The Man (1/?)

(2003- Coastal India - Rubber Plantation: The plantation manager, in his early 40s, in his office preparing to leave. Takes the bag from the little wooden cupboard near the window, puts his lunch tiffin in, tucks in his umbrella and zips up the bag. Slinging it over his shoulders, he takes a cursory look at his locked drawers and some inconsequential papers still on the table and leaves the room waving at some lingering folk outside.)

Lingering: That dark man in the dark trousers, pale checked shirt with the bottons neatly done, steel watch on his wrist, wears black sandals everytime. Every Friday, he is always by that sal which skirts the pond tending to his cycle. But he scares me because I know that naught is wrong with his cycle any of these times. He watches me, I know that too. How? I can feel it. Feelings are our sixth sense at work: cannot be ignored. I walk fast past him and increase my pace as I walk keeping the trees carefully behind me; he raises my hackles: he scares me. It has been eight years, it is long enough, I thought it was long enough, it should have been long enough to let me live, to let still waters be, to not throw this pebble into my quiet existence.

But who can reason with paranoia. Because what else is this. And I must not get this way. Erase that frown from your face - you are losing touch, you need to practice. Visibly schooling my face, I keep up my pace till the cycle parking. Casting a practised nonchalant look around the shed and the trees behind it as well as the way I rushed in from, I wheel the cycle to face the road. By the time, I am home 7 minutes later, I have worked up a sweat - a combined result of the cycling and the anxiety.