Ridwan works in a multinational corporation. He has a very hectic job which seldom allows him to follow the agreed work hours of 9 hours a day and 5 days a week. On a typical Thursday, Ridwan enters office with a pleasurable mind—the week is finally ending.
The all too familiar jazzy sound of his cell phone started ringing. Boss is also on a call, so I might as well take the call.
“Hi Ridd, how’s life?”
“Life’s good on Thursdays...you know that very well. What’s up with you?”
“Nothing much; I am also glad that a tough week is ending.”
“Talk about toughness! I had two tough presentations as well as many other ad-hoc tasks that I absolutely had to finish this week.”
“Oh yeah, all the businesses are going through the mid year craziness, and the bosses have become suit wearing lunatics!”
“Anyways, wanna catch up with the updates after work?”
“Heh, as if there’s much to update! But hell yeah, I’d love to get together. What about the rest?”
“I’ll be calling them as well. Just give me a call when you’re outta office”.
“Cool, see you in 9 hours!”
Ridwan, Rizwan, Ronny and Rakesh—the four R’s, as they call themselves, have been friends since primary school. It’s kind of amazing that even after so many years, they still stick together. They all began their life journey at the same point of time and they grew up through the 80s and 90s to see cassettes and VHS tapes getting replaced by CDs, DVDs and Mp3s.
Ridwan noticed that the sole female colleague in his department is cutting a red apple in two halves. She wakes up late, and used to come late at work a lot. After several warnings and an eventual HR threat, she started arriving early. But that also means that she started bringing in breakfast from home; which she never shared. No matter what the core breakfast is, she would almost always finish it off with an apple, some grapes, an orange, or some bananas.
“What is redder than a red apple?”, wondered Ridd, as friends affectionately called him. Ridd, Ron, Riz and Rack they became. None of them are working in the same fields now. After school, half of them studied in the same college, but after college, there remained nothing common in their career choices. But still four souls are tuned as the first four strings of a bass guitar. Okay, there are only four strings in a typical bass guitar!
“Ridwan, are you day dreaming?”
The thousand-times-heard-damn it’s so boringly familiar voice of the boss brought Ridwan back to reality. “Sigh, there goes the happiness and calm”
“Blood! Yeah, blood is redder than an apple”, thought Ridwan whilst jumping from cell A1 to AE99 in the obscure business case neatly arranged by the analyst in the excel file.
“Red roses are very good to look at, and red cars aren’t half bad”. The other day, he was stuck in a severe traffic jam within Gulshan 1 and 2, and he saw a good looking lady driving a red RX 8. He was looking at the car body. Ridwan is a long time fan of NFS, and he loved driving the Mazda RX 8. “Sigh, I will never be able to buy an Rx 8. CNG and public buses are the only options for me”
When work was finally over, he un-silenced his cell phone to find 4 messages and 8 missed calls, and it was 20:20. He was supposed to get out of office by 7 and call Rizwan. He hurriedly called him and found out that everyone was waiting for him.
While ascending from the ten storied building, he saw a “Lady in red”. What’s going on? What’s this obsession about red, wondered Ridwan.
After rendezvous, they all went to a bar. It’s an open secret that despite of strict rules and regulations, almost anyone and everyone can get a sip or two. None of them are addicted to alcohol, but sporadic in take helps the pack unwind after a hard day’s night. When hard days become plural number and turns to hard weeks, it becomes essential to chill out in style.
At around 12:30 AM, they finally decided to head off home. Though not all of them were too happy and confident about facing the folks after spending so much time outside home. Luckily they found a CNG driven vehicle. Ridwan lived the farthest, while Rack just lived nearby. So watching Rack speed away in a Lamborghini rickshaw, the others boarded the CNG. Ridwan remembered about the argument he had with Ron regarding calling a CNG vehicle just “CNG”. “See dude, CNG is the juice that gets the vehicle going, it’s just a baby taxi that’s being driven by CNG. You can’t call it a CNG!”. “To hell with your arguments, I am so going to call it a CNG”
The idea was Ridwan’s but, tonight’s liquor outing was heavily supported by the usually quiet guy Ron. He’s quiet by nature, but when he decided to speak up, he’s hard to argue with. However, that day Ridwan won the argument. Then they started another silly argument as to why the CNG’s are only painted green instead of Red, Green, Blue or any other color whatsoever...
“Red is not my favorite color, but why red is circling around me? Is it because she was wearing red when we broke up?”
“Procrastination is the devil that stops us from climbing the stairs up”, thought Ridwan and looked sideways to find himself alone in the CNG. His other two friends did drop off at some point of time, but he could vaguely remember himself bidding farewell to them while they descended. Anyways, he thought, they should be home safe and sound by then. He looked around to find a secluded alley, which he could not readily recognize. “Err, is the small gifts of madness drink causing this?” The memory of getting mugged by who looked like a friendly acquaintance came back to his mind. That was almost four years ago. Since then, he maintained a high level of alertness while traveling alone in a CNG.
The difficulties at work, the break up, the arguments, the demanding family—everything was finally hitting him hard. He was definitely tipsy, and when he found the vehicle slowing down, he wasn’t too surprised. As he thought, a guy jumped inside the CNG as if he’s an old friend. He saw him brandishing a shiny knife and saying something to him. He was hearing but not listening. He smiled and said “Who are you?” The knife guy was half amused and said something about handing over the belongings in a harsh tone. He also added something about splitting his belly if he failed to comply. The CNG driver was nowhere to be seen, nor were anyone else found in the locality.
The knife guy was wearing a red shirt and blue jeans. Ridwan was not in the mood. He felt a sudden rush of anger ridden emotions surging up.
A memory of past bothered him. He was very afraid of chickens when he was a kid. He found the otherwise tasty bird like species to be very frightening when they were alive and flying and charging at him. So when he was asked to hold the neck of the bird when someone else would be slaughtering it, he was afraid, but he was also happy to be part of the killing session of an annoying thing.
When the knife was placed on the neck, the bird’s reddish complexion and lamenting moans did not create any sympathy in the young Ridwan’s mind. He was jubilant when the first drops of blood spilt over and med his hands red. That was blood, and it had the same color as it had when he used to have nosebleeds.
In an unthinkable act of urgency, he snatched the knife from the knife guy. The guy was not expecting this. He had been mugging people for quite some time, only to ensure the regular supplies of heroine and other such substances. At the beginning, he found it appealing to keep count of his victims, but he ceased to do so after scaring away his hundredth victim, and not a single one showed any signs of courage. He had a deal with a number of CNG drivers, and they would always bring him coward victims.
When Ridwan was stabbing the knife into his abdomen and neck repeatedly, the knife guy was staring in surprise, “What’s going on? I am the hunter, I should not be hunted like this”. He struggled, and managed to punch his victim in the eye. But it did not seem to bother him a bit.
Ridwan was taking a blood bath. He saw the CNG driver standing nearby. He had both his hands in his head. He was not coming to help the once alive figure of the knife guy. Ridwan’s purple shirt was now red. The knife was also red, and so was everything else. His eyes were filled with blood.
Flicking the knife casually, he came out of the vehicle. Home is not too far away, he thought. He looked at the CNG driver, who was now trembling in fear. Ridwan started to laugh. There was not even a dog or a cow to hear his laughter, let alone other humans. It was sadistic, and he made the streets red with all the blood.
He took out the ipod from his pocket, and started playing Californication by Red Hot Chilli Peppers on his way back home....
“Today’s been an eventful day”.
