I went to The Jukebox, Koramangala with my flatmate and AP. We got some Toit Stouts, and remarked that they were diluted. It had just drizzled outside. I looked out of the window and thought, "hmm, pollution."
Then a tween beggar-boy sauntered up to our window, holding a bouquet of tacky roses. "Please buy some," he said. AP was excited. She asked for one. Then she fumbled through her seven pockets and realised that she had no cash.
"I have cash, but only a ₹500 note. No change," I said.
"No worries, I have change," said the little urchin.
I handed AP my cash, who dutifully gave it to the frolicsome child.
The child ran off with the note.
AP looked at me. "Oh no! I'm so sorry!"
"It's fine. Let me see if I can get him," I say, while steeling my resolve.
I walk out, and up to the window from which the child took the note—and lo—I see the child galloping back with glee written on his face.
"Just kidding! I made you tense up didn't I?"
He hands me not one rose, not two roses, but ten roses, one by one and starts speaking again.
"Tension is the result of forces that takes us from what is, to what could be. Every joy, tragedy, and narrative undercurrent of life is on the other side of tension. We mistake tension to be an ordeal that needs to be released. But tension is a discreet voice within us, letting us know that it is time to let go, and catapult ourselves from the person we have been to a more fully realised person. And we must listen."
He hands me yet another rose and looks at me.
"When tension goes awry is when we botch its release, out of the fear of not being able to bear the consequences of a possibility resolved into reality. And we hold on to it, while it eats us away."
I look at him, realising that his devilish grin belies a deep wisdom in his eyes. I decide to engage with him at his level.
"How do I learn to listen to this discreet voice of tension, little amigo?"
He hands me another rose. "Like this," the urchin suddenly kicks me real hard in the nuts and runs away while I writhe away in the wet Koramangala footpath.
These are weeknotes where I explore alternate realities. I take actual events in my life and totally change the facts and rewrite what happened.