Part 8: A drunk vision
The night was folding under the first rays of sun and I was still in my chair, awake. All that alcohol and I had still found some will to stop drinking over the course of early dawn, which was surprising given that I have never been half-drunk as I was now. My eyes couldn't stop going through the finer details that Bittuji had missed in his summarizing. Or may be, its the clarity that comes with time, when you simmer in those thoughts at length. That this is just f**ked up!
Has it ever occurred to me before? I wonder; this inaction in me. My anger is so overwhelmingly intense that it is beyond my tolerance of sensation. I feel nothing, except an annoying need to break something into two and before I could make a decision on how to act on it, I had already called Bittuji.
"Chief..." Bittuji came cringing at a pace that would put a snail to shame.
"Bittuji," I said, "Gear up...We are playing indoor golf!"
He gave a shiver, as a wet dog shaking water off its body. "Chief!" he cried, his body stiff with alarm, as the memory of the last time I had senselessly frolicked around the house must have crashed in his head.
A good quarter of an hour later, Bittuji stood in a corner adjusting his jock, his man goods safely behind a cup; to hold fort under a possible attack from a flying golf ball, driven only by what was rage in me.
The first time I had taken a swing at anything glass in my living room, Bittuji had begged me to allow him that one measure of self-protection given that he still entertained dreams of marriage, all while continuing to being my assistant. I had wished him good luck then, but when the second time I had come down the stairs with the club on my shoulders, I had practically thrown myself down on the floor with painful laughter and gone back to my room with a mild easing that had gradually nursed my ire. He'd stood in an armor fit to suit an ice hockey goalie. But, today he'd peeled down to minimal gear, suspecting I wouldn't drive a furious swing. I didn't warn him that he'd been wrong in his assuming.
A swoosh; a clink and then a beat of silence before the glass cracked and poured as beads of powdered glass. My window pane next to the entryway door was scattered around the floor as a thick carpet of sparkling diamonds.
Today, I was already weary and I threw the club over my shoulder. It was just Bittuji's unwed wife's luck that it ricocheted inches above the top of his head.
Slumping into a couch, still exceptionally free of glass shards, I called to Bittuji and he came tip toeing over islands of broken glass, "Yes Chief..."
"What were those lines from Inception?" I asked unsure, my gaze straight at the ceiling above, as my head lay fully tipped back, "The one Dom says to introduce the concept to Saito..."
"Chief!...You can't be serious, right?" he stood leaning towards me at an angle that implied complete subservience, "Men like me, we could attempt lines from Dabangg at best, not those firang movies, Chief"
I straitened and smiled, tapping at his cheeks, "How very self-aware, Bittuji?" In fear, that my tapping would turn into a slap, he kept pulling away, "If only you had been a woman, I would have married you. But again," I had to reconsider what I had said then,"I doubt even then we would have lasted beyond a day"
Bittuji had a wry smile on; I didn't blame him that he didn't know how to react to that remark made in passing, when I had no clue where that had come from.
My hand eventually fell to my side when I could no longer sit up and I went back to rest my neck against the couch.
"Once an idea..." my voice slurred and my eyes clouded from a sudden haze, as the lines finally came to me, "Once..an...idea..has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible...to iradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood"
"So you have a plan, Chief?" Bittuji's voice hovered somewhere to the left of my head.
"Yes..." I said without realizing I had one.
"Then do we do something to ruin their wedding preparations, Chief?"
"No..." I struggled to bring the words to my mouth, "We first call Pranav Roy..."
"What is the next thing, Chief?" He asked and Bittuji's tone burbled towards the end from his addled senses.
"Then we..." It took me a second to fish for the next word, "Push the wrong buttons to make her invite me to her wedding..."
"Then," I said without Bittuji's asking or may be he was gone from there...
Then we plant an idea...
Then we steal...But would that be stealing him from her? Or would it be her from him?
Then we plant another idea...just to be sure, what we steal will not fly out of our hold.
And then we make her pay...for what she rightfully ought to...
While I search...
For me...and for her...
"Oh! Bittuji..." I heard myself as a paper thin whisper; the numbness having left me, my hands braced my head while a blazing pain enfolded there.
"Why is she Madhubala?" I asked again and again...again...
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