were just not there.
They say you build the walls around your own imprisonment. My mind had seized functioning, all that remained was hope. The mountain Gods were angry. They had shifted and turned, a rock had changed the course of the river for ever. The mountains kept shifting and bleeding, the wounds very much evident in the snow. My heart felt sad. The mountains were awake as if trying to say something, trying to make us humans understand that they no longer stood by us. The morning sun was bright and brought back hope. I decided to go for a walk.
I slipped thrice before I was able to get a solid footing on the ice. It was a sheer miracle that I had not broken any bones. Maybe it was that I was wearing too many clothes or sheer luck. As I walked in to the town I saw familiar faces. Newly weds gobbled ice cream and chat alike. It was an interesting sight; they seemed to be happy or were they? They were still to discover the truths about life but it. they were happy unlike me who didn’t know what to do with my life. A story of a newly wed came to my mind that had discovered how tough life was. She had made a great impact on me and I had decided not to get married after that.
"Take care beta, don’t fight, he is your husband." A man had told his newly wed daughter as I entered the compartment on the Delhi bound train. His sentence hooked me as I looked up to see a girl crying and her father trying to console her .Now she was no diva ,extremely fat, fair and nice features. She was probably married because of the fat dowry that had exchanged hands. She covered her face and was crying pretty dramatically giving those amazing sound effects .As the train started to snail out of the station, her father kissed her. No goodbyes, no thank you, no parting notes.
Staring in to the oblivion she looked depressed. Now I was sure that she hadn’t had a great first night, of course that would have been impossible with all the girth that she carried it would have been impossible physically but that surely wasn’t the case. As soon as the train pulled out of the station, she pulled out a mills and boon novel and started reading it, imagining her prince charming, tall dark and handsome, in reality a mediocre businessman who was not really interested in her or so it seemed at that time.
As she read, I stared, trying to analyze whether what I was thinking was true ,was it that book she read had disillusioned her, it had seemed so very much the case. Fed on a healthy diet of tandoori chickens and Mills and Boon she had become sick in both mind and body. What was it all about? Marriage a reality, prince charming an illusion . Now I was on a train where meals were served but she declined to have those, as a matter of fact she didn’t ate a morsel during the sixteen hour journey.
As the station drew closer she went back to her crying mode. The journey coming to an end or was it a new beginning, an answer which only she could provide. As she stepped off, a man approached her, her husband or so it seemed was a man of small stature, simply dressed, he had come to pick her up.
I had got my answer when she had looked at him and slipped the novel in to a near by dustbin.
The sun was bidding farewell, the mountains first turned orange and then pink, some kind of communication seemed to be occurring here only there were no words being exchanged. The lights of Shiv Shakti guest house guided me as I walked on the treacherous path which led to the guest house. The restaurant was relatively empty and in a corner sat Randy with Jindu who was rolling a joint.
"Where were you?" Randy asked, his eyes dropping, his peculiar smile in place. Jindu looked up and went back to his business of rolling.
"Ah, was at the town, checking my mail." I replied.
"So how was the day?" I asked.
"Nothing much." Randy answered.
"Just rolling and smoking, Jindu got this stuff from you know who and its rated as the best stuff in the world." Randy added.
"Humm… enjoy, I am tired and going to sleep now." I said.
As I lay in bed my past came haunting once again, I was a chef once more, being abused chopping that never ending heaps of onions, feeling lucky that no one could make out that those tears were real or were onion induced.
"hey get on the range." My chef had shouted one day. For six months I had been doing the potato and onion routine.
"Yeah you Siddhartha, prepare crepe suzette table nine." The chef had barked instructions as I washed my hands. The crepes were passable but I had finally arrived.
Over the years I had mastered the art.
"I want to leave." One day I had told the chef who was rather surprised to hear this coming from one of the hardest working guys in the kitchen.
"I cant explain." I had said.
I don’t know when I went to sleep. A knock on my door woke me up, it was all a bad dream. My past haunting me, my future\ full of uncertainty I ordered breakfast that was a standard forty rupee affair.
Randy was already awake, strumming his guitar he sat in the sun, his face making more movements than his hands , a crowd of local kids had gathered to enjoy this freak show free of cost.
"Hey Randy, those kids are making fun of you." I said as I sat down next to Randy.
"Ah, tell them to take a chillax." Randy replied.
"last night I met my guru in a dream that was so vivid it seemed to be real, he said I was going to achieve success pretty soon and there fore today I am going to practice." Randy muttered. Making no sense whatsoever, he got up and went to his room.
"What’s wrong with him? " I asked Jindu who walked in with my breakfast.
"Oh nothing I asked him for rent this morning and he is upset since then." Jindu replied.
"How much does he have to pay now?" I asked although I knew Jindu would never tell me the exact figure.
"Not much, I was telling him that the neighbors are complaining about his music and he kind of got angry threw money at my face and told me to shove it up my arse. I mean what kind of behavior is that, you don’t talk to your innkeeper like that." Jindu said.
"Relax Jindu, he is not really a bad guy, and besides he pays of his dues on time, he is just a little frustrated for not being able to make it big." I explained, although I wasn’t sure if he really understood any thing besides the language of money, my only concern was that Jindu did not throw out Randy who had grown close to me as a friend.
"Well, tell him to watch out. Next time I am not going to take any shit from him." Jindu said.
"Sure, I will do that, will you be going to the town today." I asked Jindu.
"Yes what do you need?" He asked.
"Some paper, news not rolling." I said as Jindu smiled and some tension was lifted from the air. I knew that this was going to be a very long relationship although at that time I didn’t know how long it was going to be.
"Hey mother fucker how are you doing today?" I asked Randy.
"Upside down." Was the reply. He was a rock star or so he called himself and had been struggling in the music world for a long time. Staying at the Shiv Shakti guest house, he had been trying to make music . Dope according to him stimulated his mind inspiring him to create while all that I could make out was noise or music heard elsewhere. His name was Randy and he had been staying at the Shiv Shakti guest house for some time now he had arrived a month before I had and was occupying the room on the ground floor for some strange reasons as there was no sunlight in that room. It was cold dark and strange. Randhir aka Randy would smoke whole day rolling joint after joint, discussing john Lennon , breakup of beetles and end of hippies.
"A sad case." I thought.
Life was unfair, but was it ever fair. Shiv Shakti guest house seemed to house all kind of loosers.Be it spiritual seekers like me or music lover like Randy.
"So dude what’s up?" I asked
"Nothing" he said as he pulled the last drag of a joint.
"You know john could write some amazing stuff after he smoked this stuff, some of his best works have been written after smoking this." He said as he prepared to make another joint.
"Yeah right" I said as I tore of some rolling paper to get it to the right size.
"Humm…you know Siddhartha what I like about this place ." he said.
"What?" I asked him
"Nothing bothers you….." he said as he lit up another joint.
Randy had passed out early in the morning at nine o clock. It seemed to me he had been smoking since last night and finally his brains had given up.
I got up to get out side and his last words haunted me "nothing bothers you." Was it true in a place away from civilization where the night sky lit with zillions of stars you could see with your naked eye, here were two men, one in search of his soul, the other for his music, but then music was his soul which meant we both were searching for the same things only the mediums for this search were different.
Was I running away from the civilized world, I guess I was. I wandered if I died in my room, surely Jindu was going to call the cops or maybe he won’t for the fear of getting caught in the drug trafficking case, so maybe he will throw my body off a cliff to make it look like an accident. Prospect of dying a mountaineers death was pretty exciting and I smiled at the thought.
"Hi are you the owner of this place?" The voice surprised me as I looked up.
"Uh…no up there." I pointed to Jindu’s house.
"Thanks" she said as she kept her backpack down.
"You can easily get a room here, the guest house is only fifty percent occupied." I said trying to make conversation.
"how did you know?" she asked.
"Well there are four rooms and only two are occupied.’ I said as I smiled at my own joke.
"Are you a rocket scientist?"
"No" I said.
"Well I could have never figured that out, good bye" she answered as she walked towards Jindu’s house.
I got up and ran to Randy’s room to inform him of this new development in out lives The news of having a female at our hotel excited Randy.
"Jolly good, now we can screw too…." Randy passed out again.
The idea did excite me as it had been a very long timesince ihad gone out with a girl, not in the last twenty seven years and I was twenty eight now and before that I don’t think I could have possibly have managed it physically. So I was a virgin and I thought about it all the time and this seemed to be right .Just like in the movies. God and spirituality came back with another jointand it was evening when I got up, hungry and thirdty I called Jindu who could be heard talking to some one.
I climbed down those steps which were surely a death sentence for some one care fully, I saw Jindu and our new nieghbour drinking tea.
"The bastard is going to charge ne ten bucks for that." I thought.
"Hey Jindu can you get me something to eat." I asked him waving at that new girl.
"Butter and toast." Jindu suggested.
"Fine." I ust wanted to eat and I knew that this was the best Jindu could do for me at this hour.
"Hi there, what’s your name?" I asked as Jindu left to make a quick forty rupees.
"Linny" she replied.
"I am Siddhartha ,like in herman hesse Siddhartha the famous author." I said trying to sound nice.
"Yes I have heard of that" she said.
"So why do you call your self by that name?" she asked
"huh… Well my parents named me that." I couldn’t come up with a better answer then that.
"Would you like to smoke?" She asked me.
"Well, Sure why not. " I said. I knew that this was going to be a fruit ful relationship. Friends made while smoking dope generally remained friends till there was more pot to be smoked ,more crpets to be burned As I rolled she watched me, studying my face.
"So what do you do?" She asked me as I neatly gummed the paper.
"Nothing now, I used to work at a hotel. Kind of retired now." I answered.
"What about you?" Iasked her.
"Same thing only a different department." She said and I knew she was lying. Maybe she didn’t understand what I was saying I thought but then mabe she was just hiding some thing she didn’t want to share with a stranger.
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