Intoxicated Mistake

It’s always the day. “Today’s day was bad.” “Today’s day was really good, na?” “What a depressing day.” It’s always the day that gets the credit, or maybe sometimes the blame for everything that happens. Everything that we do. But, I’m sorry, I beg to differ. That day of mine had been quite a routine one. A normal one. I had woken up early in the morning to find my laziness trying to get the better out of me. But I had managed to shake it off and started my day. Had a normal train ride to college. A normal dose of lectures. A stray project meeting with my project group members, only half of them present. A half-hearted attempt at making constructive use of the free time. Eventually, everyone had given up as a bad job. Dispersed. Like everyday I had called my best friend, who went to a college quite close to my own college. Her lectures were also just getting over. Her professor was just taking the attendance…

I had rushed to her college. There were many reasons why I went to her college so often. One of them was that I never quite gelled well with my college people. They always seemed too rude, too indifferent, too irritating, too sweet. Another was that I preferred the company of my best friend, who knew me through and through, rather than having to spend time with someone new, trying to bond over the anxieties of ‘oh-is-she-judging-me-on-this?’ Yes, I was pretty paranoid when it came to these things. And of course, the most magnetic thing about her college…The guy. Something of a love story was brewing. How could I not go? So that day, like so many other days, I had gone there. Waited for her near her college smoking a cigarette, at the same time worrying about how I would behave in front of the guy; what if someone I knew passed from here, they would know about my covert smoking habits; and God knows what other trivial things. I saw her come with a big grin on her face. Sensed some good news on the love story scene. She said she told the guy “my best friend is waiting for me” and he had smiled and said “okay, I got the hint”. She was trying to play the cupid between us. In my opinion, trying a bit too hard. But I had wanted him that bad. And so we had stood there with other common friends and waited for a whole hour in the burning heat. Had finally given up and gone to a restaurant, eaten lunch, and taken a train home. On the ride back, my friend had received a message on her cellphone saying “I’m stuck in college. My project has to be redone and submitted within an hour”. Yes, the guy. I had been overjoyed, as I had always gotten with any small inclination from him towards me.

I had excitedly chattered about the night over that we had planned for so long, amongst us best friends. We were going to lie to our parents and stay over with a friend whose parents weren’t home and had decided to go clubbing. These were my favourite people in the whole world. Sanjana, with whom I usually went home, who wanted to be my cupid, my partner-in-crime; Tanya, who was my school friend, my support through everything, the bad part of my conscience; Simran, my baby, shy and unbelievably sweet, my follower; and Meera, my oldest, bestest friend, my mirror image. Among the five of us, we had one car. And three of us knew how to drive. It seemed like a much sorted plan. The idea of having the otherwise busy streets of Bombay to just ourselves at a nocturnal time seemed very adventurous and exciting. I had been talking and planning all the time I was in company of any of these, and now, it seemed to be coming true. That was the night we had been waiting for so long. I had excitedly said ‘bye’ to my friend with a thumb raise, to tell her how excited I was. She replied with her thumb raise. Yes, she was very excited, too. It was about 3 in the afternoon. I had enough time to go have a nap and then leave home for Simran’s place, whose parents weren’t home. We were to assemble there and get ready together and leave with the car. To a club. All night dancing, drinking, doing whatever our parents would never imagine us doing. Guilt had, by now, taken a back seat.

We were all together and very excited about finally having the plan come true. None of us could stop grinning, talking nonsense. We had already got some beers “to get in the mood”. It had begun. The dream night was here. All of us had decked up to our best, all geared with a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of beer to each, and sat in the car. Tanya would be driving, we assumed, it was her car after all. Grudgingly, she did start the car and all of us braced ourselves for the fun-est thing ever. Traffic was thick. Being in our prime of moods, all of us had managed to have fun inspite of the stationary car, and the blaring horns. We had reached the place an hour after we had expected to reach. Excitement had risen to our cheeks. I’m sure every bouncer saw it there on our cheeks and felt the same, familiar twinge of annoyance. These girls always think it’s such a big thing. But it was, Mr. Bouncer. For us it was a very big deal. As we opened the door, loud music greeted us. All of us smiled at each other and straight headed for the Bar. How would we dance without getting drunk? We were already buzzing, to tell you the truth. Thanks to that beer that we had all guzzled down in a state of inebriated delirium. Of course, none of us would’ve admitted it, then. So we went for one shot, two shots, soon we lost track. Wednesday night was Ladies’ Night, after all. Everything was on the house for the ladies. In that drunk stupor we had danced. Danced like there was no tomorrow. Danced to celebrate our long standing friendship. Danced to acknowledge the existence of wish-wash in everybody’s lives. We had grown up very recently, broken away from the protective shell that our parents had built for us, in order to save us from the brutalities of life. But alas, such was life. They were proven wrong, no-one can remain protected for long, the devastation had come from within our shells for us. Somebody’s parents were getting separated, someone was having financial crisis, someone else was seized up in a battle of egos between a son and a father, while someone else was going through the loss of a dear family member. We had bonded through the crises and united through the joy of the closeness that our friendship had offered. No longer, did we get drunk and cry, or talk about how we were ultimately alone in our life. We were not alone anymore; we had each other for comfort and support. Maybe it was the alcohol, but I saw us holding each others’ hands, grabbing anyone amongst us who was going out of the step and falling again in return, hugging each other all the time, like I was watching from someone else’s eyes and weird thought occurred. It’s not going to last for long. What the hell, I had thought, I’m just very drunk, nothing’s going to go wrong. We had continued our drunken rapture till the wee hours of the morning when finally, the bar had closed. We had gone down the stairs singing and laughing loudly. While we had waited for our car to be driven to us, we had managed to scandalize a lot of people, including a woman who was looking at us in disbelief. I remember telling her, “It’s nothing, really, I swear I had only 7 shots of vodka.” That laughter still rings in my ears.

All of us had sat in the car, in our usual places. Tanya was driving again, I sat next to her. Behind me, sat the meek Simran, thanks to our smoking habits (both of us had a habit of smoking from our left hands), we both had to sit near the window. In the middle it was the garrulous Sanjana and next to her it was the thoughtful Meera. We had decided it was still early to go home and that we hadn’t gone for a long drive in a very long time and the time was perfect. So we headed for the sea face. It was exhilarating the way the air played with our hair and made us shut our eyes and smile to some unsung fact. Tanya was very drunk, like all of us, but me having quit the department of taking incessant stress about everything, I only offered a smile to the unknown. Meanwhile, Meera had taken charge and was nagging Tanya about the speed. I had started playing songs on the CD player of the car. “Rich girl” made us all sing. We had sung on top of our voices, which echoed through every street we passed. We stopped at Bandstand parallel to the sea shore. Breathed in the cold, sea-water air, and felt even better about ourselves. Simran realized that we still had some bottles of beers left in the trunk of the car. We hooted, took beers for ourselves and sang to our good luck. Tanya had felt like a joint and luckily enough we had spare paper in the car to satisfy our craving. Simran, the official incharge of rolling did her job and I, the official charsi of the group smoked most of it. We were very high once again and our spirits, both literally and symbolically, were at their highest. We drove through the quiet lanes of Bandra to the main road. Nothing could stop us today. We were our own masters and we had the whole of the world for us. We drove like maniacs past every lamp post, every closed shop, every abandoned rickshaw. A curve was coming up ahead; Meera still had some of her beer left which she was trying to drink in the backseat. As we neared the curve, Sanjana had looked at the speed and yelled, “Go slow, Tanya, its 160! You can't be driving that fast...You'd sworn on Sydney that you wouldn't go that fast!” Her pet cat's swear had done it for Tanya. While taking a right for the curve, she had lurched hard on the breaks, skidding the car heavily. It had swerved right, then left, and finally came to a halt. Meera let out a frustrated sound and said “My beer!” The silence that had descended on us was broken by loud laughter by all of us. Yes, to our drunken personalities, it seemed a joke. A near miss. We looked to our right to the huge over-filled dust bin, which we could’ve rammed into, and laughed some more. On popular opinion, Tanya was made to sit back and I was asked to drive. Maybe they thought I had sobered up by now. But I hadn’t. The effect of the alcohol and hashish was doing dangerous things to my mind. Of course, I hadn’t realized that. I started driving pretty steadily, and all of us had relaxed by now. I had continuously been getting visions of some dark shadow that was following us and kept accelerating. No-one noticed what speed I was driving at. Suddenly, I saw that shadow in front of me. I stared at it, horrified. It looked like a black hole. Leading into nowhere. Somewhere I knew I was just seeing things, but my brain was too shocked to react. I swerved to the right and missed the shadow by inches. I breathed a sigh of relief, but it got stuck in my throat as I realized that I had lost control of the car and we were spinning to the right and there was nothing I could do. Through all the screaming, I looked where the shadow was and realized that there was a road construction crane, in my place of that black hole. We were spinning in that car for very long…I remember looking at Tanya’s face. She was laughing. Maybe she thought this was some stunt I was trying. Everyone had their eyes on me. Meera was screaming with panic and Simran was watching me with wary eyes. Sanjana looked like she was enjoying and scared at the same time, screaming her guts out. I pretended to be in control. I don’t know how long we were in that car, still spinning. Seemed like an eternity. Things started to flash in front of my eyes. My mother’s face. My brother and my father. All of them seemed to be crying…

We were all thrown out of the car, as it hit the pavement. The car toppled. I didn’t know whether to be proud of avoiding hitting the crane that looked like my black hole or be guilty for having mistaken it as a black hole. I realized I was finding it difficult to breathe. I looked around, and realized what was happening. Simran had blood on her forehead but was walking around; I couldn’t even stand on my feet. Tanya was sprawled in front of me…Unusually still. Sanjana was still screaming or maybe crying…I couldn’t make out the sound. Meera was getting on her feat shakily, with a broken bottle in her hand…my vision was blurring. I couldn’t breathe. A tear fell from my eye just as Simran came towards me. I managed to kiss her hand and mouth ‘sorry’ before blanking out.

I wish I could know where they were, how they were. The guilt is unbearable, would dying again help? Is there any way I can escape it? My mother visits me in my sleep everyday, she can’t stop crying. The guilt exacerbates. My existence or non-existence, whatever it is, is drowned among thick remorse. Is there any way out?