The Mirage

It was like any normal day. He was on his way to work, driving across the city, one of the rats waiting their turn to move forward. The newspaper served as company during the long dreary traffic lights and the never ending inches gained each minute, the newsprint telling him the latest news or what passed for news nowadays, in its muted baritone. He almost drove the car on auto pilot, his eyes busy scanning the newspaper. He caught sight of the car ahead moving forward in his peripheral vision and eased his foot off the clutch gently, folding up his paper with one hand. A sudden movement ahead made him jam his leg down hard on the brake. The car jerked to a shuddering standstill and there was a heart stopping thud from behind. He looked again to see the lady who had crossed in front of his car, still walking across, apparently oblivious to what had happened. She was short by any standard but the purpose in her stride more than made up for stature. As she approached the pavement, she turned as if feeling his glance on her, her heart shaped face framed by a halo of hair, her high cheekbones framing the gently upturned lips that gave him a smile and made his heart skip two whole beats.

An insistent pounding on his car window dragged him back like a reluctant cat to his current problem as the irate driver of the car that had bumped into his made it appear that the car had been totaled. The argument see-sawed back and forth and by the time he convinced the other driver that he would be covered by insurance and exchanged cards, he realized that he was going to be late for his meeting. He inched the rest of the way to the office, driving more with the horn and earning nasty stares from passersby. But he did not care, his force field made stronger by his distaste for being late. When he finally made it to his parking slot, he was about half an hour late – an event that was so unusual that it caused a murmur when he entered the floor. He went straight into the meeting, muttering an excuse about an accident.

As he sat in the meeting listening to the client describe their requirements, his mind unraveled and traced its path back to the instant when the cause for his accident had smiled at him. The completely open smile that traveled all the way up to her eyes kept getting replayed in his mind. A sharp tug on his sleeve and a quick whisper of “they are asking us for our approach” blew away his dreams and he stood up and launched into his presentation. The rest of the morning passed predictably without incident, safely tucked away in the meeting room. The client was suitably impressed with his pitch and was ready to sign on the dotted line and only the formalities needed to be completed when he finally rose and shook hands. As he made his way back to his room, concerned colleagues asked him about the accident. Their curiosity was more out of the fact that he was probably the most careful driver around than from their concern for his safety and he soon grew tired of explaining. For some strange reason that he did not care to explain to himself, he left out the lady completely from all his explanations.

The day drew on with a conference call and a review. He grabbed himself a coffee and was making his way back to his room when he suddenly turned to look at the reception for no rhyme or reason. The reception was at the far end of the hall but was clearly visible through the glass paneling. A matron of a lady who was almost as old as the company itself, she was a fixture of the office. And he came to a sudden stop when he saw the “lady” of the accident talking to the receptionist. Without even realizing it, he had changed direction, his mind having directed his feet towards the reception automatically, his eyes fixed on the woman bending down in conversation across the counter. Suddenly, he felt something slamming into his shin and went sprawling on the floor. The cup of coffee had drained itself down his shirt front as he now lay in a pool of loose papers and files that had emptied out of the open filing cabinet he had banged into. When he finally stood up after disentangling himself from the files and papers, the reception was empty save the matron. He ignored the ugly brown stain on his shirt and the stinging gash on his shin as he went up to the receptionist and asked her about the woman who had just been there. Meeting a blank stare, he almost started describing her when he caught the receptionist’s interested looks and stopped himself. It was the second time that day that the lady from the scene had caused him to come completely undone. And he wasn't enjoying the feeling. Neither was he enjoying his obvious interest in her. It wasn't like him at all to be behaving like some lovesick puppy.

The way home was uneventful enough, the routine trudge back home. He was scheduled to meet a couple of friends at a pub a short distance away from his apartment and he walked down there. His mind soon switched off the day as he got into the familiar routine of trading stories with his friends over beer. Waves of their laughter washed the day’s events out of his mind like their erasing patterns in the sand on a beach. The place was a favorite of theirs and they were Friday night regulars. After what seemed like a couple of hours of horsing around, he excused himself to go to the washroom. Checking his phone as he walked back to the table, he saw a missed call from a client. He found a quiet place away from the music and called up the client. As he stood there talking, he glanced back at the table and his brain stopped short in mid stride as he saw “her” talking to his friend. He stood there staring blankly for a couple of minutes and then the cogs in his brain started whirring again as he heard a “Hello, hello, hello”. The irritated client had realized he had been speaking to thin air and was trying to reestablish contact. He placated the man and told him that he would sort out the problem soon. He finished the call in a hurry, his eagerness to do so almost bordering on desperation, and he looked up only to find his friend alone. “She” was nowhere in sight. In a mindless panic he ran outside and scanned the street desperately but could not find her.

He went back to the table and sat down, feeling slightly restless. Trying to appear casual, he asked his friend who the lady he had been talking to had been. Faced with a “Which of the ladies are you asking about?” and a guffaw, he simply said “The short one in black trousers”. His friends then started poking fun at him and for the rest of the evening; he became the source of their entertainment for his seemingly apparent attraction to short women in black trousers. So much so that, they would call out to him whenever some woman passed by in trousers, asking him what color he thought it was. When his irritation became visible, they stopped. It was nearly time to wind up anyway and they made their way out after paying. As he waved his good bye and turned to walk back to his apartment, his friend called out “There was no one with black trousers that I spoke to this evening. It must have been the waitress.” He simply shook his head at that and chose not to reply. The walk back was short, the breeze cooling his thinking down and trying to create rational explanations for what had happened. By the time he reached home, he had almost completely succeeded in explaining the whole episode away. His sleep that night was troubled, with visions of smiling eyes framed by high cheek bones and a heart shaped face floating in and out of range.

The next morning, he resolved to put what he now called his stupidity firmly behind him. Reaching office early, he threw himself into a frenzy of work to make sure that he had no time to sit and think, almost afraid that he would start thinking of “her” again. He made sure he was tied up in some meeting or the other and was in company through the day, but was obviously on the edge, losing his temper at small things, growling like the proverbial bear with a thorn in its paw. Most of his team was quite upset to hear his edgy comments, something that they had never experienced before and ensured that they ran clear of him after the first encounter. By about 4 PM, he had completely run out of things to do and was now searching desperately. Some members of his team politely suggested that he take the rest of the day off and faced with the lack of an alternative; he chose to leave office and walk to the nearby cafe and ordered a coffee. While he sat there sipping his coffee and staring out of the window, trying to concentrate on the drink, his mind traveled unbidden to his first sight of the woman and her smile. The path it had to take was by now familiar and it found its way with ease. As he absently sipped the coffee, he tried to imagine who she would be and what she would be doing.

Her dress sense was excellent and the fact that it was a definite work dress would make her a young executive. She wore her hair long, as opposed to most women who cut it short, choosing a soft feminine look over an efficient short style. Her strides seemed to eat the ground up, showing a definite sense of purpose and aggression. He was musing at her name and background when the sour taste of coffee dregs told him that the coffee was long over. He asked for the cheque and happened to look out of the window as he waited for it. And there she was, on the other side of the road, in a white summery dress this time, her hair and the dress softly billowing in the strong evening breeze. The traffic, the crowd, the distance, all melted into nothingness as his entire being suddenly sharply focused on her. She was walking away towards the next intersection, her strides eating up the ground. He had no memory of having got out of the chair and run out of the café but he suddenly found himself at the intersection waiting for the light to turn green. The boy from the café was at his elbow asking him to pay for his coffee and in his hurry, he thrust the first note that he could take out of his wallet into the boy’s hands.

The light seemed to be taking an eternity to turn green, each second stretching endlessly. He could see that she was already turning into a building. He decided not to wait and made a dash across the road. Cars honked their displeasure and a few jammed their brakes just mere whiskers away from him. But he was past caring. He made it in one piece across and continued to run, making straight for the building which she had entered. He went in and found that it was an office complex of 15 floors. He had no way of knowing which office she had gone into. Riding on an unreasonable flash of inspiration, he decided to take the lift up and simply stop at each floor and look out. He made it into the first lift and to the extreme annoyance of a couple of co-passengers; he pressed the buttons for all 15 floors. The lift was a glass cage and he kept looking upwards through the sides while waiting for the next floor. It seemed to take an hour between each of the floors and at each stop; he stepped out for a moment and looked around on the floor. There was no sign of her. As he crossed the 8^th floor, a movement caught his eye. Another elevator was coming down and sure enough, there she was in it, riding the glass cage down like some mythical enchantress of yore.

He got off on the 9^th floor and ran down, trying to outrun the elevator. As luck would have it, the elevator did not stop at any floors and was heading straight down. He could not keep pace with it and as he reached the 6^th floor, he saw that it had reached the ground level and the woman was heading out of the front door of the complex. She stopped for a moment and asked something of the security guard and then walked out. He continued running down and reached the ground floor, his chest on fire and breathing like a steam locomotive as his lungs screamed their protest at this rough treatment being meted out to them. He ran up to the security guard and tried speaking while the breath wheezed in and out of his throat. When he finally managed to make sense of the question about the woman, the guard simply replied back “What woman in a white dress? No one stopped here or asked me anything.” He thought that the guard was trying to protect information and tried to cajole him but to no avail. After a few minutes of trying he gave up, feeling uneasily that the guard actually was telling him the truth. A question suddenly appeared in the dark recesses of his mind – had he actually seen her or was it just his memory causing hallucinations? He brushed the thought away as instantly as it came, his rational behavior taking over and dismissing the possibility.

He simply decided to go home after that. At home, not wanting to be by himself, he decided to go over to a friend’s place. He spent the evening playing with his friend’s son and making small chat with his friend. He was relieved as he got home, relieved that he had not hallucinated or seen any more visions of “her”. Exhaustion soon took over and he sank into a deep sleep. He woke with a start realizing at once that he had overslept. He hurried through the motions and finally got into his car. Turning the key in the ignition, his heart sank as the engine made a dull thudding sound as it turned over but did not fire up. Several attempts later, he realized that it was not going to start though he could not find anything obviously wrong. A phone call to the service station got him no reply. They were probably not yet open. He walked out into the street and hailed an auto rickshaw. He got in and joined the queue of vehicles, trying to jostle their way down the street, fighting for space at six impossible lanes on what was otherwise a two lane road. About fifteen minutes and a kilometer later, he passed the subway entrance to the metro railway station near his house and realized that it might be much faster than going by road.

It was definitely a good decision though he felt like a complete sardine jammed between a heavy set man in a suit and two teenage boys discussing girls at their school. He wished he were someplace else but had to make do as this seemed to be the only way to reach faster. He reached office on time though he had started a half hour later than normal. But the day seemed destined to go wrong. He lost his presentation for a client, his sales manager called in sick, the laptop ran out of battery in the middle of the client meeting, lunch was cold sandwiches that dripped mayonnaise making a nice white patch on his pants and the package he had been expecting was delayed. By afternoon, he was one bundle of nerves, expecting the sky to fall on his head. As he sat there with his head in his hands wondering why all this was happening to him, a heart shaped face with a heartwarming smile floated in his mind. With a visible effort, he shook the thought out of his head and stood up, wanting to simply get out of there. The cafe seemed to be a good idea and he headed out to it. He got there and found himself surprising hungry and ordered himself a sandwich. He chose to sit in the same seat as yesterday and stared outside the same window. He told himself that he was just looking outside but there was a small voice inside that mocked at him and insisted that he was searching for her, hoping that she would turn up today as well.

Half way through the sandwich, he turned around to look for the waiter and was shocked to see the very lady sitting at the table behind him. As the initial shock of discovery wore off, another thought slowly made its way through to the surface of his thought pool, that maybe he should go up to her and strike a conversation. Just to try and get to know more about her. He ran through various conversation pieces in his mind, rehearsing his lines and trying to anticipate what she might say. He felt very much like a gawky teenager himself at that moment. Finally, his mind made up, he stood up and walked back to her table and asked her if he might join her. She was wearing a pastel shirt and khaki trousers, looking quite like the first time he had seen her. The heart shaped face looked up and smiled, exactly as she had done when she walked across the traffic that day. Taking that to be an invitation, he sat down and introduced himself. Still getting just that disarming smile and no other response as she sipped a tall drink that looked refreshingly chilled, he asked her what she was drinking. Again, that smile which seemed to not reveal anything but also said a whole lot. He decided to not let her silence faze him. After all, she was still smiling, wasn't she?

He called the boy over, the same one that had chased him down the road yesterday for the payment. And he told him to get the same drink that the lady was drinking. The boy looked at him weirdly for a moment and then across at her and then back at him. Then the boy looked uncertain and almost walked away, taking a couple of steps and then inspiration seemed to strike him as he walked across to the next table where there was a couple sitting and looked at what the woman was having. The boy then came back and said that the woman was having a cappuccino. By now, impatience had got the better of him and he almost screamed at the boy, “Not that woman you idiot, I want the same drink that the woman sitting opposite me is having”. The boy now retreated to his manager, clearly confused. The woman was still just sitting there, the smile still playing on her face, almost quizzical and he thought mocking his losing his cool. He could now hear the boy conversing with the manager. The boy was telling the manager “Boss, this is the same guy who gave me Rs 500 for a coffee yesterday. Today he is asking for the same drink as some imaginary woman. He seems to be cuckoo. Should I just give him a coffee and pretend to go along?”

Hearing this was like a dunk in a bucket of cold water and he simply got up, kept a Rs 500 note on the table and left the cafe. He walked out as if in a daze, realizing that the whole episode had been his imagination and he had made a complete fool of himself over some woman who did not even exist. He walked aimlessly for a while not realizing where his feet were taking him and then simply decided to go home, not feeling like working any more. He called up office and told them to lock his cabin and walked into the metro station. As it was not yet rush hour, he was able to get a seat on the train and sat there, still in a complete muddle about what was happening to him. He almost felt betrayed by his own mind for having played such a huge trick on him. The train stopped at each station and passengers got on and off while he was blissfully unaware of them, lost as he was in his own misery, staring at some spot between his shoes, almost boring a hole into the floor of the train with his thought waves. Suddenly his eye fell on a pair of legs in khaki trousers ending in tan heels.

Shock turned into disbelief as he looked upwards to see the same disarming smile, the eyes looking straight at him. For a moment, he responded despite himself, a smile making its way across his face. But just after, the fact that it was just his mind playing tricks sank into the puddle of his conscious and he willed her away. Try as he might, he could not shake her away, she was irrefutably there. He would normally have stood up and given his seat to a woman. But, knowing this was just a hallucination, he did not stir from his seat. He turned his face away and looked around, resolutely ignoring her. An old gentleman in the opposite row stood up and she then sat down in his place. His mind explained this as just a coincidence as the old man proceeded to get off at the next station a couple of minutes later and there was just a couple of people standing in the aisle now. He took out his phone and went through his emails, finding solace in the comfort of his work and trying to shake her from his mind. At the next station, a few boys got onto the train as soon as the doors opened and stood at the doorway. He heard a soft husky voice that was almost ethereal say, “Will you boys excuse me?” He turned his head to see the woman of his vision make her way out of the train and the doors close behind her.

She stood there and looked back at him, the smile still there but tinged with sadness that had crept in, almost as if she was upset at his having ignored her. But that was not possible, his mind screamed. She was just a figment of his imagination, was she not? But then suddenly, a cold thought arose in his head. This was the first time he had actually heard her speak. And the boys had moved to make way for her. A wave of panic rose in his throat as he jumped up and tried to jump through the doors, only succeeding in banging against them to the complete amusement of the boys. He stood at the door watching her recede and shrink in size and then quickly disappear as the train swiftly picked up speed. He stood there by the door and waited for the next station, almost jumping off in a run as the doors opened. He ran out and crossed the road, hailing an auto rickshaw. Telling him to go to the next station, he was met with a quick refusal. Refusing to take no for an answer, he thrust a 100 Re note in the man’s hand and asked him for help as there was an emergency. That was impactful enough and the auto surged forward with a new vigor. It was just a few minutes later, but it seemed like a lifetime later, when they stopped with a screech at the previous station.

He ran outside onto the street and stood there, wildly staring, searching desperately for a sight of her. Finding no trace of her, he suddenly became aware of a never ending line of vehicles that started almost immediately outside the metro station. Acting on a wild hunch, he started walking down the line of vehicles, peeking into taxis and auto rickshaws that stood there, patiently waiting their turn to move. A couple of choice curses from some indignant women and a fist shaken in his face later by an irate boyfriend later, he stood up frustrated. He suddenly felt drained like a sponge that had been squeezed out of every drop of energy. He felt he could not move even a step further and just stood there. Waking out of his reverie as the traffic started moving slowly forward, he slowly walked along the traffic, just desultorily looking around. The vehicles stopped soon enough but he just continued walking, searching for any sign of her.

After about half a kilometer of walking, his legs buckled wearily and he almost fell onto the road. Grabbing vehicles for support, he made his way across to the pavement. He sank down on the edge of the pavement, his head almost sinking on his knees, staring blindly across the road. An auto rickshaw stopped almost in front of him, the driver’s legs blocking his vision.  His eyes automatically moved across to the passenger section and disappointedly moved away. A moment later, his brain registered a heart shaped face looking at him concernedly and his eyes skittered back to the woman he had grown so used to seeing. He almost smiled his relief and the answering smile was like a drug that swam its way across his veins, creating an incredible sense of well being as his world righted itself. She simply moved over in the auto as if she were making space for him to get in.