When Strangers Meet (50000 ebooks sold): 3 in 1 Box Set (Now with Sample Chapters from A GAME OF GODS) by Kumar K. Hari & Harry Kristoff

Author:Kumar, K. Hari & Harry, Kristoff [Kumar, K. Hari]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Srishti Publishers & Distributors
Published: 2013-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty Nine

19 December 1997

Madras Municipal Corporation Building

The night passed in a joyous state of sleep. I had never slept so peacefully in recent times. The hope of getting a job the next morning filled me with a kind of rigorous calmness. My life was broken, now I would be getting a chance to fix it. I was awake at five in the morning, the beach felt fresher than ever. The cool breeze from the Bay of Bengal kissed my yawning face. The scent refreshed each living cell inside my withered body.

I had been standing outside the Municipal Corporation building since seven in the morning. The man from the beach had asked me to arrive outside the building at eight. I was there an hour earlier. I wanted to impress him with this act of punctuality.

At around quarter to eight, a thick-skinned blackish male wearing a khaki uniform arrived outside the gate of the building. That khaki clearly was not a police officer’s uniform. I made sure by rechecking. Maybe he was a peon at one of the divisions in the huge building. I had seen the same man at the beach last night. There was no woman with him. He was coming towards me. I smiled at him. He did not bother smiling back. As he came closer to me, he pulled out a folded page and handed it over to me. I quickly received and unfolded it.

It was a form.

‘Fill up the form quickly and give it back to me.’ He commanded as he produced a packet of local beedi from his shirt’s pocket.

‘Okay, sir!’

‘And yes, attach a passport size photograph with the form. Do you have one?’ He looked at me while lighting the beedi with a matchstick.

I bristled through my wallet, there had to be a photograph there somewhere. I kept a couple of my photographs all the time in my wallet. There it was, a rusty black and white photograph of mine, taken when I was in class 10th. The inseparable smile on my face cast a shadow of irony over my bewildering face of the present. I wondered if the very same photographs were displayed on notice boards in police stations of Tuticorin too, among the list of MISSING PERSONS. I handed the photograph over to the man in khaki.

‘Fill it up fast. We have to report downstairs by 8 am.’ He blurted among blusters of raw tobacco fumes. He coughed lightly.

‘Well, yes, of course!’

It was a government job’s application form. Proudly I filled it.

‘Very good!’

He started going through the form that I had just filled up. I added meticulously, ‘I can also speak English and Hindi.’

He fortressed with a rising hand as if asking me to shut up, ‘You do not need to know any of these to do what we do here.’

I was confused. The man blew in another ounce of smoke from the handmade beedi. He started walking towards the rear side of the building. He gestured me to follow him. I kept pace with his short strides; I did not over take him.

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