There has been a certain victory in all my defeats. Battle scarred as I am, I still can stand erect and look into the eye of fate. As Cyrano de Bergerac said-“ I still have my white plume intact!”
With all my mental and emotional losses, the sole gainer has been my soul. The anguish, agony and all the sufferings have been followed by great ecstasy and an unexplainable happiness. [ A psychiatrist may term it bi-polar! But that’s another story.]
Your suffering is your own. Your happiness is public property.
On your worst days the whole world is hyper active. Even your maid wont turn up on such days. Is it a state of mind or is it some kind of conspiracy master minded by time?
I am still wondering.
Last night I enacted my own death scene and cried a lot seeing all the people who turned up for those last moments with me. I had not planned it. I was standing in my balcony when I suddenly started crying and the next thing I know I was witnessing my own death sequence.
As I was saying, I cried at the turn up. For included in the visitor’s list were people I would hardly acknowledge today. So it was not merely my loved ones who were around me but some guys I would hardly imagine would shed a tear for me. But yes, they were all there. But the icing on the cake was of course the arrival of my “little princess”.
The moment I saw her I breathed my last telling her-“ I love you!”
How completely filimi ?
And that was it. But then not really. For even after my death, I could see her moist eyes.
Coming back to my senses, I tried to re create that death scene. Especially the part where she arrives to see me on my death bed.
It was of all people, K whose voice I first heard.
“ Rajiv Sir…..dekhiye aap ko milne kaun aaya hai?”
I slowly open my eyes and see Kamil and as usual call him-“ Kaminey!”
He turns his head sideways and my gaze follow. Et voila, there she is. Staring at me. All weak and bald. [ Oh! I forgot to tell you, I am dying from brain tumor.”
I take a deep breath and smile. The effort would have won me the “ Tour de France.”
She says-“Hi”
And once again I win the “ Tour de France” and request her to replace that with her “hello”.
She has a very peculiar way of saying hello.
She tries saying it but her voice fails her. I close my eyes and think of the first time I had seen her.
“ Hello….S!”-She had introduced herself.
“ Am sorry.” – I tell her.
And then completing my hat trick of victories at the“ Tour de France” tell her that I am sorry for troubling her with all those SMS’s. And the " sorry" did not at all mean that I did regret ever falling in love with her.
“ I promise you….no more SMS’s in my lifetime …..anyway…..I have erased your number from my cell….”
It takes me great effort to speak so much. And with greater effort, I once again smile at her. Her eyes are moist. And I can detect a small smile somewhere in the corner of her petal like lips.
“ I wish it had been that easy to erase you from the memory of my soul!...... Ek dum chipak gayee ho….Fevicol ki tarah!”
And I laugh. And its like bowling 91 pins down with one ball.
And then even in my almost dying breath I turn sarcastic.
“ Why have you come to see me? Oh!.....I get it….its to make sure that I am really gone!!! Isn’t it?....”
My own stench of arrogance suffocates me. I feel like shit. And for some strange reason feel my inside ripped apart by the dagger of my own sarcasm. Some gland inside my body throws out some kind of caustic substance. Burning my tongue. My mouth. I feel my tears betraying me.
She hugs me in a flash. Taking me by surprise. And holds me longer than she had held me three years ago on a spring morning in Lonavala.
And my soul merges with her soul.
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