The Wake-Up Call

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The phone kept ringing… and interfered with her dream… entwined with the music playing in her head…

Tu To Nahin Hai Lekin Teri Muskurahatein Hain

Chehra Nahin Hai Par Teri Aahatein Hain

The landline phone’s ringing got louder drowning all other sound in her head and she woke up with a start. She dragged herself off the living room couch and looked around for a glass of water to clear her grogginess. The urgency of the ringing seemed to amp up and she put aside all thought of freshening up and just grabbed the phone’s receiver. She just had enough time to see that the caller-id showed ‘Unknown’. Before she could croak a hello… she heard the voice on the phone say “Hi!”

The sound of the voice jolted her awake like no cold glass of water would. It was a voice that had the potential to stop her in her tracks, turn her knees into jelly and fill her with breathless awe and love. She couldn't speak a word… all thought had escaped her. She clung on to the receiver waiting with bated breath for him to speak again… it had been a long while since she'd heard from him… and she wanted to hear every word, savour every nuance of his voice. He spoke again, “Isn't it time you woke up, jaan? It is time you stopped running away from facts. Don’t deny it anymore. You have to let go and move on.”

What was he talking about?! She couldn't make head or tail of the conversation… why did she have to move on?! Her head whirled. He sounded so far away… like his voice was coming from another dimension. She whispered into the phone, “Where did you get my landline number?… it’s been so long… where are you?” He repeated, “You have to move on… stop denying it. Wake up and move on.” and then there was a click and she heard static over the phone. He was gone and he did not make any sense to her.

She placed the phone back in its cradle and walked back to the couch and picked up her Blackberry. She dialled his number and waited. There was static and nothing else. She typed out a BBM message – “Did you just call me on the landline? How? Why? What did you mean?” She send the message and waited for the little ‘D’ for delivered mark to appear above the tick mark that notified that the message had left her phone. There was no ‘D’ let alone an ‘R’ for read. She tried calling him again on both his numbers and all she got was static. Tendrils of worry started creeping across her heart… and she kept pushing away untoward thoughts. She felt tired… she wanted to go back to sleep. Had something happened to him? But, the lack of response from him / his phone troubled her. She picked up her Blackberry again and typed out the same message and send it as SMS texts to both his numbers. Again, she got no delivery reports. She opened up their BBM chat window to check if he had left any messages while she was sleeping. She found the chat history empty. There was nothing from him… and then suddenly the LED lit up purple notifying a message from him. She opened the chat window again and found a simple, lovely message – “I love you!”

She was ecstatic… it had been so long (a year maybe) since he had said that. She had tried so hard to not get upset when he ignored her ‘miss you’ and ‘love you’… and now she felt on top of the world… again. Everything seemed perfect. She typed back “Love you too.” and hit send… No ‘D’ marked the delivery.

She tried to call again with no success and then decided to try from her landline. But, her landline was locked for outgoing ISD calls and she had to call the operator for a code. She dialled the exchange and realized that there was just eerie silence on the phone. A silent, unnerving hiss. She tried again after checking the cable but the silence stayed.

She remembered her other phone… a big Android, which she used for internet surfing, games and videos. It was in her room. Walking over to her room, she opened its door. When she stepped inside it she was struck by the oddity. Most of her stuff was missing… the wall-to-wall bookshelves with all her books… it was gone. She remembered her parents were planning to shift most of the furniture in the house to Kochi, Kerala but that was two weeks from now. Why were her stuff missing now? How could she have missed them packing and towing the shelves and her wardrobe away? She felt too tired to consider the possible scenarios… but before anything else she had to contact him. She would call up mom and ask her about the missing books after she talked to him and confirmed everything was fine.

She found her Android phone in her computer desk. Its battery was out of charge. She plugged the phone into the wall charger and switched it on and waited for it to boot up. As soon as the screen came on she heard multiple beeps and its notification bar populated with loads of Whatsapp messages and one missed call notification. She saw that the missed call was from him and so were the messages. All the messages were similar…

“Had lunch? Is your Blackberry dead? I messaged you and it doesn't get delivered.”

“Hey… what’s with your Blackberry?”

“All ok? Take care. Let me know if you need a new phone.”

“I just called you on this phone. What’s wrong? Pick up.”

There were more messages that said he couldn't reach her and the last Whatsapp message on the Android read “I am worried. Why is this phone switched off? I can’t reach you.”

The messages all had dates from the last couple of months. That was weird… what WAS the date today? Before she could check, the phone rang in her hand. It was him, his Dark-Angel avatar filled the screen.

She slid the receive button and she heard him say, “Finally! What’s wrong with you? Why aren't you answering calls and why have you switched off the phones? Hello… are you there? Hey… can you hear me?”

She replied… “I am here… I didn't know, something is wrong with my Blackberry… and I cannot reach you from it. The battery died on this one too. It is so absurd… you…”

He interrupted, as if he never heard her… “I can't hear you… is anyone on the line? I think the connection is conked off. Wait, I’ll call back.”

“No, wait… I can hear you… Hello… helloooo!”, She panicked… she hadn't wanted him to hang up. Everything was so weird and she was tired and she just wanted to hear his voice because it soothed her, calmed her.

She called him back and the call refused to get through. She realized he would be calling back and waited for his call to come through. The phone rang again. She picked it up and said… “Hello!”

“Damn! Still nothing… the connection’s fucked up! I will call you in a while.” He said and hung up.

She could hear him perfectly… and now she could not call him back. Her head was getting weary and she felt she would fall off to sleep right there… a dull beat was throbbing at the back of her head, threatening to blow up into a bad headache.

She decided to charge her Blackberry too as it had just about 20% charge in it. She rummaged in her desk drawer for its charger and her fingers closed around something. She pulled her hand out and saw her fingers wrapped around the Blackberry… its screen had cracked, the edges were chipped… the phone was dead. She didn’t understand… she had just used it to message him. How could it end up cracked and inside the drawer?

She rushed back to the couch and there it was, her Blackberry, intact… she picked it up and checked it… and turned it on. On a whim she opened the chat window to see if the BBMs were delivered. The messages were still stuck, undelivered… and she noted the date of the “I love you!” from him… it was dated almost a year back. Her head throbbed, the headache was blinding her… she didn’t want to think anything over. Not yet, at least. She just wanted to lie down and sleep. She would wake up and try to make sense of the weirdness around her. She sank onto the couch and in no time she fell asleep.

... She was at the railway platform… waiting for the local train. All around her everything seemed out of focus… a little ‘not there’. She had her Blackberry out and was typing out her reply to his routine enquiry about her lunch. She said she was at the station and that she would have lunch “in a bit.” She typed out, “How is your day shaping up?” He replied, “ Don't ask!”… and then unable to stop herself, she typed out, “I miss you… a lot.”

There was no immediate reply… her eyes started to sting with unshed tears. The purple LED on the phone lit up. She looked at the phone with expectation… the message read, “ Don't forget lunch.” The tears did fall then… she could hardly see through them, but she could hear the fast train coming in on the other side of the platform. A madness seized her… with the Blackberry in her hand she walked to the edge of the platform. She saw the train approach through the curtain of her tears and as it came whooshing in, she jumped onto its path. The Blackberry flew from her hand… hit the platform edge and then skittered down the track. Its screen had cracked. Its edges had chipped.

She heard a big commotion… her head was throbbing. She whispered or maybe those were just her last thoughts… “I shouldn't have died…”

**The characters in this short story are fictitious. Any resemblance to anyone dead or alive is purely coincidental!… Or is it?**

***This short story, the whole text in this post is the sole property of Surya Murali (that’s me). You do not have the permission to copy it and / or use it anywhere without my express permission. I would allow the use of the post only with a link back to the blog and with due credit to the author (that’s me, again!)***

A Strange Love Story

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© Surya Murali

True Love.  There are unaccounted number of stories that tout its existence even though it is a much maligned emotion.  From eras gone by to this day, love has been an emotion that has been both tragically successful in claiming its victims and yet has been immensely profitable to the hundreds of people who have realized the sway the emotion has over human minds.

Poets of yore and songwriters of today, moviemakers, novelists and writers… everyone has cashed in on the emotion. Reams of paper & rivers of ink have been used up in tribute to this emotion. Of all human emotions, love has never had an equal. Even the other powerful emotions of hate / hatred that can change people’s lives and create enough reasons to fill history books stem from love or the absence of it.

They say true love only happens to you once in your lifetime. Some even say that it happens when least expected or when totally unexpected. Well, they also say that life happens to you when you are busy making other plans. So, we do equate life to love in more ways than one.

Now… I have questions… I always do. Why only once? Why can love not happen more than once… after all we are dealing with the finicky, fickle human heart here. Our brain and our heart aren’t the best of friends at all times… one could fall in love and give oneself up unconditionally to someone at one point of time. Things go bad, there could be a lot of reasons… bad things are always waiting to happen. So, things aren’t that great and the two people drift apart… still bound by the threads of love. Distances creep in, sometimes physical and often in the heart. The heart keeps hoping that it would turn around and everything would be all perfect again. But, the brain goes in to defend & repair mode… at times shutting down social interaction, at times creating invisible walls around you to prevent you from putting yourself through the drier only to be wrung out emotionless again. At times like these, what if someone outsmarts all the ploys of your brain, gets through its defences and once again strikes at your heart. Would that second time be true love?

There was this girl… she had never known loneliness… not even when she was totally alone. But, she wasn’t alone. She had a lot of friends… friends who liked her and cared for her and who enjoyed her company. She also had a lot of admirers, and there were well-meaning guys who wanted to get past the tall concrete walls with concertina fences she had built around her and to touch her heart… because they probably believed in love. She didn’t. 

She loved to be in her own little world filled with so much wonder that exploring it took up all her time… she didn’t have time for love. In the middle of a crowd, she could flip on an emotional switch and leave the rest of the world behind and cocoon herself in her fantasy realm. It was not much unlike a drug induced high and just as addictive.  At times like these, to the outside world, she appeared melancholic… but in her head she was having a ball.

It so happened that of all the guys who wanted to be included in her world, there was one guy who persevered harder than the rest. He understood her unlike anyone ever before. He saw the gleam in her eyes where everyone else saw a sadness, an aloofness. He alone saw that she was having a hell lot of fun in that head of hers. They soon became friends… though they were like duellists in a fencing match… eyeing and anticipating the other’s move. His concerted efforts finally broke the concertina fence… and slowly but surely they were in love. She wouldn’t have termed it love… but to her he was part of that colourful world which she loved to retreat to. Charming, charismatic, along with being headstrong and argumentative… he was everything she was.

It is nearing the interval of the story. And like all love stories this too has to have a twist, a period of tragedy… and in their life it came with her going away to a foreign land. In the beginning their relationship was like an elastic band… the tendency on both sides was to pull each other back… but a band stretched for long eventually has to break.  Every time it snapped they would re-tie the ends and continue. But, by then the band had lost its integrity… it was just a series of worn-out knots. The alone time she enjoyed started to close in on her… where there was a world of fantasy, there was darkness and zero-visibility.

She decided to let go. No more tying knots in the band. In the battle between her heart and brain, the latter emerged the victor and soon set about changing the rules of the game. New walls came up… stronger than before… the barbwires sharper than earlier… defences that were meant to inflict pain on an intruder.

No sooner had all the construction been completed, there came in to her life a ray of hope… that kept jabbing at the darkness surrounding her. This guy hadn’t even met her. They had been acquainted before online and even then she had a certain respect for the guy. They chatted online… sparring and duelling with words… and she found herself being increasing drawn in by his character. She had no face to put to his words… but his words and soon his voice were like a talisman against her loneliness (which she now really felt.)

By the time, they decided to meet up, she didn’t need a face… she already knew she loved him. He was to her the spring after a cold, long, dark, drawn out winter. Yet she was cautious… too cautious, maybe… she did not want to find ‘true love’ again and see it slip through her fingers. She did not want her best assets to become liabilities… she didn’t want a repeat of how her USP of finding happiness in being alone was turned against her when she fell in love.

And then… they met. There were no extra sparkle to the twinkle of stars… no soft strumming music heard only by their ears nor did the fragrance of fresh love envelop them. They met like old friends who had known each other for ages. His face was new to her… yet, the fact never occurred to her. It wasn’t a stranger she was meeting, but the man she loved. The man she was convinced she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

Her life took on a new and beautiful meaning… she loved every moment she spent with him. She enjoyed their lengthy discussions and absolutely loved their arguments and at times altercations. He was arrogant and regal just as much as he was kind and sensitive… if he was a lion, she was no pussy-cat… her claws were just as sharp and her tongue quite acerbic. And so, on the foundation of pure trust was built her passionate relationship with this amazing guy.

With him none of the traditional methods worked. Their being together was meant to be but as much as he loved her, he feared hurting her and so losing her. Though she would argue endlessly over everything else, she could not argue or convince him that nothing would make her leave. She wished he would realize that she would fight him tooth and nail to stay. There was never a question of getting hurt and leaving. It wasn’t like her to give up on something she so coveted. But, he would not be convinced.

She then decided to take matters in to her own hands… if the traditional way of getting married would not work with him, she knew she had to get what she wanted through other means. And what she wanted was to be with him… forever. 

Her folks had no issues with their relationship… in fact, they looked forward to them getting married. She was amused at the irony… in most love stories, you have to fight your folks because they stand against your relationship… and here she was about to take a decision where she had to fight her folks because they wanted her to marry the man she loved and who loved her.  But their love was too strong for her to back down… she decided that her folks would come around soon enough if they knew she was happy with him… even in a live-in relationship. It was a tough decision for her… to decide to move-in with him… against what her friends, folks and society thought was right. It was also extremely difficult for her to get anyone to be on her side… from where they stood, they couldn’t see why two people so much in love couldn’t just marry and be together and had to resort to a live-in.  But, she had him by her side as she stood facing the world that had turned against her.

Once again, she turned to what once was her way to survive the real world… she sought to be alone with her thoughts. Closing out the rest of the world, she withdrew within. It was just him and her in a small little happy world. She had no one else but him, so whenever there was the tiniest of friction between them… she would be absolutely alone… with even him outside the perimeter of her world.

And soon the girl who once never knew loneliness… had just that for company. Loneliness became her life… The loneliness of true love.