Neon: Chapter 1

It was sometime in July, probably towards the end of that month, on a weird morning that we happen to find Dhrupad curled up on his bed with a blanket wrapped all around him in impossible curves. A leg sticks out from that mass of Dhrupad, blanket, blanket cover and pillow. It isn’t really cold or anything. Infact it’s pretty hot but for some reason Dhrupad loves using that old blanket of his and he enjoys sweating under it. He thinks that the evaporating sweat provides him with an air-conditioning effect and he religiously sticks to his weird doctrine. The room surrounding this spectacle looks on with quiet resignation!! Room No-226, a.k.a the music headquarters of the college campus. Essentially this room itself could be introduced as a character in this particular story. But then probably I’ll just stick to simplicity and not exactly stretch imagination too far. There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about the room. It was just like any other room in that massive hostel. Decent sized, ceramic tiled floors, an old cabinet to keep clothing, two windows from which numerous empty beer bottles had been chucked out (much to the peril of the passerby), interior decorated with cobwebs and showpiece spiders, two tables one of which supports a majestic computer, two plastic chairs, two beds (joined together for better rolling space!) and two inhabitants one of whom is our Dhrupad with his air-conditioning blanket wrapped around him.
“SAAP!! Oye Saap! Wake up you sleepy bitch!” hollered another denizen of the hostel.
Oh, by the way, Saap is Dhrupad and Dhrupad is Saap. That’s his nickname in the hostel. He is sometimes called Snake, sometimes Saap and sometimes “Jol Dhora” which in Bengali is the name of a rather harmless water snake. The last nickname is used only by his roommate (who is also his best friend) during moments of drunken mirth and the usual leg pulling that is associated in most general cases! Dhrupad’s roommate is characteristically almost identical to Dhrupad. You could add a few extra dollops of determination, impatience, musical sense, height, reduce body mass to half and bingo you have the new and improved Dhrupad Version 1.1. Yes, both the roommates share the same name. For clarity we’ll call Dhrupad Version 1.1 as Chilli. The name Chilli is a gift from the hostel that will stick with him for the rest of his life, something similar to Snake. I mean you could possibly have a balding potbellied Saap in his miserable late thirties calling out to a familiar face in a crowd and another thin, slightly tired looking Chilli waving back vigorously from a line of fathers trying to get their sons admission to a good school! Whatever might the case be, the names “Chilli” and “Snake” are never going to get old, let alone forgotten. Well the package isn’t quite over yet. Chilli and Snake are, in effect, a part of a group of tightly knit, musical, intelligent, frequently drunk, wild, argumentative “would-be-engineers”. There is the “O fat one”, the one who never drinks, the one who never smokes, the one who always says cheers with a glass of cola, the one who smiles and gives off a thick laugh which oozes with sentimentality and the one who never gives up on you. Mesdames et Messieurs put your hands together and welcome the one and only Varun on stage!! He is also known as “Barunaxx” for some weird drunk reason that no one remembers. Next in line is the one who goes by the name of Anup. Anup is physically small, large eyed, had long hair at one point in time when the group was at its rowdy best and permanently in desperate love with whiskey. You would barely notice him till he starts singing songs and talking about music. He is a veritable gold mine of music, bands, composers, lyrics and you name it. Anup believes in frugality of words and takes his time and utters each word in a precise and accurate manner, which in most cases totally slices through the listener. Our man has this habit of looking at you with his severe big eyes and concoct an expression that will make you feel totally miserable about yourself. They call it the “Snoof Look”. A deadly look that we could use as a cool offensive to batter the opponent’s morale beyond recognition. Snoof doesn’t have too many complications in life. That off course, to the average bystander, is the apparent picture. Give him music, give him whiskey and he is happy to exist! Then comes the tall, lanky, massive toothed, intermittently available drummer Ketan. The Ketan!! Passionate and dead sure of what he wants out of a given situation. Situations, finally add up to form what we call “life” in general. Ketan has never really faltered, never seemed sad, never gave in and always lived with loads of things to look forward to. Only once, had he ever broken down. Only once, he was hurt and confused enough to cry (fuelled off course with large quantities of alcohol). That time was a rather rainy night at a place called Hockey Club in one of the posh areas of Bangalore. No I am not at all being melodramatic. It was actually raining and raining pretty hard. Everyone had coaxed Varun into getting them inside the club since he had a dependant membership. That was the time when Ketan had broken down and mentioned very solemnly that he had successfully managed to neglect his friends and the band because he had only one chance of making it to a good master’s school and he had to do what he did. He felt miserable for it. He didn’t want to say sorry because he never says sorry to friends. He just cried his heart out. I suppose in the midst of describing Ketan, I probably mentioned something like “the band”. Well, these boys here had formed a band named “Unicorn”. Chilli was the bassist, Anup the lead singer, Ketan the drummer, a guy named Nandakishore was the lead guitarist, Tim was on the rhythms and Varun, who joined in late replaced Tim when he had to leave the band for a personal reason. And our man, Dhrupad, the sensitive poet was the freelance lyricist who never really got to play in the band, a fact that he rues till date! Chilli knew the technique of getting words out of Dhrupad. Chilli would make a tune and buy a bottle of Old Monk XXX Rum. These two seemingly unrelated activities held the key to the word box that Dhrupad held. “Get Dhrupad drunk” was the motto when there was a dire need of lyrics and Chilli had veritably mastered the technique of getting it done.
“WAKE UP DHRUPAD!!” Said “the denizen” again, vigorously pulling at Dhrupad’s feet. This time the volume had gone up from a holler to a full-fledged shout that rang all around the near empty corridor of the second floor of the hostel building. Dhrupad lazily kicked with that exposed foot of his, murmuring something in his half sleep and clutching at his precious blanket like some refugee. There was an effort to pull off the blanket but it proved to be rather unsuccessful. The wrappings were impossibly complex and Dhrupad was heavy. The last resort was water, which off course was duly brought carefully preserved in the cup of a massive palm (our “denizen” was a big man!). It was then poured into the ears of our protagonist with a care that perhaps was never displayed in the chemistry lab while pouring an indicator. Dhrupad cried out and miraculously seemed to emerge from his blanket in one fluid motion that perhaps only he knew how to accomplish. Our man, “the denizen”, left the room. His head tilted back in loud laughter and apparently highly satisfied with his efforts.
Dhrupad off course never wanted to wake up. The reasons perhaps were more complex than just his love for sleep. In fact, he had gone to sleep last night hoping he never wakes up. Such suicidal tendencies weren’t new to him especially since the last few days. Off course, his suicidal contemplations were only limited to just that, contemplations. Like Anup sometimes says, “Dude! It requires more than a gun to pull the trigger.” Which off course he had plagiarized from some song and twisted the lines a little bit!
The heavy eyelids parted with considerable effort. They were reluctant to allow Dhrupad’s tired eyes to get exposed to the world. They were in love with the eyes and they wanted to protect them by remaining closed for as long as they could. The room all around wasn’t helping in the process one bit. It was 10 am but the room wore a forlorn and dead dress that morning. Completely unlike the state it had been for the past year, the room almost died that morning watching Dhrupad wake up. The cobwebs added a few thousand kilograms to his eyelids and the bright sun and the noise completely irritated him. The computer speakers were still quietly squeaking out some tracks from a Paco de Lucia album that he had queued up in his playlist before going to sleep. He had slept at 4 o clock in the morning. His head was throbbing. His hair was in disarray. On one side of his head it was pressed to the scalp and on the other side it was sticking out. He had slept all of those 6 measly hours on one side. Dhrupad finally looked around appearing to wake up. He surveyed the room with his tired sunk eyes till he found what he wanted. A packet of Wills Navy Cut smokes was lying nearby. Fortunately it was within reach or else Dhrupad would sit like that for another fifteen minutes before he could pollute his lungs. He stretched out his arm, heavy with sleep and fatigue and pulled the packet and the matchbox to him. He looked down upon the packet almost with pity and pulled out a cigarette. Upon giving a slight push with his thumb the matchbox tray came out with a scraping sound displaying its mundane ware of matchsticks. Dhrupad pulled out one unlucky stick and struck it against the side of the box. The head hissed slightly and glowed red before bursting into flames almost trying to have the last laugh at Dhrupad, or so Dhrupad thought. The smell of burning sulphur hit his nostrils. He tilted his head slightly and touched the flames to the cigarette already held against his lips. He sucked at the filter deeply till the humble glow at the tip turned into a defiant red fist worth all of 700 degree Celsius. Dhrupad breathed in the soft blue filtered smoke, deeply, felt a soft twitch on the nape of his neck and exhaled, slightly shuddering, satisfied and content. He then put his arms around his knees and rested his head on them and looked out of the window with his lips slightly twisted into a soft mocking smile. Thus began the day of Dhrupad Chaudhury, romancing the smoke!