The Last Call

She looked around. The place was beautiful. She was at a hill station in North India. On one side of her were a lot of tall cliffs and on the other was a forest of tall pine trees. It looked like the view of a European hill station from the 90's Bollywood flicks. Even though it was summer and the middle of the day the weather was still cool and pleasant.

She had come here with her husband for a week’s holiday. They needed the break after the hectic two weeks they had just had at work. It was the March year end rush at office and they had slogged and burned the midnight oil to complete their targets. After the workload had subsided they took a week off to come and relax at the hill station which was famous for its breathtaking views and its adventure sports. Her husband and she worked at the same office and that is how they met. It was not love at first sight or anything; they got to know each other; she found out that he is a level headed, hardworking and ambitious person. Slowly they started liking each other and they ended up marrying in a beautiful ceremony. There was a lot of love between them at the starting but the romance had slowly died out. He was too much involved in his work, even now at the hill station he was constantly on his phone talking to work. He was a good husband, he took care of her well, but they didn't really have any common interests, he didn't challenge her on an intellectual level. This trip was sort of a rekindle the romance trip also. Fat chance of that happening with him being on the phone all the time, she thought. They haven’t had had a conversation of more than 2 sentences that day.

She got a call on her phone. She was expecting this call and for the first time in the day, she smiled. To be honest she was expecting this call much earlier in the day and she was pissed at the caller for calling so late. She still answered the call with a smile on her face.

“Hey, Look to the top of the cliffs” said the caller

She did and he continued “Do you see a man standing at the top of the cliffs north east from you?” She said she did. 

“Well that is me and I am going to jump” The caller cut the call

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He was standing on top of the cliff. He had wanted to do this for a long time, and it was would be poetic and anti climatic for him to do it in front of the woman he loved the most, and the one who has broken his heart in an irreparable way. She was always afraid that he would do something like this.

As he stood on top of the cliff, he started reminiscing about his time with her, one of the happiest years of his life. He remembered the first time she met her; he had fallen for her beauty at that very moment and their first conversation after which he thought she was an arrogant bitch and she thought he was a pretentious, stuck-up nerd; oh man! How wrong were those first impressions? He remembered the first time she took his hand in hers and asked will you always be there for me, all the time they spent talking about technology and other stuff, all the time she listened to his lame jokes, he remembered their first date, the flowers he had got her for it, the numerous outings and all the fun times they had. He remembered all the fights and the small break ups that they had, he remembered their final breakup when she said he was too egoistic and angry for them to have any real future. Well, she did find a person who is not egoistic and can control his emotions; he hoped that she was really happy with this guy, because she deserved all the happiness in the world. He remembered how he had cried in front of her begging for her to take him back. But most of all he remembered the love they had for each other, a love which he still possessed for her.   

  He had paid good money to a photographer with a telephoto lens to take a picture of him before he jumped and give it to her. He could see the photographer as well as her standing at the bottom of the cliff. Even the photographer didn’t know what he was going to do after the photo was taken, but he had made sure that irrespective of what happens the photographer will hand over the photo to her.

The time had come. He saw the photographer focusing his camera and taking his picture and then walking away to get it printed on his handheld printer. He took his phone and dialed her number; he still knew it by heart. He asked her to look up at the cliff at him and cut the call. He was ready to jump, everyone told this was the scariest part of all and what came after that was easy. But he felt no fear whatsoever, he was feeling unexpectedly calm, maybe it was the feeling of surprising her again as he always did. He took a deep breath and he jumped.

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She was shocked and had lost all the ability to think. As she was looking up at him jumping she was approached by a guy who handed her a photo. It was a photo of him just before jumping; he was smiling ear to ear and was holding a placard which said Happy Birthday. He hadn't forgotten it was her birthday after all, even though her husband had.

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As he got nearer to the bottom of the cliff he could see her face and see that she had gotten the photo. As the bungee cord became taut and his jump came to a stop he couldn't help grinning at the look of surprise on her face.       

The Last Chapter

A blast from a fishing boat’s horn woke him up. Sunlight was streaming in through the window. He looked to his left; there she was; sleeping peacefully looking as beautiful as ever. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe that he ended up with such an incredible girl. It has been 5 years since their relationship started, it had taken a lot of courage from the both of them to bring it this far. They had come a long way from the highly emotionally scarred couple they were in the starting, together they had successfully climbed the mountain of insecurities that they both had.

Life had been good to them. Both were working in Bangalore in good jobs and they lived together in a beautiful apartment overlooking a park. A year back they had bought the place they were in now, a one room house on a cliff overlooking the sea in a secluded beach 5 hours drive from Bangalore. The other end of the beach had a small fishing community staying there who were really friendly and welcoming and the place came quite cheap. I was just a small room with a bed, table, couple of chairs, a kitchen counter and sink and a bathroom but the view was amazing. About a 10 minutes’ walk down the cliff was the Arabian Sea in all its glory. They came down here often on weekends and other holidays; currently they were here for a 3 day weekend. Today was the last day of the weekend, they would return back to Bangalore the next morning.

He was awakened from his lazy half sleep by a wet slobbering at his feet. It was Dexter, their Labrador pet dog. When people asked why the dog was named Dexter they would say because Dexter’s lab. It was just one the many jokes they laughed together loudly when they said it irrespective of it being the thousandth time. Sensing that he had woken up, Dexter wanted to go down to the beach and play. He loved playing football on the beach and chasing the waves. He was dead afraid of crabs but, one sight of them and he would run away with his tail behind his legs. He dropped a ping on her phone telling he was going down to the beach, picked up the football and ran down to the beach with Dexter in hot pursuit.

 They played on the beach for almost an hour. They also met Laxmi, a fisherman’s wife who provided them with good home cooked food. She informed them that everything was ready for the night. He was planning a big surprise for his beautiful lady that night, after years of writing he had finally completed his first novel. It was a crime thriller set in Bangalore featuring two cops from the Bangalore crime branch, Raju and Radha. A romantic relationship between Raju and Radha is a subplot of the novel. She always criticized him for writing a ready for Bollywood novel rather than something with good substance. But he knew that to get a book published from a respective publishing house he needed to have some mass appeal and indeed it had worked out; Rupa had agreed to publish the book and a sample first draft of the book was with him now. He was going to present it to her during dinner. She had already read the entire book except the ending and the last chapter. He had been working on the last chapter for almost 4 months and finally about 3 weeks back he got a really good idea and he completed the novel.

He came back to the house; she had woken up and was already taking a bath. They had plans to visit an old rundown fort some 50 kilometers away. They both got ready and armed with directions from the fishermen set off for the fort. They stopped to have breakfast from their regular hotel on the way, a small little shop which served hot tasty idli, dosa, vada, sambhar and chutneys. They also got some idlis packed for lunch. 

They reached the fort an hour and half later with him inevitably getting lost twice on the way. The fort was beautiful; it was made of red sand stone and the green moss covered a lot of it. It was overlooking the sea and you could see the fishing boats coming back with the day’s catch from the fort. They found a nice spot in the shade and settled down there. They sat there enjoying the nature, the peace, the quiet; talking for hours. His misgivings that she might not find him funny one day proved wrong, she still laughed at the silliest of his jokes and still called a lot of them lame. Her passion for technology still fascinated him. They could talk for hours about it. The sun setting was a beautiful sight from the fort. They went down to the beach and took a long walk along it as the day cooled off.

The journey back to the house was much shorter as he didn’t lose the way again. They stopped at their hotel for hot chai and snacks. After reaching back at the house they packed their luggage and cleaned the house as they had to leave early morning the next day. He told her that he had told Laxmi to make dinner. They will go to Laxmi’s home and eat and will sleep early so that they can wake up early and set off for Bangalore. They started walking along beach at around 7.30 to go to Laxmi’s house. Dexter was running up and down excitedly along with them.

Just before reaching Laxmi’s house was an abandoned boat which was kept on the shore inside which he had asked Laxmi to set up the dinner and she had outdone herself.  The boat was lighted by a series of oil lanterns kept on it. Two small chairs were waiting for them in the middle of the boat. Dinner was set already in the middle of the boat. The moon was shining the perfect amount, not too bright and not too dim.

“I have a surprise for you tonight babe.” He told her

She looked so happy and surprised to see the dinner setting. She said it is really romantic and they sat down to eat. Dinner was delicious; rice, prawns curry, fish fry and semiya kheer. After dinner he presented her with the first copy of his book.

“I finally finished it.” He said

The excitement on her face on the seeing the book had no bounds to it.

“I like the cover page design and it is much thicker than I thought it would be.” She said checking out the book

“Oh, that is because they bound it along with some blank pages because I was rushing them for a copy before we came on this trip. There are like 50 blank pages in the end. Go on, read the last chapter.” He replied

She started reading the last chapter out aloud; you could see her expression changing as she read it. She came to the final line of the book; Raju and Radha are sitting in their favorite restaurant after solving the case, Raju presents Radha with a ring and asks “Will you marry me?”

She turned the page, there, embedded in the pages was a ring; she looked confused for a moment and then looked at him. He asked “Well, will you?”’