People with stories

Two people were having a conversation next to me. Two people in an office, from their cubicles.

To recollect the exacts of that conversation would be a tough task even five seconds after that exchange. It went along the lines of:

"Did you try to do it using the New Java Applet Package?"
"No. We had decided to take the old route of finding a backdoor and trying to loop the program from in there."
"But don't you think it would have been easier to try the AOD?"
"And not to mention that Server 2000 guidelines. We did it the wrong way."
"It's like Heisenberg's Uncertainity!"

What I heard, for the first time, was not esoteric mumbo jumbo but life. They were having fun with it, discussing their programs and their technologies. It was their dream. I could see them, standing in the middle of their respective homes and happily thinking back to this moment. There would be mental black-and-white photographs of these moments, of such a perfect setting for the important episodes of their lives. If their lives were to be made into movies, these would be the scenes picked for a slower playback with beautiful music in the background when the movie ends. The scenes where they find stories.

I have the script all figured out for the biopic on me. I know how it should end. Slow Scottish bagpipes in the background. I am walking on a busy, crowded street as the camera zooms out from behind me while the bagpipes drone on. A slow flash of white light and a shot of me laughing at a joke at a coffee shop with a late-afternoon sun behind me. Flash. A shot of me kissing a girl under starlit skies. Flash. I am looking out of a train window with huge mountains in the background. Flash. I am jamming with friends in a Bombay apartment, with rain-clad clouds and jazz and smoke and vada pav and mini tea. Flash. I am walking all alone, in the extremely crowded street while the bagpipes reach a crescendo.

I am able to see other people's perfect scenes. I can see them moving in slow motion during these times for posterity. I can see them fixing my position in their world so as to get the picture right.