Short Stories

A change of routine

The sound of the water dripping from his clothes was drowned by the fury of the downfall outside. It was getting darker as confirmed by the numerous headlights passing by. His hands and feet were cold and extracted as much warmth as possible from the somewhat dry wooden floor of the veranda where he was standing hoping to be spared the wrath of the skies outside. He had been caught unawares by the rain when he left his office to make way to the bus stop which was quite far off from the place where he exerted his toils. He had not brought an umbrella with him since he thought the morning sun would be faithful to his belief of an evening without rain. Nature is sometimes deceitful in a way repaying the faith of humanity. He was quite drenched before he reached the veranda of the old building but he had to admit he quite liked being drenched, proof being he smiled at the rain as a man aware of his limitations and accepting it with grace. The rain also brought a change in the routine of his everyday walk to the bus stop akin to a robot with a pre-defined path. He decided to wait for some time hoping the rain would appease if not he shall brave it nevertheless to return home. He decided, given the ferocity of the downfall, him having brought his umbrella would not have served any purpose. He was glad of a burden less to carry. His thoughts returned to his life where there was not much sunshine either. The sad smile on his lips shifted from the rain to bestow itself upon the man’s life. He did not feel very satisfied about what he had achieved so far.He felt he was drifting with life unconsciously doing what people do. The problem lied more perhaps to the fact that he could not decide whether to feel satisfied or not of who he had become. He felt he was missing something fundamental that a pulse of purpose which would shape his life. He had always let things come to him rather than going out to search for them but to classify him as lethargic would perhaps be an overstatement. Others perhaps have decided for him during the course of his life so far, decisions which he only emulated convincing himself that they were his. He had to admit however he was quite happy before with his job and life. Since a few days, however, an uneasiness had crept in making him feel something was amiss. Perhaps what he needed was just a change of setting but he knew that would just postpone the uneasiness.

The flow of traffic was became slower and slower. A car stationed in front of him with the exhaust sending out the faintest of smoke. His eyes sprung to the front compartment in the hope of finding someone he knew going the direction of his home. He was a bit disappointed and cursed himself for not having a car. His eyes though rested on the car itself. On the passenger’s seat, there was a woman who glanced at him and dismissed his image as someone not important to linger her eyes upon longer. She was being driven by a man probably her husband or lover or both. The man under the veranda was sure the driver could not be anything but her companion. Their posture maybe suggested explicitly enough the nature of their relationship. He had a way of leaning towards her in the car that suggested close familiarity. The lights were on as the woman was fumbling for something in the glove compartment. The man under the veranda tried not to stare but through the application of furtive glances started to build up an image their life. They were young and probably married since a couple of years. Was their marriage one of love or of a compromise of love, he did not know but the coupe seemed to be waves in the same phase. It is perhaps convenient today to get married without loving each other too much. The suffering of separation is then perhaps much less. However, if the love between each other was much, would the need for separation arise? Marriage has become some sort of competition. You win when you pick the right person to love. Then it becomes a question of comparing your married life to your peers and of deciding whether you made the right choice. In the car, the relationship seemed more of a loving convenience rather than a culmination of love. Is marriage though the finality of love or the start of it? People marry sometimes because they simply have nothing else to do when they reached this stage of their life. The man under the veranda thought whether he had reached this stage which was the cause of his uneasiness. He did not linger much on the thought and instead decided that the couple had no kids yet and was yet undecided. He thought of their home, imagined how it was maybe not very far off. Their house must have not lost its newness yet or maybe they were living on the first floor of the driver’s parents’ house which information suggested the parents were waiting for them to come home, the routine for them also broken and today would have something new to converse with the son reminiscing about similar rainfall in bygone days. The woman did not appear very happy. Maybe, she wanted a house to call her own. The driver perhaps was working on the same want but appeared to indicate that it would be not in the near future. They had married with great pomp, music and a great many pictures. Would the period of wait to acquire a new house be less if they had married with less pomp, music and pictures? Surely yes. But you cannot weigh the pleasures of getting married as per the norm to the material acquisition of land and bricks. The happiness of living among bricks and land that are your own perhaps deviate from the materialistic point of view. Is it not better to be married happily than happily married?

The car suddenly drove off. The traffic was easing up. The man on the veranda thought that it was time for him to get a companion. They sometimes say that everyone in the world has a designated companion, that there is someone out there for you. Your only job and perhaps the most difficult one was the search. Some are lucky, the case to search far never arise while for some a lifetime gets by in solitude. Some end up with the wrong companion which signifies the designated companion ended up with the wrong one too. The time had come to start the search before it is too late and a cascade of mismatches occurs. He wondered whether the pillars of his parents’ home would suffer a floor.

He was still musing upon it when the rain relented as is satisfied of having rinsed this part of the world enough. The man walked away from the veranda suddenly thinking he had a bottle of wine at home and that it would be a good time to open it celebrating the freshness imparted by the rain and at the same time its subsequent end. He started contemplating to drink all of it as a joke and not come to work on the morrow. He laughed at the idea.

As he cut out a lonesome figure towards the bus stop, he wondered whether the real world population’s count was an even figure.

~ The End ~