Bond Till She Bonds...

"She decided on a whim, as she got off the Shatabdi at Dehradun, that while in Mussoorie, she was not going to bond with Ruskin. With James maybe but definitely not with Ruskin".

She understood her thoughts even as she was also sure that there were not many who would understand the way she thinks. It was not about the thoughts but about her words. There are many deep thinkers, rationalists and their breed with a why before most of their words and a hunger for more knowledge to vie for and why about. She was many things but none of those. Okay so maybe she did feel the hunger but that was only about three times a day and it was no coincidence that those were mealtimes.

Her thoughts were complicated only for people who didn't live her life or walk-in her flat-soled boring shoes. It wasn't about her thoughts but about the way she was thinking of expressing them. It wasn't a way she had to make an effort to find. It was natural to her....maybe she thought that way and then spoke the same way. Or maybe she thought the way she spoke just like the chicken would argue with the egg!.

So if you were a man of action and thought she was looking for Ruskin or James then maybe you should think a little less or a lot more. Maybe, you should give up on your chances when the competition is at that level. But then if you chose not to then you would have to look far beyond the names and read her thoughts.

She didn't like to read. She was literate and learned and that done, she was literally a little tired with learning to continue that for long. So she read a little and learned even less unless she was paid to do so. Sometimes life as a Management Consultant has those professional hazards. Much like a beekeeper who isn't really fond of honey anymore.

So she wasn't in a mood to bond with Ruskin. She was offline now. This was her holiday. She worked hard as a consultant and now she would work hard again to switch off while she was off work. She would rather say hi to one of Ruskin's lion in Ranthambore with those same exact words or maybe even with a tranquilizer bullet. But she wasn't in a frame of mind to read about them. Say hi if they walk in and keep the book away was the tantra mantra for her now.

And it's easy to criticize that and just that much more difficult to understand her. It wasn't about animosity for Ruskin or about affinity for James. It's just that for now, she liked the action. She wasn't the type to ponder, reflect, opine and then make a move. She was more of the speed chess types who would make the moves first and maybe understands later why she moved what she did. In texting, she would type and send and then read what she wrote. She would usually blame her thumbs for being faster than her thoughts when she was texting someone. She hated life in slow motion. She liked to break rules when they didn't make sense to her and not many did. She liked to stay true to her thoughts and if she thought fast, she moved even faster.

So James was in and Ruskin was out. Brawn was in and brains were out. She was on a holiday and books were not in her luggage. She was more in the backpack mode where she could travel light and fast. That's how she wanted to live her life for life in her ahead. She wanted to bond with action without brains for complications. The kind that thought "I am bond, James bond" to be a sufficient introduction. She was used to taking the initiative but for now, she wanted someone else to. She had been alone for too long. She had tried to pass over a failed past. She was moving ahead but was held back before. Now as she got off the train, she decided it. Life was to begin now.

She didn't like Ruskin anyway. She knew he wrote and had heard that what he wrote made sense. That didn't make sense to her. She was a consultant used to filling reports with words and sentences that amounted to paragraphs and pages but really nothing more. She had perfected the art of writing without telling. Her words, unlike maths, often didn't add up to much but then she didn't want them to either. So she was different from the Ruskin breed. For her, her life and her guts really knew what she didn't like rather than what she liked. She had always voted against rather than voting for someone. This was one of those rare moments when she knew the type she would avoid and the type who would have to avoid her initiative. Maybe it was on a whim that she decided to live life. Maybe it was just the outcome of everything that she had been through and now a new station seemed like a great place to start again. She knew life had just begun as she alighted off the train. A new track had just started.

But then it had to. She had left behind a busy life of a successful but rather unhappy consultant. The unhappy bit hurt every day while she rarely felt happy about the successful bits. It had a magical way of surfacing just when she would begin to unwind for the day in the closed empty rooms of her house. And then the being successful bit didn't quite undo the hurt.

She wanted a Bond without having to bond with someone. A Bond that wouldn't become her baggage on the way home. She wasn't sure how long she would live this life. She wasn't about to step back on the train but that was a thought she would revisit. Maybe she would just step into the train after a few days and carry on to the next station. Another John Doe, maybe a Brooke Bond could then walk in and walk out of her lifeless life. Maybe Brooke would be like a refreshing sip of hot tea. Maybe she would discover that she had limited her choices to the wrong bonds. Maybe she would want to discover a new world that wasn't limited to a Ruskin or a James. Then she would be glad that she had already left her other bond baggage at the last station.

This had been happening for a while now. She was moving from station to station with a trail of footprints behind. The Bonds weren't the only ones who would discover that she wasn't in a mood to drop anchor and stay. She was just experiencing and experimenting with the life she had never experienced before.

But then she knew. Every train stops at the end when there are no stops left. She knew she was moving ahead in life. She knew where she was destined to go. She was just determined to enjoy the journey a little more than the destination she was wary of. Her life was going to change forever again. That probably happens to everyone. It's just that it was going to happen to her again. That scared her. If Marriage was a sentence and not a word, she felt that she was getting a life sentence again. Twice in the same life wasn't funny. It was a compulsion. It's not a choice. It's what happens when it fails the first time. It happens then when you think that you were right and he was wrong and that it can't happen again. Optimism wins. The fact that he thinks he was right and she was wrong is a detail to be optimistically ignored.

So she was getting married soon. Life was to station her at the last station that this train would eventually stop at. Till then these were her last moments as an independent lady. She wasn't really in a mood to pick and choose. She had an appetite for James, a Ruskin and even a Brook. She wasn't going to shield herself from any Brooke or really anyone who cared to make an advance on her. Sometimes in life when you move on, you like to be the person on whom everybody makes their moves on. This was her. This was now. Life stands still when you move fast enough to keep pace with it.

Marriage wasn't the next stop when she first met Banjo. He wasn't a Bond of either type. Neither a man of words nor a man of action. Maybe he could have said that my word is my bond but he didn't speak up enough to say that either. He was just a normal person who took an abnormal interest in her. He was also the person who made all the moves just when she thought she would move on. Life happens when you least expect it to. The next date was always followed by another date. They came closer even when they didn't know they were coming closer. Their story wasn't a lingering romantic story. It was a movie in a fast forward mode just like she intrinsically was. She knew she didn't like life in slow motion. She also knew that this was faster than she had hoped it to be. She was going to get married soon. She had been there and done that and had been back. Now she was going back. That scared her. The Bonds were only a distraction.