Cards

“ For want of a nail the shoe was lost

For want of a shoe the horse was lost

For want of a horse the rider was lost

For want of a rider the battle was lost

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost”

Sanjog was hearing Chandrika, babuji’sgrand daughter reciting her school poem while he waited for babuji to get ready and come. Everything seemed to connect to the thought he had been struggling to avoid for days now. Sanjog had felt lost the entire day today. On days like these he would usually sit with babuji and chandi for drinks and cards in the evening. And it was rarely that the gentleman they were they refused. Babuji was always looking to spice up his post retirement life and there were not many in the town that would suit him more than sanjog and chandi was the easiest invitee once sold the idea of drinking.

But today was different.

Sanjog moved to sirohi 13 years ago from Bangalore. This small town in south rajasthan was known for the artisans who produced clay pots. He learnt from them for full 3 years and has been here since then. Never did he have had more pleasure in playing with mud since he was 4 years old. Overs the years he started experimenting with clay in a way which was not necessarily leading to clay pots but differing shapes which could only be characterized as weird. One thing which aided the weird designs was the rubber gloves he seemed to have his hands all the while. He was selling less and less in the local market and more and more of them now adorned his shed, verandah, drawing room and even bedroom. He was not using his hands to modify the shape the clay was taking. It was a nonchalant way of throwing clay over a revolving wheel in random order. He would let it take the shape and then sit down to sketch on them.

Only once before was he so engrossed in his work ever in his life.

Sanjog grew up in the bustling cantonment of nashik. He was a beautiful strange kid with strangely beautiful ideas. He had a everyday regular childhood and just like his elder brother took up engineering. Well it was the national hobby for parents to send your sons for engineering and sanjog was one of the brightest minds. After his education he joined a private aviation firm. He soon found himself wanting to go back to studying and joined IISc Bangalore where he did his masters and decided to stay on. He was researching on turbulence and the impact it had on flights. It always fascinated him that while billions of dollars was spent in the most expensive of aircrafts they still never could really predict how it will react when it flew through the clouds. Some really stable looking fluffs of clouds contain amongst them moving air inside in a way which will rock the aircraft. It brought a drain on the energy, the flow the accuracy of the aircrafts. He found similar problems were there with submarine in water. He wanted to find how to predict and control turbulence. He worked feverishly to try and measure the impact of various wind speeds, humidity and vibration on a moving object. He was lost as he had found beauty in science.

There was only one other place where he was at peace with himself besides his wind tunnel. The road to Anthony top. It was beautifully lined and the wind always blew full in your face. Sometimes the cloud overhead almost looked like they had been furrowed to look like brain matter. It resembled the image of brain on his table he thought. When driving around the road in his bike he would drive fast till he could almost feel his eyes watering out. There would be tears rolling out of his eyes and over his cheek backwards. It was here that he met Rubina the first time. She saw him wiping the tears of his face and smiling to himself after one such drive.

She would listen intently to what he had to say about physics and mathematics and biology and water and sun and sand and then just smile and say my grandmother too talks about sun and water all the time. She was a lecturer in literature department of Bangalore University. Such was the nature of conscious intelligence and in so many different ways it can manifest. With simple sentences she could bust weeks of his work. “So basically you just slightly improved upon what was done by Dr Fesel.” Anybody else belittling his work and he would lash out with a fury.

Gradually Sanjog was spending more and more time with his work and he was getting more and more obsessive with his attempts to predict and minimize the damage by turbulence. Starting afresh was becoming a problem. He would always find his ideas getting influenced by work done before him. Corrupted by his own previous failures and polluted byefforts of his more distinguished counterparts. He would always start where either he or someone else ended. Sometimes Rubina and her free flowing contribution also confused him. “Your science needs to meet some human intuition too”. He was putting more and more of his time and less and less of his heart in his pursuit. But that was then. He left bangalore when he skinned his hands in science and skinned his heart in love. He wore gloves on his hand to hide the burns and for himself he decided to hide here.

Chandi always liked being in the company of sanjog. He was a simple villager who used to manage a family of six with his small herd of goats. He would sit for hours when sanjog spoke and while he could barely understand what sanjog would tell he somehow always would end up connecting everything to what his goats used to do too. As sanjog and babuji laid down the first round of cards, he warmed his hands as if he was cold and got ready to play.

As Sanjog was shuffling the deck of cards in his hands, babuji snatched it away. He wanted to shuffle cards once more. “I would change my luck” he grinned. Sanjog was thinking that the fact that shuffle would change the cards was for sure but for better or for worse wasn’t sure. You make your choices and alter the course of your future in a similar way. But for better or worse you never know. Also you would never know what it was going to be otherwise. He had left Bangalore and after about a month travelling around had come to sirohi and decided to stay across. But his desire to move again was beginning to take shape. Last night he woke up from a dream he was having . He had stepped into a place where the wind didn’t blew, clouds were stagnant, the land was plain and the trees never moved. Things were constant and defined and you never made mistakes. But he felt uneasy. When he woke up he realized life didn’t come with a set of instructions and there is reason for it to be so. His eyes held back the moisture but the clouds didn’t and it rained.

Chandi’s raucous laughter brought him back to the game. Babuji had lost inspite of the extra shuffle. Obviously that meant he lost too but he hadn’t much to loose. The beginners luck has probably started to cease. He knew his time was up in this place which had sheltered him for this long.

He walked out for a smoke. It was raining again. He started walking towards the road. There a lorry driver trying to mend something in his vehicle which had broken down due to rain. His old pride at mechanics took over and he dived besides him beneath the lorry. Another couple of hours and the lorry started. Even later Sanjog never really understood why but he just sat along with the lorry driver and drove out of sirohi. The lorry had two things written on it. “I will be a truck when I grow up” and “ ALL India Permit”.