“Redemption of the Playboy”

“Redemption of the Playboy”

It’s the story of a man told by his rival. The narrator is 74 yrs old and the story dates back to their hay days. The story is in his words, as follows.

“He used to be my best friend. We grew up together in the murky land having nothing in our pockets but only dreams in our eyes. I wished to walk but he wanted to fly. It has always been difficult for me to sync feet with him and catch his pace. I had to force myself to run to catch him and give him the piece of my mind but he never listened to me, not then and not ever.

Our boyhood was fun even though we didn’t have two nickels to rub together, adolescence came up a hard but who was afraid to work hard. We shuttled studies with myriad work routine to burn candles at homes. It was a sheer luck or suddenly god remembered us that we were rich when we celebrate our twenty fifth birthday.

Our small scale business took off a good flight and the currency started to fall from the roof top. We were not same bloodline but we were more than brothers in arms. We did everything together even got married too on same date.

Through money brought stability in our life but with it, shadowed the vices, waiting in dark, lurking in the corner, for an unguarded moment of our defence to mutate itself into multiple hooded snake. I could sense it but my friend was blinded with speed. I told him life is the present and we got to preserve it. One is liable only to take calculative risks.

“You make life sound like Retirement plan”. He used to always say that. His roller coaster ride was always mayday warning for us and like fire fighters respond to a fire alarm, I have to always be ready with a backup plan. Pulling him out of the pit, had become my routine job, whether it was to drive him back home when his senses were Tequila ridden, paying off his debts  after he lose big in gambling , covering up for him in front of his wife when he was busy with his mistresses. From wiping his vomiting to hiding away his dirty linen, I did everything. His wife left him but I stayed little longer.

But when the water was hell high and beyond my human limits to drain, my patience finally gave up. We parted ways, life, business and everything material and immaterial. But in deepest corner of my chest, my heart still beat for him. I kept a close tab on him. He was indifferent, drowned in debauchery and all illicit pleasures known to mankind. He just wanted his life to be that way.

He married again. I was invited and I went too. Again tried to put wisdom in his ironclad head but futile, instead got embarrassed and insulted in front of a big gathering by his wasted self. That was the last straw. Our friendship broke. We turned into rivals.

It gave him a reason to get back to his work and earn more money though it was just to prove me wrong. He was sweating again. My ego too didn’t let him win the race. Our clashes became public and sometimes made headlines in local magazines. We were so head on.

But even in those bullying time, he never crossed boundaries. He wanted a competition but not to harm me in any way or other. When people approached him taking advantage of our enmity, he punched their faces right off. It was then I realised, he wasn’t indifferent. But it was too late to sew back all hanging threads.

It was for this reason probably his second marriage ran the track for 10 years, contrast to his previous one year matrimony. He had two children, pretty much grey hairs and a little pot belly. But he slipped on and off in his playboy avatar even while condescending horns with me. As a result his second marriage too doomed. A large share of his finances went in divorce settlement. But he was born to not worry at all with a devil may care attitude. He never cared if he lost everything; at least he lived his life according to his rules.

The love knocked his door again for the third time. But this was something different with him. The feeling was absolutely unexpected and a new. He wants to change for a change. He wanted to redeem himself.

He was getting sober, exercising, and sleeping at tine. The woman he was dating for past one year was turning him to a man, the one which I always wanted for him to be. It was good and I was happy for him.

He proposed her. She said yes. A playboy who was on the verge for complete redemption was dead after two days of proposing the girl, in whom he found his eternal love. In his entire life he challenged fate, destiny and his luck but finally providence had a last laugh.

Heart attack, died in the ambulance!!

I wasn't surprise when he died at age of forty five but I was sad, very sad. Even now, when we didn't see eye to eye, his departure took away a large piece of me.

I wish now, that if I had stayed little longer with him, if I would have tried little more harder to change him, if I would have geared more patience to understand him, we would have lived like a big happy family, but now, as the sand skips out of my fingers, I am left with ‘if only’!!

I miss the man, who once used to be my friend and once used to be my sworn enemy. The man I respected hated and envied, but the only man that I ever loved.”