Where's your Death Wish?
Boredom, Boredom, Boredom. Where does a girl go when she wants to have fun- With no money, and worse, no date? Before I joined the university, people had described the place to me as "quaint" and full of "old-world charm". I want to tell them all how full of shit that is. You want to take a vacation? Then sure, Biriyanibad is a great place to go to. But live there for two years? Someone should have a really vehement death wish for that!
Every time I wanted to jump off the half-constructed fifth floor of the hostel complex, which was more often than normal, I would instead flip open the pristine white cover of my smart phone and browse through the Vogue app. My phone was sometimes the only link to the real world. What ever would one do without modern technology?
My weeks are not structured like a regular person's. I have two Mondays to deal with- and they are called Tuesday and Thursday. On a particularly stressful day one week, I stepped into my room to find Big Bird hunched over her laptop.
"Big Bird!" I cried.
"What, you dirty woman?" came the reply.
"I want to die" I whined.
"You could jump off this building, you could eat at the mess for one more night, you could slit your wrists or, if you prefer hanging from the fan, please use the one on your side of the room." offered Big Bird.
But that was not the kind of death I wanted to die. I paused at the door wondering weather I could experience death at the hands of The Aviator more quickly. Or perhaps more slowly. You know, the Shakespearean kind. With the very thought of it killing me, I forced myself to look away and consult my calendar. Tuesday was marked with a thick, red marker- which was not entirely surprising. Tuesday was the day a little blue Smurf made my life miserable with number crunching. Professor Smurf believed in data analysis, the predictability of numbers and springing unpleasant pop-quizzes upon his students. Before each Tuesday, I would tell myself that I would be better prepared to counter his attacks in class and each time, I managed to befuddle myself and fail miserably. This time, however, I was determined to work against the odds and get my quiz score on the right side of the performance distribution curve, quite literally on the right of the X-Axis.
Fifteen minutes of positive affirmations later, I tried to make myself more comfortable in front of my laptop. I truly made an effort to ingest the undecipherable course material on statistics when- the unthinkable happened. My phone chimed with the arrival of a new message. Instantly, the butterflies in my stomach that had been dormant for an entire week began their apocalyptic fluttering. Could it be what I thought it was? There was only one way to find out.
When I checked my phone, I discovered that my elevated blood pressure was quite justified. I had one new message from The Aviator. It read-
Sorry, babe. I've been dog tired. Working 12-hour days every day for the past week. I shoulda called you but I'm off on another flight. Will make it up to ya.
My heart was hammering. I didn't know what to do. Part of me wanted to whoop with joy and another part of me wanted to throw the phone away in frustration. Overwhelmed, I screamed.
"What is wrong with you?" yelled Big Bird, irritated.
"I don't have a damn clue what this guy is up to!" I said.
"Which guy?" she asked.
"The Aviator!" I said.
Big Bird gave me a you and your men look and went back to writing her assignment. But what was I to do? After holding my silence for an entire week with utmost impatient patience, I received one measly little text message that I couldn't even reply to. Was I to be happy that he finally remembered that I exist? Or was he just another guy who wasn't very into me? I wanted to put a gun to my head that very moment and shoot myself. Life wasn't worth living when a perfect guy was just perfectly unreachable. It was so much worse in my case because I lived in a place where no guy was ever reachable. And I would never drop my standards low enough to even consider the very few men who wandered the campus.
I had been on campus only for three months but it seemed like a lifetime. My other life back in my own city seemed distant and studded with beloved old lovers and urban convenience. Now I had a non-existent sex life, much less a love life and I was dying with sexual frustration. Seriously, you'd think a guy who flies planes for a living would be able to visit me once in a while!
Four hours later, I was still very much lost in thought. In all that time, I had only scrolled a document up and down and let random sets of data run in a blur. It was certain that Professor Smurf would saute my brains for lunch the next day. At quarter to eight in the evening, with four whole units left to cover, I began fearing for my life. I took multiple deep breaths and began going through the theory of statistics, sincerely praying that my mind wouldn't stray again. And just when I thought I'd gotten into the flow, I heard a loud knock on a door outside.
The sound seemed to be coming from across the quadrangle. I ignored it in vain. It was soon followed by a very angry sounding shout. Someone was determined to have a door opened and the girl inside seemed equally determined to keep it shut. I knew immediately that a full blown cat-fight was in progress. Big Bird and I exchanged do-you-know-what-is-happening looks as we tried to continue working.
Soon, more voices began yelling and screaming. It was too much noise for either of us to handle it. Unable to take it any longer, I went out with abuses waiting to escape my throat.
"Will you calm the fuck-" I began to say, but I lost the rest of the sentence to the sight in front of me. A small crowd had gathered in front of the farthest room in the corridor and a couple of those girls were trying to break the door down.
"What the hell is going on here?" said Big Bird who had materialized next to me.
It didn't take us any longer to find out. With the next shoulder-slam, the door broke open. There was the tiniest moment of dead silence. And then the screaming started.
Every time I wanted to jump off the half-constructed fifth floor of the hostel complex, which was more often than normal, I would instead flip open the pristine white cover of my smart phone and browse through the Vogue app. My phone was sometimes the only link to the real world. What ever would one do without modern technology?
My weeks are not structured like a regular person's. I have two Mondays to deal with- and they are called Tuesday and Thursday. On a particularly stressful day one week, I stepped into my room to find Big Bird hunched over her laptop.
"Big Bird!" I cried.
"What, you dirty woman?" came the reply.
"I want to die" I whined.
"You could jump off this building, you could eat at the mess for one more night, you could slit your wrists or, if you prefer hanging from the fan, please use the one on your side of the room." offered Big Bird.
But that was not the kind of death I wanted to die. I paused at the door wondering weather I could experience death at the hands of The Aviator more quickly. Or perhaps more slowly. You know, the Shakespearean kind. With the very thought of it killing me, I forced myself to look away and consult my calendar. Tuesday was marked with a thick, red marker- which was not entirely surprising. Tuesday was the day a little blue Smurf made my life miserable with number crunching. Professor Smurf believed in data analysis, the predictability of numbers and springing unpleasant pop-quizzes upon his students. Before each Tuesday, I would tell myself that I would be better prepared to counter his attacks in class and each time, I managed to befuddle myself and fail miserably. This time, however, I was determined to work against the odds and get my quiz score on the right side of the performance distribution curve, quite literally on the right of the X-Axis.
Fifteen minutes of positive affirmations later, I tried to make myself more comfortable in front of my laptop. I truly made an effort to ingest the undecipherable course material on statistics when- the unthinkable happened. My phone chimed with the arrival of a new message. Instantly, the butterflies in my stomach that had been dormant for an entire week began their apocalyptic fluttering. Could it be what I thought it was? There was only one way to find out.
When I checked my phone, I discovered that my elevated blood pressure was quite justified. I had one new message from The Aviator. It read-
Sorry, babe. I've been dog tired. Working 12-hour days every day for the past week. I shoulda called you but I'm off on another flight. Will make it up to ya.
My heart was hammering. I didn't know what to do. Part of me wanted to whoop with joy and another part of me wanted to throw the phone away in frustration. Overwhelmed, I screamed.
"What is wrong with you?" yelled Big Bird, irritated.
"I don't have a damn clue what this guy is up to!" I said.
"Which guy?" she asked.
"The Aviator!" I said.
Big Bird gave me a you and your men look and went back to writing her assignment. But what was I to do? After holding my silence for an entire week with utmost impatient patience, I received one measly little text message that I couldn't even reply to. Was I to be happy that he finally remembered that I exist? Or was he just another guy who wasn't very into me? I wanted to put a gun to my head that very moment and shoot myself. Life wasn't worth living when a perfect guy was just perfectly unreachable. It was so much worse in my case because I lived in a place where no guy was ever reachable. And I would never drop my standards low enough to even consider the very few men who wandered the campus.
I had been on campus only for three months but it seemed like a lifetime. My other life back in my own city seemed distant and studded with beloved old lovers and urban convenience. Now I had a non-existent sex life, much less a love life and I was dying with sexual frustration. Seriously, you'd think a guy who flies planes for a living would be able to visit me once in a while!
Four hours later, I was still very much lost in thought. In all that time, I had only scrolled a document up and down and let random sets of data run in a blur. It was certain that Professor Smurf would saute my brains for lunch the next day. At quarter to eight in the evening, with four whole units left to cover, I began fearing for my life. I took multiple deep breaths and began going through the theory of statistics, sincerely praying that my mind wouldn't stray again. And just when I thought I'd gotten into the flow, I heard a loud knock on a door outside.
The sound seemed to be coming from across the quadrangle. I ignored it in vain. It was soon followed by a very angry sounding shout. Someone was determined to have a door opened and the girl inside seemed equally determined to keep it shut. I knew immediately that a full blown cat-fight was in progress. Big Bird and I exchanged do-you-know-what-is-happening looks as we tried to continue working.
Soon, more voices began yelling and screaming. It was too much noise for either of us to handle it. Unable to take it any longer, I went out with abuses waiting to escape my throat.
"Will you calm the fuck-" I began to say, but I lost the rest of the sentence to the sight in front of me. A small crowd had gathered in front of the farthest room in the corridor and a couple of those girls were trying to break the door down.
"What the hell is going on here?" said Big Bird who had materialized next to me.
It didn't take us any longer to find out. With the next shoulder-slam, the door broke open. There was the tiniest moment of dead silence. And then the screaming started.
************
I stayed inside my room and didn't get off my bed no matter what happened outside. I could hear voices of concern, discretion, gossip, inquiry and the police. But I stayed put through it.
The next day, a newspaper report speculated "relationship issues" leading to a twenty-something girl ending her life by hanging from a fan. The entire thing was completely incongruent to what my mood was a mere sunset ago. What could be the one big thing that was insurmountable? People were... people, after all. They can be spoken to. Sooner or later, they and their phones would have the flight mode turned off eventually. And come to think of it, could men really make you want to die? Is a man's love really that important- so much so that a girl can't love herself at the end of it or even accept the love that her friends give her?
That day, Professor Smurf cancelled what was supposed to be one of his pop-quizzes but The Aviator still hadn't called. And somehow, it didn't matter then. And back in my room, I crawled back into my bed and intended to stay there. But a soft knock on my door told me I couldn't. When I opened the door and let Big Bird in, she seemed a lot less taller than she usually was. She turned around to face me and there was a moment of silence.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
It was then I knew- I was alright.
That day, Professor Smurf cancelled what was supposed to be one of his pop-quizzes but The Aviator still hadn't called. And somehow, it didn't matter then. And back in my room, I crawled back into my bed and intended to stay there. But a soft knock on my door told me I couldn't. When I opened the door and let Big Bird in, she seemed a lot less taller than she usually was. She turned around to face me and there was a moment of silence.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
It was then I knew- I was alright.
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