Hanging up on the world

IT was a day like any other, or so I thought. Shoghi market was bustling — a sea of hurried footsteps, clinking coins and murmured bargains. The air smelled of fresh coriander, dust and pakoras. I stood there, momentarily lost in thought, when I turned around — and there he was.

Humraaz — the same old pot-bellied friend, untouched by time. Not a wrinkle of worry had dared cross his forehead, not a single strand of grey had crept into his hair. His ever-calm demeanour hung about him like an old shawl — familiar, frayed in places, but radiating warmth.

Laughter bubbled up before words could form.

“Where have you been?” I asked, clutching his shoulders, half-expecting him to vanish if I blinked.

We had all ‘lost’ him the day he walked out of his corporate job as a senior associate. His phone number became a relic, unreachable — like an old file in the basement that no one dared touch. Rumours filled the void. Some claimed he had gone to the Himalayas, others insisted he had joined a monastery. A few whispered that he had simply evaporated into thin air, leaving no forwarding address for the world’s noise to find him.

But here he was — solid, smiling — as real as the samosa vendor haggling over the price of extra chutney.

We spoke as if no time had passed. Nostalgia and laughter threaded through every sentence. Then, with a mischievous glint in his eye, he revealed the moment of purest liberation.

“The day I left,” he said, “I began deleting. First the branch manager’s number. Then another. And another. Numbers of people I would never again need, never again wish to hear from. Each deletion was like throwing a stone out of a backpack I’d been carrying for years.”

I burst out laughing so hard that the tea vendor gave me the kind of look you reserve for people on the brink of delirium.

“Freedom,” he continued, “is not just about walking away — it’s about knowing what you’ll never return to. Every deleted number was a door I closed forever. And with each one, the silence in my life grew sweeter.”

He paused. “Phones are like gardens — you have to pull out the weeds if you want anything worthwhile to grow.”

I looked at him — this contented, detached Yogi of the everyday — floating weightless above the clutter most of us drag behind.

“I envy you,” I confessed.

“You should,” he smiled. “But it’s never too late. Start small — delete one number at a time. Try decluttering your life.”

And with that, he strolled away, swallowed by the market’s colour and noise, leaving me with the lingering scent of old friendship and the haunting question — which, indeed, would be the first number I delete?