by Atul Todi
He made no money from it, and Vivek like a fool gave it all up for a Harvard degree and a well-paid job. For Abhay, everything happened too quickly and all of a sudden he was broke and directionless. He had no fall back plan. His startup dream was as good as dead, and he was scrambling around desperately to stay afloat.
Not willing to give up, he naively believed: 'You never fail, until you stop trying'.
He did not want to fail; he wanted to keep trying. His family was not willing to support his insanity, still he had faith in himself. Telling himself that he could fix everything and find a way out, there was just one thing that scared him to death – losing Tia.
He had become dependent on her. Her smile made everything better. By then, he had become emotionally feeble, and he needed her more than ever. She was his lifeline, the only bright spark in his otherwise wayward life. She made him want to keep trying.
Tia was living under a false hope that once Abhay's startup got funded, he would fly to the US and be with her. She didn't care about the money, but she needed him to be with her.
Time flew by, and neither of them had any control over it. At times, it felt like he was in college with Tia just like yesterday, but sometimes it felt like it had been a lifetime since they met. Before he knew it, it had been three years since he moved back to India and six months since Vivek betrayed him.
One fine day the inevitable happened; the dreadful phone call came and put the final nail in his coffin. She called to tell him that she could not wait any longer. Her parents were getting her engaged against her will. She wanted him to come get her or at least come meet her parents and ask for her hand in marriage.
He had no answer for her. His life was a wreck; he could not promise her anything. Chasing his dream, he had lost everything, even his faith in himself. The cruel world he was living in had sucked the life out of him. He had become a drug-induced insomniac, running around directionless.
At that point of time, marriage felt like a mean joke to him. He could not afford it.
With successful men running after Tia and wooing her, Abhay started to believe that he was not the right guy for her. He had nothing to give her; she was better off without him.
In those circumstances, filled with negativity, he became a miserable person. Unable to think straight, he made his biggest mistake: he did not stop her from leaving his life. In fact, he made sure she did.
He did not tell her the truth about what had happened to his startup. He could not come across as weak.
Instead of telling her how much he loved her and that he would find a way to come get her, he told her that he had no time for her. Like a heartless man, he advised her to listen to her parents and get married to the guy they had chosen for her.
Blatantly lying, hoping to make her hate him, he told her that he did not like doctors, and he had no intent to get married to her ever. Pretending to be cold, he tried to ignore her and told her that he had no plans to go back to the US.
He said extremely mean things that no one should ever tell anyone they cared for. He tried everything to make her despise him.
It was all just a lie. He thought he was doing the right thing by not being selfish. He wanted her to be happy, and the only way that was possible was by him distancing himself from her and letting her go. He had nothing to give her.
He was nothing like the guy she had fallen in love with, just a shadow of his old self. His mind was overpowered by his circumstances.
Khushi shook her head in dismay. Disappointed with what Abhay had done, she said,
"That is so cold; you were the only guy she ever loved. Why didn't you just stop her? She would have loved you no matter what. I am sure she would have waited for you for as long as it took. She would have fought the world, for you, I am sure about that."
Khushi couldn't believe that a romantic writer like Bugsy could have been that cold in his own approach to love. He showed no faith in the power of love and thought material wealth was more important.
Responding to Khushi, Abhay said, "She would have, but I just didn't think I had a fight left in me. With no money, no friends, I felt like a stranger who was lost in the wilderness. Yes, I could have taken a job and got myself back together, but it all felt too late. I didn't think I was the right guy for her."
"So what did you do?" Khushi asked.
"Instead of telling her how much I loved her, I started fighting with her, screaming and abusing her. I hoped that at least she would have a reason to hate me because I had none. I told her that she should go ahead and get married; I even told her that I did not love her, and she was better off without me. I had to make her hate me; that was the only way she would have moved on."
Khushi was shocked to hear that. Feeling bad for Abhay she said, "You didn't mean any of it. You loved her! Why did you say all that?"
Abhay told Khushi that even though he didn't mean it, it felt like the right thing to do. He had nothing to give her; she was a doctor, and he was a failed entrepreneur who had stopped believing in himself. It would have taken years for him to get back on his feet, if he ever did.
He was suffering from depression. Everything looked downhill at that point of time. He felt numb inside and too scared to face life. There was nowhere to go, and there was no one to help him.
She was too far from him, and with her engagement, their distance increased.
"Did she not try? Did she give up on you?" Khushi asked.
Abhay told Khushi that a few days before her engagement she tried to convince him for the last time. She found out everything about what Vivek had done from her sources and wanted Abhay to come back to the US and be with her. She was going to sponsor his visa and pay for his living until he was back on his foot.
She was willing to do anything to get him back in her life, but his ego was too big to see himself as a loser in her eyes. While her intentions were pure, her offer did not go down very well with him. Being dependent on her was not an option.
At that time, he did not realise that when bad time strikes, one's pride is their biggest enemy. Even though he was broken, his self-esteem did not let him accept his failure.
Enraged by her offer to sponsor him, he was mad at his own helplessness. In the spur of the moment, that day he did the most irrational thing that he still regretted. He broke off all connections with her: threw away his phone, deleted his Skype account and blocked her Facebook account.
From that point, there was no going back. She had no way to contact him, even if she wanted.
"You are such a fool. How could you do that to her? She didn't deserve that." Khushi had tears trickling down her eyes, feeling extremely sorry for Tia and her sad love story.
Abhay said that by the time he realised his mistake it was too late. Few days later, he got a message from Jolly that Tia was getting married in a few months.
There was nothing he could do to stop it; maybe he just did not have the strength in himself to change his destiny. Even though Jolly offered to buy him a ticket to go stop the wedding and tell her how much he loved her, he refused his help. He told him that Tia was better off without him.
Jolly called Abhay selfish and a pathetic human being for betraying Tia. Abhay fought with Jolly and ignored his advice.
Abhay told Khushi that in bad times nothing goes one's way. The world becomes a very lonely place. Giving Abhay a hug, she told him that he was a really nice guy, and Tia would have been lucky to be by his side.
Right then, as Khushi consoled the heart-broken man, they saw a train approaching on the railway line running on the bridge above their head. The bridge shook more and more as the engine sound got louder. They were just a few meters below the track and Khushi wasn't sure if being there was a good idea.
The siren of the approaching train got shriller. With her eyes wide-open Khushi looked upon Abhay, who looked absolutely calm.
Telling her to just lay still on the cemented platform, he told her that it was going to be an amazing experience
Chuk Chuk Chuk Chuk……
Chuk Chuk Chuk Chuk……
The whistling train got closer, as they lay on the shaking cemented platform below the rail-lines.
CHAPTER 11: FIGHTING TO MOVE ON
Holding on to the rope tightly, Khushi watched the train gallop past them. As the engine guzzled and the metal wheels made loud shrieking noise, she could feel the whole bridge shake.
As the train went over the bridge, Khushi realised that the speeding bogeys were just a few meters above their head. The bright blue sky showed through the gap between the bogeys. Her heart was pulsating like a time-bomb. Scared for her life, she kept her eyes wide-open and covered her ears with her fingers.
After a couple of minutes, the train was gone. The bridge stopped shaking and it was all back to normal.
Sitting back up, Khushi started laughing hysterically. She couldn't believe that she was sitting with a stranger, thousands of miles away from home, under a railway track and listening to his sad love story. She had to be crazy to be doing that, but it was still the best experience she ever had.
Her ridiculous decision to come looking for the mysterious writer was worth it.
Sitting there with Abhay on the edge of the bridge, she felt alive. He, on the other hand, lay there quietly. All expressions on his face were frozen. Like a man who had seen his demons, his eyes looked emotionless. Sitting back up, hiding the hollowness in his heart, he tried to smile.
Khushi asked him if he ever tried to find out what happened with Tia. Did she get married and move on in life? Did she never try to come find him?
Abhay told Khushi that Tia was a doctor getting married to an engineer who was well-settled in life. She did not need a penniless dreamer like him anymore. He had nothing to give her besides his half-baked love.
Khushi did not agree with him, but she kept her opinion to herself. Instead, she asked him why he had brought her to the bridge. It seemed like it had a connection to his story.
There was a connection and Abhay told Khushi about it.
Reminiscing the day Tia was to get married, he remembered that drunk aching afternoon. Standing at the edge of the train door, he held on to the side railings. Looking at the setting sun beyond the horizon, he thought about how the sun sets every day to rise again. Staring at it, he had reasoned that maybe life was like that: new life starts when one life ends. Wondering if it was a sign for him to start again, he had contemplated jumping off.
He was on the verge of committing suicide.
Pointing at the setting sun, Abhay told Khushi that it was the same bridge off which he was going to jump on the eve of Tia's marriage. Hanging on to railing of Kerala Express, he was ready to let go and end his misery.
The bridge was very special for him; it reminded him of the lowest point in this life and also his rebirth.
Khushi could not believe that Abhay had contemplated suicide.
To quench Khushi's curiosity regarding what made him take that drastic decision, he told her about the events that took place after Tia got engaged.
Left penniless and with Tia engaged, his confidence evaporated, and his self-belief got decimated. He went into severe depression, and he had no clue what was happening to him. Everything was falling apart.
His family did not see his pain; they failed to understand the emotional turmoil he was going through. Deriding him for wasting his life, they questioned why he even came back from the US. They wondered what he had been doing for the past three years and were more concerned with what the relatives would think.
Unconcerned about his mental state they were worried about who would marry him and how would he support a family. They thought he was being childish and running away from his responsibilities.
The doctors warned them that he was suffering from depression, but they ignored all signs. To them depression was a joke - a mental condition where a person was being stupid and not willing to get their act together. They tried to make rational arguments with him, but he became a recluse and did not speak for days.
Finally, giving in to his family pressure and mother’s emotional tantrums, he started applying for jobs in India to get back to normal life. US was going through a major economic depression, and it was impossible to get a job back there. Even the companies that had earlier offered him a job on a platter, outright rejected his application.
Randomly submitting his resume to any job opening that he came across, he lacked passion and zeal to pull himself together. Nothing seemed fun anymore; his desire for money, power and fame vanished. It all seemed meaningless and futile. Becoming withdrawn from worldly life, he was willing to exchange his dreams of a private jet and a yacht, for a few moments of complete peace.
For many hours a day, he would just sit and stare at the ceiling; his mind was completely blank.
He got a few job offers due to his US MBA degree, but could not continue with any for more than a few days. Finally, giving in to his family pressure and with no other options left, he was convinced to work with his dad.
A small manufacturer, his dad had been selling garments in the southern part of India for more than twenty-five years. Going to small towns across the region, he haggled with wholesalers and dealers to sell his products. With cut-throat competition and razor-thin margins, it was a daily struggle for his father to make ends meet.
Everyone hoped that once Abhay started working again, he would forget about his past and things would get back to normal. So after a lot of emotional blackmailing by his mother about his dad needing help, Abhay started to accompany him.
Dealing with those wholesalers, who bargained and haggled like scumbags, sucked whatever little life was left inside his soul. He became indifferent and experienced no pain or pleasure. Standing in front of the mirror, he could not even recognize who he had become.
Not sure what to do, his mother had started seeing psychics, fortune-tellers and self-acclaimed Godmen. She met sadhus practicing black magic to ask them to ward off the evil spirits that were tormenting her son. She called mystics, who came and beat their brooms on his head to get his mind right.
His mom met astrologers who looked at his birth charts and said that he had done many sins in his previous lives, and all his sufferance was an outcome of that. They prescribed rigorous rituals and offering to various Gods to undo the karma of Abhay's past and said that unless the Gods were pleased, he would suffer till the end of his time.
His parents paid heed to everyone’s advice, but never understood what he was going through. Maybe, he could not be helped, but they tried.
Less intimidating than the astrologers, a soothsayer claimed that there were evil spirits of past lovers lingering around Abhay; they brought him bad luck and prevented all his tasks from getting completed. The most amusing of them all was a pandit who claimed that there was a ‘Kaal sarp dosh' (The Black Snake Curse) on Abhay's birth charts. According to him, the only way to remove that curse was to visit a forsaken place called ‘Kal-Hasthi' in the Southern part of India, and pray at the sacred temple there. Abhay had to go there, make a sacrifice to the snake God and perform rigorous rituals to rid himself of his misfortune.
His parents completely bought into the ‘pundit’s' bullshit and forced Abhay to go there. Nothing changed in his life; he remained miserable.
That afternoon, travelling on the train, he was going back home to Ludhiana after one of his miserable trips trying to sell garments in Kerala. It had been seven months since Tia got engaged. It was finally her wedding day and Jolly had messaged him the details, coaxing him to do something for the last time.
Even though he had fought with her, ignored her and pretended that he was strong enough to let her go, he always thought a miracle would happen and bring her back to him.
Nothing miraculous happened; Tia, the only sign of hope in his life, was going to be gone forever.
Thinking about it, he stood by himself at the gate, looking out from the train. Right when the train was going over the gushing rive
r below, lost in his thoughts, he made up his mind. There was no direction left for him, and he had to start all over again. He hated his life and nothing interested him anymore. Looking down, he slowly loosened his grip on the metal bars on the sides of the train exit door.
His hands were fidgety, but his heart was absolutely still. His mind had gone blank, and he had stop breathing. Looking down at the river, all he could feel was a warm wind calling him, telling him to let go and end his misery. The singing river was calling him to come join her on the onward journey.
Looking at Khushi, he told her that it was the same river and the same bridge from which he was going to jump. The reason he had brought her there was to help her visualize the whole story and better relate to the pain he went through.