Chapter 2 - Room with a View

From the 11th floor of Sea View Apartments, Maan had a wonderful view of the sea on one side. The windows on this side let in cool, salty breeze from the sea. Down below he could see people walking on the paved road surrounding the rocky beach. In the distance the coastline curved around and he could see Nariman point. That is where he had been in the evening. The other side of his apartment overlooked a main road. The window overlooking the main road let in warm Mumbai air along with a lot of noise. That is why Maan seldom opened this window.

The apartment actually belonged to Maan’s uncle. A blissfully balding banker with a beatific smile and taste for beer, he lived in New York. He visited India once every few years. It suited him to have someone take care of his apartments. Besides he was very fond of Maan, and often invited him to New York.

Maan lived alone these days. He didn’t spend much time at home anyways. At 28 he was successful, brilliant and much in demand. The price he paid for all this was time. There was always a lot of work at work. And if there wasn’t work, there was always something to do, somebody to meet. He hadn’t the time to feel lonely in his big apartment nor the time to realize that his friends were slowly slipping away as he had no time for them.

He had had a roommate before, called Abhijit. Quite a character was he. Behind his kind eyes and winning smile hid a rather impish mischief-monger. His sense of humor was divine, what you might call all embracing – everything was a joke. His sense of hygiene, however, was bovine. It was no better than that of disinterested cow. It stemmed from a general lethargy and dislike of order. It fed on an affinity for inertia and a desire to keep things in their lowest state of potential energy – i.e. lying on the floor. His world lay scattered around him, a whirl of chaos and confusion. He, unperturbed and unconcerned, spent most of his days ruminating, burping and laughing at himself and everyone around him. All in all he was immensely likeable but very undependable. Not much of his life was determined by reason or planning. He was run by whims and impulses. He had an instinct for life, a zest for it as though an undetached umbilical cord connected him to life. Almost on a whim he quite unexpectedly got married and suddenly moved out. It was then that the house felt empty. It was then that beautiful spick and span home felt lifeless.

It was such an odd friendship – they were complete antipodes. Yet Maan borrowed from his friend a certain love for life that kept in check his growing cynicism at it and his friend drew from him a strange inspiration and a general sense of direction.