I first noticed him when he sat down in the opposite seat vacated by an old woman. Actually, that’s not right. I saw him only when he made a gesture, immersed in a newspaper. There was something vaguely familiar about it. It was an odd one for sure. Roughly every two minutes he would tweak his left ear with his left hand. In all other ways he appeared normal. Even his face did not seem to ring a bell for usually I’m pretty good with faces. And then the circuit closed. But of course, I should have recognized him faster!

I had last seen him about ten years back; on the day he left our lives under a bad cloud. He was the first and last person to rent the extra room to the side of our house. Somehow, after him, we never got around to renting the room to another person. He was about thirty years old then. A very mysterious age you know. It lends the person a certain aura. The aura of being on the threshold of middle-aged cynicism and shedding the last remnants of youthful idealism. Or perhaps I was too young and saw him through the prism of awe. It was the literary air he had. I always had this thing for even vaguely literary people. They were like gods, infallible and distant, talking in fabulous language of things and people I could only dream about. And he was not completely a fraud. He had actually got some of his writings published. For me then that was equivalent to winning the Booker.

He was a master of words. He could weave the most amazing and fantastic conversations. I used to spend hours listening to him. Instead of playing street-cricket or flying kites, almost everyday after school, I’d knock on his door and spend the evenings with him until mother called. Oh what things he would talk about! I’d be carried along by his words to the most exotic places and meet the most colorful and irreverent characters that ever lived; the narrowest house of Amsterdam, the lost streets of Tasmania, Mad-Eye Pillai, Sunset Madhavi, Boston Barney, Willowy Waterson. Each of their stories would be spread over three to four evenings. Later, the words would evaporate like early morning dew, leaving only a vague taste of melancholic sweetness. Like a drug almost and perhaps that’s why I used to hunger for more. Conversation was not needed. It was a monologue. I just had to nod at the right time, make appropriate noises and insert the right words at the right places. When I look back now, even with the burden of hindsight, they seem such beautiful evenings.

But that sudden departure of his ended those mellow evening monologues abruptly. Even now, I do not know what really happened. Mother and father refuse to talk about it. I only have vague rumors and overheard words to fashion a theory. It involved women and abortions. What role he played in that and whether he was really involved is still an open question. It was so sudden that I couldn’t even pester my parents to let him stay. At the time of his departure I was in a state of limbo, confused and curious. Not the best of states to be in. But I can still recall his farewell look. He did not say a thing. He just looked at me. A look full of sadness. The sadness of being misunderstood. A look also of faith perhaps. A faith in me. As if he had the confidence that I’d understand him and not judge him like others had done. That was also the first time I cried in public. But I was careful not to let him see the tears. I just stood there and looked back, a confused kid looking up at his disgraced idol leaving. We did not shake hands or wave. He did not even look back once as he walked away down the street.

And there he was in the seat opposite me after so many years. He had aged badly. No wonder it took me so much time to recognize him. The interweaning years had apparently not been kind to him. There was a certain hardness about his mouth. As if the world had kicked him from one pothole to another. His hairline had receded a lot and the hair was mostly grey in color. His eyes lacked the special crinkly quality they had before. They seemed to have lost the ability to smile. I wondered about what might have happened to him. Had the dark cloud followed him everywhere? Had it not allowed him to rest anywhere? Or was he happily married with two kids and just showing the normal signs of aging?

It would have been a simple matter to talk to him. To remind him perhaps, if needed, who I was, and get into his life again. But something stopped me from doing that. I wanted to remember him as a child’s idol, flawed but real, and not temper that image with the hard reality in between, good or bad. To be frank, my reasons were perhaps more selfish. Deep down, I did not want to change his image of mine as a curious but shy child, always dreaming and in awe of people. Even he would have been disappointed at what I had turned out to be, a lazy fantasist full of broken dreams and unrealistic plans. So I just sat there, surreptitiously glancing at him over the top of a book until my destination arrived. I got down and went home with another reminder from the past to be buried in my garden of memories.

(Note: Final part in a trilogy of fictional portraits. Please keep in mind that the image preceding the text has nothing to do with the text, the words were not inspired by the photo. It is only meant to complement them.)