déjà vu

Last time I met him, he hardly spoke.

Sometimes, he would just shut up and shut himself out for weeks together. And, when he does that, he can be pretty much insufferable. It is well-nigh impossible to know beneath that frivolous facade does lie a gloomy persona. Someone suffocating to the core.

Years ago, when I first ran into him and this side of his, a friend said ‘it’s his way of unwinding.’ He probably was looking for another word to substitute ‘unwinding’ but did not get any. I think he meant 'self-examination.'

I met him last night. He stood there on the terrace, bending forward over the dwarf wall, as if attempting to catch hold of something that was flying by. There was nothing I could see though.

I made no attempt to talk to him. It would have been an exercise in futility. I respected his philosophy of respecting people’s space. “Let them be,” he would always say. Some mistook it for his aloofness and indifference to others.

I left him alone on the terrace and walked into his room. As I drew closer, I could clearly hear Mehdi Haasan’s rich baritone (if I can say that) from his computer’s speakers. The volume was set very low. As if the great singer was whispering away. I turned the speaker volume higher. The voice was resonating:

Keh do in hasraton se kahiin aur jaa basein
Itnii jagah kahaan hai dil-e-daaghdaar mein*….

His personal diary was lying on the table. I know how he loved his diary. He has been writing since he was 17, he once told me. For the last few months, he had stopped though. “I write only when I feel compelled to,” he had said. You could well substitute it for “when I am either happy or sad.”

I opened it. There were blank pages. I saw one. Then I saw another. Some more…..and more. So many. Do blank pages mean he is sad? Because it meant he was not happy.

I reached December 10. There were just two lines scribbled on it.

It read: It's a sense of déjà vu. But when people choose to walk away from you, all you can do is wish them well in life.
----------------------------------------------------------
*The lines by Bahadur Shah Jaffer mean:
Tell these desires
To go and settle down somewhere else
Where is so much space
In this scarred heart?