An Honest Smile

For the past twenty minutes, the car has not even moved for more than five hundred metres and he feels like he has been stuck in the traffic for a lifetime. That’s not entirely untrue, it takes him minimum two hours to drive up to his office and then two hours down, four hours every day can easily take away five years out of thirty years of one’s life, only for just remaining stuck in traffic. It’s a daily event, but today he feels particularly trapped. This stagnation of motion is driving him insane. He checks the A.C. again, which is at its highest blasting out chilled air while his forehead is lined with sweat-drops. He takes off his maroon tie over his crisply ironed grey cotton shirt that’s turning black by his armpits and chest. Undoing two buttons down his collar, he still feels he can’t breathe as if something is tightening around his neck harder and harder. The car before him starts moving and the car behind him starts honking. Quickly, he stomps on the accelerator.

The movement of a few inches was not enough to soothe his racing mind. He is in a hurry. Everyday he is, but other days he rushes to office to join a call or prepare for a presentation or welcome some delegates. Today, he is rushing to a different direction, he is driving to the nearest hill station, ninety kilometres from the city. He planned several times in the past two years, with his wife to go for a drive and enjoy the sunrise there, but every time, he would get a call from his boss to take care of some thing or the other, ruining his weekends- actually that’s the story of most of his weekends and that frustrates Srishti, his wife, like crazy. While she manages to log out of her office exactly on time, she cannot understand why Daksh has to stretch for overtime every day and on the weekends.

Daksh, known for his cool composure and polite smiles, wakes up to his boss’s calls most of the mornings before his alarm. The number of times he gets calls from Indrajeet, his boss, makes Srishti question their intimacy immensely, especially when they are in the middle of an argument and Indra’s call saves Daksh from her digging up the grave of the previous arguments. But yesterday when he saw texts from his secretary, Rajiv, on Srishti’s phone with heart and kiss emojis and when Srishti, instead of feeling guilty, was pointing fingers at him for being negligent and unaffectionate towards her, he kept staring at his phone to light up with Indra’s name or a simple text from any of his incompetent subordinates who haggle him day and night with questions and he ends up doing their tasks after explaining again and again and again, burning out his patience.

He couldn’t get angry, he knew he didn’t have the right to, because her allegations were not wrong. He has been working, burning himself out. After four years of marriage, Sristhi can’t wait anymore to start a family, they must at the least start trying to have a baby. Daksh plans to buy a house before that. He grew up in a house that crammed three families in one, his father with his two elder brothers who had two sons and two daughters respectively. Him, being the single child of his parents, had to fight for every ounce of extra food or every inch of space in that house kinged by his oldest uncle, his father’s eldest brother. That house never felt like his own where every form of protest from his end was shut down with one resolution that he could leave the house any time if he didn’t wish to follow the rules. His baby should grow up with full freedom in his or her own house.

After four switches of organizations in the past two years, he is one of the guys with the highest package in his position. He has been keenly awaiting the next hike cycle in three months when he has been promised to be promoted to Manager. Then, he can sit back and relax and enjoy his family life- at the least that’s what he has been planning to do. What he missed was the distance that came between him and Sristhi in the past four years when all he thought was earning money. Yes, there were nights when he didn’t think if she had dinner or not, if she slept or not, he missed how she sprained her ankle or the colour of the new curtains or it was a burnt chapati he was eating. He became a robot, getting up, going to office, working the whole day, coming back late at night, sleep, repeat.

He forgot how he felt, he didn’t care. Thinking about his feelings was a distraction he couldn’t afford until two days ago when he was stunned by the news of Karan killing himself jumping off from the twenty-fourth storeyed rooftop. Karan initially drank some poison, that cockroach killing sprays that we have at home, but it was taking too much time and causing much pain, so, he decided to jump. But why? This question has bothered Daksh and kept him distracted. Karan was the most happening and easy-going person he has ever met. It’s already been two years since he joined the team, but his efficiency was the same as a new recruit. He made the same mistakes again and again and when he was scolded for the same, he simply smiled. Right after he got schooled, he would get together with other team members and would laugh and make jokes as if nothing happened. His girlfriend got married to some other guy last year and he threw a party on the day of her marriage. Nothing ever got to him and that annoyed Daksh.

“Why is he always so happy?” Wondered Daksh often. It felt like Karan was mocking him- what have you achieved with all your sincerity and diligence? Money? Asset? Family? Is it all worth it if you can’t even have one meal in peace? If you can’t even breathe without worry? If you can’t even smile honestly?

Daksh wanted Karan to stop smiling, wanted to see him sad, for once. Three days ago, when he scolded Karan in front of the entire office for messing up the report again, he saw Karan’s face dim down at first. He thought finally Karan was breaking him down. At the end, Karan left with a smile as usual, though dimmer than other days and that made him so mad. However, he kept feeling guilty that night for yelling in front of others, at least he should have done it in the confinements of the conference room. Daksh was ready to apologize the next day when he was slapped with the news.

Reason? Some said he turned gay and got dumped by his boyfriend. Some said he was chased down by loan sharks as he had to borrow huge amount of money for the treatment of his cancer-ailing father. And some said because his family outcasted him after he came out of closet. Daksh got angry and frustrated that nobody pointed finger at him, as if his last day’s yelling nobody noticed.

And then, he wondered, why is he so angry at Karan for dying? He felt as if he has been left behind. How Karan could find a way to liberate himself while he is stuck? He listened to his boss’s nagging, listened to his wife’s suffering, listened to everyone’s complaining and then, does what needs to be done to make them stop making a fuss and move along to get things done. Nobody ever cares how he feels. Just because he is silent, doesn’t mean he has nothing to say, nothing to vent out. When Srishti started blaming him for her being interested in other men, it got too loud for him. No, she was not speaking too loudly, it’s just the voices inside his head that kept telling him how insignificant he is as a human being. If tomorrow he is gone, would anybody actually grieve for him other than for the things he provided for?

His phone starts ringing with Indra’s name. He didn’t want to receive but his finger presses on the green button by habit. “Hey Daksh! How far are you from office? You know Mr. Franklin is coming today. I don’t think I’ll be able to reach office in time. You receive him….start briefing him….I’ll take over from you…..” The call is dropped before Daksh could answer or make it clear that he will never go to office again.

Right then Srishti calls, “your phone was engaged…..I know……you were talking to Indra, right? Anyways, we have a get together at Mr. Roy’s house this evening. Last time also you ditched me. If you ditch me today, I’ll kill both you and your Indra…..” The call is dropped before Daksh could make it clear that he would never come back to home again.

The heat is rising. He switches off his phone. Rolls down the window. A girl at the corner of the street catches his eyes. The lane has congested slums by one side of the four-lane street. The malnourished girl, barely five or six, in a tattered faded green dress that’s hardly covering her body is playing in front of her hut with a broken cycle tire. She is trying to spin it, keeping the tire horizontal on the ground. Since, the tire is crocked and dented, it’s getting stuck but she is trying, from different angles, putting stone chips in the centre to increase its height from the ground. As the tire spins a little, a smile brightens her dried dusty face. Her effort increases with little increase in spin length and with every success her smile re-appears. Daksh started cheering for her with his heart thumping with anticipation as it does when he waits for a six by his team. He forgot he stopped sweating, he forgot he was stuck in traffic, he forgot he was driving to jump off a cliff.

The car starts moving and honking again breaking him out of his reverie. As he hits on the accelerator, his eyes fixated on the naïve source of joy, the child looks up right at him and sees him looking back at her, feels getting caught in her silly act, smiles big innocently revealing a blank space in her lower row of teeth.

Standing on the edge of the cliff, he feels the racing wind hitting his face. He looks down at the depth, the brown earth is barely peeking through the clouds floating beneath. His right foot steps up towards the sky and then he realizes, he has been smiling. He smiled all along the way as the child playing with the tire and the most importantly, her smile in the end kept fiddling through his mind. Now, he realizes why Karan’s smile bothered him so much- it was fake, it was a lie that he constantly projected. That’s why Daksh could never believe him, could never tolerate him.

He brings out the car-jack from the trunk that he keeps for changing tires. Sitting down on the ground, he spins the back tire of the car suspended up from the ground. He doesn’t remember for how many hours he has been doing that. But he knows he has been smiling, honestly.