Long Story: Unpolluted Love ❤️
Aditya dreamed of that place again, the same one that had been haunting him for the past many days.
He was in a jungle; lush green trees, the ferns and wild bushes lined the muddy trail that he was walking on. He could feel the misty smell of the forest, the mud, the sweet and sour smell of squashed wild berries. Occasionally he would hear the squeals of a bird and dried branches falling. He kept walking till the woods dispersed and he could see a clearing. A gentle but playful stream was cutting across the forest, its rocky bed turned smooth and shiny by the currents.
He reached the rocky shore and there she was. She stood on the opposite side looking like the goddess of the jungle. She was clad in nothing but a few vines and a crown of pine leaves. She was looking away and her flowing black hair was obscuring her facial features. Suddenly, she turned to face him and raised her hand as if she wanted to give him something. He raised his hand as well, and walked forward, wanting to cross the stream and reach her. But then she smiled and it all turned black.
He woke up once again, unable to shake off the image for a long time.
Aditya lifted himself up from the laptop he’d fallen asleep over, the meeting long over and the screen gone black. Upon waking up he thought dismally that he was still in a jungle, albeit a concrete one. The sky had been grey for many days, and the sun had become an elusive presence, only to be felt never to be seen. He could sense the others outside his room, his pet dog Mickey was suffering from coughing and breathing issues, while his live-in partner was walking up to his door.
He had a live-in partner, yes. They were in the fourth year of their relationship and fourth month of cohabiting. Her name was Chhaya, and she wasn’t the girl appearing in his dreams.
“Mickey’s medicine is running out. Go get it before the shops close.” Chhaya instructed him flatly and closed the door again. He’d probably done something wrong again and forgot about it. Or maybe it was her general weariness talking.
She had changed her job to move to this city upon his insistence so they could live in and spend more quality time together, but things were different from his imagination. He was stuck in his room working all day and the bulk of household responsibilities fell on her shoulders. And then things were made worse with the increase in air pollution, which disrupted every aspect of their life and confined her inside in an unfamiliar toxic city.
Chhaya’s worries increased multifold, and peace slowly left his abode.
He didn’t want to let her go back and at the same time he didn’t want to leave the city, it was the place that had made him who he was and his whole life was here. At the same time he couldn’t peacefully find a way out of the growing tension at home. He could only escape in his dreams.
On the streets, the air was thick and visibility was not more than ten metres, even though it wasn’t that late in the afternoon. Everyone was covered head to toe in dark winter clothes and had masks hiding their faces giving it a very eerie unsettling feeling.
With the growing health problems in the city, the queue outside the medical store could compete with the queue outside the liquor store, Aditya thought dejectedly as he joined the line after walking what felt like a kilometer. Thinking about the liquor store, he decided to make that trip next, since his own diminishing stash at home also flashed his mind.
He was wrong though, the liquor store line was an actual kilometer long and was still going longer. It had no competition. Probably the pollution was affecting the minds of people even worse than their bodies, he laughed as he thought.
He took out his phone to check the time. He started calculating if the medical store alone could justify the time taken for this ‘detour’ as well, and put the phone back in his jeans.
There was a slight scuffle in the queue behind him, the people were getting impatient from the line moving too slowly or something and he was bumped into and pushed a bit. He turned around to tell people to behave and also relieve his other stresses by indulging in some therapeutic cursing. However, when he turned back he realised that his jeans felt different. He felt the front of his pockets and girls turned away in disgust. He ignored them and confirmed his doubts, his phone was missing.
Startled, he immediately replayed the scene of the scuffle in his mind. He remembered the first guy who bumped into him had left the queue in the commotion and walked ahead. He had a vague impression of his raggedy brown jacket and tattered grey scarf. Thus, he moved swiftly in that direction scanning the crowd for those clothes.
In his limited visibility through the grey smog, people appeared to be quickly appearing and disappearing. Fortunately, it got a bit better as he moved closer to the road. After a few steps he quickly spotted the dirty brown jacket and the threadbare grey scarf that was about to cross the road. He jumped and grabbed the guy from his shoulder and directly pulled his mask. It was to reduce the cushioning of the punch he was about to land. The guy… turned out to be a girl. A high-end fashionista was mistaken for a shabby pick-pocket.
She was startled at first, but soon looked at him furiously. Her hand automatically went inside her handbag grabbing something that couldn’t have been nice. All the adrenaline from the hot pursuit drained out of him in just one moment. He apologised profusely, but couldn’t wait to explain fearing partly that he’d miss the thief, and partly the retaliation of the weapon she was hiding in her bag. Thus he continued to run across the road leaving behind a yelling and cursing young lady.
He had already lost a lot of hope due to the delay caused by that brief pause, the situation with the visibility being already bad and he’d even started getting out of breath from all the running while wearing a mask. He paused for a bit at the bus stop, at this point having almost given up and took a last look around. His eyes immediately narrowed as he spotted the same jacket and scarf again, this time on a man who’d just boarded the bus.
He ran towards the bus and dived into the hive of people that were stuffing it to the point of bursting. He was cursed and shouted at, but at least he managed to catch his guy by the collar and he wasn’t about to let go.
Due to the commotion caused, the bus had to stop as soon as it started and the man and his thief were kicked out. That was just what he wanted. His fists talked to the guy before his mouth and eventually a cop was drawn towards the hustle and forced to break it up.
Impassioned with aggrievement caused by theft of his precious phone, and the ensuing exertion, the guy explained to the cop the matter in its entirety. A small ring of masked onlookers had gathered around, like they finally found something worth seeing. Luckily the cop was cooperative and managed to control the situation. The shabby culprit was taken aside and searched thoroughly.
However, nothing came up.
Aditya was so angry he could feel lava bubbling in his eyes. The other party, probably either used to facing this kind of situation because of his appearance, or simply too confident of not getting caught, was uncannily calm. All of Aditya’s angry protests and accusations were in vain. Soon the public sympathy and even the cop’s sway turned away from the complainant, since he started to seem more and more like just a bad-tempered guy harbouring class bias.
After the cop released the suspect and asked him to get the theft reported, the people began to disperse and mostly told him to forget about it, since there was no way he would see his phone again. A few more sympathetic ones told him about various new ways to track it.
Lost and confused he started walking back and found himself back at the bus stop where he had managed to spot his thief last.
It was already dark at the moment and the street lights had just started to turn on. The smog was even more visible as it got lit into hazy orbs by the street lights. His mind wandered as he imagined the tiresome scene and the disappointed face that was waiting for him at home. He felt suffocated and blinded in this place, but didn’t want to go back home either. And so he simply stood staring blindly into the smog spread across the road.
There was a breeze and the smog lifted slightly, he could finally see the people walking on the other side of the road. His eyes were caught by a lone steady figure, standing directly across from him. It was still not very clear but he could be sure that the figure was clad in a fashionably raggedy brown jacket and a fashionably tattered grey scarf, and the figure’s face slightly obscured by the flowing hair definitely belonged to a woman.
As their eyes met, the girl across the road put her hand inside her handbag and pulled something out. Without breaking eye contact she raised her hand and stretched it out towards him as if giving it to him. A smile broke on her face as she saw him recognise his own phone.
Even as his eyes recognised his phone and his brain commanded his legs to directly dash across the road, he found himself stuck. Suddenly the people around him turned into trees and the view became bright and sunny. The ceaseless traffic became a rocky stream that he was forever unable to cross to the other side, to reach the girl of his dreams.
He fell into a daze and when he came about he realised the smog had covered everything up once again. He looked across the road to catch another glimpse of the girl, but he knew it was useless. His body had finally caught up to his brain and he managed to turn around and leave, disappearing in the smog himself.
Aditya reached home, and Chhaya started asking all sorts of questions of why he took so long to just get the medicine and why his phone was switched off. He had almost forgotten about the medicine, but fortunately it was still with him. She impatiently took it from him and without even waiting for his reply went to the kitchen. He could hear Mickey in the balcony wheezing slightly amidst the noises of the bustling city traffic outside.
He wanted to head to his room to lock himself up and work as usual, but his feet automatically turned towards the kitchen. Aromatic tea was boiling on the hob. Chhaya was crushing a pill to mix in the dog food. He walked close to her and hugged her from behind.
“What happened?” Chhaya asked in surprise.
“I lost my phone.” Aditya replied with his head on her shoulder.
“How?”
“Dropped it in an open drain by accident.”
She was silent for a moment and then sighed. She then gently stroked his hand and said, “It’s okay. Get a new one.”
He hugged her even tighter. Her hair smelled like sweet and sour berries from the shampoo.
“I am taking you on a trip. We are going to the mountains.” he declared.
“Huh? But why suddenly?” she was even more surprised.
‘We’ve had enough of the pollution’, ‘You deserve a break’, ‘It would be good for Mickey’s health’, etc. were excellent reasons that flashed in his mind one by one. But all he said was
“I really want to see you in a crown of pine leaves.”
