Nocturnal Programmer

2AM Sangumugam Beach, Trivandrum, India

He was too old to cry. Wisdom they say. An attribute of the old. His mind was rather as calm as the sea, yet not without the waves, a turbulence that is constant as long as the sea remain. They say, the sea has the power to wash away all worries of living, just being near it, watching it. Rhythm. Teaching the mind to resonate as you watch it rise and ebb away. Rhythm. Like learning music. Like being trained in the army to march. Like an athlete’s footwork. Done again.. and again… until you look like you were born that way. It is easy for the world to pass it of as a natural talent. Lazy world, what do they know about hard work. About life’s destiny. About dedication to commitment.

It has been 6 long hours since that destined hour since his love of life orbited past his skies again. An orbital path never expected to cross again in his lifetime. Across the same skies he’d look up to pray for peace every night. Damn. Pagan skies. He wondered if early christians were love lost.

She’d been there briefly. Scrolling around the beachside with her new family. A conversation of confessions. About how her girly confidence was long lost and she thrown into the world of womanly uncertainty. Ah.. the days of confidence. He was just one of the flowers the frolicking girl who ran around the fields plucked to beautify her hair. How innocent is growing up, one would write about. But the flower was young, not a drop of honey broken, not a full days sunlight relished.

Was it enough to let her find life her own way. Was it enough to save her when she got lost? He wondered if every person were to learn everything from scratch and repeat history in his own world, how can the world pass of anything as common. Earth turns. Sun rises. Everybody falls in love. Everybody dies. History by design is bound to repeat itself. He wondered if extraordinary was just happenstance or calculable only in fiction.

And then his phone started ringing. Jasmine.

“Hello Jasmine.. Have you landed?”

“Yes, just now. Damned fog, an eight hours delay. Were you sleeping in the car waiting?”

“No I’m at the beach side”

“What are you doing there? Getting drunk seeing crabs hanging out having late night parties in their underground joints?”

“Hmm I wish… I was rather just missing you”

“Yes. Me too. It is very hard to be married and be away like this Vijay. I only wish I could get this course over with fast, so that I can be with you all the time”

“Alright, I’ll come around to pick you while you check out”

“Ok… See you soon David”

“Who is David?”

“Oh sorry Vijay, its this friend of mine whom I met briefly while at the airport waiting. I just accidentally spilled out his name for you.”

“Ha.. Alright. I thought you met him briefly”

“No actually… he came to drop me too to Chennai airport. You know he sort of works with me in the labs sometimes, so we are just friends”

“Yeah ok. Come fast Keerthi, I’m waiting for so long”

“Who is Keerthi?”

“Hah hah.. I was just kidding”

“Bad boy!!! Fine, I’m walking over Kerala now. Come over fast”

“Ok. See you soon…” Click

He was bored. Looked at his watch. 5AM. Day Break. His wondered if loyalty was just a perception. He couldn’t care less. He walked back to his car singing- “Sunrise… sunset… sunrise… sunset… simply flow the days…”

The sky. Bright sunlight.

A crowded cafeteria. White spots in the vision afterwards.

Boredom.

She was looking at her friends talking over lunch talking something. She asked herself if she was having problems with memory these days that recent events seem too vague as if they’d happened too long ago. Is it her body confused from all that chemical imbalance induced from all that frequent drinking lately? She wondered lazily.

She had difficulty in breathing well… a sort of suffocation as if she was depressed. She wondered why she was overcome with such intense a bout of boredom. Was it a craving? The precursor to habitual addiction? She tightened her lips while her mind drifted into a resolution to try and restrict drinking only to friday nights.

She was woken up from her reverie from the natural change of scenes as notified by her vision, being in a busy workplace cafeteria. She was amused how visual notifications can also wake a person from a day dream, the eyes being open unlike that of a sleep dream. She lifted her head and looked around , lips still tight , releasing a breath that she didn’t know she was holding. People talking. Flirting. The happiness in the faces of people as in from a tinge of adventure of the attempts at being casually unfaithful. Her mind drifted again into its dark miserable existence. She had a fear for such tendencies exhibited by people. Wondered if her love of life felt a similar sense of adventure and happiness when he tried to play what he wanted to be just a casual attempt at what many pass of as fun. Was he a weak heart? Or was it a physical need for variety in living? Wondered why such memories remain so etched unlike the rest. Questions she feared would remain unanswered to her grave. Grave. She feared old age. Wished she died young.

“Alamel!!”, she heard Karthik shouting, “Come, lets go back, its been too long a lunch break”

Karthik. Hmmmm. Somebody cares. She felt important. Wondered when her human nature would conveniently choose to forget such good done by him. She despised human nature.

“Alamel, how are you feeling after all that happened yesterday night?”

Yesterday. She strained to remember. Felt very odd why she was so forgetful lately.

Distributed storage. She broke a smile as the phrase occurred in her mind. She always believed that human beings don’t really have to remember anything, because of their abilities to social interactions and utilization of tools, information could be stored in different places or in people. She always performed malpractice in exams with small pieces of paper, following the very same philosophy. At this point she reasoned to retrieve aid from his memories.

“Karthik”, she lazed to outsource reminiscence, “I only remember the part were we got drunk too much and while we were driving back, you wanted this chewing gum…. which I took from my pocket…. and it fell down…… and I was distracted from driving, and I nearly hit a garbage truck… ha ha.. It was so dangerously adventurous. Cant remember a thing. How did you people sneak me into my room without waking that crazy landlord?”

“Ha ha.. interesting… funny how physical abuse can affect the mind so much”

“Oh-no. Not another complex metaphysical discourse. At least, not in my dazed mindset.”

“What? Are you kidding me? I was just joking about getting back to work after the break. Wondered if you’d subconsciously walk back to our workplace when I said that. You see, I’m experimenting with this new thing we are into”

“Hmm. I guess I’d so much to drink yesterday; I can’t even decode your surreal jokes. Can you believe it? So you meant the bill? I thought you’d paid, I was about to ask you that anyway”

“Alamel…this is going to take a real while getting used to. Lets see how lost you are. Try and answer this totally simple, non-surrealistic, general awareness question.”

“Okay, shoot. But don’t ask me who the vice president of India is. I hope you know I don’t really read news papers that much”

“Hmm”, he shrugged, “it’s a much simpler question actually.” He’d a sudden strange concern in his tone and expression with the brows, as if he was a doctor about to inform his patient about childbirth or death, “What do you think you are now?”