THE LAST CIGARETTE

As the satin curtain was cautiously being detached hinge by hinge, he sat at the far end of the dimly lit small suburban studio. With a wrinkled and tired forehead much like the walls and corridors of an old building, he tried to flex his fingers, but even his lazy knuckles refused to crackle with a noise. Half lit by the flickering monitor kept ahead on a small makeshift tool to his left, the other half of his face kept steady despite the glaring sunlight entering from the small slit on top of the grungy studio wall next to him. The untied shoelace on his stretched-out legs kissed the long sequences of never ending wires on the worn out wooden floor. The hammer, with which the P.O.P pillar in the middle of the shooting set was being broken, could not break his deep gaze. The only time his eyelids shifted was when the plywood was being unearthed, generating a heap of floor-dust; even as the lens on the camera, was still being detached. Right from his first day of shooting as an unpaid intern to 20 years later as a modest television director, he had learned to respect, protect and shield the camera at all costs. This brief instinct of the eye broke him out of the deadness of the graveyard shift which began at 9 – the previous night. Moving his head towards the glaring slit now, his eyes struggled to keep open. His digital watch displayed 8:59 am, and the noise was suddenly much more prominent. With honking horns and barking dogs outside, he stared at his worn out watch for some seconds while the entire shooting floor was being dismantled. It was a wrap! The long run of 318 episodes had come to a halt. The production house had decided to shut shop as the ratings weren’t really the talk of the town! But there was little despair. Over the years, he had incepted and ended numerous mediocre shows with great flair. Once touted as a promising film-maker – he waited anxiously for his ancient Nokia 3310, battery bundled with a rubber band - kept on the monitor in front of him, to ring. Neither the ‘KEEP IN TOUCH’ hoots and hugs of his assistants, actors and crew; nor the workers and setting boys taking the set to pieces – could get his eye. His son had an interview lined up at a film production house today for an internship as an assistant. Just making sure that the phone is fully charged and not on the silent mode, he picked up his torn packet of Marlboro next to it. Without using his fingers, he lipped out the last cigarette in his mouth.


I ran! I ran and how! I ran like a dog! In absence of a belt and food - for days, my pants were on a perpetual decline. As I struggled to keep my underwear from full public display with one hand while running, the other one tightly clenched a shoulder bag freely hanging all over the place. I was still far from even the other side of the road and I feared that I had missed the bus to the city, already. It was, by now, almost 9 a.m! My interview was at 11 and the massive production house, about 90 km away, had shortlisted applicants for an Intern position - from all over the country - for the biggest film ever being made. Having won umpteen film festivals, this was to be my first job and I was perspiring not because I was shitting in anticipation but because I was running like my ass was on fire. With an entire town praying for me, my untied shoelace and ill fitted pants did not ruin my plan of racing through the bustling street of my small town connecting to the main highway to the city, like a fox. My body was giving up but with no other means of travel to that production house and with virtually no money in the pocket, I just couldn’t afford to miss the bus. The clutter of the street filled with tea stalls and bullock carts, clubbed with the madness of the sun were driving me crazy. Even in this moment of insanity, being the obsessive freak that I am, I wanted to check my resume one last time for any errors. Jumping railings and maneuvering like a cat, my hand swiftly moved inside the bag to remove my paper. Meanwhile, I had almost reached the opposite side of the bus stand and my sticky black shirt could now take it no more. It was a small town where the bus barely halted for seconds but it was no where in sight. Gasping for breath, I had the slightest smirk when I gazed at the fat fuck standing at the bus stop grinning at me. I used to see this guy every day, same time, same place, and sometimes I used to think – same clothes as well. He used to catch the same bus to the same final stop for fuck knows why. His life was as predictable as that of a headless chicken. When I saw him there, I knew I hadn’t missed my bus. Deciding to check the papers in the bus, my breath was subtly returning. I was bending with hands on my knees, with the fat fuck smiling at me with just a road divider in the foreground. The desolated road usually never had a single vehicle pass for hours in a day. So passing onto the other side required no marathon. Giving him the most devious smile, I reached out for my pack of cigarettes. No one knew I smoked. I barely used to carry a packet, but this moment called for one! To my delight, there was one last cigarette inside and I guess one last minute before the bus to arrive. Perfecto!


The studio was virtually empty. The crew had left, the set dismantled, the equipment loaded in trucks. He still sat at the far end of the studio with eyes gazing in front. He was waiting for his son to call. He was waiting for his son to tell him that he was on his way to the interview. He was waiting for his son to ask him what to expect when being interviewed by a director. He was moving the cigarette from one end of the lips to another. He wouldn’t light it. His eyes were tired and clumsy. His posture was losing grace. Smelling like a rotten fruit and looking like a pig, he got up finally to bid adieu to his bread and butter for over 18 months. Dusting off the leftover properties of the dismembered set, he picked up his shoulder bag and stepped out of the studio with the cigarette popping from one end of the lips to another.


As soon as I managed to smuggle out a miniature matchbox from my dysfunctional shoulder bag to light that victory cigarette, a bus zoomed in and zoomed out before I could blink my eye! I lit the match and was about to light the cigarette when my ass lit with fire. The fat fuck was gone! He boarded the bus. My body trembled. My mind went numb. The next bus was not scheduled till for at least 3 hours and my big interview went for a toss. Drowning all expectations, I felt like a goat ready for slaughter as I gazed at the empty bus stop. I still had the cigarette in my mouth. It did not drop. I tried getting my phone out to make a call but to my dismay, I had not charged it. I was a dead duck. Just sometime back, I was a promising film maker who was in the final short list for the coveted intern job. I was destined to be there! Everything and everyone in the universe conspired and played the part right to get me that job. The last cigarette did me in! Life did not fuck me. I fucked myself!


It has been 20 years today. I managed to get a job in the city after that. I have a wife and a son who is starting out to make a mark. Who knows what would have happened if I were to be on that bus. Life could have been different for me or the bus could have punctured a tyre just a second after my boarding and life would have been the same. But I missed my chance not by destiny but by deed. And that’s what counts. The universe forgives but does not forget. And I did miss the bus it sent! I stopped time on my fancy but cheap digital watch just a minute before 9 am and it has remained like that ever since. Time stopped, life paused! I played with fate and it screwed me hard and I wanted to apologize. I don't know why but I couldn't get closure. I stood opposite the bus stand on a deserted and lonely highway with a cigarette stuck in my mouth, angry at myself - for a long time. I hated every element of that moment but I wanted everything to remain as is, like a snapshot, till the time fate found me again. Life was to resume only then! And hence, I could never throw my Nokia 3310 which gave up on me at the last minute, nor throw my flying shoulder bag. My watch still reads 8:59 a.m and I still do not tie my shoe lace! I still gaze at the fat fuck every time I end a show, thinking and reminding myself that he was the one who led me to that bus every day. We never spoke but he smiled and grinned till the last minute. He was virtually making my life. I never saw him after that! Only the day I find him and the bus in real again, will I throw the last Marlboro cigarette, from that day, I could not drop. Until then, I will continue popping it from one end of the lips to another.

The Look

Cramped like a doll in a cardboard box -- at the window seat in a crowded bus, you travel to work. You still can't figure whether to put your feet up and rest your knee on the back of the seat ahead or ground your feet on the floor and sit uptight. You fidget and fiddle to fit. You wonder how the fat fuck next to you with a sticky sweaty white shirt can sit with such deadpan tranquility while you try every feather in your number-fucked mind to achieve that calm! Yes, your mind's perpetually number-fucked. Dates, Schedules, To-do lists, Birthdays, Meetings, Appointments, Friend requests on your blackberry, your GMAT score, the damn E.M.I, the number of comments on your twitter post, the money in your wallet, the time on your watch, count of days for your next pay, recurring adjustment in today’s daily budget to compensate for last night's fat dinner bill --- the list's pretty extensive! But all you think of right now is the number of coins you have in your pocket and the tantrum the conductor will throw once you play a prince with no chchutta paisa. Wrestling your hand into your ass, you somehow manage to traject out the wallet. "Teri Maa Ka! No 10 re notes, no fucking coins, not even a 50 - just the damn 500 re note - the jackass is gonna throw a fit." Anxious as hell and full of shit, you squirm like a prisoner and frown like satan’s dick! Showtime! Standing on your head with his botox’d fat-ass grin, the bus conductor looks like Google’s answer to God! You so know he so knows that you don’t have so many coins! The sticky sweaty white shirt fat fuck just bought his ticket with so many coins. They have shared a smirk and formed a team and they know you are a prince. Moment of truth! But something happens just then. As you crunch, you realize it was the front jeans pocket. It always was! The coins – the fucking coins! Their smirk transforms into straightfaces, your straightface into a smile! But your pants are tight. You need to get up to remove the coins. But to get up is to give them respect. You don’t wanna do that! You have a solution! There’s still that tiny space underneath the back of the seat ahead, you can spread and dive your legs straight in. You slant your spine and slide your ass forward to give your hand a clean slip in your front pant. You glide your legs oh-so-smoothly beneath the seat infront, remove the chchutta paisa from your jeans and start pulling back just when you hit the bottom of the front seat with your feet, hard. Fuck! You just kicked the lady’s butt sitting on it; and dude, how!! The lady turns with disgust, you squirm in embarrassment, the fat fuck’s anxious to see what happens next, the conductor’s bugged. They all exchange --- The Look !

If cell phones were monsters, the internet would be an orgy! But ‘the look’ – the look is inevitably the mother of all communication. We all give the look - be it conscious or faint, plotted or impromptu, straight or slant, focused or hidden! Because spiritually, as mammals - that is ‘THE’ only way we truly speak! And cynically, the lone way to determine a lie is only by the fucking eye! (or more recently, the lie detector polygraph machine).

So when you walk past people on the street, turn back after taking tickets from a window, sit in your car waiting for the traffic signal to go green, waiting at the doctor’s clinic – you consciously (more often than not) or otherwise, make eye contact with most people at your arms distance. Customarily, those strangers return your temporary gaze. But just at that moment when they fix their tangent with yours – you abruptly withdraw your look. You suspend and move forward. You let the moment pass. You stop communicating because there’s frankly no fucking need to, well – most times!

You enter a washroom in the movie interval. Most guys subconsciously dread to pee in between 2 other guys. They’d rather wait for one of the corner urinals to be vacated. It is by far, the weirdest feeling on the face of the earth to be in between and at kissing distance from 2 guys taking a leak. But as in most theatre intervals, the space and time crunch gets the better of you and ‘To Pee or not To Pee’ is no longer the question. ‘You got to do what you got to do’ takes center stage! And here comes ‘The Look’. You make it so obvious that you aren’t looking to your side that you go totally deadpan. The side look, in most cases here, comes with extremely emotionless-driven-rawness. With absolutely no expressions, your tangible relief of having a good pee is surpassed by the psychological relief of having the guy next to you zip up and fuck off from there before you! Phew! It is slightly simpler in the queens section though - Unlike men, a woman expects and knows that it is highly likely that she will be checked out by all women in front of the basin mirror. But they will still do the side glance. And if caught on camera – that is so beautiful sometimes!

The Look is always the first initiator of any communication– the first smiling eyes when you meet your soon to be boss, the first time you actually brush skins with the woman you love (lust in most cases), the look your new born gives you when you hold her in your hands. The look is always the last of any communication – when you look at your boss in the eye when you are quitting or getting fired, when you look at your wife when she is calling it off for some fuckbag, when someone you love is breathing his last. The look is the first act and the final act – there is no foreplay in this with a sweet kiss and a Thank you Miss! The look’s the beginning, the look’s the end – the only deal is how many of them are there in between!

Cynic Diary

You are not that prevalent!
It’s a myth that you are the center of the universe. I thought as much but turns out that it isn’t exactly the case. It’s a fallacy that when you sleep in the night, the malls shut and the monks fuck! Nothing changes – because of you. Things change – because they ought to.

You will not make a difference, nor make this world a better place!
No amount of saplings you dig in the ground will save a dying life! Eventually someone or the other will take a leak on it - balancing oxygen with piss. Let’s look at it more objectively than metaphorically! You ‘cannot’ power oxygen on earth – so just control where you piss! As the aeroplane tutorial video rightly puts it – Please take care of yourself first before giving oxygen to others! Survive! For everything else- there’s God, Government and the fucking MasterCard.

You will never improve!
I can never change! You can never change! If we claim that we have changed, we are lying. If I claim that your opinion on me matters to me, I am kidding you. I may be doing what you are saying, but it is because I ‘want’ to do it – not because you make sense. It’s just that you made me realize what I really thought. So, yeah – Thank you - but - Mind you, I ‘will’ go back to my old ways in no time. That’s pretty much how the cookie crumbles.

You will always be a wannabe or a fake!
Whether it’s the salary hike or a simple Facebook like – you will want to be appraised in life. Be it maneuvering facts on your C.V or colour correcting your display picture, there always ‘will’ be a black gland in your body. You will not be able to flush it out of your system. You will always be an actor –with your close colleague, closer friend and closest partner! No matter what you claim or think, there is no chance that you can be yourself with anyone or anything other than your washroom mirror.

You were never important!
You will always confuse phases of temporary attention in life with the significance you command in other people’s lives. You will never want to accept the fact that you are alone and no one gives a shit in the long run even when you claim that you are accepting that. It’s a pity that you will never realize that all love eventually dies and nothing is permanent in life – not even ‘life’!