Between Shadow And Soul

He looked at her eyes. They looked back at him. She was smiling. He could feel a sudden calm, an unrestrained happiness somewhere deep inside and seeping deeper still with every second. She had said yes. He could smell the bad coffee and fried patty from the cafeteria kitchen mixed with her strange flowery perfume. He could hear the noise from the crowd around him and her soft smile and his own. Every second went like an hour, but still time seemed in a hurry. He lifted his trembling hands, reached out to her face...

But he couldn’t reach her. As much as he tried, as much force as he put into it, she was always just beyond reach, something pinning him down, keeping him away. He tried and he tried, sweat beading down his face from the effort, but now he’s pushed back, back until finally he falls down an abyss.

He wakes up. The nightmares come, vivid as ever, every detail lucid, making him live out that day again and again. She was just a memory now, but still one that tormented him daily. The perfect moment being the perfect nightmare, every day a realisation of what he does not have, every day a dirge of what could have been.

He gets up, puts on a jacket, puts on his slippers, takes the scooty keys from the rack, leaves home till morning, until it was time again to go to work. He couldn’t sleep anymore. He wouldn’t. But he needed coffee and noise to drown out the sleep and the restlessness. He had learnt to live with the pain until it was just a numb buzzing in the background, like an irritating fly he could not kill or shoo away. The restlessness was a different matter. It nagged and it nagged until he could not sit still, or do any one thing for any time. It always felt like a train leaving without him, like time were flowing away just fast enough for him not to catch up. Like he had reached out for her face with his trembling hands.

He parks the scooty just beside the cafe entrance. It was one of those places that were open all night to cater to midnight shift IT employees, restless college students and sometimes even high class pimps finalising the details with potential clients, sometimes with the merchandise in tow. He sits at an empty lonely corner table, perhaps not the most extravagant but certainly their most regular customer. He’s served coffee within minutes, the waiter knowing what to bring, no questions asked, no small talk. He takes a whiff of the strong bitter-sweet black liquid in his cup, takes a sip, sits back and closes his eyes, listening to the noise of the cafe that never made any sense.

He looked at her eyes. She looked back at him. She smiled, he never wanted to look away, the happiness was so complete, so much a part of him. She had said yes. He felt the smooth finish of the table against his palm. He saw the colour of her t-shirt, so perfectly green, saw the small black marks on her face that she tried to hide with make-up. They were beautiful, he wanted her to know that. He gathers up the courage, lifts his hand and reaches out to her face...

He is startled awake by the nightmare, immediately thankful that he hadn’t cried out. Sweating profusely even in the late night chill, even feeling a tear run down his left cheek. He was annoyed at himself for falling asleep, but he was so tired. Almost no one had taken notice except the waiter, who gave him a strange look and then left to get him more coffee, even stronger this time. It happened rarely, but wasn’t the first time he’d fallen asleep and suddenly leapt awake.

He drinks the second cup of coffee in one gulp, orders another one with a glance. Tragedies, poets and movies would have you believe alcohol and other intoxicants make you forget, make the pain go away. They don’t, they magnify the pain. And even when they bring numbness, it is momentary, just a brief lull. When the pain returns, it feels worse than it was before. The trick to surviving is getting used to it, making the pain a part of life, a dull noise. That’s why he preferred coffee, coffee kept him awake, it kept him aware. It did not create illusions. More importantly, it did not lead him to nightmares.

And that is what he did. He survived. From one day to the next. He drinks the third cup, leaves money on the table, glances at the waiter to let him know he was done for now. The air is cold in the open, he’s shivering before he reaches his parked scooty. Zipping up his jacket as high as it would go, he takes the longer, more crowded, and hence warmer, road back home. The air, though still cool, did not prick him like needles, conditioned as it was by the buildings, flyovers and numerous other concrete behemoths under construction. He could feel it making his hair fly back, cool against his ears, a soothing buzz.

He looked at her eyes. They looked back at him. Her smile lit them up, a few milliseconds after they lit up what could only be categorised as his soul. She had said yes. He could feel himself smiling too, like an idiot perhaps. He didn’t care. That constant nervousness, that constant feeling of euphoria mixed with doom had been put aside for now by relief. She thought him good enough, even though he knew he never would. He would take every inch she gave and turn it into a mile, every little gesture of hers would be his epic love ballad. He felt his own determination and saw her lowering her gaze a little, the gesture he was waiting for. He needed to make her look at his eyes again. His hands reach out to her face...

He’s heading straight for the divider between a flyover and the road going below it. He makes a sharp left to avoid crashing into it. His rear tire skids from the stress the turn puts on it, making his front tire wobble and he loses control, while a truck comes in on his blindside. He watches in great detail the last two seconds before the truck mauls him over. He sees the face of the driver, a slightly late reaction of horror. He was probably drunk or fell asleep at the wheel like he did. He notices the blank empty stretch of road just two feet away where he’d have been safe. He notices the divider on the other side, and realises crashing into it would only have caused minor injuries. He looks at the truck’s windscreen, ‘God Loves You’ and ‘Jesus Our Saviour’, written in a flowing gothic script. He sees the skid marks his rear tire made on the road, sees that the visor in his scooty has a minuscule chip of glass missing, something he had never noticed before. He reads the numberplate, ‘KL03AC1425’. He looks at the headlights, blinding.

The pain came gradually. He had a thought that he should feel scared, but all he felt was a slight anger and a great disappointment. He figured in a less fatal situation, he would be feeling bemused by his own foolishness. This was a stupid and petty way to die after all the hours, days, years he had spent surviving. Among all the other regrets that he already had, he added one more in his last moments, that he could not survive another day. And then all thoughts were washed away by the pain. It drowned him.

He looked at her eyes. She looked back at him. She smiled and there was nothing else other than that in the world. She had said yes. He felt her there, just a foot away, but for the first time he felt fear. Fear that she would be gone the minute he tried to touch her, or talk to her, or in any way change this moment they were in. Fear that this was just a nightmare that would come to him every day, a nightmare that he lived every second of his life. He wanted to be there, static, unmoving for the rest of his life. But he couldn’t. She was just there. He raises his hands, fear and apprehension flowing through his arteries, reaches out to her face...

He feels her face on his palm.