Let Her Jump – A Short Story Not for the Faint Hearted

Let Her Jump – A Short Story Not for the Faint Hearted (Based on a true story)

When he walked in that morning he knew he had a very busy day to look forward to. And as he didn’t want the hassle of starting it too soon he just walked past his secretary without glancing at her for he knew she would be giving out all sorts of disapproval signals on his coming late to office. But he didn’t care as he had just come off a calm and restful weekend and he didn’t mind if he put a frown on his secretary’s face if he could extend that mental bliss to a few more minutes. As always he switched on his computer to check his mails as was his daily routine. And it jumped right out at him with no subject heading.

He read the message again hoping against hope that he had read it wrong the first time he did. But no, it still read the same ominous way "If you want to see me alive one last time come to the top of The Temple Tower building by noon today before i jump off it." And that’s it - the entire message was that cryptic with no hint of who or what or why. But he knew, of course. Knew it was she. No one else would use that phrase "... or else I will jump" for no one else in his acquaintance ever threatened that way, except her. It was her signature threat and had been almost the first words he had ever heard her speak when they were both three year olds in the same kindergarten class.

That day he had entered the class and stood looking around uncertainly and he had heard those words "I am going to jump" and had started turning around when someone jumped right on him pushing him to the floor. When his eyes cleared of his tears he looked around to see his new classmates as a group laughing at him and he hurriedly got up pushing away the girl from him just in time for the teacher to come in and start scolding them both. They had ended up sitting beside each other for the rest of their school days. That fateful jump was the start of their friendship and the first of many jumps she took.

The next one he remembered very clearly was in the last year of school when she again tried to jump on him. They had drifted apart over the past year with the pressure of studies and he had started hanging out with other girls. In the course of one such friendship (a budding romance) with a cute classmate he had been overheard to say that she was not his girlfriend. During the lunch break she had got up on the parapet wall of the school terrace, of course after alerting the whole class and threatened to jump off and die unless he recanted his statement in front of all their classmates and re-affirmed to everyone that SHE was his girlfriend and not the cute girl. Egged on by everyone around he had thrown one last despairing look at the cute girl before repeating the lie and saving her life but destroying his in the process.

When he had asked her later how dared she, she replied coolly that she knew, that he would always be there to catch her when she jumped, just like when they were kids. He protested that he had not but she never listened, her remembrance of events was clearly different to his memory of them. The look on his current girlfriend's face later when they passed each other in the corridor- a look full of contempt and anger at his spinelessness - chilled him and haunted his sleep for months as he had really liked that girl and had thought they had a future together. He couldn’t help but speculate what would have happened if he had stood his ground and refused the blackmail? Would she have really jumped? Maybe she would have- she was half parts possessive and half parts psycho. Thinking about it was useless now for he had chickened out and given in hadn't he?

College took them both along different paths and they struggled to stay in touch. He studied hard, worked hard and rarely thought about girls. She was the one who kept coming back occasionally to keep tabs on him and to discourage him from showing anything more than a passing interest in other girls he found attractive. There was never any talk about their getting married or their future or anything like that. It’s as if once she had staked out her territory she had moved on with the confidence that he would be there for her forever. And on his part he too was reluctant to push the issue knowing that he didn’t really love her. He secretly hoped she would find someone else and leave him alone. But he never told it to her face.

And then during his final year and just before his exams there was a knock on his apartment door and there she was looking like hell. She pushed her way in and made herself comfortable. It was a dreary October day and the northeast monsoon rains were pouring outside. He asked her if she would like a cup of coffee and went in to make one. When he came out of the kitchen with the coffee cup she was sitting on his balcony with her legs up on his chair. She was staring far away with a dreamy look on her face. He was instantly chilled and worried. He didn’t like that look. He went nearer and holding out the cup to her asked her to get down from the balcony railing, for it was thin, rain slicked and they were three floors up. She looked back at him smiled sickly and asked him why he had caught her the first time when they were kids for it would have been far, far better for her life if she had died then.

He didn’t know what to say to that but waited knowing she would explain. She told him then that she was pregnant. He gasped like he had been punched in his balls and asked "whattttt?". She repeated in a matter of fact voice "Yes, I am pregnant, I met a wonderful man and I gave myself over to him fully knowing that we would be getting married soon. But he turned out not be so wonderful in the end for when he heard I got pregnant he disappeared without a word". He stood there blinking trying to digest this perfidy on her part and then she went on "You know me; you know my family, my parents. If I bring a bastard on to this world they will commit suicide- my whole family will commit suicide. Its better then that I alone die. That's why I came to see you. I knew that you alone would understand why I had to die like this" she said and made a move to slide off the balcony. He jumped forward and caught her arms and pulled her back "Don’t be an idiot -death is not the solution to anything, tell me" he asked "tell me, is there anything I can do to help?" Even as he asked that question he knew it was the wrong thing to ask her but a close friendship of twenty years meant he had to ask her that. She smiled sweetly at him and said "Why yes, you could marry me I suppose and give my child a father".

They were married two days later with no one but a couple of their old school friends as reluctant witnesses both of them when he had called them up having advised him to run and hide himself till she had gone away failing which had  come to their wedding under protest. He had immediately vacated his paying guest accommodation and found them a larger apartment and had joined up for part-time work in his free (study) time. The day after their wedding she had miscarried and lost her child in the womb and developed complications and was very sick for quite some time. He took her to the hospital and without informing either set of parents he took care of her all by himself, of all her wounds both physical and emotional, taken all her pain into him and allowed her to heal peacefully with the certainty that he would always be there for her.

Whenever he could get off from her bedside in the hospital he had been out job hunting and one day he came back to her hospital room with the news that he had been placed in a great firm with a great salary -only to find her missing from the room which looked all neat and sterile as if she had never been there and it was all a dream. When he enquired with the hospital staff they told him she had discharged herself and left with a relative and all they had was a letter from her. It told him in very enthusiastic language all about her good fortune- how her former lover and father of her child had tracked her down and apologized for leaving without telling her that he had merely gone to get his parents approval for their marriage and now that he had tracked her down he wanted her to go back with him to Bangalore where they will be married properly with everyone's blessing. He read that letter three times before he understood that she had left him forever and when he finally did he felt totally drained of every emotion. He didn’t know how to contact her or he would have pointed out that it was bigamy for her to marry again. He knew he should feel devastated and depressed at the betrayal but except for drinking himself blind that day all he felt was a strange apathy towards his being left in the lurch like this. Truth to tell one part of him was even glad she had left and his life was once again his after the agony of the past few eventful days.

So, seven years had passed since that fateful day. He had pulled himself together, pulled his whole life together and worked and achieved great things in his career and was even now poised on the verge of even greater things and she had come creeping back into his life again. He shook his head and calling his secretary to hold off all meetings and calls scheduled for the rest of his day; he went down to the basement car park, took out his car and drove off to Temple Towers where she waited for him. He went up in the lift and there she was again just as he remembered from olden days, deja vu moment, sitting on the parapet wall "I knew you would come" she said and smiled at him. He said nothing but merely stared at her. The years had not been kind to her, she looked wasted.

He stood there waiting and she was forced to talk again to fill the awkward silence "I wish people die young when they are at their best. It’s as you get old that you realize even death is less a punishment then you deserve for the life you lead. I know that I have behaved very badly towards you and I have thought of coming back and apologizing a hundred times, a thousand times but I never had the courage to face you again. Till now" he still waited silently as she went on in the same gushing tone he remembered so well from the past "yes, now that I am about to die, I can tell you how sorry I am. You were the only person who never hurt me. The only person I could trust always. The only person who would catch me if I ever jump and some crazy thought, some crazy, crazy hope that you would catch me again this time too was what brought me here again". She looked hopefully at him but he stood as still as a statue. She went on recklessly then "Who else could I go to? After all you are my husband?" she said and smiled sickly at him. The smile did it - what all those words didn’t do, that smug smile did. He just turned and walked away "No" she screamed "don’t go, I will jump, I swear if you don’t stop right now I will jump" were the last words he heard as he took the stairs down.

As he drove away in his car he could see in the rear view mirror a crowd gathering around the other side of the building but he felt no curiosity to stop and see over what. He just went straight home and rang the door bell. His wife who let him in was surprised "Why? So early, what happened?” He brushed her off with a casual "Headache. Can I get a coffee?’ When she brought in the coffee he caught her hand and pulled her closer and said "You know, I thank god every single day that you were still single when I traced you so many years of losing touch after we finished school and went our own ways". She smiled at him and said "Ah, if only you had not been such a gutless worm and had boldly said I was your girlfriend to that bitch we would not have been separated all that time and you need not have despaired of finding me single". For a minute he stared at her solemnly “Yes I wish too that I had stood up to her then and told her I found you seriously cute but I never learned to speak the truth well - at least not till I married you”. She smiled at that frank avowal and sat down beside him “You really were afraid of her weren’t you?”. He smiled at his wife and said “Not afraid, not that at all -it’s just that I loved her too in my own way but it was not the way she wanted- I hope you understand”. His wife smiled radiantly at him “Yes, yes, I do” and she gave a light kiss on his cheek to show all was well between them."Gutless worm, am I?" he asked as he pushed her down on her back and started nibbling her cheek.

  

That Mandatory Valentines Rant.

That Mandatory Valentines Rant.

Its yet another Valentines day come again and as per socially-sanctioned norms, not that I have ever followed such norms assiduously- the day requires the mandatory valentines blogpost on love and relationships and what not. As it’s been a while since i wrote here on my love life (non-existent though it may be) let me jump onto the bandwagon too and write an update on my relationship status. You know whenever i write a blog-post which contains my most intimate and private thoughts I usually write it like no one is reading me, which I believe is the real case too (no one reads me at all sob, sob).....so assuming that by some kind of mistake you got lost somewhere and ended up here reading this, well then, -think, reflect and decide if you want to read pages and pages of a long, boring, rant or just take my advice and leave right now to do something more interesting with your time. If on the other hand you decide to stick around and see it through to the end - i applaud your bravery and I only hope you won’t curse me for wasting your time when you reach the end of this rant. Just remember- the choice is yours. So go on then and read the rest.

The other day i was at a CME program- a Continuing Medical Education is, if you dont know it, a kind of lecture where people remind you (again and again) of all the things you once skipped over in class because you them found boring as hell. The only worthwhile part of a CME is usually the post lecture party -a party for nerds where people from the profession get together and jaw, jaw about what the current state of the profession is and how much each one is making. The average conversation is usually as interesting as watching paint dry that you tend to let down your guard in such nerdy company and quite unfortunately, fate takes that moment to kick you wham right in the balls and before you know it you get asked the hardest kind of question there is and you are floundering for the right answer, yet again. 

Now, the hardest question to answer, for me, is the one which goes like “hi, do you remember me?” The second hardest goes like “Come on, we met at Goa/Bombay/Mahabs etc in so-and-so year at so-an-so event where we partied together all night.  But you never called me back after that.  Why?” That "Why" is a kick-ass question to dodge.  Because the answer to the second question is intimately connected to the first and the unsaid answer truthfully goes something like this "I didn’t call you back because I forgot all about you. And the reason I forgot all about you was nothing memorable happened during that night- enough for me to make that call the next day. The truth is there was no real connection between us except for my being drunk and having lust filled thoughts which made me sidle up to you and start flirting. When i sobered up the next day, i felt like a fool and wisely decided to write the episode down to a learning experience. And now that you have reminded me again i cringe to realize what an idiot i was that day".  Of course, I can’t or won’t say all this directly to my questioner, even I am not such a fool, but will give the standard "i changed my mobile/broke my mobile, lost all my contact numbers" routine to escape unscathed from there. 

Now if you read the above para and mistakenly assume that i am some kind of rake who was just looking to have a good time you can’t be far from the truth - i am not such a player, i am more sinned against than a sinner. Every crush I have had was always with the hope of it being the love of my life (finally) what the poets call "an experience to end all experiences". Its that kind of love i am looking for and not just marriage which I believe is inevitable in everyone’s life. But what I really, really crave is a mind-blowing love, the kind of overarching love which obliterates everything which came before it. But sad to say that i haven't even stumbled upon such a thing, even accidentally till now. 

One thing about having crushes is when you think back on them with the passage of time you can see that they were merely relationships of convenience, relationships of proximity- you two were either in the same class or same job or thrown together constantly and friendship was mistaken for love because it was so much easier to talk with shared interests. That is not real love- I knew it in the deeper recesses of my heart and whatever you say of me you can say one thing- I am an honest man.  So whenever i realized that what I had was just a comfort level masquerading as love, I didn’t have it in me to continue to pretend  and so i told them the truth- maybe I could have told it in a more diplomatic way hindsight often teaches you important lessons. But i did tell them as soon as possible which is one thing I am proud of. 

Which is why i have been holding out for so long from marrying the wrong person merely to complete my quota for family life and get on with it as others advice. me to do. Truth to tell getting married is not that hard personally -i need to just close my eyes put a finger on one of the numerous brides bio-data’s lying around the house and be married in a month or so- to someone I don’t love and in the best case scenario – am indifferent to . But won’t that be cruelty to the other person. If I don’t love someone what business do I have marrying them? Simply for convenience sake? For sex? For offspring to pass on the genes to? Sorry none of those reason appeal to me. They are – agree with me or not- dishonest reasons to marry. 

I deeply believe that a marriage is not honest if it does not involve real and deep-felt love. Simply marrying for marriage sake- as so many advices me to do day in and day out- no, that’s not me at all. I would rather be alone than hitch myself to someone I don’t love. I see you shaking your head and asking me to be practical- but yes, being practical is what 99% of our earth’s population do, I agree. But those practical people never achieve anything ground-breaking in their lives. Edison was not practical when he experimented again and again before he made a single light bulb. Watson and Crick were not practical when they disregarded everyone’s advise to propose  a helical model for the gene. Pasteur was not practical when he decided to experiment with an untested vaccine on a young boy bitten by a rabid dog. None of them took the sane, practical route- but they changed history by sticking to their guns and believing in themselves didnt they?

And closer to home, I certainly was not practical when I disregarded my parent’s advice not to apply for the medical field- being born in a so-called forward community- there was no chance of me ever getting enough marks to qualify for a merit seat was what I was told repeatedly. I didn’t listen but came out second in the entire state and made sure that i will not be turned away simply for belonging to the wrong community. Again I was told to be practical and not resign my job at a private hospital and try for a government job- because practical people told me I had no chance in hell of getting one given that i am from the forward community. But I aced that exam too and they had no option except to take me in. So, if you get to ever read my autobiography you would see that every step of the way, every decision of my life – I have fought against the practical decision, have gone against the grain and attempted the impossible with nothing but faith in my own ability. Again and Again. All my life. To see from where I came and where I am right now gives me the confidence to believe I will succeed in this too. In finding the right kind of love. And of course with that right kind of love, with the right person, a wedding would be the most natural progression

So if you are still with me, here is my final answer to all those questions about when i am getting married, i will when i find the right person. And if i never find the right person, maybe i never will. The future is not writ in stone, its more fluid, let’s leave it at that shall we?

 

The Things I Say

The Things I Say

And so do I.....

So this morning I was standing at the bus stop all spruced up and waiting for that 24-A bus which rolls to my office. Almost obsessively I kept checking my watch to see if it was time for the bus to come even though knew I was almost ten minutes early. As anxious I was not to miss this particular bus, I had taken special care to look my best today - for I had a mission today, a mission critical to the point of explosion. Before I share the rest of the explosive events of the day, let me take you on a brief flashback to the day before, to share the back-story to what was about to take place today. Yesterday travelling by the same bus at the same time, I had chanced upon, serendipitously, on a girl seated just in front of me on the bus and reading a novel by Guy de Maupassant, one of my favorite authors and which of course showed her fine taste in literature. I thanked my lucky stars for making the usual boring bus journey interesting and changed seats three times (despite the conductors frowns) just to get a proper view of her face underneath all her hair. As soon as I saw her, there was an ominous electrical discharge in the air, lightning struck between us and I was in love. Unfortunately, I had to get down at the very next stop and I didn’t have the time to speak with her properly then.

So here I was, the very next day, ready to propose to her without wasting any more time in sundry preliminaries. The bus was on time for once and thankfully nearly empty, which suited my mission. I hopped on anxious to confirm her presence and there she was, on her favorite seat in the front of the bus. After getting the ticket from the conductor, the same one who had given dirty looks at me yesterday, I moved on to the front of the bus and again took the seat right behind her, just to play it safe by vastu/feng shui rules. She had a notebook today on her lap and was going through some handwritten notes which I couldn’t decipher much, though I peered with all my might. Maybe she had a semester exam coming up or something and I hated to disturb her study but as I had just ten minutes or so before I had to get down at my stop and timing was everything in such things, I knew that without much ado I had to start proposing to her, if I was going to do it at all today.  To tell the truth, last night I had had a slight pang of doubt that she might be a bit young for me, given that she seemed to be a college student and for a minute or so I worried she might take my proposal amiss. But on further reflection I had decided that it didn’t matter, at least not to me, which was the main point and I was going to go through with it after all.

As was my habit when proposing, I had to pick and choose the role I was going to play to impress her. As I very well couldn’t show her my inner Batman right then, I had decided to play the older but more successful, my debonair Bruce Wayne persona to convince her. So I leaned forward and said a "hi". She shut her book and turned halfway back in her seat to look back at me and I went on recklessly "Do you believe in love at first sight? No? But I do. Ever since I saw you yesterday morning in this same seat, I am in love with you. Well, to tell the truth, I don’t know how to convince you all of a sudden but, you see, I may be older than you, I may be uglier than you.." and I stopped abruptly at that point when i saw the shock on her face. And then I realized that I had gone and done it again- Called a Girl Ugly to Her Face in the midst of proposing to her. Thankfully the bus had nearly reached my stop by then and I smartly skipped out opting to escape for the time being.

I guess my tongue has a way of running away with itself. And I guess I have to change my bus route tomorrow. Damn, I just want to bang my head on the desk -again and again. For wasn’t this the lousiest proposal you ever heard? I think I should board the next flight to the Sahara desert and hide myself there for the next thirty years or so. The things I say, aren’t they the weirdest?   

How To Write a Love Story.....

The famous American romance publishers’ Mills & Boons had a contest to identify writers for their series on Indian love stories. Along with lots of other aspiring authors I too sat down to try and write a romance tale of the mills and boons type. But to my surprise I discovered that although I could so easily have written yet another clichéd romantic tale of the boy glancing meaningfully into the girls eyes and the girl swooning into a faint into his arms, I was appalled at the ease with which all these clichés were rolling out one after another in my story till the whole story was a caricature of every other romance tale. When I had started, I had set out to write an honest love story. But the one I ended up writing was anything but honest. Which made me think over why it is so hard to write about love.

If you have read any famous love story, you can see that the writer has deliberately mythologized the story and its characters are often caricatures of real life persons. Take Romeo and Juliet. Take Salim and Anarkali. Take Devdas and Paro. Can you honestly say they are real life characters? Aren’t they caricatures written to tug on our hearts sympathy and draw a few sighs and tears? Or to take the modern version of the same classic tales, the Dev D version so to say, where love ends up being an alternate term for sex. It is easy to write about people’s physical characteristics rather than emotional make up. Likewise it is easy to write about two people having erotic thoughts about each other than about writing their romantic thoughts. You can describe how they loved such and such a body part (using ready-made slang terms), far more easily than why they were attracted to such and such a personality trait.

But that is mistaking sex for love. The romantic experience in its purest form just cannot be put into words. Oh!!  A lot of authors have tried over the years. They have used everything from religious allegories (like devotional ecstasies) to cultural tropisms (the point of death/white light experience) to describe the unfulfilled yearning in us for love. But to reach for it in writing is almost never successful. It’s because love is such a fleeting emotion. We are all born alone, we live alone all our lives and we die alone. Its only those brief moments of love which make us connect with another person and escape the otherwise profound loneliness of existence. When we actually feel alive and one with the universe in all its glory. And this cannot be explained in mere words. Like joy, like sadness, like pain and fear, love is an emotion which has to be felt and cannot be told about. We cannot talk about it dispassionately or describe it in a socially acceptable way. Because the real experience is far, far beyond description, it thrills it chills, it’s ecstatic and when we reach out to grasp it, it disappears like water.

So what is love? Can you explain it, I can hear you ask. No I can’t . I don’t have an answer too. But I can give you a reference to check for yourself. From one of my favorite novels. If you have heard of the famous American author Louis L'Amour, you must also know that he wrote many westerns, filled with gunslingers and cowboys and Indians battling it out in the old west. But the book I am talking about is an historical novel he wrote- about a traveling warrior wandering all over medieval Europe and it’s called “The Walking Drum”. In it the protagonist Kerbouchard, who keeps getting entangled in romantic affairs, compares love to being momentarily under a waterfall, where you get wet and enjoy the sensation of the cool drenching water, but you cannot stay on forever under the waterfall. You have to move on and get out of it. This concept of love has resonated with me often and I find more and more that the insight was true.

Love or falling in love is amazingly blissful; it drenches you, enervates you and washes away all dirt and care from you. Bathed in the stream of pure love, all the hidden noble characteristics of our self emerge out of the layers of muck which surround us. They show us up as bright and beautiful and full of selfless motives, ennobling us and our lives for that instant. But however cooling the water is, you cannot stay hidden under the waterfall forever, you have to come out and face the hot burning sun. And likewise love cannot shelter you from the realities of life. You cannot stay drenched in love; however much you would like to, for life must go on. And life is all about getting out of the water and walking on to the next field, the next village, the next town, the next city. You cannot stay rooted at one spot all your life claiming I was born here and I will die here. And as you travel the hard dry lands, throat parched with thirst and skin burning from the heat you will look back in wonder at the cool water which once cocooned you and which you so willingly forsook to travel again.

And that’s love in a nutshell. A series of montages of the best times you had. A panorama of happy moments. A bunch of memories colored by nostalgia. And a burning desire to reclaim that bliss again and to stay there the next time you get to a waterfall. The cycle repeats itself.

P.S. And I find that I too can write about love, however imperfectly. And maybe I can have a real crack at that mills and boons contest soon.