Of cosmic laws. And a little dust.

I did glance at the tiny clock on my computer. The last bus would have just been missed. I continued listening to the silence at the other end. We are like that only. Most often than not, I hold the phone and work while he does too. Conversation starts and ends at 'Then what'. I've gotten used to working with the phone cradling comfortably on the curve of my neck and having him on the other end. Different coasts connected by a common silence over a telephone line.

'Ask them to be kinder to the door. That force hurts', I’d hear him say when anyone from my office would open and close the squeaky door near me.

I'd smile and continue working.

'Hold on. Let me get some coffee'.

'Do you want me to hang up?'

'Nah. Just stay on the line.'

A coffee and a bag of chips later, I would be greeted with an 'Am back'

And we would continue working our own different works.

But yesterday, we were talking. Words and all that. I didn't interrupt him. He was listening. Or pretending to. Didn't matter.

'Say, I gotta go. The last bus leaves in 8 minutes'

This would've been the point where I would be hurt, if I chose to. But I am agreeable. Not all that very though.

'My last bus left sometime ago'

A usual silence punctuates our conversation. It never makes me uncomfortable.

'I am sorry about that. Is it a long walk home?'

It’s always a long walk home.



I was walking a lazy walk home when a car pulled up beside me. It was someone from my office.

'You going home?'

I smile a yes. To help them understand, I nod my head.

Am-going-that-way-shall-I-drop-you?

'I have to drop him at the mosque’, pointing at another colleague. ‘It’s only a few minutes out of the way. Do you mind?'

I smile a no. Of course not.

The guy who was until then sitting beside the person driving, climbs out and ushers me in. He very the gentleman he perhaps he is not, climbs in behind.

A conversation that was interrupted continues. Ramadan, fasting and the people he’d met at the mosque.

The colleague, who was driving, plays some music.

I start in surprise. M.S Subbulakshmi singing a ‘Thousand names of Vishnu’. ‘Vishnu sahasranamam’

Two believers and me... Believers of what they believed in- god, religion or something on those terms... And I, as always, confused. I really didn’t know here, as I didn’t many things in life- what exactly I believed in. Whether I believed at all…

Two believers of two different religions and me in a car talking about Ramadan while listening to a thousand glories of Vishnu on an almost deserted road in the US of A.

It made me smile.