I drive inside my old college campus and park my car. We used to have many bikes and cycles parked around this curve. Now it is filled with swanky cars. I walk to the library and explain who I am to the librarian. She lets me in with a smile, half-appearing to remember.
I walk to the library basement. It is cold and dry, and laden with fine dust. I pass my hand over the books in the shelf marked "Language Reference", my head tilted to one side to read the labels. Collins, Webster, Oxford - the names stare out from the leather-bound volumes. At last, my hand comes to rest on a dark grey volume of Roget's Thesaurus.
~*~
The library was in the interior of our engineering college campus, below a
stretch of green lawns that tapered down to its edge. We had two floors and
a basement in the library. The basement was scarcely visited, holding as it
did books of a general nature, unrelated to engineering or science. Still,
it was the haunt of our small literary gang.
There were three of us - Dotty, Parul and I. Dotty was our convener, the guy who thought of new things for us to do. Parul was our intellectual pillar - well read and opinionated. And I? I was the catalyst, the putty that held us together.
Parul liked to say that the library basement was a metaphor for us misfits. We were alone in a world of teens whose idea of fun was a movie and the disco. Like us, the library basement was unpopular. It was also, Dotty said, deep and mysterious.
After the day's classes were over, we would get together for a shared cup of coffee at the nearby cafe and then spend some time in the library basement. Many Saturdays, we stayed there for hours. Sometimes we played scrabble, sometimes it was a new game of word building, and sometimes we read out poetry. But the best time we had was when we played games with the thesaurus.
After reading Richard Bach's book "Illusions - The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah", we had subscribed to his theory of a "Messiah's Handbook". Any book, he had said, contained answers to questions. You just opened it at random and put your finger on a word or a line to find the answer to your question. It could have been true. And for minds like ours, open to interpretation and imagination, the thesaurus was the original book of answers. It was our very own Ouija board and we asked of it questions ranging from the trivialities of campus life to the larger conundrums of the world. The answers were sometimes direct and miraculous. Rarely, they struck at some unknown tangent. But they were always the right answers.
~*~
It is now 1998 and 8 years since we have passed out of college. Dotty is doing
his Ph.D. in London and is engaged to his school sweetheart. Parul is married
and working as a science journalist in New Jersey. I am working as an engineer
in a nondescript firm in Bangalore and am still unattached.
Until now.
The past few weeks have
been a whirlwind of events. I have met someone with a subtle charm that overwhelms
and scares me. It is as if all of life's meaning has changed to align with
him. Yet, I am not certain that this new meaning holds truth..
The other day, he asked the question that has lingered between us for days.
I thought of it all day yesterday - analysed my fears and anxieties, my dreams
and hopes. And still, I could not decide. As I drifted off to sleep, I remembered
our Messiah's Handbook.
And so today, I have come to the old library basement. The thesaurus is now
in my hands. I have entrusted to it the biggest decision of my life. It is
a trust based on the faith of youth, the superstition of old age, and perhaps
my own reluctance to take responsibility.
I open the book at random and run my finger down a page, all the while closing
my eyes.
My finger has stopped. It is time to know the answer.
Slowly, I open my eyes and look in quiet excitement at the word my finger points to.
~*~
