‘Mehfil mein kaise keh dein kisi se; dil bandh raha hai kis ajnabi se…’
Kishore da’s voice filled the room as Raj stood there, stock-still, in shock. In all the years of police work, Raj had seen many crime scenes; more horrific and grotesque than this, yet this one knocked Raj out.
Just a few feet away, lay Milind, completely motionless.
Anybody who even remotely knew Milind, knew how out of character this was for him. To lay motionless. He was somebody who was completely animated, loud, full of life, like sunshine on an early February morning – bright and warm. It was thereby ironic that when he decided to open his bar, he decided to name it ‘Inertia’.
Well, he had to. After all, this was the name that his childhood sweetheart, his Praju, had had her heart set on.
Milind and Prajakta’s was the most clichéd love story there ever was. Milind claimed that he heard violins playing in the background the first time he saw her (this was long before Shahrukh Khan trained an entire generation in romance). Milind was in the 9th standard then and the country was yet to be hit by the DDLJ tsunami.
Prajakta moved to Bombay when the bomb(s) in Bombay had already gone off but the name change to ‘Mumbai’ was still awhile. She came to live with her paternal uncle after she lost both her parents in a cloudburst. However, nothing in her appearance and mannerisms gave away the emotional upheaval she had had to go through at such a young age. She had somehow managed to make her eyes icy and her face stern. Her pahadi short slender frame was defied by broad shoulders and a round face.
Milind, on the other hand, was a tall lanky fellow. Even at 15 years of age, he was already 5’10”, and growing. Many a times he wondered if he could pick up Prajakta and put her in his pocket.
They noticed each other the first day she started school. He was the popular kid and his presence loomed large over the class. She had red apples for cheeks and that thoroughly fascinated him; he had never seen a face like that.
But that was that. He was the popular boy; she was the shy new kid. He was an average student; she was bright. He was always centerstage in the class; she preferred to sit in the corners so as to stay invisible. Like chalk and cheese. All of Milind’s efforts to befriend her had gone in vain so far.
And then it happened. Milind’s family, then comprising of him, his younger sister, parents, and his grandmother, had been residing on the third floor of a three-storeyed building in the Seven Bungalows area in Andheri. Like most of the MIG housing built in those times, this meant a no-lift-in-the-building situation. This was becoming an issue for Milind’s aging grandmother and the family started looking for a place where getting to one’s own home didn’t feel like undertaking a tirthyatra.
Three months after their schools had reopened, Milind’s parents chanced upon an affordable rental in a newly constructed high rise in the Four Bungalows locality. The new house was a few kms away from their existing house but it was only a stone’s throw away from Prajakta’s uncle’s place. This meant…this meant…that Milind could now take the same bus as Prajakta took to and from school.
Milind couldn’t be less excited at the prospect of sharing more time, and a tiny space, with Prajakta in a non-school setting. This was not a school bus where they would find guaranteed seating. This was a BEST bus, which would be jampacked with people waiting for other people to get off so that they could take their seat. Milind decided that he would be the hero who would get her a seat everyday.
2 years from this resolve, Lolo was to tell ChiChi that he was her ‘Hero No. 1’. But Prajakta was no damsel in distress, and she didn’t need no hero. In the last three months, Prajakta had herself mastered the art of traveling in BEST buses. Taking the same bus everyday, she had noted schedules, identified patterns, and now knew very well which seats became vacant at which stops.
On his first day to school from his new house, Prajakta saw Milind struggling to get a seat. She knew that the seat across the aisle from her was to become vacant at the D.N.Nagar stop. So she signalled Milind to come over and stand next to her. Under the pretense of looking at classnotes, she told him about the seat that was to get vacant and who was to occupy it once it got empty. From here on, it was upto Milind to slyly slide in and capture the seat before its usual taker took it. And that Milind did, very skilfully.
And so this became a routine. Everyday, Prajakta and Milind would board from their stop. Prajakta would take one of the seats designated for ‘Ladies’. Milind would stand next to her until D.N.Nagar and then occupy the seat across the aisle from her as it got vacant. The earlier taker of that seat had now understood the dynamic and moved onto a new arrangement for himself. Sometimes, Milind saw seats getting empty before they reached the D.N.Nagar stop, but he never tried to reach those.
Return was easier. Their school was the first stop and so they got whatever seat they wanted. On that first day, Milind immediately went to the last seat and signalled Prajakta to come sit with him, but she didn’t. She preferred to sit in the designated ‘Ladies’ seats.
One morning, before the first school bell, Milind, his 2 jigaris, and Prajakta were sharing a bottle of flavoured milk at the ‘Aarey Milk stall’ when they decided to bunk class and go to ‘Town’ instead. They would take the fast train from Andheri to Churchgate, get down at the Marine Lines station, walk the Marine Drive promenade all the way upto Nariman Point and back, and then take the fast train back to Andheri. All this in the time their friends suffered through Hamlet’s existential monologue at school.
Prajakta was amused but did not want to be part of this unplanned excursion. She was a highly disciplined kid and did not want to do anything that might make her uncle seem like a lesser guardian. She bore the weight of unspoken responsibilities on her broad shoulders. But Milind was persistent, and something about the way he described the Marine Drive on a high tide day during peak August rains made her want to break her shackles and go wherever he wanted to take her.
The excursion did not turn out to be the experience they had hoped for. The fierceness of the high tide sea and the pearl sized droplets of rain reminded Prajakta of the unforgiving storms in her hometown. And one of those storms had taken away her parents. They never made it to Nariman Point that day. They had hardly reached the junction overlooking ‘Not Just Pizza By The Bay’ when Prajakta broke down crying.
This was the first time Milind had seen the ice in her eyes melt. This was the first time since arriving in Bombay that she had let her icy eyes become moist. He held her in his arms. She let him hold her in his arms, for what seemed like an eternity. No questions, no words between them. She would tell him when the time was right.
And thus it was sealed. She, who had not shown any vulnerability in front of her family even, had broken down in front of this strange boy. That day on their busride back home from school, Prajakta sat with Milind on the last seat. Milind shared one end of the earphones coming out of his Walkman with her. Visuals of Aamir Khan soft landing as ‘Pehla Nasha’ came on. And she became ‘Praju’. His Praju.
And it stayed this way for the next 15 years. Even as they pursued different academic interests, different careers – he, at a BPO in Gurgaon, and she, training in Nagpur. She was by his side, figuratively, when he got his first paycheque, his first promotion, the first time he got snubbed while a lesser deserving colleague got promoted. She was there when he finally had too much of corporate life and decided it was time to do something of his own. A bar. Yes. That’s what he was going to do. And he was going to name it ‘Inertia’ coz that’s what Prajakta wanted.
Last night was Inertia’s grand opening. Both of Milind’s jigris had flown-in (one from Bangalore and the other from Ahmedabad) for his special night. Prajakta was now posted in Mumbai anyway.
But Milind somehow felt that something was missing. He wanted for his personal life to take a leap as well. He decided that it was time that he finally proposed. And she said yes. Of course.
So after the bar shut down that first night after its opening, Milind, his two jigris, and Prajakta took over the backroom, and they partied. Hard. The music was as eclectic as their mood. At some point, Shakira’s hips couldn’t lie, at another, Jagjit Singh ranted about how hoshwale didn’t know what bekhudi was, and at yet another, Raveena Tandon felt like she was on fire under raindrops that fell tip tip.
Prajakta finally left at 3 am; she had to get to work by 8. Milind’s jigris left by 5. He saw them off as Divya Bharti proclaimed ‘Zulmi meri jaan tere kadmo ke niche aa gai’.
For some reason, Milind decided to moonwalk his way back in. After what he thought was a reasonable stretch of moonwalking, in jubilation, he spinned upwards the beer bottle that he was drinking from. The bottle hit the high ceiling and one of the shards came flying back and launched deep inside his skull.
And so Milind lay there for the next three hours, until Savita Tai, the cleaning lady, walked in at 8:05 am sharp.
Within 5 minutes of her arrival into the bar, Savita Tai came running out, her shrieks drowning RD Burman in the background. A few people on the street heard her screams and came over. An untrained eye would believe that these people came over to calm down Savita Tai, but in reality, most of them just wanted to know what went down that was worth this much screaming. Among these people, was a traffic constable posted at the corner of the road on which Inertia was located.
He immediately called the local police station and within no time the inspector, along with two constables, reached the scene.
So here she was. Inspector Prajakta Sood, or Raj, as her colleagues called her due to her strict authoritarianism; riveted with grief in the same place where she was dancing with joy not more than 5 hours ago. Her eyes were misty again, after 15 years. Kishore da’s voice pouring in ‘Kaise dekhe sapne nayan…’