Contents

1. 2. Man in Café Milan

Man in Café

1

Today is Sunday and a plausible day in the calendar for me at the cafe. Recently I had a lot of angst about how I spend my time. Attempting to get back all of it from unfruitful works. Cash had never been my principle vexation. Except at a specific time of life, when I appallingly felt its absence and thought how I could have shared some of it for society's beneficial uses. But my thoughts only remained on paper. I did not bulk up any amount of mega wealth to satisfy all these dreams. At times when I was poor, I tried to console myself with the idea that health is wealth (as in those times of diseases in history) and did not feel miserable in this regard. But only as time passed, I realized that some works do not elevate my soul and are not worthy of pursuit during my stay here, which again is a brief period… Today another intriguing thing occurred toward the beginning of the day when I was leaving the bistro. That morning, first I went to an expensive one and in the wake of seeing the menu, requested an espresso since I was there just to be away from my routine of the week. And also, it guaranteed more moments to muse upon certain ball games where my presence is imperative.

At the point when I left the restaurant, a little girl of nine or ten moved toward me and she focused on the fruit vendor and requested a taste of it and I obliged. And I was buying this for her when her little sister came and needed one for her too. The seller was not hepped up to give these things to them, still, they were given, and he didn't take the full price, however, reduced some cash, and started recounting that these youngsters are not on the right path. Without doubt that is a devious perception and who are we to pass such a judgment on these poor kids who are already carrying on with an existence of indigence. They were living in lanes and a good ways off, one could see their mother. This is where we are to refrain from verbalism yet do something that will not diminish the staidness of the scene. Then again your awful wishers -anyway though you are a peaceful joe, you have a few such on the planet-will make you interminably muffled on all such spells. Yes, you know the entire saga.

seen some street artists in my town and had wondered what their past would have been, but now, I got an inkling of that issue. These things are among the secret folios of life that are hidden from us for some time or at times forever. My presence, he said, was a decent boost to him, though he would prefer to be alone. I wanted to help him with a passable amount because that week was also a fortuitous one in my calendar as I was clearing away some of my debts by selling a part of my house. The deed was executed months ago, but the first part of the deal came to my account only a fortnight ago. I asked him about his wife and he said she felt unsafe with him in his financial mayhem and is with the daughters. And he told me with a genuine feeling of sadness that though they were willing to help him, their spouses are totally against it. Let the old spendthrift suffer. Only then the goose will learn. One of them even mentioned a very bad jargon in the vocabulary in his presence. The funny part was that he was that fellow's tutor in the tenth class. So Caliban can come from all parts of the earth at all times.��

2

It was past the ides of February that I visited the café again. He was there. He said that his mother was of Romanian blood and his father was Indian. He studied in Paris. His mother was a Freemason and had her parent lodge in London. He did odd jobs after he had lost his regular job as the administrator of a prestigious institution, and after the school bus tragedy, he lost major jobs permanently, as some sources reported that he was the chief culprit in that incident that took away many innocent lives. After the incident, he had bouts of depression but on another personal side, lost his connection for good ones forever and was henceforth doing quaint jobs. In the past three years, the Dobermann was his sole companion and he told me that dog is a special animal, a very grateful brute and he is happy that his love for a living being is reciprocated immediately. We human beings, he said, do not express love from the heart, because we are more worried about the image we create before others than actually expressing it. He had for that reason liked certain types of women in his life who are pellucid and expressive in their emotional lives. A false emotional life, he argued takes away the true joy of life forever and joy is an integral part of our being… That day, we were occupying the window chairs and the panes were wet in the morning drizzle and the air carried the smell of fresh bitumen on the dragways. Outside at a distance were manifest mighty stretches of silver poplars of heart-shaped and coarsely toothed leaves atremble in the wind. I asked him about his original home and he replied that his father kicked off when he was a small boy and he was brought up by his mother and aunts. They had a house near the Dacian citadels, and he left the country when his mother died. He was educated by his stepfather and he studied art in Paris and when his stepfather pegged out in the Second World War, he skived all connections with the immediate chain of relatives and travelled from city to city, country to country. The next ten years, he said, were the happiest in his whole life, and when he said that, a drop of tear touched the rim of his eyelashes. He claimed that his forefathers were Transylvanian Saxons and played a decisive role in the city’s development, but usually, I don’t take these genealogy tales very seriously because in my place every other household has written genealogy books, which contained only wrong historical data just to please those coming generations making them smug and dorky. He asked what I am into and I said, I am an aide to a mathematician who is doing some

His aunt was a university professor and in the free time, she acted in plays. When she took a role, she became that character. She played Duchess of Malfi many times in her life. That was her favourite role. ‘A good actor while acting, should give her imprint which nobody can give to the character she portrays and still remain aloof.’ , his aunt told him once. But the last part of her rede was difficult for her to follow. ‘And what happened to your aunt?’, she queried after a pause.

‘She lives ‘, he said, ‘and has FTD and also other problems ‘. She seemed relieved. He thoughtHe had not been to war front nor had he engaged in combats and taken injuries. Instead,he had his cupboard loaded with art books and chess sheets and pamphlets of pet stores and addresses of vets.

‘I loath such a life’, she said. And after a brief pause added- ‘I lean toward machismo. Not at all in negative sense’,she clarified again. He grinned. That was her uncommon notion of common things , he thought . However, he did not desire to be judgemental, and was attempting to view things every now and then in new perspectives.

‘My subjects are remarkable,’ he said in his rather genetically braggart timbre, as if he were seizing a decent arrow from his ancient quiver. ‘You are one of those celestial ones.’ Death of his father was a great blow to him. After that ,he had a habit of emphasizing things with extra energy or using extraneous words. ‘Religion explains, art shows ‘,she said when the talk started taking intellectual spillways. He preferred not to counter. Definitely she was not his type and in any gathering he would have avoided her company , but here in this evening in Milan, all were a bunch of trifling things. It ended with a midnight toast at the Golden Lounge with oysters and Super Tuscan. And she kept her word, she neither tripped the light fantastic nor shared rooms. But she gave him something that she had not promised, a strong embrace, stronger than the goblets of wine and a kiss too on his left cheek, (his right cheek had a razor smirch) that left an indelible and ambrosial mark on his memory than the dinner. When he looked into her eyes, an undercurrent was beginning to burgeon. Then they both took private passages. His group was near the Tiber river from the Cavour bridge, to see the new year fete . But he liked to be for a while alone.

After she had left, he spent a long time in Milan Central, thinking about his life. A vacuum started forming in his soul, which loomed larger at every nanosecond…The next day, he took a train to Florence and joined the main group as had planned. Though he was travelling in Frecciabianca and was supposed to reach in less than two hours, that was perhaps the longest train journey that he took in that decade.