Someday

This was the life he always wanted. And he was living it. Expensive rides, chartered flights, hotel rooms, limited edition watches and weekend casino visits - the celebrity lifestyle. The life he had always wished for since the time he believed he understood life. That was since he was fifteen or sixteen, 10^th grade. He knew he had to do something in life, something that would make him known, respected. People always said that money can’t buy happiness, yet the same society judged you on your financial status. Dev knew he had to get a good job, something that paid him enough, then after he had enough he would start his own business venture. At least that’s what the most successful people he had read about did. He believed the money would buy him status and it did turn out to be true. He had become successful, at least in his own terms, made his family members proud and above all his own life too as his mother always used to tell him.

Sitting in his room in the Marriot, Dev saw his whole life flash by, he was seeing his past, moments that defined his life. He had heard that at the time of death or when you feared you were going to die your whole life flashes by, important faces, decisions, and regrets just to remind you of your life and its sins. But he wasn’t dying, at 27 he still had to live out his dreams and its pleasures. It wasn’t just sprinting across him, he was seeing the details, things that didn’t matter but could still clearly remember.

Dev was in his hometown. The place was his whole world until he left for college. He loved the place, he knew its roads and its shops, theatres and clinics and the central market which never ceased to entertain him. Leaving for college was hard as he was to live in the hostel. His town had always fascinated him. To say that Dev adored the place would be an understatement for it was much more to him. It’s strange how people fall in love with a city, but once you do, it’s difficult to say farewell to that place. His primary classes were in a local school nearby, he was shifted when he was in fifth grade. Munshi Memorial School. The institution he had loved, hated and above all that which had given him a lifetime of memories, memories he could cherish, that gave him a feeling that was non-describable.

It's true what they say that you only realize the value of something when you lose it. Well, that school was where it all began. He met his first real friends there, friends who would go a long way with him., friends who would later become family. By the time he was in sixth grade, he was settled, he had made a lot of friends with whom he hung out everywhere. The school was fun, no matter how much he hated it, he still missed it when vacations started just like everybody else. He had always done well in academics, or atleast he did enough to stay in the top half of the class. Though every day was a routine, there are some routines you get used to and can’t do without.

This was one. The morning bus to school, stories from yesterday's late-night match, forgotten homework and much more. They had to walk a bit more from the bus stop and would end up taking half an hour for the 10-minute walk being late on most occasions for the morning assembly. That was school life when nothing really mattered when life was carefree and not so complicated and insecure. When everything seemed like a joke, when you never thought of yesterday and tomorrow(sometimes though!) but just today, about what you were going to do next period or in the evening. Dev was seeing his friends, his teachers, his school, his childhood, all the fun he had. He saw the P.T periods, playing football in school was the best. It was never football, more like wrestling where all of them would be kicking at each other while the ball would be somewhere else! If it was monsoon, it was better, when you were bound to slip and fall and get yourself dirty, it was a one-hour comedy show.

Monsoons in India were always eventful, the first showers, grey skies, puddles all around, paper boats and getting drenched all the time. Catching a cold and ultimately a fever was not so uncommon followed by a three-day leave from school. Dev saw himself and his friends, years younger, wandering through the streets, jumping into every puddle along the road, aiming at some stranger’s mango tree and getting splashed by some speeding vehicle. Lost days, happy days but days forever etched into memories, never to be erased again. He was seeing everything, even the small things, like those moss, covered walls which he would always slip while climbing and how his cat would run inside when it began to drizzle. Those 2-3 months used to be the time of their lives for Dev and his friends. Then the sun came out again, ever so brightly never again to be replaced by the rain for another year or so. And life went back to its normalcy.

        

 He had lost his father when he was in seventh grade. Cancer took him. They never identified it until he died. He still remembered the day, clearly. He felt gutted and lost even though their relationship had never been so open. He used to work in an airline, so he wasn’t home most of the time. But whenever he was there was no real instance where Dev could remember having a long conversation with him. Their silence spoke most of their emotions. It was hell for a week, all the mourning and the visits from relatives he had never seen before. He didn’t cry for most of the time, but couldn’t hold back when his friends visited. It’s creepy how your life can change in a single day. And the thing about how we realize the value of something only when we lose it forever was becoming truer.

He felt a void in him, it's true that his father wasn’t there most of the time, missing him was a usual thing but there’s something about losing someone forever. Those who have suffered will tell you, it’s like you have been hit by something but feel no pain, yet you feel weak and incapable. It was difficult at first, the weeks that followed felt longer than ever. You get a lot of pitying which you know isn’t enough to get back what you have lost. You wander a lot in thought, you regret a lot of things but then life continues as it always does and you are forced to move on. Seeing those days again, Dev realized how much he has moved on, how much influence it had on him. There was even a time he felt his loss would give him a surge for greatness, something he had worked out over the course of his life. Every person who had become successful were people who had nothing, rising from their fate or else people who were hurt early in their life – losses, broken hearts, accidents or something painful that inspired them, that made them soar above the stains of their sorrow. A thought he regretted since and a belief he banished forever.

          Days were passing again, you were meant to grow more mature, more serious but felt the exact opposite. Bonds grew stronger, friends became everything, questions got tougher, exams became tougher, but everyone held on as every day became a celebration. Dev saw the best days of his life, so far, it was beautiful, the times when you flew around like kites going wherever the wind took you, aimless yet strong. Tenth grade was the best, there never a particular reason to point out yet it was, everyone agreed, maybe because it was the last year of high school, you don’t know who all are going to stay, who all will leave, maybe because they felt their time together was ending soon. It’s a beautiful feeling when you cherish all those moments that are unforgettable, moments that live beyond a picture from the camera and still relive them every day in your thoughts.

                                       

    Dev saw himself standing in his school bathroom, alone. It was another one of those days he could recall moment by moment. Farewell Day. He had come running in here because he felt like crying. He didn’t feel sad, infact they were having a merry time since morning, recalling all those stupid incidents over the years and laughing their brains out. That was one thing with his friends, they always felt free around each other. They never had to pretend, did whatever they felt, no boy-girl thing and never an ego issue. You said what you thought(mostly), made fun of each other and pulled off some real sick pranks on each other. He always knew that this day would come when he would lose some of his friends leaving only those countless memories to remember. Dev cried, one of those times when he cried shamelessly for he felt the need to. Did he feel better or not he could not tell for he was not feeling sad, it was a strange feeling – a mixture of emotions, something that has to be experienced and not described.

That day too passed like every other day did. A few of the girls wept, apart from that they left having a good time promising each other never to lose touch and to meet everyone in the future. In the end, around a dozen people left to different schools and a little more came in as new admissions. Dev recalled the first day of senior secondary, even though it still felt the same with a major group of his friends still around, it still felt incomplete though he could not tell what.

                   “Time flies,” they said but they never mentioned the pace at which it did. That was how it was, from 10^th grade to graduation. It felt like the weekend just ended, but there he was sitting in the exam center for his 12th boards. Those two years were all about a feeling of ‘growing up’; seniors of the school, creating havoc where ever possible, spending more time outside the class than inside and making the principal’s office a familiar place with their weekly visits for reasons ranging from breaking the staff room window to coming to the school in motor bikes. Life was running in normal mode, while the world around you expected a sense of purpose to grow in you, you got addicted to the world and its infinite pleasures.

There are times when you fall in love with the ‘normalcy’ of your life that it's only when something out of the blue happens you realize how ordinary and disappointing your life is. Dev’s first love was one such event. That Friday afternoon(He did remember the day!) after school in the alley, when she proposed him. Yes, it was she who came to him, with her appealing eyes and pierced nose which he had always admired; and a half smile merged with excitement and fear. Yes, he was surprised but there was something about her, something that he couldn’t help but loving. And from that moment she became his everything, Kavya – his queen, his goddess, his world.

                   Was it real? Was it love? Dev would be answerless even today, but that never did matter. He sure felt different, maybe it was just his imagination, but then he never wanted to prove it wrong. Those who have loved will tell you, that it is a feeling to be experienced and not told. To have someone to share your feelings with, someone to walk with till the bus stop after class, someone to smile back at you. Those who have had their hearts broken will tell you that friends too do these things but when you are in love you want it to last forever, that time, those moments, those words, that smile ......

And just as all good things end, their relationship (if it could be called that way!) ended with their graduation. There never was a formal breakup if there had to be, there was a ‘goodbye’ which spoke volumes as Dev realized later. She left for Pune, to pursue her future to be a doctor. They were friends on facebook, he had her number, she had him but there never would be a conversation again. Maybe they both wanted to talk again, at least Dev did, but they didn’t. Fear, ego and pride – things that always influence a decision prevented them to do so. And so time passed until their love became an event of the distant past leaving only the memories as ruins.

Dev never felt a loss, he didn’t go into depression as they did in movies, he didn’t lose his appetite and slept better than ever. But there were instances and places that evoked certain memories from your past, something inevitable to the human mind, those moments made him downcast. Yet life dragged on carrying you with its current never giving you enough time to stutter and fall behind. Results came out pretty good for Dev and everyone was in the rush to find admission to pursue their ‘higher’ studies and build a proposed career.

And just like that school ended and before you knew it you were poised for college. And as days passed you just yearned for a chance to put on that uniform again and take that old path to school, relive those old days again. He realised how quickly he started missing certain things, things you never cared to notice when you had it with you. A familiar sound echoed all around, a noise so recognizable to Dev yet couldn’t pinpoint it. It took a couple of seconds for the spark to ignite in Dev. It was the siren in his hometown. Yes, surely this was the same sound, it boomed at seven every twelve hours; but why was he hearing it now? This was odd, very odd indeed. There wasn’t the smallest reason for the existence of this reverberation at the present moment. Dev felt being dunked by someone.....but who? Darkness followed.

 ***************

Dev was in his room in his house. He could easily recognize those pale yellow curtains and the dusty and rusted USHA fan. Not to mention the poster of the Indian Cricket team with the 2011 World Cup! Wasn’t he supposed to be in his hotel room? When had he come home?

And like every other person Dev experienced those clock ticks when you come into existence in the real-life acknowledging the fact that you had just been in a dream; that mystical and wonderful feeling where you are not bound by anything. The next phase was the recollection of everything he had just experienced, embracing those visuals and accepting the fact that it was a dream. But Dev was puzzled by two things. Two things that mad the ‘dream’ even weirder.

1. He could remember the start of his dream or at least what he thought was the beginning. That had never happened with him or anyone he knew. It had always been impossible to figure out how a dream had begun in the first place.

2. Apart from the start, everything else was not a dream. It was his past, incidents from his eighteen years of existence. It was just like seeing a documentary biopic on himself. And the beginning was simply his own projection of his future.

The hotel room was a graphic he had conjured up several times in his mind in the past. According to Dev, it was his moment of success, that time when his own tree would finally flower. Bliss, just pure absolute bliss. For a brief period of time, Dev fell into the belief of having achieved that future. His gaze shifted on to the calendar. The 8^th of August. The college was starting next week. The thought of still having an unaccomplished dream gave him strength. And as the sun’s rays silently kissed his face Dev wished that his ‘dream’ would be a prophecy of tomorrow. He couldn’t help smiling. ”Someday, But not yet......not yet.”