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?”’

Incomplete

My thoughts started drifting as I sat in the back seat of the taxi that was taking me from the airport to my village, my hometown, the place I was born in and spent my childhood in. I am almost 35 now, working in a large MNC far away from my village. It had been a long time since I visited my village; my last time was almost 5 years ago. A lot had changed during this time. I knew 5 years was not such a long time but I couldn’t recognize the way to the first place I called home; everything was different. I couldn’t see any of the familiar landmarks that marked my route to home. The route used to be covered with lush greenery that was synonymous with Kerala, a river or a backwater would make itself visible every now and then, and even though you couldn’t see the sea, there was always something about the air, about the thin film of sweat on your body caused by the humidity that made you sense that the waves were not far away. I was sitting in the back of the taxi with my window rolled down but I couldn’t feel any of these; the green cover was gone, it had been replaced by concrete buildings. The backwaters were no longer beautiful, they were polluted and the water was black. I asked the driver to stop at the next junction; there was a small hotel called Pai hotel there which served the best dosas. I got down and went to where the restaurant was, only to see that the place has been converted into a CCD. This wasn’t turning out to be the trip of revisiting my childhood that I hoped it would be. I got a large cappuccino from the CCD and got back in the car. 

      

 The drive was not very long, just over an hour, but memories of the entire seven years I spent in the village, the first seven years of my life, started playing through my mind. My house in the village was old and big, it would be more than 70 years old now. It was painted white and had brown tiles for the roof, which were typical of the Kerala houses of that era. It was situated in the midst of paddy fields and lush coconut groves. There was a cattle shed in front of our house which housed more than 10 cows when I was a kid.  There were 10 ponds situated in the coconut grooves that provided irrigation to the numerous coconut, cashew, mango, jack fruit and other trees that were situated in the compound. Small streams of water marked the boundaries of the land. The streams were quite narrow, even I could jump across them with my small legs but it was deep enough to submerge even a grown man. These streams connected all the paddy fields and the ponds and ensured their proper irrigation. There were no concrete boundary walls, weaved coconut leaves connected together formed an eco-friendly and recyclable boundary wall. Out of the 10 ponds one was used for bathing and another for domestic purposes like washing dishes, the other eight were for irrigation. It was in one of the ponds that I learned how to swim; dad would just take me to the pond with him and throw me in the water. I taught myself how to swim while my dad stood nearby keeping a watchful eye on me. Every morning started with a run and dip in that pond, however cold it was.  The cashew trees were easy to climb, even for the small kid that I was. With some leg ups from the children of the neighboring homes whom I played with, I would climb the cashew trees and pluck the fruit for everyone, mangoes were also plenty, guavas and other fruits and berries kept the stomachs of me and my friends full while we were kids. The kids in my neighborhood were mostly the children of people who worked in the paddy fields and coir factories that were abundant in my village. I was the like the leader of that gang, it had nothing to do with my abilities though, it was just because I was from one of the higher caste families. My family even owned a temple, we still do; only that it is run by a group of the villagers now. I used to run around the temple when I was a kid and light all the lamps and sing the hymns along with my aunts albeit well out of tune. The gods in that temple are the only ones I still pray to. I was a spoilt kid, I got everything thing I wanted, I only had to say that I needed coconut water and someone would climb a tree and get one, cut it and give it me, people ran around to fulfill my wishes. 

A loud screech of the breaks of my taxi and a shower of abuse from the driver to a biker who had jumped from the left side without looking bought me back to the present. This is one thing that hasn’t changed, people jumping from the left side of the road without looking, it used to be cycles earlier, now these people seem to have graduated into motorbikes.

I slipped back into my flashback as the car started moving again. The story of my childhood will never be complete without her. It has been so long that I have even forgotten her name, but I still haven’t forgotten her cute round face, her naughty smile, her sparkling eyes and the way in which she called my pet name. It has been so long since anyone called me by that name. I saw her first while she was standing in the queue outside my home’s kitchen waiting for the milk. Only the upper caste families had cows in their homes at that time, there were only two households including mine in that area that sold milk and others houses bought it from us. I would have been around six at that time, I was standing alongside my grandmother who was distributing the milk to everyone, and there I saw her, almost the same age as me, wearing a red skirt and a blouse, looking nervous and tagging behind a lady who looked like her mother. Later I asked grandma who the family was; she told it was the sister of the “lower caste” people who lived across the paddy fields. The lady’s husband had passed away so she along with her daughter had moved back to her brother’s house. My grandmother also told me I should keep away from the mother but I can play with the daughter if I wanted to. Grandma was like that, a little weird. I never fully understood why she said the things she said. She loved me, adored me and gave in to all my whims and fancies. Ever since grandpa passed away almost a year ago, she seemed to live just for me. I don’t really remember grandpa, he was bed ridden from the time I can remember; people told me he was a very powerful police constable in his youth and a lot of people were scared of him. To me he would just always be a person who was so weak that he even had to pee in a weird looking white flask which I realized later was a bedpan.

That evening while I was playing with the kids from the neighboring houses, I enquired about the girl and asked the kids to bring her also to play. Minutes hadn’t passed and she was present there, that is how all my wishes were carried out over here, it took only minutes for me to get anything I wanted, I was the undisputed prince of the area. After some initial shyness and silence she started playing with us, she was a very talkative and playful girl and gelled in with our group very fast. As darkness started falling we stopped paying, I was angry with her, we were playing hide and seek and she had just betrayed me to the seeker. I looked at her with anger; like every spoilt child my rage was really infamous. Every one there started cowering and moving away while she just looked at me, gave her naughty smile and called me by my pet name. All my anger evaporated in a second, I told her to come the next day also to play and we said our goodbyes for the day.

We became close friends over the next one month; you couldn't see me outside my home without her tagging along with me. She talked a lot, kept asking a lot of questions, most of which I didn’t have any answers to. We sat on the edge of the pond, on top of cashew tress, near the paddy fields and kept on talking. It was mostly her talking and me listening, she had something to say about almost everything in the world, why the sun was so bright, why plants grew, why the water flowed; she talked about anything and everything. I started treating her like a princess, she got the biggest fruit when we plucked them, when we were breaking badams she got the most perfect one, when we were doing the annual cleaning of our ponds she went home with the biggest fish that was caught. My parents also noticed the way I was treating her, not only did they say anything about it, they played along as well. When a new flower blossomed in our garden, my parents teased me if I am not giving it to her; perhaps they didn't view it as anything other than the innocence which could be present in a relationship between two 6 year olds. Even my grandma who usually didn't allow people from lower castes to enter our home didn't seem to mind her, she allowed us to sit in the veranda of our home and play. One year passed, my parents decided to shift to a city about 4 hours away from my village. I didn't really know how to feel , I was sad to leave my friends, sad to leave her and sad to leave all the space I had to run around and move to a small house in a congested city, but I didn't have any say in it, my parents had decided to move and I had to. During the last weeks of my stay in the village I hung out and talked less and less with my friends and her. On the day I was leaving I didn't even go and say goodbye to her, all my friends had come to say goodbye but she didn’t come. As the car pulled away leaving my childhood memories behind I kept looking out of the window to see if she came but she didn’t. I reached my new home and for the first few days I thought about her and I missed her, but in the excitement of the new school and new friends I soon forgot all about her and my other friends from the village.

I went back to village after almost 6 months, this time for my grandma’s funeral. I saw her nowhere around when I was standing around watching the ceremony of my grandmother’s body being wrapped in a white cloth with a very peculiar feeling in my mind which at that point I couldn’t fathom. I asked around only to find out that she had moved back to her father’s house with her mother. I felt sad; I had wanted to see her again. I didn’t know what is the felling that I had for her, I don’t think it was love, I don’t think I was big enough to comprehend or feel love at that age. After completing the last rites for grandma we locked up the house, as there was no one left there now, and left for the city. I haven’t seen her since.

I woke up to the calls of “sir, sir” from the taxi driver. He told me we had reached our destination. I had dozed off slightly. I got out of the car to the place I had been thinking about all this while but it was barely recognizable.  The house was no longer white, it had become black from the water dripping from the roof, vines and termite mounds had grown from the bottom. The garden was overgrown with grass and bushes which reached almost to my height. I waded through the grass and reached the house, and sat on the veranda for some time. I didn't feel like opening the house and going inside. After some time I started walking around the compound, the cashew and jackfruit trees were long gone, the coconut tress looked like they would never again bear nuts. Nobody did any farming in the paddy fields anymore; all the ponds had become almost dry due to negligence and what little water was left was dirty and stagnant as there was no longer any water circulation because the farming had stopped. I stood at the side of the pond in which I had learned swimming, this too had dried up. Right next to the pond I saw the reason of this visit to my village after the long gap. Some neighbors had encroached into my property and built a boundary wall over there. In order to end the property dispute and to keep them back I had to get a certificate from the village officer saying it was my land. The village officer was creating problems for me. I had tried to get the issued resolved through a relative of mine who still lived near the village, but the he was not budging, he wanted the owner of the land, which is me, to personally come and talk to him. I even asked my relative to offer him some bribe but the officer didn't accept it. He seemed adamant on wanting to see me. I was getting really frustrated with it, so I talked to the collector of the district who was an old friend of mine from engineering college. He talked to the officer and resolved the issue, but I still had to go down to Kerala and sign some papers.

I entered the village office and to my surprise I found that the village officer was a woman. Now that I think about it no one told me that it was a man, the sexist in me just assumed that only a man could be this adamant. I entered the cabin only to find the same familiar eyes and cute face smiling at me. Her eyes hadn't lost any of the sparkle and she still had that naughty smile. She called me by my pet name and asked me how I have been. After some catching up we got down to business, she handed me some papers and said that the only thing I had to do was sign them. I went through the papers only to find that they were half completed.

“You have left these incomplete!” I said.

She replied “Well, so did you when we were seven, Mr. Nair”           

P.S: This short story is inspired by the short stories of Ruskin Bond. I have always been a fan of the way he writes about hill stations and rural India. After a long time I read some of his short stories again and got the idea for this story. 

  

P.P.S : The photo is not my actual home, it's something I found on the internet although it looks a lot similar.