Three thousand kilometres

Adi looked sideways in slight disgust upon being summoned by his childhood nickname. The first thing he saw were the hazel eyes

Adi’s eyes grew wide as his eardrums were hit by these words. “300 kilometres?” he asked himself. It wasn’t the intangible weight of the words that hit him hard, but the very tangible distance of the journey he was about to take that made his round face look swollen. He tried to eavesdrop on people’s conversations half expecting that the number was incorrect. To his utter dismay, the number he had overheard was correct to its very last numeral. Did they even know how long 300 kilometres is, he wondered. Did they know that it would take eight hours for the bus to cover the distance? No, eight hours and 20 minutes, he corrected himself after some swift calculation.

Adi then contemplated his hasty decision to take a road trip, to hop in any bus he could spot and ride along on a journey that could take him anywhere. He knew it was very unlike him to act in haste when all his life he had calculated everything meticulously. Even as a child, he had followed dragonflies with such pertinence that had defied even the most calculative insects’ tactics. And when all of his friends would be still be aimlessly chasing the zig-zag curves made by dragonflies in flight, he would have a bottle full of bright yellow and brown and red. Although the bottle and the buzz of dragonflies had long been replaced with piles of papers and theories of atomic physics, the meticulous pertinence had stayed with him.
As the bus kept moving forward, with Hindi songs blaring out of a huge speaker that looked at least a century-old, Adi wondered what had prompted him to take this journey in the first place. He remembered walking on the pavement on the hot, humid July day, mentally mapping his atomic calculation. Those godforsaken atoms, he had thought aloud, that move and bombard each other without any premonition. He remembered how those atoms had bedazzled him as soon as he was introduced to their elliptical movements, pertinent energy and meticulous positions. But as he had walked fast on the pavement earlier that day, he had realised that the bedazzlement now made him dizzy, and the meticulous bombardments now seemed to be as random as his friends following those random curves. The combined effect of this realisation and the humidity that took over his town every July made him stop askance, in the middle of the road. He needed some place to sit and do the painstaking calculations all over again. This is when he had decided to hop onto any bus that would stop for him. And without any calculations or questions which seemed to fill every page of his life, he had gotten onto the bus and sat down next to a window seat.

With the wind snaking in and out of the open windows, Adi had felt refreshed in the moving bus, as every pore of his body drained out their last drops of sweat. He had felt his drained energy renew and his muscles relax until he overheard those numbers.

“It’s 300 kilometres from here.” Adi remembered overhearing an excited voice. As soon as he had heard this nonchalant announcement, his muscles had gone back to their pre-ordained tense form. “300 kilometres?” he asked himself again. He then straightened his shoulders and decided to get off at the next stop. Adi sat back as he regretted his miscalculation. No, he corrected himself; there had been no calculation at all.

“Adi?”
Adi jerked forward as he heard his name.
“Adi, the atom-lover!”

Adi looked sideways in slight disgust upon being summoned by his childhood nickname. The first thing he saw were the hazel eyes—a colour that stood out in his part of the world. The eyes were bespectacled, but he couldn’t miss that colour. He doubted if anyone could. His eyes then searched the face—the fair skin, the nose, a bit crooked, and the parted lips with that unmistakable smile. If he looked closer, he knew he would find a mole somewhere on the chin. Mole of Mina, the words formed a backdrop in his mind.
“Mina,” Adi restrained himself from saying the mole part. “Mina, it’s you.”

“It is.” That wide grin never left her face. “It’s good to see you.”

Adi didn’t know how to react to that. How do people talk to someone they’ve met after quite a long time, 8 years in this case, he thought. All those Wh-questions then started to queue up in his head.

“How have you been? What are you doing these days? Where are you going? And why are you staring at me?”
As Adi fumbled with his set of Wh-questions, he was bombarded by Mina’s.
“Okay, one question at a time,” Mina laughed. “How have you been?”
“Good. I’m working at a research institute.” Adi never missed that proud streak in his voice whenever he mentioned that.
“Let me guess.” Mina squinted her eyes. “You’re researching your favourite atoms?” Mina didn’t want it to sound like a question for she pretty much knew that that was the case.
“Yes.” Adi smiled. She still remembers, he was surprised.
“You’ve always loved those atoms. I always ran away from them.”
“You danced.” I remember too, Adi surprised himself.
“I still do.” Adi couldn’t look away from those hazel eyes. He wondered how those eyes would sparkle when her feet would leap in the air, or make graceful turns. “I’m working at a dance academy,” Mina continued.

“That’s great.” Adi had no idea what it felt like to dance, to make arcs in the air with your hands, to thump your feet with such accuracy and move your hips with such supremacy that these movements defied all calculation. One moment her hands would be still and the next, the invisible curves they made would have you in awe. The feet you thought so delicate would then crush the earth beneath with such strength that the resultant energy would create infinite wavelengths and amplitudes.
“You should come to the academy to see us dance.”

Adi only smiled. He doubted he would. He had to keep working on those theories that had been luring him for so long. He always seemed to find himself on the verge of unlocking those cryptic theories, but somehow they managed to get away from his slippery grasp. Maybe I should try a new approach, Adi contemplated as he tried hard not to remember the number of ‘new’ approaches he had taken so far.
“Adi?” Adi jerked back as Mina touched his shoulder. “Are you alright?”
Adi could feel the warmth of her slender fingers through the pores of his cotton shirt. “Yeah. I …” Adi looked at the ancient-looking speaker. “They should turn that off.”

Mina laughed. Adi wondered how many air molecules could get hit by the sound waves of her laugh. “Music is good company when you’re travelling such a long distance. So where are you going Mr Atom-lover?” Mina crossed her hands as she tried to look stern.

“I … uhh …” Work, research, seminar; just pick one word, his brain echoed. “I don’t know,” he replied as he looked straight into her eyes. The harsh July sunlight that passed through the canopy of the trees and made its way lazily through the blurred glass of the bus-windows did something magical to her eyes. Did the colour just change to light green? Or was that light blue? Adi asked himself as he tried to look deeper into her eyes. It reminded him of the dazzlingly beautiful colours of the dragonflies. Adi looked sombre as he remembered those dragonflies he had chased so long ago.
“Are you okay?”
When Adi saw those lines of worries around her beautiful eyes, he was tempted to say that he wasn’t okay, that he now wanted to figure out the colours of her eyes.

“I want to see you dance,” he said instead and decided to wait for her reply for a nanosecond—time taken by an atom to move.
“Sure, we have a programme tomorrow morning at the academy. I am heading there. Would you like to join me?” She let the light do the magic as the colour of her eyes changed from one shade to another.
“Sure.” Adi thought for another nanosecond. It was a hasty decision, he knew, second one for the day.
Mina smiled as she looked at the blaring speaker. “They really should turn it off.”

“300 kilometres is a long journey. And music is good company.” Adi sat back and took a deep breath taking in the dust the winds carried in. 300 kilometres, the number resounded in his head like the symphony of Beethoven’s music. He closed his eyes, and instead of the calculations that filled every nook of his brain, he saw a light shade of green. Light green with pigments of blue and a tint of brown, that’s the colour of her eyes, Adi noted.

Barsha Chitrakar