She wore a pink salwar kameez and an attitude, long legs balanced on high heels, no make up, shoulder length jet black hair, honey colour complexion, intoxicating brown eyes, about 30 years. “Hello Sir, how are you?’ she asked as she slid next to me. I had to fight the enticing perfume and presence to concentrate on the lecture.

A few lectures past, I realized two things – she was a tad deficient in her upper storey but made up for it with loads of attitude and chutzpah. I was more than happy to help her with the occasional answers in return for a company and a dimpled smile. Men will always be boys and 500km away from home, staying in a hostel; men will be boys with loads of testosterone!

The moot question hammering my intellect was – can a person have more than one soul mate? Are human instincts and happiness subservient to man made rules, to be sacrificed on the altar of “acceptable behaviour”? Do we come across friends, confidants, loved ones and enemies from our previous births in our present lives? How else can one explain instant like or hate when we run across certain persons? Soulmates are fellow travelers from previous lives or maybe part of our soul which has transmigrated to different physical forms, now trying to get together again……

As students we, armed forces officers, were acutely conscious of the fact that we were the chosen ones to study in the hallowed precincts of the institution. The red stoned building with its sprawling lawns had an old world charm; there was feeling of freedom and expectation in the air. The faculty and alumni of the institution boasted of names from the who-is-who of the academic and management world. Two weeks into the course, we had our first get together with the faculty in the local army mess.

A typical army party on the lawns besides swimming pool, local DJ playing popular numbers. She wore a light blue crepe sari and was letting her hair loose on the dance floor – a figurine full of mischief, masti and oomph. The full moon cast its luminescence on her; the songs talked of her beauty, the music made her come alive.

On the way back to the hostel, I composed my first ode to her and like a love smitten juvenile, emailed the poem to her on the intranet. I didn’t give a damn about rules anymore. I was in love

Heaven (or Hell?) has a nice antiseptic smell to it. I slowly start becoming aware of the environment – the smell and the sounds. My eyes open to revelation that after life is full of fancy gadgets and tubes protruding from my body. I can make out the beeping of technology which has obviously pervaded the after life too. As my eyes become more focused, I can discern my wife sitting at the bedside. Has she followed me here? I force myself to look around, to think rationally. I discover that I am in ICU, very much alive. The scream I had heard was succour in form of my wife walking into the bathroom.  Unfulfilled in love, unsuccessful in death – I feel waves of nausea and disgust. The drugs are welcome as they push me back into the void.

The next time I surface, I am better prepared to face the reality. And so is my family! I see my son and daughter and wife around – looking expectantly at me, smiling, trying to reach out. My mind is blank. The outflow of blood into the bathtub seems to have obliterated all the memories and desires. I feel relief at having a family, at having someone by my bedside as I re surface into mortal life.

Over the next two weeks, I rest, recuperate and rediscover the joys of being a mortal. The family keeps me company, keeps me going on. I rationalize – Powai is near and real, Gravesend by Tilbury and far. Who is more important – the one who made you feel alive or the one who kept you alive? Confusion. What are my priorities? What are my responsibilities? Unrequited love is romantic but is story book romance real life? Can life really be lived in the pages of a romantic novel? My brains struggle with the questions and slowly start taking control of my heart – for good or bad.

The day of my discharge – wife is running around to get the papers cleared. I have conditioned myself to look forward to going home and spending time with the kids. Memories have been entrapped in some dark, dingy corner of my mind. I am undead. There is this tap tap of someone walking in the hospital corridor. The tall woman is wearing high heeled knee length brown Jimmy Choos, a dark green Dior skirt, soft beige blouse and a matching jacket. The hair is soft, silken, shoulder length wavy; the skin honey coloured and dewy fresh. The face is made up to accentuate the high cheekbones, the eye shadow and mascara highlight the smoky brown eyes. The smell of Elizabeth Arden awakens my senses as I realize that she has learnt my lessons on being a sophisticate quite well. She smiles and says in a husky voice “Hello Nadeem – I have really missed you”

It is surprising how life can obsessively revolve around waiting for a single response on the Facebook. My Blackberry had the account, the office computer had the site opened and minimized as also the PC at home. Every moment spent in waiting. Hope and anticipation waxing and waning everyday! Bouts of intense despair where the air seemed poisonously heavy and the lungs incapable of drawing it in. Disinterested and divorced from the mundane happenings of everyday life. Hope is all I lived with, hope which was increasingly giving way to dark, dull despondency.

The temporal self is weak; Eternity a vast chasm for the temporal to bridge. To wait for Eternity, I needed to divorce the temporal and take an ethereal avatar. Maybe time as we know ceases to exist on the ethereal plane. Maybe, the astral self could cross the oceans and watch her sojourn in the temporal till it was over and we were united. The idea slowly began to take root.

I had always been a sybarite – loved the good things of earthly life. But those were means to an end and without her presence in my life, meaningless. I followed elaborate rites for my passage from the temporal to the ethereal. No loose ends to be left behind, no other attachments except for my singular goal – Her.

I sit in the bathtub – soaking luxuriously in warm water with a bottle of Elizabeth Arden’s Mediterranean poured into it. I sit surrounded and immersed in her smell as I remember her. A mellifluous voice renders a popular composition of Ghalib, romantic nuances float in the background. The crystal glass on edge of the tub is filled with my favourite single malt on the rocks – the temporal savouring the last pleasures of the physical world. My laptop runs a slide show of all the images I have stored of her and my brain makes those nostalgic moments come alive. And I watch the white foamy perfumed water change colour – from innocent virgin white to a promising irrevocable red. My sights are dimming as I concentrate on the slide show – locking the last vestiges of her physical image, imprinting them on my soul. I have started feeling cozy and lightheaded when there is a tong from the laptop.

I peer through the gathering haze into my laptop to read my last message.  It’s from her and reads ‘ Hi Nadeem, Howz life treating you?’

She was an ex army officer from the northern part of the country – rustic but with a tremendous zest for life. Five years in the army had not separated her from her penchant for loud lipstick, garish colour combinations of synthetic clothes, loud make up and the hard twang of rural accented English. But she had guts and an attitude which showed promising potential.

I was the sophisticate by Indian standards who could differentiate between Chenin Blanc and Shiraz, Gucci and Armani, between Poison and Opium. I loved my Mozart and Bach while she liked hindi pop, I read Orhan Pamuk while she enjoyed Chetan Bhagat, I played golf while she jogged to keep herself fit. We were as different as cheese to chalk; add an age difference and you have a well nigh impossible situation. But the opposites sought each other desperately. I taught her to be a sophisticate while she taught me how to be alive. I explained etiquettes and learnt the joys of breaking rules from her. We were soulmates – she and I.

Love sneaks in your life only once. That is the time when each joyful pore of your body feels alive, each breath intoxicating. It is a phase when societal laws, familial ties and peer pressure cease to have a meaning. Each moment is exhilarating, pleasurable and filled with immense happiness. And when you make love, stars twinkle, bells jingle, lights explode, there’s the crescendo of Bach in the background. You loose your identity, your souls merge, each day is better than the previous day. You live just to be with her, to see her, to smell her, to allow her to fill up your senses. Obviously, such happiness and love is not meant to last. Human beings in such love would be liberated from the bonds of hate, social norms, religion – disrupting the harsh real world we know.

She went off to distant lands to join her husband exactly a year ago and we lost contact. The intervening year was spent in pining for her, in hoping she was happy, in agonizing over a thousand what-if scenarios, in being caged in the rationality of worldly rules. One year of non-existence until she popped up again on the Facebook.

It has been two months since I have sent the Facebook message to her. She has not replied. I wait patiently. After all, eternity is a long long time……

 I had gone to the local D Mart with my wife to shop for the monthly groceries.  Inside the hypermarket, I was allotted the important task of pushing or pulling the shopping trolley so as to maintain within 5 metres of my wife.  It’s an amazing experience to witness the multitude of variables which a housewife examines before deciding on a particular product or a brand. Since I boast of being happily married for 20 years, I have, naturally, developed the wisdom to keep my mouth shut during my wife’s shopping forays. My participation is limited to answering questions like “ Is 660 gms of X detergent at Rs 75 a better bargain than 800 gms of Y detergent at Rs 80 ?”…….

So, in the true spirit of a happily married couple, we loaded our trolley to the brim with the goodies my wife wanted and proceeded to one of the numerous cash counters. The counter was manned by a Cashier girl and her Assistant. The Cashier had a barcode reader connected to a computer which scanned the price and did all the calculations – a typical Point of Sale operation prevalent worldwide. So Ms Cashier scanned and Ms Assistant packed the grocery in bags. The billing complete, I produced my card and signed the credit chit. Transaction completed! At this point, we could see a hectic and tensed whispering session between the Cashier and her Assistant. The Assistant excused herself and went away.

Ms Cashier gave us a charming smile and requested us to wait since her Assitant had gone to meet the Supervisor about our gift items. In recession,  grocery freebies are always welcome. But curiosity got the better of me and I inquired ‘ Gift with which item?” Ms Cashier politely handed over one of the ten JAMZ biscuits packets my wife had purchased. As I tried reading about the gift offer, Ms Assistant came back breathless and apologized that the free gift with the biscuit packet was unfortunately not in stock. Ms Cashier wanted to know if we still desired to buy the biscuits since the “free gift” was not available. Meanwhile, I could not find any mention of any gift offer or scheme on the biscuit pack. Finally I asked Ms Cashier as to what free gift was she talking about! She smiled and rather importantly pointed to a blue text box on the biscuit pack which read “ TRANS FAT FREE”.

Personally, I find the larger than life Bollywood stereotype image extremely detrimental when dealing with the corporate HR interviewer. The general perception is that defence services officers are all spit and polish, magnificently endowed with brawn and deficient in brains. So when it comes to the extremely complex corporate world, HR concludes that we won’t be able to cope up and will end up antagonizing everyone by our idiosyncracies.

The truth is that an armed force officer is fairly intelligent and rational. By virtue of facing diverse and difficult situations, he is flexible and adaptable with an ability to innovate to achieve the desired goal. As the saying goes, we are trained for all situations ranging from the ballroom to the battlefront. And if I were to quote my more brash colleagues, from the bedroom to boardroom! After all, how many corporate CVs can boast of the capabilities and expertise to handle diverse tasks ranging from taking the lady of visiting foreign dignitary sari shopping, providing succour to populace during calamities, planning operations with umpteen variables and staring down enemy guns? All this and more, in extreme operating environment, 24X7!

“But Commander, you don’t have the corporate experience or domain knowledge” is an oft heard refrain. As a mid to senior level professional, I feel that “capability” rather than ‘domain knowledge’ is more important. But then, I have decided to quit the services and seek a career in the civvy street, so I need to play by the new rules.

However, I must confess that the new rules are not easy to play by. Self praise is frowned upon in the Services and I still blush when I have to assure the HR recruiter that I am good. HR folks don’t make it easy either. I recall an interview wherein I was trying to draw the analogy between HR as practiced in the Services and HR as advocated by Gary Dessler, author of the book on HRM followed worldwide. After listening to 10 minutes of my earnest explanation, the interviewer stopped me and queried “Who is Gary Dessler?”! Neither is it easy to dispel the mistaken notion that all faujis are dimwits. During the initial phase of my most recent interview I told the interviewer” I want to assure you that an intelligent naval officer is not an oxymoron”. The svelte lady flashed a brilliant smile, nodded understandingly and asked “ Oxy what?”. I had no choice but to reply “Moron!”, realising fully well that I couldn’t possibly crack this interview!.

Meanwhile, my search for a job continues…..

“Uncle, Numair has hit me unnecessarily. He is a very bad boy”. The complainant was a 6 year old child – about the same age as my son Numair. It had been a tough day at the office for me. I had been intercepted by this gang of children as I was walking back home after parking the car. Numair stood in the background, sulking. I could not help but feel a sense of déjà vu as I surveyed the scene before me. I was transported back 40 years to a  time when I had been in a similar situation.

As a child, we used to play in a small ground behind our home in a small city. One of those evenings, all 6 years of me got into an argument with a neighbourhood kid. 40 years down the line, I cannot recall the actual reason, but the passage of time has not diminished the righteous feeling in me that my premise was more correct! Well, we tried to resolve our arguments like any other sane and rational 6 year olds – we whacked each other. Whilst our whacking bout was on, my dad came back from his municipal school where he was a teacher. My opponent ran up to my dad and vented his anger whilst I sulked in the background. Dad surveyed the scenario, slapped me twice in front of everyone and walked away without uttering a single word. A dumbfounded and very hurt self tried to hold back my tears, my cheeks red and stinging. Apart from the physical pain, what really hurt was the feeling of being punished unjustly and in front of everyone by my own dad. I can still hear the jeers of everyone as I walked back home – hurt, angry and alone.

At home, dad explained that he had hit me to keep the outward impression of impartiality intact and dismissed the issue. Impression at your son’s expense? – the child in me cried silently. That night, all alone in bed, I was quick to absorb the lesson of this twisted middle class morality. The impression of others was more important than that of your near and dear ones. Cursed with this sick logic, I grew up making the interests of my family and near and dear ones subservient to the ‘impressions of others’. Imagine living you life with this kind of morality – sacrificing your own interests for the sake of others at all times. Pleasing others became more important than the happiness and comfort of self, family and my dear ones.

Did my father ever realize what he did that day? No, I don’t think so. In his defence, I must hasten to add that he was probably too busy keeping the wolves away from our doors, to make sufficient money to pay for our education. Life was a struggle, dependent on the goodwill of others to survive. The only people willing to stand by you and suffer for you were your near and dear ones…………  

I jerked back to the present and called out to my son. As Numair came close, I put my hands protectively around him and told the other boys “All of you are old enough to sort this out amongst yourselves. Don’t be sissies and complain”. I believe I finally corrected a 40 year old wrong.

It was one of the lazy weekend afternoons during the early nineties. I had reported to a Mumbai based coast guard ship on deputation from the Indian Navy. Keen to get acquainted with my new shipmates, I changed and went to the Ante Room. The bar was open, the atmosphere was relaxed; the lights dim with Enigma blasting from a futuristic looking stereo system. I went around introducing myself. Vikram was sitting in one corner, ensconced between two pretty girls. “Please call me Vicky” was his laconic self introduction as he went back to the animated close quarter discussion with his girls.

Vicky was the ship’s Medical Officer or in civilian parlance, a doctor. He was suave, smooth and urbane. An extrovert who loved interacting with people and a compulsive party-goer, Vicky was also good at squash and Bridge. Grapevine said that his list of Mumbai girlfriends was a mile long. Vicky was ruled by his impulsiveness. I remember an occasion when we took the ship’s Gypsy on the Marine drive at midnight after drinks onboard and tangdi kebabs at Bade Miyan. The dare was to touch the highest point on speedometer in the stretch between Nariman Point and Chowpatty. Needless to say, Vicky won; the runner up not even within 10 kmph of Vicky’s top speed. There was this air of controlled aggression around him, of someone who would charge at the enemy without batting an eyelid and enjoy the plunder of his victory with equal aplomb. Vicky could very well have been a swashbuckling buccaneer but for the fact that he was living in a different age.

. Within a month of my joining, the ship was shifted to Chennai and deployed in Palk Straits. The mission was to prevent LTTE using Indian soil as a sanctuary from Sri Lankan Army. We did a cycle of 15 days deployment in the area followed by 15 days rest and recuperation at Chennai. Over the next one year, Vicky and self became the best of friends. During our stay in Chennai, we used to paint the town red – getting drunk, smoking pot, listening to Enigma and doing all those delightfully sinful things bachelors do when deployed away from home port. We purchased a life size stuffed Pink Panther which we took along with us everywhere we went. This Pink Panther was our passport to striking interesting conversation with pretty girls. I recall a particular episode when we went to Chola Sheraton for dinner and deposited Pinky with front desk for safe keeping. While retrieving him, Vicky also managed a date with the pretty thing at the desk. Vicky’s philosophy of life was a tad radical and futuristic even by today’s standards!

After a wonderful year together, we were posted out to different units in different cities and lost touch with each other. My life took a predictable if staid path. I got married, had children and became a domesticated husband albeit a wee bit reluctantly. After almost a decade, I was posted to Kochi. During settling down, I came to know that Vicky was married and was also posted at Kochi. Wise to the reality of so called marital bliss and aware of the havoc it causes in the psyche of a hitherto free individual, I was perversely eager and curious to meet Vicky and his wife. I had visions of a very modern woman who matched Vicky’s cavalier and devil-may-care attitude.

So I took my bitter half with me that very evening to pay Vicky a visit. I rang the doorbell and was greeted by lady dressed in traditional Kerala cotton sari, a huge bindi on her forehead, oiled pleats and a mangalsutra around her neck. “Hi! Vicky in?” I asked cheerfully.

“ Vikramji has gone for a detachment to Goa. He will be back in a week’s time” she replied. I looked past her shoulders into the traditionally furnished house with the bust of Gods and Goddesses. I could smell the whiff of incense sticks lit in the Puja Room…. I said that I will meet him when he comes back and left.

My wife, who had been a mute spectator to the entire conversation, chuckled and summed up the situation by borrowing one of my wisecracks “A man is incomplete before marriage. After marriage, he is finished”

This one goes back to my junior college days in a small town during the late seventies. The draconian regulations of the school had just been superseded by the lax discipline of college life. I had recently joined the Rotaract Club of Nagpur. It’s always the neo converts to a cause who are most fanatically zealous! So Rotaractor Nadeem Sani was the first to arrive for all projects and dumb enough to be saddled with the most inane jobs.

As part of its activity, the Club annually organized a charity film show wherein the proceeds were donated to a school for underprivileged children. During my first year at Rotaract, the charity movie was ‘Close encounters with the Third Kind’. As a zealous guardian of faith, I promptly volunteered to sell an entire booklet of tickets. Selling an English movie ticket amongst college crowd at an inflated price in Nagpur of seventies wasn’t really easy. I had to cajole, beg, request, threaten, call in past favours and pull out my entire repertoire of emotional blackmailing to sell those tickets. Amongst the dubious deals for selling tickets struck was one wherein I was to sit and watch the movie with Miss Specko – the buyer of a premium charity ticket. The general opinion of the class put her as an ideal candidate for a mental asylum but if the Knight Templar could ride halfway across the known world as saviour of Faith, I could definitely risk watching a movie with the girl-off-her-rocker for the cause!

So, on the movie day, I waited outside the Liberty cinema in my best pair of threads. Thankfully, she came on time and we sat down to watch the movie. After the initial period of being on the tenterhooks, I relaxed and concluded that Miss Specko is not going to spring a surprise today and concentrated on the movie. But girls and destiny have this cruel habit of unpredictability. Post intermission, Miss Specko failed to reappear. I waited for a decent amount of time and then went outside to check. She was no where in sight. Little alarm bells started tinkling in my mind. I went to the Rotaract President and whispered my predicament; all the senior members were dragged out to help. One of the girls checked the Ladies Toilet – no sign of her. It was now 30 minutes past intermission and the alarm bells started to clang loudly. There was a barrage of questions, advice, chastising and angry abuses hurled at me. And the pundits of doom started muttering words like abduction, kidnapping and what not. Thousands of very scary ‘what if’ scenarios ran through my mind. My imagination was working overtime with visions of parents, teachers, and policemen as major actors in the next 24 hours. After about an hour of searching, we formed a posse and extended the perimeter of our search to nearby lanes. This again proved futile. By now, I was a nervous wreck and cursing my luck, the girl, Rotaract and the world. The movie ended and the theater disgorged its occupants.

The whole of Rotaract club was mobilized and we had a hurried war Council as regards our next course of action – parents or Police? I died a thousand deaths thinking of the consequences. It was decreed that we contact the girl’s parents first and then take the campaign forward depending upon the situation.

We reached her house and I was expected to inquire about the whereabouts of Miss Specko from her parents. I had my first experience of what it must be like for the infantryman to charge through a minefield   towards enemy position, little knowing which bullet has his name on it! I rang the bell and probably broke the world record of holding the breath. It was opened by a sleepy eyed, tousle haired, pyjama clad Miss Specko. She looked at me – I looked at her and we all looked at each other. There was a lot of looking around during that couple of seconds. “How come you are home?” I finally managed to croak. “I was bored during the movie, so I left” she replied angelically.

Years later, a wiser me had a whirlwind courtship in Bombay with my (now) wife, hitting all the high spots of Bombay together. She still wonders as to the reason I never ever took her to the movies during the courtship.

“Can you help me with the venous system of the frog?" The question was directed at me by a pair of emerald green eyes in the Zoology Lab. As a 17 year old, I could feel my knees go weak, my heart fibrillating and the face flushing. I did help her – every neuron short circuiting, the blood cells whooping and dancing in the arteries, pumped by a heart now afflicted by tachyarrhythmia, the olfactory nerves surrounded by the ions of Havoc perfume she was wearing. The spear eagled belly-up frog in the dissection tray shot the Cupid’s arrow and within a month, I was proposing to the Colonel’s daughter. Proposal accepted and feelings reciprocated, we sat down to contemplate marriage, parent’s reaction, career and all other issues which two 17 year old in a make believe world could possibly contemplate. Its amazing how as a 17 year old, I was absolutely confident of my wisdom – a trait which I no longer possess at 46! She produced an omnibus solution for all our problems – real or imagined. "Why don’t you join the National Defence Academy? That way, you will be in Pune and have a better chance at asking for my hand." The Colonel’s daughter advised.

That single sentence changed my life. She finished her Board exams and went off to join Fergusson College at Pune whilst I aimed for the NDA exams. The Board results came – I I managed decent marks and was eligible for admission in the local REC for engineering but my heart was set on her. And the path to her traversed through NDA. My parents advised me against the folly of changing my life’s goal on a chance teenage remark, my friends ridiculed me. But I had recanted my life’s ambition of joining Indian Institute of Science for Nuclear Physics. I now wanted to graduate from NDA, get married to her and live happily after. No one – not even a distant cousin – in my family had served in the Armed Forces. The brighter lot became Doctors and the not so bright became teachers. Now the brightest amongst them had just turned into a renegade and was doing the unthinkable. The family elders called a council and ordered me to be present. I was made to sit in the centre and advised, threatened, cajoled and blackmailed to give up my obsession. But love is steadfast in adversity and so I remained stubbornly committed to my goal. There were mutterings about my dad not bringing me up properly, about me becoming the black sheep of the family etc etc but I just did not give in. So, NDA it was – I had prevailed, our love had prevailed!

So, on 23rd of January 1981, a romantic me arrived at Pune railway station with eyes full of stars. Prior to reporting to NDA Wing, my primary task was pilgrimage to Fergusson College to meet her. I walked across the gravelly path to meet her in front of the Stats department. She was looking so heart stoppingly pretty in a dark brown harem trouser and a white kurta…… "Let’s go and grab a cup of tea at Vaishali" she suggested. We settled down at one of the table and ordered tea and samosas. She kept her books aside, opened her bag and extracted and envelope. “I am getting married. Please do come for the reception" she said as she handed me the wedding invitation card.