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He was 45, tall and alone. He was pleasant. He was affable. Though unkempt most of the time, he went for trendy shoes and clothes.
And most important, he always wore a smile. It was convincingly innocent, and always so. That was one big reason he was welcomed everywhere and by all his relatives and friends. His interest in girls was scant.
He used to be untidy and wouldn’t go for a trim for months. He probably thought there wasn’t any need to be presentable before a world, which eats, drinks and sleeps hypocrisy.
What I found most intriguing about the guy is that he never complained. He regularly attended dinners, but was never heard criticising the food or the behaviour of the host. One of his friends said, ‘If you served him cold food he wouldn’t protest, if you served him food, inadequately salted, he wouldn’t ask for salt.’
Why was he the way he was? Was he seriously uninterested in the exercise called life after having discovered its dominating and uncertain nature? Was he put off by the fact that we aren’t allowed to control even a wee bit of something that fully controls us? Did he find the whole arrangement unfair and, therefore, expected nothing from it?
I tried hard to get answers to my questions when he was around, but a smile is all I got. Was he a poor speaker or saw no point in discussing a cruise whose wheel we are never allowed to steer?
He remained a mystery till the last day of his life. He wasn’t feeling well and was taken to hospital, where he decided to say goodbye after a couple of hours. Probably he didn’t want to take too much of the doctors’ time for a lap he never sought.
Days later his room was reorganised by his relatives. A number of unopened gifts, some of them expensive, were found. A large number of currency notes and new clothes were also found. He, again, left us guessing.
