A part of my novel.
"PROLOGUE
8:30pm, Driving towards the L’Arc de Triomphe, Paris.
It isn’t simple to drive on the crowded streets of Paris.
The wind blows, the skies were nothing but a mass of grey, shades of grey combined with the innocent genius of rain, the air smelt madly fresh and her eyes were just as full as the clouds in the sky.
Tears filled her eyes.
It was his birthday.
Our world rarely appreciates a strong character, and strength in a woman, they try to break her from all sides, her strength is assaulted by the chauvinists, men and women alike. The men mock at her, a clear indication of the insecurity felt; the women avoid her company because she isn’t like them, she refuses to be silent and pretty on the arm of a man. And so, she becomes a point of debate. Should such a woman be allowed to live in the society or labelled “a-la-outcast”? It is everywhere. Women like these, they have no shoulders to cry on. They are titled Ice Queens and Heartless Creatures but they feel just as much as their spineless counterparts do. Yes, the ones who stand in a man’s shadow are undoubtedly spineless for they are nothing without the man are they?
She towered over you in her heels but she wasn’t that tall. Her ankles hurt yet she wore them. She had no love for the Renaissance architecture or the Noveau Riche but she stayed in a building structured like that, filled with people of the variety. She hated tofu and boiled vegetables but she had them for breakfast every day. She loved Faryaad and she pretended to hate him. Her house was full of pictures of them from college, pictures she never stopped to look at. The wall to the left of her room was pasted with NBA posters, which is why she always slept at the right, she never looked that way. The closet was divided into two. One full with her clothes, the other empty.
She felt annoyed at herself.
It was ego, it was hurt, it was insult, it was pain, it was humiliation.
And partly, it was pride.
She was proud of him, when he wasn’t around. And he would never be. Which is what made her cry. How many birthdays would she celebrate without him? His birthdays, her birthdays, the dreary days when she’d walk on ramps or go for photo shoots without as much as a tear in her eye and go back home only to cry all night probably, wearing that one shirt of his and staying up, looking at the ceiling. Eating cold chicken sandwiches and drinking coffee at two in the morning, the tears giving all the salt it really needed. How strange could the human heart be…it makes you cringe and crawl, you beg, you are on your knees begging for that which is sacred to you and the world refuses to let you have it because they like to see you in pain.
What do you do?
You walk away? You prefer not to look back? You go away on your own, a stiffened lip, a perfect view, you look into the mirror but the reflection which stares back is not your own. That is how it goes, does it not? You can’t keep up with the other person turning tables so you turn a table in a permanent way damaging the relationship forever. Your face covered in make-up, the flashes blind you to a extent that you lose touch with your soul.
Welcome to the world of glamour.
They love complicated stories, the more fame you gain, the more your life comes under public scrutiny, the shiny present always put under the shadow of a painful past, the scars you so perfectly covered re-surface in tabloids and Biographies. Or on place like Wikipedia where the whole world can read and have pity on a life like yours.
Tut tut.
And here were you, trying to look beyond the sympathy, for if what you needed was sympathy why would you take the trouble to bury a troubled past and start anew? People in the limelight wish if the Paparazzi understood the meaning. It is a bunch of people, all doing their jobs. The glamazons doing their jobs and the media moguls using their troubled pasts to sell their papers faster in an attempt to make a quick buck or two, provide employment to tens of thousands of people, so it is a sadist industry. And the people who make it so sadistic is the common man.
Look at us.
The news of a bomb blast keeps us hooked on to the television than a Peace Conference in Congo or a report on the global racist attitude. That is how it goes. We celebrate the suffering of a human than to join them in happiness? What is it that we do? And then the whole conversation comes down to how the common man has more ethics and values than the super-class or the elite. The whole ethical behaviour is a greater sham than the illusion of beauty created with a bag full of hunky dory chemicals.
That is our world.
The memories itched with aching desire to latch onto her mind but she controlled the urge to take pain. The very habit of giving oneself the dose of painful memories in order to remember the past, the pain seemed so real that she had gotten used to taking painkillers to numb it out. Today, she refused to cry in memory. It made no difference. Neither could he come back after all the things he had done, nor could she, she had her own reasons. They were in two different worlds, on either sides of the river, she’d sold her soul to the devil in any case. No way she could take it back again, could she?
A population of 12 million, the place she was in was one of the most highly liveable, the city and its region are the world's leading tourism destination; this city gave France 30% of its GDP, the highest for any city in the world. Four international heritage destinations, haute couture, fashion, glamour, all of this and much more. The city continued to move as she struggled to keep pace, it drained her emotionally. She read extensively, interacted with the rich and the famous, and she realised there is not much difference in the human, just the amount of work put into reaching somewhere or the effort to latch onto someone dead famous and use their name to take you places.
“We’ll get somewhere, someday. Don’t you worry.”
“How do you know?” She looked at him, her eyes full of doubt.
He smiles warmly at her, his hands in her hair, she feels perfectly safe when he holds her,
“I just know.”
The lights blind her as the tyres screeched on the wet road, splashing water everywhere. She lost control of the Volvo as it skid across the road, slamming into a tiny car, direction changed and it skid again, diagonally slamming into another car, it slammed into three moving cars until the traffic froze and she rammed into the fountain, the car still, people ran to see if there was a survivor…was there anyone?
There was a woman, her head on the steering wheel, one could see her hand, a loose grip on the edge. The silver bracelet on her wrist had tiny snowflakes attached to it.
“Get her to the hospital!” “Oh my god.”
***
8:50pm, Emergency, The American Hospital, Paris.
“Call Faryaad.”
“Ms. Logan? Iris is on her way…”
“Tell, Faryaad I-,”
“Ms. Logan?”
“…love him.”
She drifted back into unconsciousness.
***
00:34am, Dr. Jonathan Chang’s chamber, The American Hospital, Paris, France
The woman was visibly confused.
“I don’t understand. How can that happen?”
“Ms. Taylor, the hippocampus is one of the main areas of the brain used in memory consolidation. During consolidation, the hippocampus acts as an intermediate tool that quickly stores new information until it is transferred to the neo-cortex for the long-term. In Ms. Logan’s case the damage has just been to the CA1 area of the hippocampus, which is not that serious but her amnesia can last for almost two years. I cannot guarantee recovery or non-recovery because it all depends upon her brain, it’s capacity to extract information or relate the present to past, it is more of a ‘it-will-happen-when-it-does’.”
“Is there any way we can accelerate the rate of recovery?” she asked, her face devoid of any emotion.
“Expose her to older memories. Expose her to familiar surroundings, people, anything. Anything could trigger her memory, however she needs to meet as many people from her past as possible.”
“Can I see her?”
“She is sleeping.”
“Then sleeping it is.”
She rose from the chair and walked with the doctor down a corridor, and for the first time since the death of Irv, she felt the bile rising in her throat. Patients, patients, sick people, people who can walk out of the hospital in a while, and people for whom survival is a struggle altogether? It is a strange thing to happen. Alexandra.
There she was.
The air seemed stuck in her throat. She didn’t know what to say. Apart from the head injury, she had had no major fractures, some scratches on her face and arms, her hair were the same, long. She felt like a mother would if her child was hurt. She couldn’t step into the office, her heart wasn’t strong enough.
“How long till she can be permitted to leave the hospital?”
“Two days Ms. Taylor.”
“Call for me the minute she wakes Doctor. I have a few arrangements to make.”
“Yes ma’am.
Each footstep firm, her heart pounding with a desire for revenge, she walked down the corridor, her heels clinking at the marble floor, tick-tock, her face determined to make things move as fast as they could, she knew just the man who’d make things happen for her for if he could make Alexandra leave, he could surely make her come back, couldn’t he? She knew it wasn’t the just thing to do, but this would be perfect revenge, just with the right proportions of everything…
Fluctuat ner mergitur.
Ner mergitur.
***
4:04am, Tarapore Towers, Lokhandwala, Mumbai.
He was sitting on the table with a cup of steaming hot coffee.
He was a loser when it came to making coffee with cream, he was a complete loser, he knew it, and yet he tried everyday as he had, for the past three and a half years, his motto was as simple as “Never Give Up”, and since no one else would make him a cup of coffee in the morning, he figured out the best way to do it was to do it himself.
“DIY Knucklehead, you are on your own now, be good! Don’t mess around too much and don’t look for me. I’m much happier without.”
The yellow stick note made him smile each time he saw it, she didn’t pause to say goodbye but she sure left a memory which made him laugh than go sick with nostalgia, she had her ways.
Alexandra.
He switched his laptop on and logged in, he wanted to check his mail for any itinery details from the Chinese, he had a flight at 8:15am to Shanghai, HSBC, opportunity of a lifetime, he’d gone through the B.Comm and was doing this job first, will follow it up with an MBA later…maybe next year? Nothing could be planned more than twenty four hours in advance for the share market and life are twins, predictable one minute and absolutely unpredictable the next. Jubilant Foods up, Tata Steel Up, Reliance Communications down? Will be up in a week max…he thought. How low could Reliance go? Worst case scenario? Going extra low? Hmm, either a week or they’d come back with a bang.
“Trust your instincts bummer, or you’ll end up selling lollipop’s in a tacky candy shop instead!”
Old memories.
He smiled.
Stepping into the bathroom, he looked at his reflection as he picked up his toothbrush. How old was he, 21? It was his birthday yesterday. The first in three years that he spent without her. It felt weird, being alone and with a briefcase, 12:00am wishes without her cakes, cards and flowers but no kisses, presents but no tacky jumbles from the street hawkers in Colaba, dining at the best restaurants and finding yourself at the Gol-gappa stall at 10:00pm,
“Woh nahi aayi?”
You smile and eat your share, give a huge tip to the man at the stall and make a move. Smiling and yet not smiling. You try to get used to the mundane routine of life creeping into your birthday too, the routine of spending your birthday with friends and family without that joy in it, and yet you have to smile all for the sake of it.
Strange.
And to think how they all craved for Adulthood as children? It was a strange bunch of experiences. Complicated relationships. Simple relationships. Lies, truth, a very thin line differentiating the two. The two things happened at the same time, his phone rang making him jump out of thoughts and his razor cut his right cheek, making it bleed.
Too jumpy a call.
He splashed some water and pressed a towel to his right cheek, walking to the room, +xx? A French number? He took the call,
“Hello?”
“Am I speaking with Mr. Faryaad Grewal?”
“Yes, this is he.”
“Bon jour Monsieur, I am Charlotte from A la mode and I am calling for Ms. Alexandra Jean Logan. We need you to come to Paris immediate-”
He was fuming. First of all she didn’t wish him, and next, she expects him to come all the way to Paris? Air fare was expensive for commoners, she was an international model but he wasn’t the King of France. He cut Charlotte mid way,
“I can’t. I have a job woman, I am leaving for Shanghai at 8:15 today.”
“Sir, I am afraid this is urgent, Ms. Logan has met with an accident.”
He slumped onto the couch, was she alive? Sensing his panic, Charlotte spoke,
“She is alive and well Mr. Grewal but we have a slight situation here…”
The slight situation seemed serious enough to convince him into risking everything, for exactly five minutes later, he left for the Mumbai International Airport. His job, his family, the things at stake ranged from family to career, yet he didn’t care what was he risking in this place, all he could even hear was,
“Sir, Ms. Logan has retrograde amnesia…”
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