“So in the end you try to think of someone else you're mad at, and the unavoidable answer pops into your little warped brain: everyone.”
- Ellen Hopkins
I used to have this friend (you will soon realize why the 'used to' usage here) who thought ill of almost everyone.
Except himself that is, obviously. He was always put himself in high regard and always thought he was right in doing so.
He was the most cynical, pessimistic, illogical soul probably in all of the worlds that all of the faiths that mankind has been yet been able to invent. You show him the picture of that firefighter who leapt into a burning building and saved a 10 year old girl, and he will point out how and where the guy's hands are in the poor semi-unconscious child's body and call him a pervert. You show him the story of a rich billionaire who has just started out another multi-million dollar campaign to eradicate polio in Africa; he will show you another article where this same techie billionaire had syphoned off billions from unsuspecting customers by forcing them to buy his products. You tell him about the 10th standard girl next door whose study room light was on all night, he will tell you about the time that he saw her riding on the backseat of a bike with some guy who looked to be of her own age.
You tell him just about anything that had for some extend a flimsy bit of positivity in it. This prick could come up with something to bring you back down and rub something completely different onto your sunny-eyed face proving to you that the world is simply not worth a single sliver of silver lining no matter what.
Well. That was until he happened to fall in love.
You see, and this is just observations so far in my still young experience with the world around me, people who move around on this planet with a globe of depressing horse crap riding on their shoulders have this common bond. They all have been so darn busy hating and puking on everything good that they have, for most part, missed out on the single most awesomely posiitve feeling that a human being can ever have - love.
Sure he had the love of the parents, and siblings, and (even though just a handful) friends. He never really had a single shimmer of a la amour in all of his gloomy death-am-I existence on this planet. That's wherein the heroine of this glorious love story comes in - Shamina.
As the obviously name suggests, Shamina is a muslim. And our ice-for-heart hero is born in an orthodox brahmin family. Call it opposite attract or whatever other cliche that you may like. It happened.
How, when and where; MORE importantly, why it sparked off nobody knows. But before the half of the second year of college was done with, he was already texting and speaking with some girl all night. He had even started to appreciate the lame jokes that some of my classmate's used to crack to survive the boredom of the classrooms; he even sometimes did the extra effort to smile/pretend to find them mildly amusing.
I remember this one episode when we are just hanging out in the cafeteria, bunking a lecture obviously, wherein we had somehow started teasing him over this mystery girl that he was almost dating. That was the first time any of us had ever seen him blush, ever!
Then came that fateful December.
We usually had the first semester exams by the beginning of January so most of us got atleast a fortnight during the last month of the year to prepare of the upcoming examinations. Almost all of us left for home, obviously if we stayed back in campus there was no way there would be anything remotely like studying done.
He, for the first time since we had known him, did not leave for home. We all assumed, and assumed right as we came to know later, that he was probably going to use this vacation to spend with his 'girl'.
What happened we are not still very sure. But according to one of my classmate's account, a local, he was seen with a girl quite often over the couple of weeks. Sometimes the girl wore a hijab and at sometimes not, that was what had put them in spotlight. There weren't that many muslim girls in the college during our time. And definitely not anybody that wore a hijab.
So obviously, this local friend of ours got mighty curious. He got one of his pals who lived opposite to the building where the guy had rented a room. He got regular updates whenever the 'Romeo' left and came back to his room.
One day, he got to know that the girl and Mr. Romeo was seen hanging out in a juice parlor close to our college campus. He by now had discovered that this girl was a junior in another college in the vicinity that had nothing to with engineering which still has proved us useless to know as to how these love birds had met. He got on his motorcycle and parked himself close to the juice parlor so that he can just have a looksee at these love birds in action.
Well he was mighty disappointed. These love birds were probably the most boring of this specific aerial specie he had every witnessed. They came, shook hands, took a seat, ordered something, and just sat there looking here and there occasionally looking at each other smiling and mumbling some stuff and then go silent again. They looked like some old married couple who have by now spoken everything that they had to speak of and by now didn't have a single novel topic to discuss between them. But Shamina's face sure got a cute blushing red color when our Romeo slyly got his hands on hers while passing on the glasses.
Undoubtedly, he got bored pretty soon and had started to think of getting out of there. That's exactly when he saw some guys get out of a van right in front of the juice parlor. From his vantage point he didn't really have clear view of the people who got out of the van and were rushing towards the couple. But he sure could see the reaction on the Shamina's face. It was pure horror.
Apparently, these men were his elder brother and his goons/friends who have also been stalking/keeping tabs on Shamina and her 'lover' for the past few days. And now that they have seen enough, have come to set some scores. The oldest of them, the local assumed to be her brother, pulled her from her seat and almost dragged her to the van and pushed her in locked the door; while his friends by now had already circled around Romeo and were pushing him around.
This was all getting very exciting to my 'true-friend-at-heart' classmate, who was happy being at the sidelines watching his classmate getting thrashed than go help him in any way he can. (We still haven't forgiven him for his negligence.)
It didn't last too long, thankfully. This was a very public area, where loads of our college guys hang around, so they didn't want to start something that they couldn't get out of with all their limbs intact. But they did manage to put some good punches on him while it lasted. They were left just as fast they had arrived, leaving him writhing with pain on the tiled floor holding his abdomen. Some angelic soul amongst the onlookers helped him hail an auto rickshaw, get into it and directed the driver to get him to a hospital nearby. The crowd dispersed soon, a few stayed back to hear the parlor owners overly fabricated account of the fight, which he dished out with extra enthusiasm as it also had gained him a few more customers than usual. Excitements like these were always good for business.
Our friend was fine though. A minor internal rupture, but nothing serious. He had a massive swelling just over his right eye were he had hit the floor. He was out of the clinic in a couple of hours itself.
We all were largely unaware to all this when we started returning to our rented apartments over the next couple of days. We noticed that he was sulking around again, always had an expression on his face that suggested that everybody around him suddenly seemed to smell of some new exotic unpleasant form of dung. Plus there was this huge sore spot on his forehead that he didn't want to talk of no matter how much we persisted.
So we stopped asking about it after a couple of dozen times, thinking he would himself tell it to us when he felt like talking about it.
He didn't. Not then. Nor ever since.
We never really met him much since that semester examination. He rarely came to college. His attendance and grades were down the drains. He failed in almost all the papers that year. Dropped out of college and went to work for his father in their family's pickle business.
Now imagine the worst pessimistic, cynical soul on this planet that you possibly can.
Add all this to the equation.
And just for effect, add in 'true-first-love' heartbreak to the mix.
What do you get?
Yep, you get pure genius of macabre. Of dark, gloom, death-cannot-come-sooner, goth-ain't-got-half-of-me, pure depressing soul.
So most people that knew him before have largely been avoid his company ever since. His parents had started to find help for him, and he seemed to be coping well with his issues when we last heard of him before we got graduated.
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Recently, added him back to my facebook account.
He still works in his pickle factory. But now as manager, and has been able to expand the business beyond just his city limits and has been able to make much more wealth with it than his father did before he came aboard.
He also got married to a nice girl from him hometown, and now they are expecting their first child by the end of August this year.
Shucks. Who would have thought?
Nobody ever is what they seem to be. Nor what the world drives them into becoming.
No matter how much they might attempt throw you off the cliff. It is your foot that has to leave the ground for you to fall.
You can either give in, or just move aside and let them dive into the abyss trying to push you into it.
And stand back to look at them gawk back at you in utter surprise.
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