Sunday, September 04, 2005

The Other side of History

The play 'The other side of History' was about a couple who read about the suicide of an acquaintance in the paper. They don't know too much about this other person. They know of two incidences in this persons life and use their imagination to fill in the gap and come out with a story, as they are the literary inclined types. Each of them have their own version. Their versions are drastically different from the dead man's version, which unfolds in the climax. Which actually led me to think of 'the other side of history' of the another incident.

Apurva aka AJ and I were house hunting. We landed up in Koramangala and decided to check out Jaya and Meghana's place, to get an idea of the size to rent equation. It turned out that they were celebrating one of their friend's birthdays out there, so we got some free lunch.
But thats a different story. Happy b'day Anshu.

Anyways met a guy at their place whose name I shall not reveal as a matter of anonymity. You will realise why later :-) Lets just call him Mr X. So Mr X tells us that there is a place for rent he had just seen in the parallel lane. Since we were in the neighbourhood we found no harm in the offer and decided to take a look. We landed up at the door which was not locked. Mr X tells us to just push the door open and go in. So our brain thinks that no one is living there and Mr X knows that since he had been here before. Maybe some brokers are inside. So AJ pushes the door a few inches and realises that someone is still staying there. Not because we saw anyone but by the arrangement of furniture and stuff on it. So we decide to ring the bell, which felt like the decent thing to do at the time.

Then after a few moments out came this giant. 7 feet 9 inches. She had this look in her eye, of a woman scorned. There was also this twist in her mouth and she was frowning in a sulking manner. All she wanted to do was wring our necks. Yikes!!! What a waste of oxygen. Wait!!!! perhaps I am imagining that, my view being biased due to what took place later. Perhaps.

So this average height girl comes out and looks at us. She is about to blurt out something but then decided to lift one hand higher and rest it on the door frame. Maybe she wanted to give the impression that she was taller, her animal instincts working overtime, to protect herself from this pack of hyenas. She took a deep breath and then the words started to flow. It sounded like she had practised the dialogue before but maybe for someone else. "How can you just enter without knocking!!!!!". She yelled a bit more!
Her voice was not as forceful as her words. She lacked the intensity. Well something was just missing I thought to myself. As AJ was in the direct line of fire he decided to speak, "Err... but we didn't enter and we did ring the bell". "Who do you think you are to just come here and disturb ppl. And why did you open the door!!!!!!". The yelling continued. "Ok something is definately missing. Breathe in. Breathe out", I say although my words don't reach her. Well who told us that we can open the door... AJ then points to Mr X and says, "Cause he... err". I think AJ wanted to beat up Mr X at that point but decided it was not the decent thing to do at the time. Well Mr X did come there before and he knew they were ppl staying there. We decided to guard our tongues and apologised, but for what we don't know. After a moment of silence, "So can we still see the house". Steam rises as we see red. SLAM!!! Ok thats more like it, I tell her. We walked away like a pack of hyenas alright. Yeah a pack of laughing hyenas :-)

I was recently telling a friend about how
ppl already decide the outcome of an argument even before it starts, biased by events from before or their way of looking at things. The other side of history. Maybe she just had a fight with her boyfriend and thats why the hatred for the other sex. Or maybe her landlord was pestering her to vacate or something. Or maybe she was not prepared for a similar incident a little while back. Or maybe she was typing an email and the sound of the bell startled her and she did a reply all instead of just a reply :-) Well whatever the reason she just wanted to let it out on someone. See... we did our good deed for the day by helping her to get intouch with her emotions :-) Ok ok... we were just hit.... Hard! Lets just leave it at that.

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