Stories Of Young Love by Abhilash Gaur Read Free Book Online Page B

class event with the other
girl after telling her I wouldn’t make it. We could have been a
pair then, not just friends.
    Maybe she had been
hurt before, but I respected her too much and was so much in awe of
her that I hadn’t been able to ask her in those last few weeks we
had a claim on each other. And later, it wasn’t a question I could
ask over email. Anyway, if she hadn’t felt the need to tell me
about it, it either hadn’t happened or didn’t matter.
    At 9pm, we were
standing at a bus stop. The evening had flown by and the four hours
we had spent together seemed less than a flash. The road was still
noisy but few buses came along. I hailed an auto and got in with
her. She protested she could travel alone, take care of herself,
and that I had had a long day already, but I overruled her and
retraced the route I had taken to her place in the evening. She
stayed as a paying guest and our time together had to end at her
door. We talked busily after the awkward silence at the bus stop.
It’s strange that the same people who hush up among a few strangers
at a stop talk so much sitting a foot away from the driver inside
an auto.
    We alighted and
walked to her gate holding hands. Some of the girls who stayed with
her were reading in chairs behind the gate, but she didn’t slacken
her grip, nor did she look embarrassed when they turned questioning
gazes at her. I lingered uncertainly and she laughed looking into
my eyes. “Go, son, go,” she teased me, “I’ll see you in the
morning”.
    “Come early,” I
said and left.
    I remember little
of the ride back to the hotel other than that the bus was
half-empty, lit with dim yellow ceiling lights set inside round,
many-cornered covers. The driver drove sedately, probably to
conserve gas, and played old Hindi songs on a radio set under a
pointed orange lamp that flickered below an image of Shiva sitting
placidly on a tiger skin in the middle of the windscreen.
    The night had
turned quiet when the bus dropped me at the hotel gate and groaned
away. The street was well-lit and the night air felt dry and hot.
The large fixed-glass windows of the hotel rooms were lit up and a
subdued babel of TV sounds floated out of them. I reached the
reception and realized I didn’t remember my room number. I opened
my bag to get out my wallet and the reservation slip but the book I
was carrying, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, fell out.
The receptionist smiled and I felt annoyed for no reason, but
pocketing my key hurriedly took the elevator to my floor.
    ***
    I expected to
be hit by the noise of TV in the corridor but it was very quiet. I
padded quietly to my room on the carpeted floor, felt the wall on
my right for switches and shut the door with a soft click after
turning on all the lights. I turned on the TV and crashed on the
bed with the remote in one hand. The TV’s red power light waited
for a signal to turn green and I stared back absently. Silence was
settling down in the room like sand kicked up in a pool of water.
The ticking of the room clock and the whirring of a fan in the room
below grew louder. I dropped the remote, dragged my bag nearer with
a toe, drew Pirsig out and turned open the dog-eared page where I
had left off the night before at home.
    But Zen... is a
book that demands concentration. There are simple ideas in it that
translate easily into images, like the difference between driving a
car and riding a bike. A car is just more TV while the bike puts
you in the picture, you can reach down with your foot and connect
with the scene even on the move. Even the bits about Phaedrus’
life—those third-person references make my hair stand on end—are
light reading. But all that ‘inquiry into values’ business cannot
be breezed through.
    My mind kept
returning to her and I struggled with the book. I finished the page
but couldn’t recollect a thing from it. I started over again with
the same result. I held my breath to focus on the page, and then
gave