When Harry met Hari

“……. we will watch the sunset from my balcony” the words echoed in his mind and he quivered frantically. Harry woke up from his slumber and stared at the mirror wall in front of his bed. Those words remained etched somewhere deep below in his mind, occasionally jetting from within to disturb his much needed sopor. The digital clock showed ‘4:00pm 17 MAR 2012’. For a moment he thought he was dreaming, he pricked himself to confirm if he was woolgathering; negative. The mirror wall bore a picturesque of a door, whose design wasn’t contemporary but appeared a decade old. Not sure whether his situation was like ‘Alice in Wonderland’, Harry got up to investigate.

The door felt real and heavy. With some extra efforts, Harry managed to push it open only to find a deserted alley in front of him. He retracted a few steps to reconsider stepping in that alley. There was something peculiar about the alley; the look it bore, the quietness that prevailed, the scent of the air; everything looked familiar. With some apprehension, Harry took the first step into the alley. He felt a chill travel through his diaphragm. Successive steps eased his anxiety and he started recollecting vivid memories associated with the area. The alley merged into a road with beautiful houses, each pluming its architecture. Harry strode on.

A nameplate, “House No. 108”, caught his attention. Harry’s apartment number was ‘108’; he had chosen it by choice as he had inexplicable affinity to number 9. Harry knocked the door and a young boy opened it with a smile on his face.

“Hello Harry, how are you? We were expecting you, what took you so long?” the boy asked.
“Huh, you know me? And who are these we that are expecting me?” Harry sounded puzzled.
“Off course I know you, you are Harry rite?”
“Yeah, but I am really sorry, I am not able to recollect your name” Harry tried to sound as humble and gentle as possible.
“Ooh come-on Harry, how will you know my name when you don’t even know me, we haven’t even met before. By the way, my name is Hari Joshi. Now let us go in or else my mom will start yelling and cursing me for my etiquettes”

Harry walked through the aisle which entered a small but cozy living room. He met Hari’s parents and found them pleasing, amiable, affectionate, caring ….. he felt as if he was with his own parents. Harry tried to recollect the last conversation he had with this parents. He had lost them a decade ago.

After having the nice lunch cooked by Hari’s mom, both of them decided to take a stroll by the river. They walked on a considerable distance waiting for the other to start ….

“What do you do Hari?” asked Harry
“Weekends I surprise friends like you” quipped Hari

Harry smiled at his sense of humor. It reminded him of his childhood days when he was famous for his funny remarks, his jokes and one liners.
“I meant to ask what you do by profession. What are your personal goals, professional goals etc”

“Personal goals and professional goals … hmmmm, lemme give it a shot.”

Hari explained his dreams that he wanted to fulfill, destinations that he wanted to visit, social status that he wanted to achieve in course of time. He talked at length from the adventures to the perfect married life that he wanted to experience.

“Well, on my personal front, I would like to marry the girl who has been with me through the good and bad times. I need to prove myself to her family that she will be happy with me after marriage. And to be candid, a girl’s family looks at the financial stability first, that’s their some kinda comfort zone and I don’t ridicule it, it is fair enough in my perception.”

“On professional front, I am still in my last year of graduation, wanna do something in same line itself after graduation. Mebbe try and improve the 200ms lag in the international phone calls by optimizing the fiber optic cables which can replace the round trip from our dear satellites.”

Harry was really surprised at Hari’s candor, the amount of thought process he had put in to have such demarcated goals and well defined settlement plan. Harry found a lot of fire in the way Hari talked passionately about his future. Everything reminded Harry of the days when he was a soon to be graduate.

“Dude, you know, there aren’t much opportunities like those back here” remarked Harry.
“Yeah, I read about that, chip design is also one of the plausible career paths that I am contemplating on” Hari replied

“Hari, I agree everyone is talking about Intel trying to setup a chip manufacturing plant in B’lore. You know why it was called off, because of hygiene and cleanliness reasons. Even if they set one up here, the infrastructure and operational costs that would be incurred will cause an innocuous IC 555 timer to be priced at Rs. 500/-. That’s fucking 10 times the cost as of its Taiwan counterpart.”
“Are you out of your mind Harry, who told you that? Tell me, you are kidding, you made that story up, rite?” Hari smirked.
“It had come in the paper a few years back”
“A few years back, you are saying a few years back some yahoo form Intel had this brainwave, while sitting on his commode, to set up a manufacturing plant in B’lore? Few years back they didn’t even know that we existed with this huge talent pool. Go take a walk Harry, you need to rejuvenate.”
“It did come on the front page of Times, I can bet my life on it”
“Do me a favor Harry, stop kidding me” snorted Hari
“If you don’t mind me asking, whats the date today Hari?”
“Hey why should I mind, its 17th of March, 2002”

Harry bore a stunned look as those words sank in.

“Can I see the photograph of your girlfriend please?” he asked Hari
“Yeah why not, you know she is really nice girl; the one that I dream of holding in my arms when I will watch the orange tinge of the sky as the sun sets in front of my balcony. She is waiting for us to get married and watching the orange ball fade away to darkness, its one of her dreams that I wouldn’t like to wreck. I call her Ketki, her name is Tejashree though!” Hari said as he handed the photo to Harry.

Harry stared at the photo, his eyes moist and his hands shivering when a small gush of wind blew the photo away from his hands. Without looking back Harry started walking to the deserted alley. Memories came flooding back to his mind like a breach in the dam’s retention wall. Half left recording sessions, pending vacations, long lost passion for drives with his sweetheart, some wrecked dreams and many more forgotten came gushing back as Harry reached the end of the aisle. With a heavy head he pushed the door open, stepped in and closed it with a thud. His breath was heavy and he perspired like a dragon slayer would after fighting a gargantuan archosaur. He sat on the bed till his heart beats got back to normal.

A lot of cherished dreams, some materialized while others were like the horizon, how much ever he tried, the distance never seemed to diminish. Harry wondered about things that he had achieved by grabbing opportunities, as they came along, and making the best out of it. This had definitely made him a better individual, but he had lost something that he couldn’t quantify. May be his sense of humor, his passion, his love; something was missing.

The bell rang and took Harry completely by surprise. He remained petrified for a minute. He turned around and glanced at the digital watch, it displayed 6:15pm 17th MAR 2012. Harry got up and went to the hall to get the door. He opened it to find his weary wife waiting outside.

“Hi Ketki”

She remained stunned, her eyes fixed on his. As he looked up the door, his nameplate read “108 Hari Joshi”. He lifted her in his arms and took her to the balcony.

“Feels like my Hari has resurrected” she said as he put her back on ground.
With his arms wrapped around her he whispered in her ears “It’s like a whole new world, dream come true. Lets us watch the sunset from our balcony!”