Stranger

Music from the CD player is running loudly in the background. Amit is sitting on a bean bag with his coffee mug in hand. He is looking at nowhere with thoughts running in his mind, of which he has got no control. The mug has been in his hand for the last 45 minutes and the coffee is untouched. The television is playing a football game with the sound turned off. He has not even taken off his socks. The sudden vibration of his cell phone in his trouser pocket brings him back to reality. He has got a tear in his eye.

            Three years earlier, Amit was a happy go lucky guy with a smile always on his lips. He had a thousand friends who all liked him as he always brought a smile to them. He was always surrounded by girls who used to fawn over him. He liked that. He used to be called a ‘play-boy’ in college. He was living up to the name now. Every girl wanted to go out with him. Every girl wanted to hold his hands. Every girl wanted to watch him talk and smile at the same time. He could do that. And once he started talking, he could never stop. He could not remember the last time he cried for anything. Tears out his eyes meant he was laughing hard. At 25, he was the youngest person to lead a team. So he enjoyed life like anything. For him, life was going to get much better.

            It was his friend Mike calling him. Mike was saying “Dude, we have a got an important game just round the corner. You have not attended practice for a long time now. I am picking you up tomorrow morning at 6.00 for the session. Get ready.” “No Mike, I don’t think I can play anymore. You guys carry on. I shall come and watch the match”, replied Amit. “That’s what you said the last time also. But you never come. Take a break dude. You are just spoiling your mind out here.” “Nothing is wrong with me alright. Stop treating me like this. I hate it when you guys say that”, shouted Amit and hung up the phone. He felt bad immediately. Mike was just trying to help. He was trying to help save Amit from the stranger that he had become.

‘Oh no, I am getting late for the meeting’, thought Amit, as he ran with hands full of papers and files. He reached the conference room, 10 minutes late. He was supposed to be conducting a presentation on some project that he was heading. There were quite a few people in the conference room. He scanned them and found a very pretty girl sitting in the corner. ‘Oh my God! She is very cute. She must be the new girl in the quality team’, he thought as he started his slideshow.

The presentation went badly. His project was rejected from the review. He was pretty disappointed with his effort. ‘All my hard work gone down the drain!’, he thought as he cleared up his papers and left for the door. “Hi, I am Sunitha”, said a voice from behind him. Thus started a friendship, which he thought was going to last a life time.

He was awakened from his dreamless sleep by the cell-phone. It was his mom. He collected himself, forcefully put a smile on his face and picked up the call. He listened to his mom most of the time, and just saying “Hmm”, “Ok”, “will do” in between. His mom knew something was wrong, but her questions always went unanswered or were pushed aside. She did not like that at all. Now she was starting to think about getting him married.

“Me, getting married? Ha-ha. No way”, Amit said. “I have a lot to do before I tie myself down”.

“Like what?”, asked Sunitha.

“I have to …. You know, do a lot of stuff”.

“That’s what I asked. Like what?”

“You ask too much questions. Do I ask so many questions to you?”

“You seldom talk”.

This was something new. Amit was never a person to shy away from conversations. But with Sunitha, he actually felt a little shy. He was spending way too much time with her. It was not like himself. ‘This girl has changed me. I must not let it happen’, thought Amit, helplessly.

There was a time when nothing went past his mind. He was very observant and nothing ever missed his attention. Now he was finding it difficult to even concentrate on something as trivial as drink coffee from a cup. His coffee had cooled down to a point where it starts to become bitter. He still drank it. He hated himself being this way. But there was no other way he could be. He just could not change himself. He felt like screaming on the top of his lungs whenever he saw himself in the mirror. “Why did you leave me? Take back these tears. Take back all the sorrow that you have given me. Give back my happy days. Give back my smile”, he spoke out loud without realizing it.

He waited a long time for her. ‘Damn, I have never waited for anyone in my life before. Why am I doing this?’, he thought to himself. He got the answer in just a couple of seconds. It was for that sweet smile. The smile that could melt a stone was directed at him. ‘I wish I could see that forever’, he thought.

“Hi, Sunitha.”

“Hi, waiting for a long time?”

“No, I just came here”, he lied. He never lied. ‘What am I doing?’

“I am hungry. Shall we go out to eat?”

“Sure.”

The clock struck 6 in the morning. He was still on the bean bag. His eyes were bloodshot. He had not slept properly for about 2 weeks now. He would go without sleep for about 4 days and the next day he would sleep like a dead man. He lost the ability to dream. If he did dream, it would be about that fateful day.

Those eyes! Those beautiful deep blue eyes! That was something he really liked about her. He was dreaming of those eyes when the dreaded call came. It was from an unknown number. He thought twice about picking up the call.

“Amit?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“You wouldn’t know me. I am Sunitha’s room-mate, Anjali.”

“Yeah Anjali, tell me what’s up?”

He checked his watch. It was 3.05 am. ‘This is odd. What would she want at this time?’

“Sunitha has not reached home. I was just checking with you if she is still in office.”

“No, she left earlier than usual today. She wanted to go somewhere, or that’s what she told me.”

“She has not reached home and I am worried. Could you please do something?”

Panic-stricken, Amit got dressed in a few minutes and went out of his house. She was not even picking up his calls. He was worried.

He was riding his bike, when he got a call. It was Sunitha. ‘Thank God, she is ok.’ He picked up the call via his headphones.

“Where the hell were you, Sunitha?”

“Hello”, said a guy’s voice. He was taken aback.

“Yes”

“I found this mobile in Sunitha’s purse. This is Dr Moorthy. Sunitha has met with an accident. She kept saying your name, so I took her mobile and called you. Could you come to Apollo Hospitals immediately?”

Amit felt he had been hit on the head with a hammer, he suddenly had this intense pain in the back of his head. He stopped his bike, took a few deep breaths and rode to the hospital. He was the first person who was informed. He messaged Anjali and asked her to call Sunitha’s parents. He just asked the receptionist for Dr Moorthy and went directly to meet him. The doctor was telling him what happened, but all he could hear was a constant ringing in his ears. He then asked if he could see Sunitha. When he went to see her, he got the shock of his life.

He was in his bathroom taking a shower getting ready to go to work. He saw his razor which he could not remember using in a long time. His mind went back to those days when he had contemplated suicide. He still had the scars on his wrists as reminders. ’Should I try again?’

She was lying in the dark. The only light coming off the room was from a green monitor to the side of the bed. In that eerie glow, he could see that her face was swollen. She had dark marks on her face and there were bandages on her head. Her injuries were contained in her head and although the rest of the body was scratch less, she was paralysed due her head injuries. The doctor had said she was under an induced coma to protect her brain but she had very little chance of survival.

Amit was heart-broken. Lying on the table next to the bed were her few belongings, her backpack, her purse and some jewellery. He just sat next to her for some time. Then he opened her bag and started looking through it for some work contact information. He then notice her diary and subconsciously picked it up and went through it. She had treasured the diary, never even letting him take a peek at it. It had photos, some sketches and a lot of entries. He could not control tears streaming down his face, looking through her diary. In it she had expressed her feelings towards him. The words she was never able to express to him directly were in her diary. It was then he lost the will to live.

He was lying in his bathroom floor and there was blood all around him. He felt he didn’t have any more in his body. He felt good and weightless after a very long time. He could feel the throbbing in his wrists, but he didn’t care. He could feel darkness surrounding him, but he didn’t care. He could hear his mobile beeping in the next room, but he didn’t care. ’I am coming…’, he thought with a smile on his face. All he could see now were those beautiful deep blue eyes….