Entropy

‘Were we in the same class?’

I turned to the right. The unfamiliar guy, three seats away at the otherwise empty bar, repeated the question.

When I remained silent, he said, ‘I was in C division.’

‘Division A.’ Still unable to place him, I said, ‘I haven’t seen you at these class get-togethers.’

‘My first time in twenty five years... have you been a regular?’

‘Yeah...’

‘You come here to stand alone at the bar?’ That seemed to be a straight-forward question and not a taunt.

I shrugged. ‘There’ve been better times…’

He concentrated on his drink. I did the same, for a while, before adding, ‘First time, it was at a friend’s place, and cheap. Then, they started upgrading it every year. This year, five-star; next year, they plan to book a resort, for a night or two, with families.’

‘Spouse and kids included…?’ he asked.

‘That’s the plan.’

‘What a pain!’

Seeing his empty glass, I asked, ‘Shall I get you another?’

‘Let’s go Dutch.’

We got the next round of drinks, raised a silent toast to each other, turned around and studied our old set of schoolmates.

‘They seem to have done well,’ he remarked.

‘Oh yeah… and they are here to advertise that.’

‘Bitter, ain’t we?’ he said with a teasing smile.

‘But true. Go to any and the first question will be ‘What do you do?’ Depending on your answer, you get your group. The super-successful, the super-rich, the super-family lot with kids and bloody-super spouse, the non-residents, the resident non-residents, the gated lot, blah blah blah…’

‘And you are…?’ he asked.

‘None of the above…’

‘Definitely something to be bitter about…’ he said with a laugh. After a brief pause, he said, ‘When we were in school, there was more variety, I think.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why… don’t you remember? There were the poor ones, the ones from broken homes, the kids with abusive parents…’

‘Hmmm, true… you remember that boy whose mother ran away with some rickshaw guy?’

‘Oh yeah… when did they all become so similar… products from some factory…?’

‘Happy suburbia…’

‘Yeah…’

We finished our drinks and refilled.

A passing thought tickled me, ‘Wasn’t entropy supposed to increase with time?’

He laughed and said, ‘Maybe, we make up for their lost entropy. So, what do you do?’

I evaded with a grin, ‘I guess I make up for the whole lot… poor, broken, abusive or abused, cuckolded in one way or the other…’

He laughed again.

‘What do you do?’ I asked him.

‘I am an axe-murderer and a terrific cook,’ he quipped.

I laughed, ‘Well, you don’t need the butcher then. And, are you scouting for the proper joint of meat?’

He pointed at our group of mates, ‘You are giving me ideas.’

‘Be my guest.’

He left after a while. We had not exchanged names, not even a ‘see you’. I had one more drink and then caught hold of one of the organizers to get my memento and free t-shirt.

The organizer gave me the items, along with his observation, ‘Saw you chatting a lot with him. Not sure who invited him.’

‘What do you mean? Aren’t all invited?’

‘You don’t remember him, do you?’

‘No, should I?’

‘Come on, don’t you remember his case? Two or three years after we left school?’

‘Spill it out, will you?’

‘Hey, he killed his girl-friend, chopped her with an axe, cooked and served her at a party. Most of us were invited… weren’t you there? It was awful… delicious cooking, I admit… but, when we got to know later…’

‘Phew… that’s him?’

‘Uh…huh… he was on death row for fifteen years. And then, that got commuted to life-sentence. He’s just got out… after twenty years or more…’

‘Oh boy…’

‘What does he do? What are his plans? Did he tell you anything?’ the organizer asked.

‘Oh… nothing… he didn’t say…’

‘So, what did you two talk about?

I replied with a smile, ‘We talked about increasing entropy.’