Karma
Out of breath. Flushed face. Wide eyes. He enters the station, white and shaken. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him glancing around and then come to a halt in front of my desk. I take a while to look at him, and when I do that, I do so slowly. I am not busy. Oh I am just having another of my late night reveries. And I am not ready to have any intruder shatter the serenity that has engulfed me on my mind’s precipice. With the most careful concoction of disdain and arrogance, I cast a beady eye on him.
He is a young lad, of lean exterior and at present, of meek interior. Sporting a seemingly stylish hair do and funky looking spectacles, he is dressed in a pair of jeans torn at strategic places fashionably, and a black shirt. It seems to me that he is a person who is confident about himself, and can carry himself about with elan. But at that moment, he is definitely not in his element. Something has hurled itself on him forcibly, and has been harrowing him ever since.
And he has come here. He has come here for refuge. Of all the places, here.
“Sir! I have to register a complaint.”
I don’t react. I don’t react, partly because I have conditioned myself to be absolutely unmindful of others’ fundamental existence, let alone others’ grievances. I am a bit surprised though, but I don’t show it. Obviously.
“But Sir, I was traveling in that b-”
“So…got into a fight with some queer people?”
“Sorry? I didn’t quite get you there Sir.”
“Really? Do I not make sense?”
“No Sir you don’t. Now as I was saying Sir, I was groped. I am hurt. I feel violated. I a-”
I cut him off. Again. He is mighty flustered now. He is perplexed because of the manner in which I am taking in his countenance. But I am having to witness the sporadic transformation of his surprise into unadulterated rage. He doesn’t understand where I am leading with my questions.
“I asked you whether you got into a fight with a queer person. I usually don’t venture into the pitiable lives of you insolent ingrates, but when I do decide to make those occasional inroads, I expect to be satiated. Now, ANSWER ME!”
My words have the desired effect, I am most pleased to say. His meek interior bursts out and spills out onto his persona.
He is silent for a while. He is shocked. I revel in his shock. I bring on my next attack.
“So…you mean to say that you got assaulted by a gay man?”
“What? NO! No Sir, whatever gave you that idea? I think that is wildly inappropriate!”
“Oh really? Inappropriate? I don’t think so.”
“Sir but what I am trying to tell you-”
“Listen to me, dear lad. Guys are into groping. Guys grape women by the dozen, by the minute. We simply cannot keep our hands to ourselves, can we? Not a day goes by without women having to grieve over the obnoxious and disgusting behavior of men. So naturally…”
I pause to see if he has been hanging on to every last syllable of my cute little monologue.
“Ah yes! So naturally (in the meantime, I light up a cigarette, and begin to pace the ground around him.), I thought that when you said that you had been groped, it must have been a guy who had…you know…”
“SIR! I think that is enough. If you will just let me explain…”
“Oh so you are quite the hothead. I see. From your indignation, should I somehow glean that you got groped by a woman? A lady? A girl? Your opposite sex?”
“Is this some sort of prank? Did someone send you here to babble some nonsense to me? I frankly have no time to indulge in such hopeless frivolities. Do spit out the truth, and be on your way.”
“Sir, if I may, I’ll just be brief. I was just about to get off the bus when I got…when this woman…she kind of…I don’t know how to exactly explain…but she did…she really..”
“Sir..she…okay it felt very abusive. I felt violated. I felt so angry. And hurt. I wanted to do something back, but I was so shocked, that I…that I kind of…”
“Was this an isolated incident?”
“Did this “incident” happen just….out of the blue? Did this incident just pop out of nowhere, or is there any preface to your flattering text, or some subtext to your blithering nonsense?”
“Did YOU do something to her?”
“Can I get violent with you? I am itching to have a go at you with my bare hands. Please, can I? CAN I? Out with the truth. NOW!”
“Sir..I kind of whistled…I kind of whistled at her…playfully only ofcourse, I meant no harm!”
“Did you…kind of whistled at her? Or did you whistle at her? You are finding it comfortable to tightrope on the limits of my patience. Tread softly my friend.”
“Okay okay sir, I definitely whistled at her, and patter her behind as she walked past me to take her seat. And..”
“And when she looked back at me, angry, I just grinned and winked at her.”
“And after that, when you were about to get down, you are saying that you groped…sorry, she groped you?”
The cigarette now extinguished, I take my seat, and pretend to take it all in. I make a great show of mulling over the details. I am a big, insolent cow. I am going to chew all his worry, like how a cow chews the cud. It will appear to him that I am going to do something productive. But after the cud chewing, I am going to do to him what the cow will do after it eats.
“Okay…now there are two parts to the story. The one where you were the naughty guy, and the one where you got ambushed by your prey.”
“Allow me to finish. I think I’m on quite a roll here. So while I can somehow imagine that the first part of the story to be true, I can never digest that of the second. A woman? Doing that? Come on! You must be delusional. You know so very well that we men are THE dominant kind. We cannot and will not let these women even tickle our mane. And here you are, strutting about with some story of some woman…haha! Mind it my boy, no more such stories.”
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