Meenakshi Saravanan - 3

He was staring through the cubes of ice in his whisky glass. The pale yellow light reflecting of the crystal surface of the glass presented him with a rather interesting sight. He was seated in a corner of the bar by the bar counter, a loud bar, a popular one, one with a lot of couples, a couple of single guys like himself and no sign whatsoever of a “single” woman around. The intoxication from the spirits he had been pouring down this throat (Yes! Most people sip on colored spirits such as the one he held in his hand but he’d rather pour them down tonight.); coupled with the long bar stools gave him a sense of airiness that comes with floating in the air.

Rock and Roll was back in vogue. There now stood a dance floor on a slightly elevated platform, about 150 Sq.Ft., where there were once a few more stilted tables and stools. The dance floor reverberated with the sound from the giant speakers as numerous couples danced, screamed, jumped and ogled, groped and fell over each other tongue in cheek (literally) to the groovy numbers spinning off the disks of the DJ on the floor. Blue, Red, Yellow, some more Blue and some more Red; laser lights bounced off the walls of the bar and off the people within spilling it’s color over them until there was no difference between the black and the white, the colored and the fair.

He sat there, still as a statue, amidst all the commotion around him, still staring into the glass of whisky in his hand, watching the laser lights dive into the intemperate spirit and then bounding off to intoxicate those hapless, unsuspecting 20 somethings. Thoughts raced through his mind even as the bartender refilled his glass, once, then again, then again; and he lost count. Unappealing work, a nagging manager, a shanty salary (well, according to his wife of course), a displeased wife, a romance that had faded, all came, each one pricked, ripped out a little part of his soul and faded into the far reaches of his memory only to come back and do it all over again until he was just flesh and bones.

As the night pulled on, the drunk got more drunk, edging towards smashed, the girls got hotter and the boys, well, the boys were getting more boyish. And rock n roll became electro pop, whipping up quite a frenzy as the music got louder, livelier and wilder. Through the sweltering heat of the dance floor, as a squealing voice announced the change of song, from the center emerged a steaming hot couple. The dance floor transcended into a stage as everyone made way for this charming couple. Yelps of whoa and ooooh and yeah resonated through the entire bar as the woman in the yellow halter and the faded jeans was grinding and grooving with her equally capable and classy man friend.

His eyes were still glued to the glass with its interminable supply of whisky. His mind though was wandering off into what seemed to be a distant memory of that one night; that one night that turned his life on its head, that one night that he lost his faith in love and hope and everything rosy, that one night when his wife came to him with a rather grim piece of news; that one night when his wife told him she was with another man, that she was beginning to fall out of love with him, that she was beginning to love that other man. A tear started to roll down his hardened face as the grip tightened around the glass of whisky in the manner in which a noose tightened around the neck of its victim at the gallows. Clink! No one heard; blood spurted out of his hand as the shattered remains of the crystal glass fell to the floor. He got up, left a bundle of notes on the bar counter, did not wait to even count, picked up the bottle of whisky and walked away.

The lady in the yellow halter spun around, slid under and flew over the fine gentlemen with élan and the young man, strong and muscular, in his mid-twenties, caressed her, let her roll and held her with passion and emotion. No one noticed the slightly odd fellow making his way to the dance floor, a bottle of whisky in his hand and a menacing face. As the song was drawing to its climax, the cheers got louder, the music got groovier and the couple matched it with just as much energy and panache. The sound of breaking glass filled the bar and before the lights went out and the focus fell on the couple center stage, the music came to a screeching halt, the crowd let out a yelp of despair, and a strange man with a broken bottle in his hand uttered the word – “Meenakshi!” amidst pin drop silence.