John and Mary had never met before. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met before. The attraction was instantaneous. He stared at her across the railway track at the Subway at Park Street and felt her return his gaze. They were not like a pair of machine components that slid snugly into place just because they were meant to. Love at first sight, in this case was like the two pole pieces of a bar magnet. Sudden attraction, volatile current and a vacuum that surged with electricity. John was sure he had picked the right job. He was a Physics professor.
In the swimming cone of metro-light and intermittent sparks of the dysfunctional tube lights above, he studied her. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a thigh Master. Perfect, chiseled features that were assembled by a higher power to produce something that was not so perfect. Like Real Madrid. Words tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. But for the blaring of the subway trains and their periodic screech on the warm iron tracks, the hustle and buslte of the innumerable people clogging the platform entries, the vociferous announcements over the speakers and the onomatopoeic drip-drip of water from the AC vents, there was dead silence. One might say the silence was deafening. Others might say it was dead. John, however could not say a word. Despite the silence that might or might not have been present, the tracks were pretty wide apart and sound as he knew, has a tendency to fade. But at that moment, he might have flung himself onto the tracks and made his way across. According to the digital clock overhead there were 4 minutes till the arrival of the next train. He could take a chance. But subway trains in Kolkata hold a reputation for being late. John had no intention of being run over by a suitably late train. John was a calculating man. 4 minutes later, she was gone. Well, he thought, there wasn't a chance in hell anyway. John, as we know, was a calculating man.
The next time they met was at a bus-stop near Esplanade. Through the thin film of early morning drizzle, she saw a familiar face she could no longer place. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree. He had a french beard that some people resort to keep when they start growing a bit pudgy. This time he came up to her from across the road. Unlike subway trains, public buses in Kolkata are generally on time. Idle conversation. The beauty of the talk is not in the subtle teasing hints, the twist of words or in decorated pretentious laughter. It's the minor things. The way a person's voice makes a chill run down your spine, or the way someone looks at you with rapt attention while you're speaking. It makes you forget what you were saying. She grew on him like she was a colony of Lactobacillus and he was room temperature mother dairy curd. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze. He spoke with a wisdom that can only come from experience, and she listened with the attention of a college student at one of his lectures. The water running down her cheeks might not have been the rain. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. John might not have been an observant man, but he was a calculating man.
The plan was simple, like my cousin Shank. But unlike my cousin, it might just have worked. They were to get married 3 months later at the community hall in her complex. But it didn't last. I met John last week at a pub that had less rats than Oly. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock to me, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine. John was not a vindictive man but heartbreak had driven him to nitpicking his ex-wife's faults. "Well", he spoke wisely, "Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever!" John was a man of few words. If he had checked his love compatibility on Facebook, it might have been dissuading. But John was a calculating man. 30 years, he calculated, was a long, long time.
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