Caught 22

It was a cloudy Friday evening. The Starbucks on platform no 2 Victoria Station was bustling with customers as usual. A man was sitting all by himself in one of the corner tables. Hari Ramanujam was sipping cup of coffee and seemed preoccupied. An innocent passerby would have described him as a man of medium height and Asian features with a pronounced pointed nose. Ramanujam did not seem to notice the waitress approaching him.

“Would you like to order anything else sir?” she asked.

Hari looked at the nameplate on her chest. It read Pam Johnson engraved in gold.

“Another cup of coffee would be great.” he replied.

He thanked Pam and she in turn thanked him. She hurried to place the order.

London was a city where everyone loved to thank each other. Hari realized this fact the moment he had set foot in London six years ago. He had a work permit but still held an Indian passport. The first time he had traveled in a public transport bus, he had noticed the strange ritual. The passengers would thank the driver before getting down at their respective stops. The driver would then thank them and wish them good day. The passengers would reciprocate this by thanking the driver and then would go about their way. Back in India people lacked both the time and the attitude to perform this simple ritual.

Sipping on the second cup of coffee that had just arrived, Hari started gazing at the other customers. A couple sitting two tables away caught his attention. They were young, cheerful and full of energy. He was reminded of that fateful day fifteen years ago when he had met Anita. He had met her at a coffee shop in Bangalore. He had been alone. She had also been alone and sipping coffee. Hari had plucked up enough courage to go up to her and strike up a conversation. One thing had lead to another and they had started dating each other. She was all he could think about. She was his power, his pleasure, his pain. She was now his wife and was probably waiting for him. He saw that it was 7:00 pm already. He gulped down the rest of his coffee, got up, paid the bill, thanked Pam and walked to the nearest subway station.

It normally takes Hari about 50 minutes to reach Upminster, where he lived. Today was no different. He took a seat next to an old lady. Hari had about 45 minutes to kill. He was bored and soon started thinking about his childhood in India. He remembered the good old days when he used to run barefoot across the streets of Bangalore, break windows while playing gulley cricket, climb trees and roam the city in search of his next adventure. His children will never have the childhood that he had experienced. His kids never had as many friends as he had back then. Indians were still treated as second rate citizens in Britain. Even professionally, he could observe this. His boss had promoted his British colleague. Hari was sure that he was more capable than his colleague and deserved that promotion. Going to Britain was like visiting a rich kid’s home. He could play with their toys, but India was where he actually belonged. His children hardly knew anything about Bangalore or India. They had never visited India. Even in school, he noticed that his children liked to hang around Indian kids. Hari then decided that he would go back to Bangalore, look for a job there and give his children the childhood they deserved. The more he thought about it, he was convinced that it was the right thing to do.

Hari reached home and decided to talk it over dinner with Anita. His wife was reluctant at first but later acceded. Hari took a few days off, boarded British Airways and landed in Bangalore. The Bangalore that he had left behind had changed drastically. The once calm, peaceful, serine city had taken the toll for the worse. The city was swarming with IT professionals buzzing like busy bees all over the place. Hari was shocked to see the traffic in Bangalore. He had never seen such a chaotic and disorganized traffic in his life. The area in which he grew up had been demolished only to be replaced by shopping malls. At that very moment he had a change of heart. He booked a ticket in the next flight back to Britain.

Aboard the British Airways, Hari realized that he could never ever adjust to the new Bangalore he had seen.'What good is an Indian who acnt live in his own homeland?'he asked himself. He certainly wasnt British and would always be treated as a second rate citizen. He was certain of that. He was neither Black nor white, but an inevitable shade of grey. He looked at the clouds and sighed deeply. Fate had played a game of chess with him and had him checkmated. It dawned upon him then that all his Indian friends in Britain were stuck in a similar warp zone. He sighed again, waiting for the flight to reached its destination.