22^nd April 2009….

Are you sure, you will be going for this?

Perhaps this will be against the life you have lived so far, the boy who did everything and tried to take control and always succeeded in the end. You are not born to live there, life is here and it will make place for you like it has always did. As there is always a window seat reserved for you no matter how many jitters are there but there is always a place for you.

Okay, I am saying please don’t go. Things will be the same may not be better but not worse than this, I can assure.

We all will be together, once again. [We= Kul, Rumi, Nirdosh, Shelja and Aratrika.]

I appreciate your words Nirdosh, but life and me, we are not two very amicable personalities meant to live together. Rather it’s much like a couple going through a forever on and off relationship. We will make our peace someday and I don’t know from where this is coming from, via my lips- I am sorry, sorry for always being predominant and the one who always wanted to take the driver seat from you. Nirdosh you have been a true friend, true friend as I can define, he has seen the worst of me (as there are no best or even good qualities residing in me) and still he never left me. He has been my shadow.

Maybe this is because of my only good karma that included educating the children of our society’s watchman as I happily pay their annual fees and hopefully I always will.

Present day –

“There is an emergency here, please call the ambulance…. Rush to the hospital and make preparations, we have no time; the blood loss is significant… Who told you people to go there stepping out of your designated places. One wrong footstep and a blast from the grenade and they have the upper hand. Perhaps the only thing in our favor was that nobody was caught by them. Rush fast, hurry up and save as many as you can. For humanity please take your best work out. I am saying all this because this regiment has been something to me. These boys have given everything they had and they never ever ran away from fear and never let their love for life win over their passion for duty and humanity….”

The tradition says, “The words will always tell the truth. A hand written piece of paper will never solve the purpose of a lie, neither will defend a lie and it will always serve the truth, no matter how loud the lie may appear. It will help the future to be brighter than ever it was.”

“In left pocket of the shirt there is a letter that is supposed to be delivered to the person, the name of the person written on back side of the letter. The person serving as the postman in this scenario is indeed the one that will turn to be messenger from God. Make sure these letters reach the places where they are meant to.” Colonel said and left. There was a sense of worry on his face that we never saw before in our whole career at the military dispensaries.

The world is a big place, big in sense that we don’t know every living being in person. We only know a few and time till we are alive, out of those few, only some (three or five) go with us till that very end. And I was assured, sitting back relaxed, time when I stepped in third and final year of my college, that I have got my quota of people who will be at my funeral reading their best nested experiences with me. (Yes, I am giving invites for my funeral.

It doesn’t mean that I am fed up of living. I love my life but I’m also a believer in the fact that nothing lasts forever). The so called circle of life indeed has no end. It just grows and grows but its radius tends to shrink exponentially.

My name is Kul. And I am an officer in Indian army posted in Kargil, 60 km drive from town Drass and the way I landed here, is something worth reading.

But let’s talk about Rumi, yes Rumi. I am a straight person and I loved a girl (love girls {few years ago}). We had a smooth run, life appeared to be running like well oiled machinery without any hassles but that was the place where I left the main screw loosely tightened and rest is my future.

Rumi was not the best girl in college; she was neither the hottest nor the tom boy nor anyone’s fantasy. Just a girl that was always meant to be a person whose lap served as a place where one could sleep endlessly, who would take away all your worries and help in fulfilling your dreams while you were asleep. And I was lucky to have her.

According to Nirdosh (don’t go on name, he is the best culprit in our group}, I had a home without roof, I had a kitchen without the food, I had a car without keys but I had a life with Rumi, that Rumi made for me. And I didn’t gave it away but I think that life loved her more than me, so she located herself at the place where she was needed the most.

Like she always did and said, “We always belong to the place where we are needed the most, not the places where we want to be, choice is ours but it’s God’s decision.”

College is a phase in life, where we are always trying to define life when life is playing at its very best; making silly grammatical (relationship) mistakes and the end, result is always the same.

I wish I had concentrated a little bit more so I would’ve scored well, i.e., some more good people with all the good ones around. But there in The Hindu, every night there was something new in store and there was not a single day when sleep was sleeping while we were awake. Alas for most of the days we rushed to the lecture halls without even rinsing and baths were an occasional taste of water to us.

Love just happens; yes it just occurs and goes just like it came. And for the modern urban India, love is the third phase of any relationship. Perhaps I have learnt this only after going through one.

It started with the filthy or cunning or apt conversation and went along like some healthy back to back answering and cruised like an SUV running on full oil tank and it took a halt in the woods where we shared the body heat and in few months life came back to same- we used to know each other, we did knew each other but never wanted to know each other.

To be continued!!!!

This is a Short Story title “Vulnerable, not Extinct” divided in few chapters by Kushal Wadhwani. Next chapter will be published on the following weekend.