There was nothing cheerful about the evening. I still said “cheers”, to myself. Yes! I was drinking alone in my room. Both my roommates were away on their official work and I was back from my job place. It was kind of new to me to drink Jack Daniels all by myself, but I cherished the fact that no one else will get to touch the top notch quality whisky! It was so smooth that the first 2 pegs, no 3 pegs, wait, I don’t remember entirely, whatever….the first 2-3 pegs I drank on the rocks, neat! Smooth it was. Though things started getting blurred. My room suddenly seemed bigger than it usually was, it was suddenly not a 1 BHK anymore (bedroom hall kitchen), it looked atleast a 2 BHK. Never mind.
I got up and began my search for a knife. The kitchen was in a mess. None of us cook but it still looked so used up that nothing was in its place. To my utmost vain I couldn’t find it, the time I needed a knife the most in my life. I began thinking then, what else could be found which would be useful. I wasn’t surely in a mood to die by getting bombed through gas cylinders. The next effective way I thought was finding a rope and tying it to the ceiling fan. How would I find a rope now, only my bed sheets could be used for that purpose. I tied it on the ceiling fan and kept a stool beneath it so that I could climb up and hang. I put my head in between the loop I had made, and kicked the stool with my right foot. For a minute, I struggled…choking to breathe, vomiting out the alcohol, and then I suddenly fell down. The ceiling fan lost its hold on the ceiling wall, and fell with me on the floor. With it fell lumps of cement, which gave my skin a color tone I could have never achieved with sunscreen lotions.
I was unconscious till my roomies woke me up after around a couple of hours. They were panicking with the visual in front of their eyes, and they demanded an instant explanation of the series of events that made me do the heart wrenching act. I started- “I called up mayuri last night. I just wanted to clear it out with her. I just can’t believe two people who were so madly in love once are not speaking at all now. So what that we’ve broken up! Both of us have new partners, don’t we? So why is it so hard for her to just communicate with me and be friends?”
“So what did she say?”
“She wasn’t picking up at first…as usual. I didn’t give up this time. I kept on calling her…continuously. I kept doing it for at least 10 times, and then she picked up. You guys have no clue how she spoke to me…”
“How?”
“She said- I don’t want to speak to you…ever, is that fine with you? I said no… then she said- don’t ever speak to me again, and she hung up after that. How else do you want me to take it and react? It’s so insulting.”
“But you can’t do this because that happened? Mayuri is history ok? Sneha is your present…why do you keep going back to Mayuri’s hallucinations when you’re drunk?”
I had no answer to that. My roommate was right. Perhaps I wasn’t yet out of love for my first. Mayuri was my first love…I felt week in my knees when I first saw her. When we started going around we did so much together, we smoked for the first time together on the college staircase. Both of us surprisingly got drunk on breezers the first time we had it, we hadn’t tasted alcohol by then. I remember we were coming back from a college fest night when we had it, she had her head on my lap after her breezer. It was the first time we smooched, perhaps the most beautiful goodbye I’ve ever shared with someone. Wasn’t all this too much to get out of it? I mean…ya I cannot cling on to the relation once it’s all over, but…
My phone rang suddenly. Sneha was calling. I "picked it up".
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
The Magician
All of us were craving for the first round of the evening tea. by then we had already exerted ourselves enough with 2 matches of carrom.The third would start only if we get our throats wet with some 'chaa' (tea in bengali). the 'royals club' at park street saw us daily in the evening.if the club was a person, he would have been pissed by now. after our routine office timings, all 4 of us found some valuable excitement and thrill playing our 'hard fought' carrom matches till the club shuts down in the night.
i was called the magician by my friends, there were times when i started the game and no one else got a chance, i finished the whole game without passing on the striker to the next person. ofcourse, it wasn't very common. so i decided to accept the tag too, it made me happy.
the 'chaa' finally arrived, now we would light up our cigarettes and start the third match. i had lost the first two matches, so there was a hell lot of pressure on me to win this one and prove my worth to my friends. there was something wrong with me in the first two matches. i just wasn't able to concentrate, something was bothering me and strangely enough i had no clue what! the third game began miserably for me, my strikes weren't accurate enough, infact i was missing from quite a distance. the count of cigarettes smoked increased, another round of 'chaa'came. i lost the next two games with big margins. suddenly just when the 5th game was about to begin, i got up from my chair and came out of the club. i was feeling suffocated, not because i couldn't breathe, but because i wasn't feeling good at all. my mind and heart both were terribly choked, and sad, and gloomy,and....what not!
i left for my home in a taxi. my father opened the door, as i rushed in and went straight to the bathroom. i splashed chunks of water on my face and eyes, and came out with a towel. right then, my father asked me to come to his room. i smelt trouble. he normally never calls me to his room for a chat.
what he told me cleared my confusion about my awkward feeling the whole evening. my sister had run away from home, with her boyfriend. she had left a note for my father in his room. there was no note for me.
i was called the magician by my friends, there were times when i started the game and no one else got a chance, i finished the whole game without passing on the striker to the next person. ofcourse, it wasn't very common. so i decided to accept the tag too, it made me happy.
the 'chaa' finally arrived, now we would light up our cigarettes and start the third match. i had lost the first two matches, so there was a hell lot of pressure on me to win this one and prove my worth to my friends. there was something wrong with me in the first two matches. i just wasn't able to concentrate, something was bothering me and strangely enough i had no clue what! the third game began miserably for me, my strikes weren't accurate enough, infact i was missing from quite a distance. the count of cigarettes smoked increased, another round of 'chaa'came. i lost the next two games with big margins. suddenly just when the 5th game was about to begin, i got up from my chair and came out of the club. i was feeling suffocated, not because i couldn't breathe, but because i wasn't feeling good at all. my mind and heart both were terribly choked, and sad, and gloomy,and....what not!
i left for my home in a taxi. my father opened the door, as i rushed in and went straight to the bathroom. i splashed chunks of water on my face and eyes, and came out with a towel. right then, my father asked me to come to his room. i smelt trouble. he normally never calls me to his room for a chat.
what he told me cleared my confusion about my awkward feeling the whole evening. my sister had run away from home, with her boyfriend. she had left a note for my father in his room. there was no note for me.
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