Someone said it right: change is the only constant. With time, things change, seasons change and, amidst a list of change-prone entities, we surely read that people change too.
By the time Simar actually came back to India after her consulting assignment, things had boiled down to a yes or no decision. It was paradoxical how we ended up having nothing left to say to each other when, some time back, we couldn’t stop ourselves from talking to each other. The present condition threw a lot of questions on the truth of the love we were in. Was it all real?
The problem with being in love is that you find it difficult to survive without the other person. No matter how many times you decide not to succumb to it, you eventually land up trying one more time. Things would have been simpler for humans if we were born with only a brain. The addition of heart has brought in all the complexities in my case.
I kept my fingers crossed and I kept them crossed for long.
It is night. From behind the wheel, I keep looking at the date on the dashboard of my car. I am shocked to look at it and realize how cursed it is for me. I am not able to move my eyes away from it. I rest there in my car for a long time. I am feeling suffocated and breathing heavy. I have rolled down the windowpanes. I feel as if something sharp has just been stabbed in my chest. And I am hanging in that tense but short period between being hit and feeling the terrible ache that follows. I know it is going to hurt in a very short while. As if some kind of poison is going to run in my veins and paralyse me. I am split seconds away from that terrible pain. Probably that’s why I am scared to look anywhere else and, instead, am left staring at that date. A lump of saliva in the back of my mouth gets stuck in my throat. I can’t swallow. I want to run away to some place—I don’t know where.
A part of me still wants to believe that all that had happened was just a nightmare and that it will soon be over the moment I wake up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sleeping. It was all real.
She did say, ‘I am sorry, Ravz.’
Those words are still echoing somewhere deep in my ears. They are running in my head, just behind my eyes, and are now flooding out from the corners of my eyes. I am crying and everything in front of me is getting blurred. As I open my mouth to let the pain burst out, the saliva sticks and stretches in between my lips. I let my pain break into a terrible vociferous cry. It was all over. And all that was illuminated in my blurred vigil, through my wet eyelashes, was that date.
24 February. It is today’s date, but the trauma it unleashes stretches far back.
Three years back Khushi had left me on this day.
Three hours back Simar left me.
Twenty-six
Those final words of Amardeep brought everyone back to the present. He went numb. No one said anything for some time. After five and a half hours of live reading, a dead silence took over everyone. It was a much-needed silence.
From a distance Shambhavi kept looking at the diary. Her eyes were wide open and they looked heavy.
The overhead light continued to illuminate the table and the faces of all the four people sitting right around it. The rest of the room was dark. And in that surrounding darkness they kept looking at each other. Being a part of the entire narration of the story, Shambhavi more or less appeared to be a part of Ravin’s friends. Sometimes this happens. For whatever Amardeep read, Shambhavi could visualize it—she could almost experience the moments from Ravin’s life when she touched Ravin’s handwriting, when she heard it all from Ravin’s friends.
Shambhavi put her hand over Amardeep’s fingers which had bunched into a fist. Amardeep struggled to restrain his emotions. Still no one had uttered a single word since Amardeep had ended the reading. The silence continued to persist.
The show was not over—the listeners were still tuned in, hanging on breathlessly. If the technical charts were to be believed the number of listeners tuned in to that show still remained at the same peak as had been scaled in the initial half-hour. It was the very first time that a night show first turned into a late night show and then further ran on to become an early dawn show for the next day. None of the other radio stations broadcasted anything during this time of the day.
A voice shattered the stillness and the quiet in the room. It came from none of the four present. The screen on Shambhavi’s display panel had continued to display a never-ending stream of callers and Shambhavi had now accepted one of the incoming calls. That voice attracted everyone’s attention, bringing everyone back to the present.
The voice was heavy. It was an old man on the other end. He didn’t introduce himself, and neither did Shambhavi ask him to. By now the introduction appeared needless to everyone. Together they were all united as witnesses to Ravin’s story.
All that the old voice presently asked was, ‘Where is Ravin now?’
Silence followed.
Amardeep flipped the last page of Ravin’s diary, closed it and placed it safely in his bag which he then perched on his lap. Manpreet took over the microphone and narrated the part of Ravin’s story which Ravin couldn’t write.
‘You don’t always need a madly running truck on the road to kill a love story; many a time people themselves are more than capable of killing their love stories. It was difficult for me to believe that it had happened to him. The most difficult part was to believe that it had happened to him again.
‘He was strong enough to bear it the first time when Khushi died in that fatal accident but not that strong to bear it the second time. He broke down. I wondered how he’d survived the first time. He had the guts to share his life’s story with the world and then fight against his fate to bring back happiness in his life.
‘After Simar broke up with Ravin, whenever I used to call him, I found him lost. One day when I went to Chandigarh to meet him, I was shocked to see him. He was lean and pale. He had huge dark circles surrounding his eyes. His shoulders which used to once be firm and robust now hung low. He hadn’t shaved and was wearing shabby clothes.
‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t even shy away from asking him if he had started doping.
‘“Swear on me that you haven’t touched dope!” I demanded.
‘I was relieved when he assured me that he had not. I tried my best to console him and make him feel better. But I failed. He wasn’t ready to come out of it. He told me what all he had been ready to accept for Simar. He recalled how he met her, how beautiful she was and he recalled the good times they had had together. Not that I wanted to hear all that, but he still wanted to share all that. I let him share whatever was making him happy.
‘I was surprised when he said that he even went to the nearby gurdwara as Simar had wanted him to do so. Ever since Khushi passed away, he had turned atheist and had stopped praying. All of us had been trying to make him come along with us to the gurdwara, but we failed to convince him. We had believed that he would never again turn up at the doors of the Almighty. We were wrong. He was so madly in love with Simar that he broke his own barriers. All he wanted was her.
‘That day, Ravin sat with me for a few drinks in a pub and said to me that even after Simar’s denial he and Simar had tried to patch up on a few occasions. Either one of them would text message the other when they were not able to cope with their present situation. On the one hand, he used to cry at night and on the other, Simar too sobbed for him. It was quite unfortunate to know that Simar too was in pain but she would prefer to live that way instead of being rational in her demands.
‘As he continued with his tale, he started crying. It wasn’t the influence of alcohol. It was the influence of his unlucky fate. He wasn’t embarrassed to cry in public. I let him cry. He also talked about having lost in love again, about how true love never comes to anyone the second time.
‘I was there with him for two days. While Ravin slept in his room, I met his parents as well. They were terribly worried.
‘“I am happy to see you, Manpreet,” his dad had said and then asked, “Did he share anything new with you which we aren’t awa
re of?”
‘“Nothing as such, Uncle, but I see that he has badly broken down. He was crying some time back.” It was all I could say.
‘“The difficult time is back again on him and thus on us. Our son is very emotional at heart. After Khushi, how much we tried to convince him to move on. He never wanted to. We forced him. See what’s happening now,” his mother expressed in a low voice.
‘I asked them to be strong and hopeful.
‘“Yes, we hope so. Waheguru sab thik karega,” his dad said and moved back to his room.
‘Before I left Chandigarh I learnt from Aunty that Ravin was visiting a psychiatrist and the initial diagnosis of the doctor was not cheerful.
‘As I drove back from Chandigarh, I didn’t know what to do. All I could do was to hate God like anything. Ravin didn’t deserve any of this. All he wanted was to love someone and live his life happily with that special someone. God denied him his love the first time. He repeated his mistake again. Why did God always have to be that cruel to him whenever he wanted to live life? I, for one, don’t have an answer to this.
‘In the following week I had to leave for the States. I told Happy and Amardeep about Ravin’s condition. And the three of us made sure that we would regularly call him up.
‘One day Ravin mentioned that he wasn’t able to concentrate on his work and that he wasn’t able to sleep properly. I could sense that he was gradually sinking into deep depression. His voice was enough to convey that to me. The next time I called him up, his mother picked up the call and I found out through her that Ravin wasn’t going to office any more. He had been fired from his job. The reasons were obvious.
‘She burst into tears when she told me that the entire day he would keep himself locked in his room. Apparently, not able to see her son in this condition, she called up Simar’s family in the hope that something would still work out between Simar and Ravin. She wasn’t able to reach Simar and her entire conversation with Simar’s family wasn’t fruitful.
‘Ravin’s mental state wasn’t okay. He had almost stopped talking and thus stopped taking our calls. He used to get furious at times, especially when his mom would push him to eat his meals. Our only source of information about him were his parents. We were in continuous touch with them and Happy and Amardeep were planning to reach Chandigarh in a week’s time.
‘But the very next day I had to take that horrible call from Happy …’
Manpreet’s voice faltered and he started to lose his grip on the subject. He halted for a while and looked at Happy. When he was about to speak the next time, Happy offered to speak instead. Manpreet allowed Happy to take control of the microphone.
Happy began to speak.
‘I am sure he would have been in the worst state of mind. All his mom had said to him was, “Till how long will you keep thinking of that girl?”
‘To which Ravin replied that Simar would come back soon. He smiled then. His poor mother tried hard to make him abandon his irrational hopes. Ravin kept repeating his words without listening to his mom.
‘Unable to tolerate this misery, she slapped him and started crying herself.
‘That afternoon Ravin ran out of his house. He ran barefoot on the streets. All he was wearing was a vest and rugged half-pants. He ran without knowing where he was heading. He was as directionless on those roads as he was directionless in his life. He was yelling at his mom, at Simar, at God, at everyone.
‘“I don’t want to live!” he kept shouting.
‘Ravin’s dad rushed out of the house in order to follow him. But Ravin continued to run and shout “I don’t want to live!”
‘A bunch of pedestrians looked at a completely mad Ravin for a while but then finally ignored him. The street merged into the main road, and Ravin ran randomly from one side of the road to the other. There weren’t many vehicles on the road but the traffic was nonetheless moving very fast.
‘Amid the sound of the moving traffic and the honks Ravin was insanely crying out, “I don’t … want to … This all has got to end! Oh God! This all will have to end!”
‘Unfortunately this time his fate tried to fulfil his wish.
‘His mad shouting, his wild running and his grief—all ended in one single moment.
‘A truck ran over him.’
Happy couldn’t say anything for a while. He took a while to regain his strength before he could speak again in his broken voice.
‘I hate having to recall and speak all this. But that was the prize of Ravin’s pious love. That’s what fate had in store for him.
‘A bunch of people rushed towards him and circled him. As the eyewitnesses later revealed, our Ravin lay calmly in the dirt of the road. His lifeless eyes remained open for a short while before the scorching sunrays shut them. A pool of his dark blood began to ooze from his body and spread outwards, the dirt floating along with it. His feet shivered slightly but then became still. His clothes were torn and soiled. In that motionless state he still held something close to himself. In the tight fist of his right hand he held those five feathers that Simar had once given him.’
Shambhavi couldn’t believe her ears. As soon as she heard this, she put her hand on her mouth.
‘God! Is he …?’ and she wasn’t able to complete her question.
Happy continued tonelessly, ‘The furious expansion and contraction of Ravin’s chest was a signal that he was breathing.
‘By then his father had arrived on the spot. People on the road helped Ravin’s father to rush him to the hospital.
‘Our friend had suffered a fractured skull, multiple brain injuries and a broken shoulder. History had repeated itself in the most interesting but the most atrocious way. Ravin was again in the place he feared the most—the ICU. He mentioned this in his first book. This time he was in a coma.
‘The battle between his life and death had started. While each one of us was in the hospital, the girl who he was in love with wasn’t even aware of this. Life, at times, gets that nasty.
‘A tug of war between reality and hope had started again. Various tests and a few operations, staying back in the hospital and witnessing sad and happy cases of fellow patients, the peculiar smell of medical wards … all this had built up enormous mental stress.
‘All that Ravin’s poor parents could do was pray to God. His brother boarded the next available flight to India. It took Ravin three days to come out of his coma and that was the only time the doctors predicted slightly optimistic chances of his survival. That day we ate well.
‘For ten days he continued to be in the ICU. We all were fortunate to receive the final news from his surgeon: “He is doing well now.”
‘Ravin survived and, honestly, his survival made us forget Simar for a while. It’s human nature to assign higher priority to the present problem and push everything else on to the back burner.
‘He was later moved to the general ward. All this time we were here in Chandigarh with him.
‘Ravin’s physical health improved, but his emotional and mental condition still demanded care. As soon as his injuries healed, we found that though his brain was perfectly fine it was under tremendous stress and trauma. Going by the advice of Ravin’s psychiatrists and the bunch of doctors at the hospital, it was decided to admit him into a rehabilitation centre in Shimla. It was a tough decision to make. But none wanted to take the risk of letting anything like this happen again in the future. We ourselves visited that place beforehand and found it to be rather nice. It had all the lush greenery you could ask for as well as a conducive environment where various patients could partake in their favourite hobbies. Unlike our preconceived notions of a rehabilitation centre as a place meant for mentally challenged patients, it was a lot different and far more cheerful. This was not meant for people with mental illnesses, but for people who were going through serious emotional stress. I think admitting Ravin there was a wise decision we took.
‘Ravin continues to get his treatment in that centre. When I met him last he said, ??
?The Belgian summer has stayed within me and probably always will. I haven’t given up. I will soon be all good and I will write another bestseller. You’ll see.”
‘I will never forget what he had said in the end.
‘“… I have two pasts. I don’t know which one I should cry more for.”
‘He laughed.
‘I cried and left the place.’
Twenty-seven
That night the Raat Baaki, Baat Baaki show ended just before dawn. It was probably the most successful show that any radio channel in the country had had so far. But that’s not the only reason the programme would be remembered for. It would be remembered for a heart-touching tale of love narrated live to its audience. for the show itself was a tribute to love and would be fondly remembered for being a wake-up call to the modern-day lovers who have made it a fashion statement to love, break up and quickly move on to find what’s next!
For many of us love isn’t a commercial commodity. When you say ‘I love you’ you mean it from the bottom of your soul. When you are promising your love to someone you are promising an entire life to that person. You have got to take all your time and be wise enough before you arrive and commit. You might just be ruining someone’s life by breaking your commitment later.
True love is unconditional. And if it is a ‘Conditions Apply’ scenario, then it isn’t true love. It is as good as a mutual fund. And if that is the case then investment in love is subject to market risks and therefore one must please read the offer document carefully. If Ravin could have known Simar’s views on marriage in the initial days of his interaction his life would have been different now. Things didn’t work between the two of them, because they both loved the same person. He loved her and she loved herself.
As Shambhavi said, it was the best show she’d ever anchored or would ever anchor in the future. For Shambhavi and all the listeners, Ravin’s story ended there.