It was a weekday ,a dark sky shut the sun out and coulped with hissing winds and slashing rain, only a madman would venture out -it was a perfect day to jump lie back and draw deep on a reefer and let the music turn pictures in my brain.,which I did. It had been raining incessantly for a week and the entire neighbourhood was under knee deep water and life came to a stop,the slush and waterlogged street making a simple walk look a plod that tired one up to the thighs.There was little traffic,cars got bogged down in the mire, the public transport ground to halt, their rickety engines breaking down after sucking the water into the engine.
I watched from the balcony. Not many ventured out and those who did waded through the slush,their dress hiked to the waist, threading their way through our back yard , stepping on precariously placed stones to reach the bus stand behind our apartment. For long now, our back yard served as the approach road to the bus stand ,commuters prefered this short cut ,avoiding the long road around the development ,which ran along the outer wall and to the gate on the main road.
It was all so long ago.Darren had come to the city a year earlier.He had found a job and rented the apartment .This was just after college and I joined him there a year later. He supposedly had found a job for me too,which turned out to be a real disappointment. As a supervisor for a local contractor. I found it energy sucking for the sheer lack of any mental effort; the ennui drained me to the point of headache. I quit a week into the job and stayed back in the apartment ,cooking for that bastard.Meantime I also read,which was my passion.
By the time I joined Darren,the apartment had lost some of it's reputation .Till then it was a kind of super market for romance and girls and boys found love, made love, broke love and fought over love until the police raided the apartment.Somebody had complained,said it was a prostitution racket ther and since then the girls boys were more circumspect and discreet in their trysts.
When I saw Radha the first time,she made me notice her.She was older than the other girls who came to our apartment and more... pert..hope that's the word. She was neat and looked freshly scrubbed and washed,though it was already evening.Her stringy jet black hair was in place,combed back and tied behind in a neat tight bun. But then she was like that, clean and ironed ,her dresses and trinkets were matched,her feet was clean and she was always awake,her eyes expectant like something wonderful was about to happen to her.
I choked up when she tried to talk to me and I loathed those moments. There was another fucker who shared the apartment with us and they would jaw jaw to no end about books and movies- just superficial stuff while I sat nearby and burned to get in on the conversation with an insiders knowledee and deep meaningful interpretations of things they were discussing.Those remained unsaid.Slowly she deemed I was mentally retarded, or I felt so and that made me want her more.
