Life Is What You Make It A Story Of Love, Hope And How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny (10 page)

They say when a calamity strikes you it stuns your normal senses so much that emotions are held in check. Perhaps that is what happened with me.

“Yes, I know him. I have seen him at youth festivals,” I heard myself saying calmly to my mom, handing her back the newspaper. I was surprised at my own clever line which was not completely a lie too.

I went to my room and sat on my bed, my heart beats pounding away like an overworked pump. I was numb with pain. I had to see Suvi. I could not handle this on my own. I managed to put up a nonchalant facade as I told my mom that I was going out for the day and called Suvi.

She was waiting at the hostel gate and she hugged me tight as soon as she saw me. Then we made our way towards the arches. It was only then that I finally broke down. Between sobs I told her what had happened the previous day. My nose was running and I was crying and wiping it on my sleeve. I was beyond caring.

I told Suvi that I just had to speak to his grandfather now. I did not trust myself to talk. We made our way to a phone booth just outside the college gates. I asked her to ask for him and then hand me the phone when he came on line. I heard her asking in Malayalam for Abhi's
appachan
.

When he came on the line I did not know what to say.

“Hello, this is Ankita, Abhi's friend,” I said stupidly.

“
Molle
,” he said his voice full of anguish. “I know he loved you. I don't know what happened between you two, but I have only one thing to say. You are young, you are pretty. Please remember
molle, sneham mathram puchikaruthu.
No matter from where it comes,” and he wept. The sound of a grown up man crying is one of the loneliest, saddest sounds I have ever heard. The words he said in Malayalam singed and burnt a hole in my soul. I would never ever forget those words or his voice my entire life. “Never belittle love,” is the closest translation that I can come up with for the words he spoke that day.

He went on to say that the police had been around earlier and had specifically asked if he was romantically involved with anybody. They had said that suicide cases due to ‘love-affairs’ were common. His grandfather told me that Abhi would never have wanted my name dragged in and so he gave his statement on record, that there was no such thing as far as he knew. Silently and selfishly I thanked the largeness of his heart. I cried some more, but only after I had hung up.

The post mortem reports concluded death by drowning with high levels of alcohol as a contributing factor. The funeral procession was the next day.

I did not go for the funeral. I told Suvi that I couldn't come. She tried persuading me. I would not budge from my decision.

“I don't want to see a bloated dead body. I have seen him when he was alive and well and those shall be my last memories.” I said. I hated myself for it. Yet I could not bring myself to go.

I wondered why he had drunk so much. Did the tide rise and then he was so drunk that he did not notice? Had he been washed away and it was too late ? Had he screamed for help in the night? Did his screams ring out? Why had he done such a foolish thing as drinking alone on the beach? My inner voice was screaming out the answers blaming me.

But I silenced it, not allowing it to rise up, not wanting to hear it.

I wished I had told him that I would keep in touch. I wished I had told him that a part of me loved him. I wish I had assured him that we would meet when I visited Cochin once a year for holidays. I wished a hundred million times. I wished a hundred million things.

They remained just wishes which would taunt me all my life and which had taught me an important lesson which would stay with me for as long as I lived and shape all my future dealing with people— Never to belittle love, no matter where it came from and to be a little humbler, nicer and kinder with my words and actions.

10

Racing ahead

B
ombay is everything I imagined it to be and everything I never imagine it to be too. Bombay is like the proverbial elephant being described by five blind men. Everyone feels a tiny bit of it and is convinced that their version of it is the real Bombay.

It was a giant cauldron of cultures, personalities, pockets and they blended effortlessly merging to create a new pot-pourri which welcomed everybody. It was almost magical. No matter which part of the country you came from, no matter whether you were a foreigner or a native, no matter what you wore or how you spoke, Bombay quietly understood, accepted and welcomed you into its fold. You felt right at home and you fitted in.

In Bombay, people measured distances by time taken to commute. The suburban railway carried more than 6 million commuters on a daily basis. This was more than half the capacity of passengers on the Indian railways itself. I took to it, like a duck to water and became just one passenger in the 6 million. There were about 60 of us in my batch. The Institute did not have its own hostels but those students who were from outside, were accommodated in the Bombay University hostels. Others were mostly day scholars and just used the local trains.

On most days, I would leave home at 7.A.M as it took me a about an hour and twenty minutes to get to college. I learnt to manage the commute, in no time at all.

At my new college, everybody went all out to welcome us, the freshmen. The Dean, the Director and two other professors addressed us. They said the usual things that are said on such occasions. They talked about how this was the first step in a new journey, how we would be transformed at the end of the course and how we would lead and take our places in the corporate world. They spoke about the glory of the Institute. They gave us an outline of what to expect. Then there was a slide show. There was one slide which made us feel very important—they had calculated the number of people who had applied and the number that finally got selected and told us the probability of getting selected and that we were in a privileged fraction. They made us feel special and a part of an elite family. After this we took a break for snacks and refreshments.

The second part of the session was an ice breaking session. They had put all our names into a bowl and drew out five at a time, and the five that they drew out formed a group. There were only twelve girls in my class. The men far outnumbered the women. By a strange quirk, my group had three girls including myself. All the other groups had just one girl or were all-male. The two boys who were in our group were getting undisguised envious looks from other guys as if saying “Lucky dogs”. We were given time to discuss and prepare and we had to present a short ad film about our group, with slides, introducing each member, their likes, dislikes and anything else we thought relevant. They asked us to be as creative and different as we could. They gave us OHP sheets and markers and set us to work. Initially everyone seemed hesitant and lost, but gradually everyone started speaking and in no time there was laughter, ribbing and discussions as each group got involved in the task at hand.

The two girls in my group were Chaya and Jigna, both of whom had been born and brought up in Bombay. They presented a study in contrast. Chaya was thin and short and looked like a child who was in Class 10, not a student of a Management Institute. Jigna was very tall, fair and well built with short hair and very confident. I found the name Jigna to be very unusual and had to ask her twice what her name was. Jigna had no work experience like me and was fresh from college. But Chaya had been working with a financial firm for a year. Of the two guys, the first namely Joseph, looked like an absent minded professor. He had a mop of unruly curly hair and twinkling eyes. Joseph had worked for two years at a shipping firm. Uday was bearded and had an air of restlessness and arrogance about him. He was fresh from an engineering college but looked a lot older than a student who had just finished Engineering.

The classes at my new college began in right earnest.

My days at Agnes seemed like a different lifetime and a different world. It had been only about two months since I moved to Bombay but it felt like I had been here forever. Maybe it was my attitude or maybe it was the place, but I had taken to it marvellously and was completely at ease. I had made new friends too and I felt happy that I fitted in.

I had really begun to enjoy my course even though the methodology for teaching used in a Management School was different from anything I had experienced before. It was the first time I discovered that subjects could be taught without books or lectures, at least not the conventional way.

I heard from both Suvi and Vaibhav. I was delighted to get their letters and be back in touch.

It was around this time that I began to take an active interest in running. I do not know how it started, but suddenly I decided that I would begin jogging. I had always been actively involved in sports at school but I seemed to have forgotten it at college. I announced my intentions to my parents and kept the spare key to the house so that I would not disturb my parents when I went out. The residential complex I stayed in had a lovely jogging track and I would wake up at 5.00 A.M. and begin my day with a jog. It was invigorating. I felt full of energy and so lively as I began my day. Sights that I would normally not see—newspapers being stacked in piles, ready to be delivered, the milk sachets arriving, people walking their dogs, old people doing yoga in a group in the park—all this greeted me and I looked at it, marvelling that there was an entire new ‘m orning world’ out there, right under my nose something that I had missed earlier.

When I reached college that day, Jigna and Joseph both remarked how charged up I was looking.

Later when we took a break for tea, Joseph took me aside and asked if I had been doing drugs.

“Oh no! I don't even smoke,” I said and he laughed at how horrified I looked.

“Come on
yaar.
It is not as though it is the ultimate sin. You looked kind of manic, this morning.” he said.

“It may not be the ultimate sin but it definitely is not for me. Maybe I am looking ‘charged up’, as you call it, because I have started jogging.”

“Ah-ha! That explains it! It seems you have this store house of energy that you are waiting to unleash.”

Later on the way home, I thought about what he said. It was the first time that someone had described me as manic. He was unwittingly very close to the truth, but of course at that time neither he nor I or anybody else in the world had even the slightest inkling or suspicion about it. On the surface I seemed normal. But underneath changes were taking place, so subtle, so gradual and slowly, much like the gradual movements in tectonic plates which would then result in a large outburst like a volcanic eruption. Had I known about it then, perhaps I could have taken a path that took a different turn. But nobody was aware, least of all me. If I had woken up one morning and found myself transformed into a completely different person, perhaps the change would have been obvious. It was a series of events that had to be pieced together gradually like a jigsaw puzzle and it was only when you finished the jigsaw that it made sense.

I began sleeping less and less. On most days I got home by 7.30 P.M or sometimes 8.00. My mother would always have a hot meal ready for me. She felt I was working very hard which I indeed was. After we had our meal together my parents would retire for the night. I would begin studying the books I had borrowed from the Institute library. It was like a whole new door had opened and there was so much to discover.

I began studying seriously. I started to make elaborate notes about everything I read. I felt that if I colour coded them I could remember it better. So I bought a pack of sketch pens and colour pencils. If there was a particular explanation I liked from a Philip Kotler book, I would write it in green. If there was an example which perfectly illustrated what had just been explained I would use an orange sketch pen and write it down. Surprisingly, the more I began writing in colours the more clear things began to become. I was delighted with this secret discovery of mine. It was as though I had suddenly discovered a magic power. The most amazing thing about it was that, the next day or even days after I wrote, I could instantly recall every single word down to the last detail. I had begun seeing words as visuals. I had always been very fast at reading. My verbal ability was one of my strengths which had helped me clear the entrance test, making up for my deficiency with numbers. But now it seemed to have improved three times. I felt like a monster devouring books. I was always hungry. I wanted more and more. This obsession would cost me dearly later. Things have a way of balancing out. But it felt so good and I was so exhilarated with the discovery of this ‘power’ that I did not want it to stop. It was almost as though I had a photographic memory. The passages I wrote were so clear in my mind. I could reproduce them almost verbatim. The bonus was that I perfectly understood all of it too. It was not that I was merely reproducing words without comprehending them. I could close my eyes and clearly see the pages and pages of notes I had made in colour. The images were indeed like photographs and I seem to keep clicking mental pictures. What I had not anticipated was running out of film.