No Second Chances

TW: rape, suicide

The first time she said it, the phrase sounded so inconsequential. I mean you wouldn't, who would rather, notice or read more into a sentence meant to provide direction.

Get off the train, take the 45, count the stops to 14. Alight. Look up. You see a Shiva Temple. Walk towards it. Take a left past Turning Point. From thereon, it's a hop, skip, and jump. Third house to the right.

Right!

You remember saying right. You remember doing all she told you. You followed her instructions to a T. You remember the way her lips, red thick ones, curved into the edges, formed circular dimples on each cheek as she shot an arm and pulled you past the half opened door. You also remember how her hands wrapped around you as she clung on to you, the throb in her chest sending tingling shivering delights up your gym toned torso. And you, thereafter for years to come, would remember every single moment, every single breath that you exhaled and inhaled in her presence as well as absence. Every single nano moment since the time you met her to the time you invited yourself into her house, her home, her life, and right upto the year, month, day, hour, minute, second and nano moment when she extricated herself from the shackling tentacles of a rotten, heartless, godforsaken world, a world you had promised her to turn around, to make beautiful, to make it worth living. In you, she sought her Turning Point; you- she said, kept on retiterating- was her Turning Point.

And then, eons later, when you try to forget it all, you remember her all the more.

Yet, this time the remembrances aren't sweet. Instead, they are tainted with the deeds and misdeeds of what she feels should have happened and not, of what you feel should have been done and not.

And while your tortured soul rages through sultry summers, waning winters, and agonising autumns and searing springs, you realise it's a lifetime of sorrow that's sped by- been sliced through and not over as yet. It's only the precursor to another lifetime of deep, bone shearing, soul seeping, agony filled days and nights, an endless array of pain and suffering, the kind only meted out to the lowliest of the low lives that wander around this 'oh so over aged world'- an unhinged flotilla of crushed dreams.

It is only then it rams your brain_when she mentioned Turning Point she was not merely giving the road to her place, was also laying out the metaphysical path that would be your fate once your mind had formed and firmed. Had thought to do the unthinkable. To cross the Rubicon and fall in love with someone who society had ordained to be someone else's.

*

'Why do you love me so much', you asked early on in the relationship. She'd half sat up, thrown her arms around you. Then, in a voice dipped in hope, her eyes carrying a far away expression, answered, " 'b'coz you love me and nobody's done so".

You noticed her lips quivered when she said this, the little fingers curling up and disappearing into the folds of her tiny palm. Her hands clasped a wee bit more tightly around your bare back soon after. And that's how she held on to you for a long long time. You opened your mouth to say something but she shushed you with her lips, and that's how you too stayed- she sholding on to you like a child would her mother while soft velvety fingers built sky high castles on your bare back.

*

'You know what, before you I had hated men.'

It was close to Cindrella hour, and the sea waves had died out. They had lived through the day's madness, had their fair share of playing crests and troughs, even gotten bored of the mundaneity of rushing back and forth to make love to the rocky shores.

"Why do you say so?," you'd asked.

She didn't proffer an answer right away. But you got one a month later. The two of you had just made love. And as was her wont, she had clung on to you, slid her long legs under yours, and laid one hand on your chest.

"Men are beasts. All they want is sex."

You'd broken into a smile, looked down your chin, and cheekily replied, "So, that makes me one."

She pretended to have unheard it. Instead, simply smiled that curve that formed small circular pools on either ends of her cheek.

Intuitively, you knew she was about to drop a bomb. The appearance of those dimples were a foreboding.

The next few words confirmed your worst fears.

"My father raped me as a child!

The words were a hammer blow on your skull. For a moment you didn't know how to react. Your mind began to swirl, thoughts- tortuous and torturous- skidded back and forth. Stupefyingly, you stared at her, at the roof above, watching the fan blades, hearing their metronomic whirr as they made concentric rounds of the hotel room.

After what seemd an eternity, all you heard yourself saying was, "Oh my god...how...how is that possible...I... I am...I'm so...so sorry, my love".

She sat upright, and this time, her smile shone like a million stars, volleyed, "But you're different. You love me, don't you?"

She didn't affect an interrogative tone she had said that. It had the full authority of an affirmation, sanguine words springing from the mouth of someone who believed nee breathed the truth, the truth that you were different.

That you indeed were the polar opposite of the man who had breathed life into her. Also, you were different from the other man with whom she had walked seven times around the sacred fire before the priest had pronounced them as husband and wife. That you were, and this she very strongly believed so, was the man who would extricate her from the hell hole of a sham marriage that she found herself trapped into. That you truly were the Turning Point she'd had longed for, craved all her bitter life for.

And when she, in between sobs, had let out that 'he rapes me every single night', you knew come what may, you will have to restore her faith in humanity.

It was then the words slipped out of your mouth: Be prepared! Tomorrow, we will run away and make a new life.

It was the last you spoke to her, it was the last she spoke to you..

What came thereafter came via a text message.

Startled by the blinking blue, you had stabbed your phone to life.

It was her best friend.

"She's gone. Hanged herself in her room".

You remember losing it. You remember rushing out- crying, howling, shouting, screaming...a crazed soul, a man who was seeeing the end of the world.

You remember doing all that you'd been doing all the time.

Got off the train, took the 45, counted the stops to 14. Alighted...Shiva Temple...a left past Turning Point. From thereon, it's a hop, skip, and jump. Third house to the right.

Right!

No- WRONG!

There was no half opened door.

The door to life had been permanently slammed shut.

The tomorrow you had dreamt for her, for you, for both, was never to come. Instead, what you were left with was a morrow of never ending sorrow, of endless tears, and a soul searing question that begged for an answer: why did she lose hope in men, in me?" 

Guess, her Turning Point came long before she'd met you; yours after she'd left you.