Chapter 41
A/N: Hey there everyone! :D :D Here is the next update. :D :D
Happy Reading! :D :D
15th March, 2001:
After a gruelling round of eight subjects, we finally saw Independence Day on the 9th of March.
Sorry that I haven't spoken to you at all in so many days, but those ten days have felt like they would never come to an end. Never in my life have I ever laid eyes upon such a horrible set of exams, and I've sat through loads. And that isn't even the end of it. From what I've heard, it's the 9th Std. students who've had the torture of their lives. And now you can understand why I'm particularly ticked off.
Let's just say that if these ten days have been testing for me, then they have been no less than hell for Ranveer. He got cold feet during his first two papers and could barely complete 70% of it by even three hours and twenty minutes. Then somehow, he managed to find some inner strength and attempted 85% of his remaining papers except for Maths (his last paper for the finals), which he managed to complete in exactly three hours. I don't know whether it was with elation or exhaustion that he fainted after completing that paper.
But if he did manage to tackle his exams, he did do it at the cost of his health. Somehow, the stress that the exams brought upon him only deteriorated his breathing problem, and the matter didn't look very good. Papa said that if it didn't stabilize soon, he might have to make another round to the hospital. Right now, we have another nurse hired who manages his oxygen needs (he's been kept upon extra oxygen).
And that's not even all. If I thought that nailing the exams would bring about the positive and optimist within him, I was clearly mistaken. If anything, it's only made him retreat into a deeper shell. I've now quit using my silent understanding to bring him back to normal - I saw how brilliantly that worked. I'm now trying to make conversation with him and engage him into it. On more than two occasions, he did ask me to leave him alone, but I did not give him that option.
I hope that if I rile him up, he'll speak his mind and heart out. I'm even ready for him to yell at me and tell me rude and painful things. But the more I try, the further he keeps pushing me away. It's been nearly two months now and he still hasn't recovered from the shock, nor is he letting anyone inside his heart. The doctors remain fearful that Ranveer might have very well lapsed into clinical depression with the classic symptoms that he's been showing, but they still are urging us to give it our best efforts to get him back to normalcy.
How do they expect our efforts to work if Ranveer himself isn't letting them to work? It's as though he has made up his mind that he wants to go through it all alone; that his pain is only for him to contain. That we won't understand what he's going through; we're perfect, he's not. In any other person's case, I would have been shocked by this line of thought, but somehow, it doesn't surprise me with Ranveer. He's always been like this - harbouring everyone's pain by killing his own. But he doesn't know what to do with his pain.
Pain cannot be fought alone; it won't let you live through it.
That's why five days ago, I asked the doctors for another permission - to take him outside on the wheelchair. I've come to realize that Ranveer is suffocated by living the life of a vegetable. He needs fresh air and he needs to come into contact with nature. It's always been his best way to cope. The doctors once again seemed even more reluctant than the previous time to let us go ahead with something like this because of his breathing issues, but they did believe that most patients responded to natural treatment of that nature.
And so it has been Ranveer's treatment from the last four days. Every afternoon, I take him out to the beach. The nurse does accompany us too, but she's there just for any emergency. Otherwise, it's just the two of us. I take him for rounds along the shoreline before coming to a standstill. I let his legs fall limply from the foot-support onto the wet sand, taking a seat beside him. We simply watch the waves crash and hit the line, spitting foamy water upon our legs. I notice how he enjoys the sensation immensely, and it's the only time I see him ever smile remotely.
It isn't really even close to his smile; I'm not even sure that it's even a smile at all.
But yet, I can see how he comfortably shuts his eyes as he feels the sun bathe his skin like a baby, feeling the water crawl upon his feet that feels cool. The water seeps its way through between all of his toes and all he does is let it, because it makes him feel human. It makes him realize that even though he couldn't move, he could still feel. That he still had some life within him, beneath him; that he wasn't dead yet. He doesn't have to tell me any of this - it's the tear that escapes his eye each day at this phenomena that's my answer.
One of the reasons why I take him to the beach is because I know that he loves the sun. His eyes have lost its twinkle, but the sun brings back some of it. I don't know how the beach felt in these four days because I haven't been feeling the beach at all. I've been feeling him. I've been unconsciously trying to feel what his heart feels, what it aches to feel. And all I can do is stare at him as he stares across the forget-me-not blue sky with the first sparks of genuine self-belonging in his eyes, the dazzling sun making his pupils dilate and constrict as the light hits him with his glowing beauty.
The beach miraculously remains empty during the noon hours with barely a few people around (except for the week-ends, ofcourse), and I somehow prefer it that way. They say that God has made nature self-abundant; that every man finds his remedy in the arms of Mother Nature, who only waits to nurture and heal, to help the pain ebb away slowly until there's only tranquility. Only calm. Only you.
And through our tranquil hours at the beach comes the moment when we behold the world's greatest sight. Where begins the most mesmerizing change in the colours reigning across the sky. Where the forget-me-not blue accommodates the sunny yellow, who in turn gives birth to the bloody orange and the faded pink. As a family, they blend into an explosion of a thousand shades until they all mix into the monochrome of the yellow and the red hues. They fade away into the night sky until the cool purple comes along, tagging along the blue and the navy-blue, exploding into a dull mass of blue and purple until everything fades into black.
But the hero of the play each day is the sun, who gracefully takes his descent from the height of the day to the cool of the evening, finding to rise across another land. Through the rapid fusions of colours, the suns finds the perfect decline, its own colours suddenly complimenting the horizon until its seeps below. The day comes to an end; the war for the day is won. Tomorrow would be the rise of another one. The waters below dazzle and glitter until they've been left as a dark mass, the foam suddenly the clouds of the sea.
But with black comes the moon, and with the moon pops the stars. Those singular glitters of light teach us that there's much more beyond what we ever thought there was. It's always been there, it's always existed. What mattered was how we saw it as. For me, it means hope. For Ranveer, it means to do the impossible. And this is where our journey ends on the shoreline. We are packed up into the car and are taken back home where our paths change and so does our pains. Nothing remains the same.
The beach is the only place where Ranveer and I connect again. It is where we know that we're truly alike, for nature never treated people differently. We say nothing, we do nothing but stare ahead at the bountiful gift of God that lay ahead of us, simply letting our souls heal. Heal from the tragedy of living. Heal from the pains that it's being burdened with. He craves to get back upon his feet - to walk, to run, to fly alike the wind. I only crave to have his hand within mine; to hold him from falling; to let him envelop me into his arms in a comforting embrace. I want my friend back. I want my Ranveer back.
But I know that there is a long way to go for that. We hadn't even started upon a path of recovery. Yet somehow, things always find a way of falling back into its place. And here too, it will. How exactly do I know this, I don't know, but I just know it. Maa, Papa, Kaka, Kaki, everyone are praying day and night for Ranveer, hoping that he finds the strength to see through the night and cling on to the hope that there is to be a dawn at the end of the night; that some nights were darker than others, but their dawns were even more powerful.
Throughout the day, I can only see him struggle with his soul, his eyes now having taken up a darker shade of brown that I somehow can't distinguish from black. I can see the torment in his eyes, the pain that passes through them every time he sees a child walking, or running. I can see the anger that flicks through them when he hears people being ungrateful to life, constantly complaining.
"They don't know what they have," is all he tells me painfully whenever we overhear any such instance.
I take his hand into mine on such occasions, but he mistakes my affection for sympathy. And that is something that he's never been able to adjust with - being pitied at or even upon. He prefers retracting his hand away every time I hold it, and I admit it hurts. How can he expect me to comfort him without him letting me seek comfort from him first? He is my strength and my source of inspiration; he's the one who makes me believe in miracles.
And there will be a miracle. And if there isn't, I will be one for him.
Somehow, the nurse tells me that he doesn't have much of a breathing problem in these last four days. He's beginning to show signs of improvement again. She tells me not to be too happy about it for things like that are very uncertain. But I am certain about one thing - times were beginning to change. For no person was left with a life-long of suffering nor was he left with a life filled with happiness. And so is the case with Ranveer. All I need to make sure is that I make him see through the night.
Because this dawn would be the best of all.
Constructive criticism will be more than welcome and sorry for any typos. :D :D
Next chapter:
Epistle 35
Your reaction
Nice
Awesome
Loved
LOL
OMG
Cry
Post Your Comment