By Dyuti Mishra

Our story begins with our character arriving at the airport.

It’s 3:26 am and his flight is not for another four hours. But here he is, at the departures area of Terminal 2, Mumbai airport. And he has some time to kill.

We don’t know his name, but we know a few things about this character. For starters, he is a he. A man in his forties—maybe late forties, gauging by the ratio of salt to pepper on his head. Could be early fifties, even. With men and age, it’s always difficult to tell. A simple looking man, in a simple cotton half-sleeved shirt and simple khakis and just a general air of simple-ness around him. He is short, shorter than the average Indian male even, and slightly on the scrawny side. His simplicity is exaggerated by this lack of bulk around him, like he doesn’t want to occupy any space in the world. It’s only the slight convex of his belly and the convex moons of the glasses perched on his rather large nose that mock his otherwise insubstantial form in unison.

That is not to say our character doesn’t put in any effort into maintaining his appearance. He is not vain, granted, but his doggedly maintained anchor beard is a dead giveaway of his regard for first impressions. That razor-thin line of salt-grain hair extending along his jawline is proof perfect that simplicity, too, is an exercise in routine maintenance. We could even go as far as to say that he has put some thought into his outfit too. The simple-cloth cotton-ness of his shirt is a conscious decision. His choice of shirt is a practised move. It says here is a man who cares enough to show how little he cares. It’s called Ironic Process Theory—or something.

The sinewy right hand extending out of the baggy shirt sleeve is clutched around the handle of a Lowepro camera case. The suitcase is black, soft-shell, and has a huge sticker across it that says fragile. Red on white with a cracked wine glass on it. Now step back and look at this image again. Our character, short and sinew-scrawny, standing there in slightly oversized clothes with a roller-suitcase by his side.

He pulls out his wallet from the left pocket of his khaki pants. The wallet is a tan leather and has gotten a sheen with age, as leather is wont to. He opens it to check if he has his ID card, then puts it back in his pocket. Our character then pulls out his cellphone from the other pocket. The screen lights up into a greenish-blue glow to reveal the figures 3:26 and a slight crack across it. He unlocks it to check his ticket again - the date, the time, and the terminal. After giving it a once-over, he slides it back into his pocket.

Our character now crosses the lanes to make his way away from the entrance to the airport and towards the bar on the opposite end. With all this time to kill, he could do with knocking back a few beers. He’s drawn to the bold yellow-and-black signage like a moth to an electric bulb. As he enters, he doesn’t register that the inside, in stark contrast, is dimly lit. He finds an empty table in a dark corner and sits himself down. His bony left knee just hit the underside of this too-small-for-two round table and now it is wobbling. He adjusts himself on his chair and places his palms on the table to stop it from quivering. The surface is sticky, and as he lifts his palms from the top, it makes a slight squelching sound which only he can hear. He picks up a triangle-shaped tissue from the holder as a server walks over to him and wordlessly tosses the menu on the table. Our character looks up at the server, hoping for a smile or a slight twitch of jaw muscle to acknowledge his presence. The server, however, is distracted.

Our character follows his gaze towards the table diagonally across him at the far end of the room. As if to greet him, raucous laughter rises from the corner. Huddled over a too-small-for-six square table is a group of twenty-somethings. By the looks of it, this isn’t the first bar stop they have made tonight. And clearly, this is one of those nights that will go on well into the morning. A girl whose face he can’t see is resting her head on her companion’s shoulder. All he can see of her from his vantage point is a tumble of dark hair, covering her face and inching toward her companion’s shoulder. There’s a certain menace about it—the way her hair falls around her companion’s shoulder, as if to swallow him within the deep ravines of an unknowable darkness. Our character instinctively reaches out for the handle of his case and pulls it closer to himself. He makes as if to open the case with the intent of pulling something out of it, but the server now fakes a cough and our character turns his attention to him. He asks for a pint of Kingfisher, mild, and before he can finish stressing on the ‘d’, the server is gone.

He goes back to watching the girl. She has shifted her head slightly and now he can see a sliver of her face. It takes on an underwater quality; the way her skin loses its colour in the blue light that is hitting it. He can’t see what the light source is. It has filtered through the glass panes that form the exterior of this beer joint. The effect, however, is something he finds himself relishing. Blame it on his vocation, but this frame, right in front of his eyes is the one that he will regret letting go of.

This frame reminds him of the other one that slipped past him. Even while the image slowly revealed itself to him, he knew there would be consequences no matter what course of action he chose. Images always exist within the context of that larger picture – time. He knew this to be true back then, he knows this to be true now. The image he let go of still exists for him; it’s for his eyes, his memory, only. The decision to not capture it within the confines of his camera but to have it seared in his memory was a conscionable one. It is that split-second decision that has steered the course of his otherwise unremarkable life and led him to this point – where he finds himself in a dimly lit bar across the airport.

*

Our character has lived his years with dignity, honesty and integrity. We can’t see this—there’s only so much that meets the eye. But that is what people do. Or, at the very least, attempt to do. And so, while we can’t see the proof of this on him, we must assume our character has done the same. We must assume that our character, now in his late forties or even early fifties, has lived an honorable life. We must assume what he has in his suitcase is a camera and that he is a photographer, even though all we have to work with is the brand name and the suggestion of fragile contents within. We must assume he has had at least some acclaim, if not success as a photographer. We must assume he has been a good husband to the woman he married when he was twenty-six and a good father to the daughter, he had at thirty-two. We must assume he can cook a three-course meal for when he and his wife throw dinner parties—and we must assume they throw dinner parties. We must assume he knows how to hold a conversation, that he is a man of fine taste, good humor and a kind disposition. We must assume that he is capable of unconditional love and has known loss and has dealt with his fair share of setbacks but has managed to pull through rather well. We must assume the weariness of crow’s feet around his eyes are the combined result of knowledge and time, not disillusionment. We must assume he has been a good friend, a good boss, a good son and, above all a good person. At this point in the story, we will have to make these assumptions. This is our character, and even if we don’t believe in redemption for ourselves, we are going to have to believe in it for him.

*

Back to where we were—our character is still at his too-small-for two table with a half-empty pint of Kingfisher in his hand and an empty one on the table. The girl and her companion and that whole group for that matter has left, but he’s still looking in that direction. He doesn’t seem to be focusing on anything specific, though. He is simply gazing in that direction as if lost in thought. Almost as if he’d lose that image of the girl if he directs his attention at something else. There is still that blue tint of light filtering in and hitting the back of the now empty chair. In the absence of its occupant the light has lost its significance. Now it just bathes every inanimate object it hits with the cheap fluorescent pallor of meaninglessness.

We can tell it has triggered something in his memory or that he has made some association. We will never know for sure what that memory or association is. We will never know what that image means to him or who that girl reminded him of.

Maybe if we did, we would have a better sense of our character. Maybe we would know that the image he is so resolutely holding on to reminds him of another picture-perfect moment in his life, the one he let slip by. Maybe we would know what that image was. Maybe it was a cold winter morning in Delhi, two months back. Maybe the sun had just come up and he was on the terrace of his brother-in-law’s house. Maybe he had walked in and found his niece standing in the far corner. Maybe he got closer and realized she was smoking a cigarette. She wasn’t supposed to, she was fifteen. But the winter sun cast an orange orb of glow around her and he found himself frozen in his tracks. This image presented itself to him as an unexpected gift. He could choose to walk up to her, throw away the cigarette and have a talk with her about this. Or he could go downstairs and get his camera to capture this image. But he didn’t move. Until he did. Until she noticed his presence and tried to put the cigarette out. And he moved in closer, the frame getting tighter. He zoomed in until he was too close. Until he couldn’t stop himself. Until he was inside the frame and had become the subject.

*

Not a lot has changed in this place. The only way to tell that some time has passed, is to look in the direction our character is staring at. The occupants of the table under our gaze have left and there are four pint bottles—three empty and the other getting there—where there was only a request earlier. The sky is changing its colour and has replaced the fluorescent blue light. But our character seems determined to hold on to the previous image. It seems important to do so for some reason.

There are consequences for our character's action, and he knows this well. If he could change the course, he might find himself in another place. A place he calls home, with his wife and his daughter and the comforts of dinner parties. Our character is in a bar across the airport, pulling out his cellphone again. The cracked screen lights up again, this time the numbers that flash across it are 6:45.

Our character is running away. But right now, he is at the bar, holding on to that ghost of an image.

The representational image is by Mantas Hesthaven and downloaded from unsplash.com

Dyuti Mishra is a journalist and features writer from Mumbai. Her articles have been published in Femina, Vogue, Conde Nast Traveller, L’Officiel and other magazines/websites.