“The Incomplete Story of the Playboy”

           “The Incomplete Story of the Playboy”

“We are honoured to have you sir. You are the great source of inspiration for all of us and it’s my pleasure to present you with the ‘Best Man Of His Trade’ trophy. You have been winning it for past five years now, so it doesn’t come as surprise for any of us because you surely are the best man,” said the anchor. The entire auditorium echoed in the thundering applause.

The fragile lithe of an aging man, probably seventy five years old slowly baby stepped his way to the stage to take the honour bestowed on him. He was peaceful in his wrinkled phizog. He had neither happiness painting his cheeks nor any excitement pumping under his skin. He was just peaceful as if things like this didn’t matter anymore. Even though he was the bigwig in the transport industry with an annual turnover in billions he walked with grounded pace. The anchor utilized the time he covered from his seat to the stage in singing the poses of his praises, as he continued speaking, “This man started from a very modest and humble beginning to reach the great heights where he stands today. A lot of time we have heard his success story and our heart have swelled with great pride. You have been the light house for the younger generation. But today sir, I would like to ask you something different. Do you have any regrets in life, something you wanted to do but you couldn’t, something of that sought?”

“Yes,” came the straight forward answer.

“In that case we would like to know....”

“Then I have to tell you the story....” said the seventy five year old man.

“We would be delighted to hear it from you sir.....” and then the anchor gave him the entire dais to speak up his mind. Even with that age he had the girt in his voice that within seconds he took everybody under his spell and started to tell his life’s tale.......

“Once upon a time 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. We both were born in utter poverty and that happened to thread our eternal bonds with each other.

As a kid, all I wished was to walk the humble ground but he wanted to fly in the unknown sky. It had 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 when I did I used to give him a 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 routines to have a modest earnings to cover up the basic needs for survival.

It was his brain and my hard work that we started a small scale business of transporters. We used to take contracts to transports edible items, vegetables and other goods to the city. We were very young, just running in our nineteenth year we stepped into the business economy. His expertise in words and mine in numbers made us the lethal combination and in no time we were the young entrepreneurs in the transportation market, the invincible kings of their trade. It was sheer luck or suddenly God remembered our presence on the planet, that we were rich when we celebrated our twenty fifth birthday together.

Our small scale business took off a good flight and the currency started to fall from the roof top. At first we used to hire the vehicles for our work disposal but later we had those tins lined up in our front yard. Everything started to fall in its place. We had all those material things from an above average house to more than quintessential luxuries for us. The enmities we just dreamed about, while sleeping on our jute cots ten years back.

We were not from the same bloodline but we were surely brothers from two mothers. We did everything together even got married on same date, same venue and same time. Through the money brought stability in our life but along with it entered the vices of power, vanity and arrogance, waiting in dark, lurking in the corner, for an unguarded moment of our defences to mutate itself into a 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 a 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 had to always be ready with tactile skills to deal with it. 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 lost 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. Enthral, enticed and enchanted by the power of currencies in his bank accounts, he thought himself to be the crowned king of the world, the personified almighty. I tried to talk him out of his created heaven but he was drowning in the illusion of self pride, he didn’t give my words any heed. He knew God had written his luck with the golden pen and he lived in the delusion that the rising sun of his amazing life would never ever face the dusk.

He was still not ready to listen and I was at the end of my rope. 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, drenched 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 I tried to put wisdom in his ironclad head but it was futile, instead I got embarrassed and insulted in front of a big gathering by his wasted self. He claimed that my existence depended entirely on him. He compared me to a parasite. At first I tried to ignore whatever he said but later my ego started to puff me up. I couldn’t withstand his raw scalding words though I knew it was just his roofie self speaking. In the morning he would call me to apologize. I wish I would have stayed calm with that understanding but I didn’t. A little haul over the coals transformed into ugly fire and burned what was left of our friendship. That was the last straw. We turned into rivals and declared a war against each other.

It gave him a reason to get back to his work and earn more money than me, an endeavour of his esteemed ego to prove me small and worthless. He was sweating again day and night, the phenomenon which was perishing out of his basic physiology. My id too didn’t let him win the race. I fought him tooth and nail. At the end of the year our profit charts were almost the same but still no one out of us wanted to quit the race and enjoy life in peace. Our clashes became public and sometimes made headlines in local magazines. We were head on.

But even in those times, he never crossed boundaries. He wanted a competition but not to harm me in any way or other. He wanted a much bigger house than mine, maybe three cars more than my present number, an extra dog probably to his present clan. When people approached him taking advantage of our enmity, spilling bad blood about me and shaking hands to hatch nefarious plans to vaporize my existence on the planet, 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 of our wrecked relationship. I wanted to do it and I think he too missed me, but no one among us could take the first step. I wished I had taken it but now I only have regrets of my youth lingering in my memory lane and nothing else.

If something good came out of our rivalry, it was that his second marriage ran the track for ten years, in contrast to his previous one year of matrimony. He was too busy fighting cold war’s with me that he had time shortage for dancing in the sin city with damsels of the town. But that man could never ever live a monotonous life style, he was never ready for the mediocre settlement. Even though he had two children, pretty much grey hair on his scalp and a little pot belly, now. He often slipped in his playboy avatar even though he was busy condescending horns with me. As a result his second marriage too doomed. A large share of his finances went in divorce settlement. The man had no regrets, 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.

Though he was not born with the diamond studded golden spoon but he was definitely born with golden luck. He was the Midas of his trade and everything he touched became gold. In no time he was up again with more power, fame and finances than before. He was invincible.

A relationship knocked on his door again for the third time. But this time it was something different for him. The feeling was absolutely unexpected and a new. He wanted to change for a change. He wanted to redeem himself. Probably he experienced his ‘love at blink’ moment, I can’t say of sure. I think he wanted to share his happiness with me and break the news of finally adorning the hat of a real life Romeo, to me.

As I clearly remember, that day in the golf club where we crossed paths. Since, we had the membership of the same club, I personally made sure that we never had common days and for past couple of years we were being able to avoid each other too but not that day. I don’t know how it happened. It wasn’t his day to be there but he was there, moreover he played in my vicinity. He was talking loud to his acquaintance sharing every intricate detail of his love life. Though I was not interested in his chitchat but from the bits and pieces that soaked in my ears I could make out his love story. It all started when he was called in to for a charity event which he just thought to attend for a change. He was never a great fan of such benevolent organisation. But what came into his head that he attended this one, only ending up fancying one of the women there. She was the window who was contributing her life in this missionary work. He couldn’t get his eyes off her and even tried to entice her by his impeccable playboy charms. To his big surprise, even after trying every trick in his sleeve, every card in his deck and targeting every arrow in his quiver, she gave him blind eye and a deaf ear. That was new for him. I general case scenario he would have moved on, after all she was just a modest looking woman, easily missed in the crowd.

But this time his heart wanted him to stay and chase his girl. He said it was his lost heart asking him to stay; I just smiled at his phrasing. He has always been eloquent with words but the actual grit of his character was not a hidden secret from me. I knew he was born with the spirit of that randy little spaniel who would never ever change. Again, according to him, this time he tried the different approach for the girl in question. He met her and voiced his true feelings of his heart, and for first time she heard. However the smart girl put her conditions on the table. She wanted him to be the better man. And thereafter his life turned summersault. He was getting sober, exercising, and sleeping on time. The woman he was dating for past one year was turning him to be a man that I wanted him to be.

I could hardly believe his words. He seemed nothing more than a babbling band of the baboon with stocked up buffoonery to seek attention of onlookers. I knew once he is successful in bedding that woman he would be done with her too and get back to his lust ridden life style. I knew all that jumping jack and talking fool tricks were for me but I completely ignored him. He wanted a decent conversation with me but I gave him a cold shoulder. I wished I had shared a latte with him that day; many things would have been cleared.

He was happy, truly happy and he wanted me to be the part of his happiness. For first time in my entire life time I could see him more humble and painted in colours of modesty. It was good but I had my doubts. I wish I would have gone and personally congratulated him on his success and hugged him, but I didn’t.

He proposed her.

She said yes.

A playboy who was on the verge for complete redemption was dead after two days of proposing to his girl, in whom he found his eternal love. In his entire life he challenged fate, destiny and God 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 when we didn't see eye to eye, his departure took away a large piece of me and it has never recovered.

I was there at his funeral, bidding bye to his soul-less body. No amount of my tears would bring back those lost moments of my lost friendship. I met his fiancé there. Though we have never met earlier but it seemed she knew me well enough, in fact she knew everything about me.

My experience in my life taught me one fact; we tend to fall for those people who are our dream destination person. How hard we try we can never be like them though we desperately want to be that person. There is this wanting that we term love, if we are not like them but at least we can showcase them in our life. I could see why my friend fell for that woman with the modest looks. The goodness of her heart sparkled in her eyes; those eyes that made my friend missed his breaths and beats. Was he bored of his life, did he really want to turn a new leaf? I don’t know, I just don’t know.

My surprise day was not yet over to see his fiancé, there was more to come, his will. He created a will six months before his death. It was not that he knew he was going to die, it was just an impulsive idea that he formulated in reality, according to his fiancé. He had donated half his fortune to the good work of his going to be wife and the rest to me.

He was trying real hard to change, he desperately wanted my forgiveness, his girl told me that. But how could he do such a brutal thing with me, I was never behind his money, I wanted him, I wanted our friendship, I wanted those lost days of our childhood when we ate from same platter and laughed our heart loud to each other, I wanted to live like a big happy family forever. But even in his death he tried to purchase my friendship with those big checks that he had signed in my name. He was cruel indeed. I regret not giving him the peace of my mind.

I can’t let him go easy and die in all the peace by giving him what he wanted. I bend to his lifeless body and in his ears I told him, to hang on where ever he is, just stay put because when my time is up, I will join him and we have much to talk about, much to clear out and he would have to answer all my questions. He could be the best thespian in front of the entire world, fool anybody he wants to but not me. I didn’t believe him. I would be desperate to meet his soul and hold his collars for doing what he did to me.

At that point of my life, there was nothing left to say or hear. When I stood beside the burning pyre of my long lost friend, I could clearly see the dark side of the light. I had lost him forever. I had no one to love, fight, keep a close tap on. He created a big void in my life which is destined to remain till the end of my life.

He left me guilty of only wistfully wishes, 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 sands of time 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. And I regret not being with him when he needed me the most, in his happiness and his distress. I miss being his friend again.”

There was pin drop silence in the hall. The man was through with his story but no one clapped. He was through getting down those stairs but still no one moved. He walked out of the gates but still the environment remained frozen inside those walls. Because no one knew how to react and frankly the man didn’t care too. He just said what he wanted to say and walked out. It was ten seconds later when the anchor took the stage and broke the ice to commence with the further events of the evening but for sure people couldn’t forget the self contempt of the man that just walked out of between them. Their eyes were moist and the sound of the broken heart echoed in their ears.