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Noida, 2024

‘Run! . . . Leave! . . . Leave!’ The voice was compelling and beseeching at the same time. Pungent smoke filled his lungs, searing them with heat and choking out his precious breath. Vicious flames engulfed the wooden staircase, which spiralled downwards from the centre of the hall. They lashed furiously against the high raft ers, wreaking havoc in their wake. Tortured screams rent the air.

He stared in horror, rooted to the spot even though every inch of his body screamed for escape. Burning beads of sweat trickled down his forehead and into his eyes, hiding whatever had not already been covered with a black mantle of smoke. Blindly, his hand reached out to grip some reassurance of familiarity and recoiled as it was scalded by a molten metallic surface. Drums rolled and pounded inside his head, intent on drowning out the voice desperately trying to break through the pandemonium.

‘Dravy. . . Dravy. . . Dravy’. With each repetition, the urgency in the words intensified. He willed his eyes to focus.

Big, honey-coloured eyes were alight with concern as they scrutinised his face. As if from aeons away, he took in the soft brown curls tumbling around a familiar face. Sasha?

It couldn’t be. What the hell was Sasha doing here? And where was he? He averted his eyes and searched desperately for something that would restore a sense of rationality to his groggy mind. The grotesque dolls hanging upside down from the ceiling grinned cheekily at him through their scarlet, plastic mouths.

‘What happened, Dravy? You’ve been behaving as though Satan’s been squeezing your gut.’

His eyes flitted around blankly and then fell to his knobby knuckles, which were clenched around a tall glass. It stood out sharply against bloodless fingers. He raised the glass to his lips, took a big gulp of the clear liquid and swirled it around his mouth, letting the icy pleasure trickle down his parched throat. Vodka! At least that was something familiar.

Gradually, the clouds scattered.

The morning had been long and tiresome without being overtly hectic. No running through streets and alleys, dragging cumbersome paraphernalia and trying to draw words from sullen and antagonistic targets.

No circumventing the onslaught of those who jostled to get themselves into the frame for that one minuscule microsecond of accidental fame.

The cool interiors of a five-star property in the NCR, with free drinks and snacks thrown in, were an enviable assignment for on-ground reporting in the mercurial month of May. Yet, he would have willingly bartered it for the sweltering roads. The science seminar he had been assigned to cover was drab. The participating physicists looked as though they had stepped out of the dusty pages of some historical encyclopaedia with their sombre, lined faces and uniformly monotonous attire.

Was there some unwritten law that decreed choosing any colour other than grey or black was nothing short of blasphemy for members of the scientific fraternity? Or did they spend so much time in the precincts of their gloomy labs that they lost touch with colour as well as contemporary trends and fashions?

But that was the least of the things that put him off.

They spoke in alien jargon punctuated with references that they reeled off with astonishing confidence. The confidence probably stemmed from the knowledge that no one would have the time or inclination to verify their incomprehensible statements, thought Dravin wryly.

As the senior luminaries presented long, monotonous papers, the younger members hung on to every word as though they had been drowning in an ocean of ignorance and the pronouncements were the plank walk to Noah’s ark. He remembered the murderous looks he had received when his mobile trilled.

‘Send me something juicy. . . which can hike TRPs,’ Derek had rasped.

Freelancing for Derek paid well, but the man thrived on real or fabricated controversies, and it took all his ingenuity to discover an ignition factor in drab assignments. The channel needed spicy material for an on-screen debate that would have no outcome other than keeping a few hundred odd viewers glued to their idiot boxes, but it added value to their presence on the national forum. Well, this was one place from which he was not going to get any statement that could be dressed up as a controversy, even by the widest stretch of imagination.

The current speaker was waxing animatedly about a man named Thales of Miletus, who had proposed a theory that water was the basic element of which everything was composed, way back in 580 BC. Did it need a genius to expostulate such an elementary fact? Whether it was discovered in 500 BC or 2000 AD did not make an iota of difference to the nature or relevance of water. It was certainly not an issue that could stoke a nation wants to know kind of debate in 2024.

Thankfully, the delegates addressed themselves to the aspiring Nobel laureates seated in the well of the auditorium and ignored the ignoramuses occupying the front left rows reserved for the media. Sliding down in his chair, he got ready to take a power nap till it was time to savour the gourmet lunch. The spread was going to be as happening as could be, and as far as he was concerned, that was the only high point of the day.

The last thing Dravin remembered was the speaker peering down at his hushed audience and enquiring mildly, ‘Is there anything other than matt er and energy which can neither be created nor destroyed?’

And everything had suddenly exploded in flames.

His mind zoomed back into the present.

‘What about the fire?’ he enquired in a subdued voice.

Sasha looked at him strangely. ‘What fi re? What’s got into you, Dravy? You were screaming as if the devil was after your blood. They went absolutely ballistic at the unwarranted interruption.’

The pair had been unceremoniously evicted from the hall, and Sasha had escorted him to the dark recesses of Imperfecto, their favourite haunt. Dravin had to take her word for it as his memory had deserted him completely.

‘I sent Derek the report. He wanted a word with you, but I said you were chasing the grey beards for some off-the record comments.’

Dravin ran his fingers through his hair. Thank God for Sasha.

‘You cannot marry her.’ The smile on his father’s face vanished. Even on the screen, Dravin could see disapproval writ all over his face.

‘But why, Baba?

His father’s words reverberated in the room without sinking into his mind. The routine early-morning video call was a part of the day he looked forward to. This morning, he had narrated last evening’s events and his father had listened with rapt attention. Till he reached the point where he had proposed to Sasha. Dravin had been deliberately saving the best for the last. But a shutter had fallen over the older man’s face.

Seeing his son’s uncomprehending expression, Prakrit repeated slowly, ‘You. . . can. . . NOT. . . marry her.’

‘But at least tell me why?’

The cloud of euphoria he had been floating on imploded and he crashed unceremoniously on cold ground. Last night, from Imperfecto they had drifted to Sasha’s flat, and as they unwound over a hot toddy, Dravin had hesitatingly popped the question. He knew only too well her cynical views on marriage and abhorrence of being trapped in a permanent relationship. They had walked that route a zillion times.

To his absolute amazement and delight, she had accepted.

Till that moment, her resistance had been the one and only impediment to their future together. . . or so he had thought.

The last thing he had expected was a blockade from his dad.

‘Dravy, please don’t be unreasonable. If I am saying so, there has to be a good reason behind it.’

‘Unreasonable? Am I being unreasonable? That must be the understatement of the year. What is the problem with Sasha? You have met her. I thought you liked her. We get along like a house on fire. She is educated. . . independent. . .beautiful. . . and I love her. Where is the hitch?’

‘Trust me, you will regret this decision.’

‘Who gets to decide that? And I was not asking you.

I was telling you. Both your nieces got to choose their life partners. You never once opposed Rati when she went in for an inter-religion marriage. On the contrary, you stood like a brick wall against the entire extended family and managed to convince them all. I was so proud of you. My dad, the ultimate progressive and liberal man. Or so you let me believe.’

‘The problem is not about Sasha. You cannot get married. Ever. Period.’

‘OMG! I can’t believe you said what you did. And who decides that, if I may be permitted the audacity of asking?’

His father ignored the caustic sarcasm. ‘Let us say the stars have ordained it.’

Dravin’s features twisted in comical consternation.

Things were getting weirder and weirder by the minute.