Broken Heart!

Warning: Not a happy ending!

To those wondering who is Tony? I am afraid that I can give you no single answer. Is he the protagonist? Nope! (Actually he is, but since I am part of this story and I am the one WRITING this post, it was my humble decision to take that “unassuming” position). Is he Mr. Broken heart? Not really, at least not now. But he was once. And I was the one who did the breaking. Sick minds reading this can wipe off that “gay” thought from your minds. It is a bit more complicated than that!

The story begins like most stories do, with the awakening of true love in our pseudo hero’s mind (remember, I am the protagonist!). Tony fell for the girl and he fell hard. That he fell was no surprise to me. We were both in that “falling” stage, with a new love blossoming every other day. What surprised me was that even after a long time (read one month) he was still hooked to the same girl. Is this true love? I asked myself. Is this true love? Tony asked himself. No! And Yes! Were the respective (and emphatic) answers.

I was ready to wait and see the outcome. But another month passed and he was still laid low by this new and powerful emotion. Maybe it is true love after all, I decided. The problem with true love is that it can work black magic on your tongue. Tony, a normally talkative person found his tongue on strike whenever he met his love. Things got so bad that each time he met her, he used to gibber out some rubbish and make a royal fool of himself. I being a true friend was immensely perturbed by the situation. A wave of sympathy for my dear friend engulfed me (big mistake!!!!).

Due to all that sympathy hanging in the air when Tony came up with that utterly hare-brained solution to the problem, I ended up saying “yes minister”. His elegant solution (monstrously screwed up idea, if you ask me!) was to do a slow build up of his sagging image in front of his beloved (responsibility --> MINE!!!) and then he would ride by like a knight in shining armor and have the lady swooning in his hands. Blinded by love (straight! normal! casual!) for my dear friend, I agreed to take up my part of the deal vis-a-vis the image building exercise.

Whatever his faults, Tony had one winning advantage and that was his logic. He had thus come to the logical conclusion that since his tongue was on strike some other tongue had to wag. No prizes for guessing who ended up doing this miserable wagging! Somebody forgot to tell him that love has nothing to do with logic!!

To enumerate my role, I was supposed to call the girl in q every other day and if possible, several times a day and talk high and mighty about Tony. I was never a natural with the ladies and this new task gave me the butterflies. But love for a friend was love for a friend no matter what and I took up my task with utmost seriousness (which, if I’d applied to studies, I wouldn’t by typing this here in the first place!). Tony was very helpful regarding the logistics part of the operation. He provided me with the phone number and other details to get started.

Now, I had my own plan of action. First and foremost, I had to build a friendship with the girl for all the wrong reasons. The idea appealed to my crooked mind, but the execution was not that easy. I called her up on a regular basis, but I never had anything to talk, it got so tough that on many occasions I felt like giving up. But my duty bent mind and my superb criminal spirit held sway and I persevered to build up something reasonably close to a friendship. At last, after weeks of effort we were on talking terms.

Now started the hard part, I had to talk high and mighty about the biggest wimp on earth. The art of lying was never too alien to me, but to do it in such bulk quantities was tough even for my non-existent conscience. Day in and day out, I would sing praises of Tony to her. “Tony is that, Tony is that...blah blah blah” but she would just kind of skim over those comments, or totally ignore them. Getting the conversation hooked on to Tony was near to impossible.

On top of it, I had to deal with Tony’s incessant questions regarding our conversations. In the end I guess that was the undoing of it all. He would call me up and go through our conversations in detail, trying to analyze them logically for any sign of a break through. At the end of all that analyzing he would be very disheartened.

I kind of felt that I was letting him down even though he wouldn’t tell me so. In fact, I used to feel so bad about him feeling bad that I started adding a bit of masala to our conversations to make him feel better (Yeah I know, very big mistake!).

Tony was now coming to the logical conclusion based on some truly questionable data that she was “softening” up. As such, lying to the girl itself was hard on my conscience, but at least I was telling good things about someone. But lying to Tony was definitely giving me the nightmares. As the days went by, my conscience troubled me more and more. Many times I thought of telling him the truth of the matter about how she didn’t care two cents about my praises about him. In fact I wonder whether she ever understood that I was actually talking about Tony the whole time.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that she would never fall for him with this dumb approach. The time to tell Tony the truth about the matter had come. But I did not get the right environment to open my heart and it was weeks later on the day before our Tamil Nadu entrance examination that I finally found the environment “suitable”.

Sitting in a lodge in Comibatore, his mind full of formulas and equations for the approaching exam, Tony looked tense. But I decided to end this melodrama once and for all and took this opportunity to put up the hard facts.

I: Da, I want to tell you something
Tony: Hmm…
I: It’s about her.
Tony: Hmmm?
I: I’ve not told you everything about the phone conversations.
Tony: what???
I: Well you see, when I talk about you to her, she doesn’t really respond much.
Tony: But you told me that she was lapping it all up.
I: Well I told you wrong. She hardly says a word about that.
Tony: What!!!
I: Don’t get worked up yaar, but it’s the truth, she isn’t responding at all.
Tony (Gibbering much like when he sees her): but but…
I: I wanted to tell this for a long time dude, but you were so emotional about it that I didn’t have the heart to tell you all this before.
Tony: And you tell me this right before the exam! You ******
I: Sorry yaar.
Tony: !$^%&%&#^&#*$^*#&^*#%^&*
I: Sorry maan!
Tony: $^$%&*%&%^%^&%&@&*^%#&**
I: Go ahead. I deserve to be called all that and more.
Tony: you deserve to be burnt at the stake!!!
I (Looking and feeling pretty bad): That too.
Tony: You just broke my heart!

It is a tribute to our friendship that it stands strong and tall today even after the traitorous stuff I did.

Tony was resilient though, showing more courage than you would expect of him, he did what was logically to be done, proposed to her! Naturally, she rejected it.

Never ready to lie low just because of one failure, he went ahead courageously and had many more such failures in life. If an association be made for the love failures of this world, he could chair it any day I guess.

Yesterday he called me up to say goodbye. He is flying to the US of A in search of a bright future and a great career. He was always a great fan of Gandhi and now has taken a leaf from the great man’s book to “quit India”! Hopefully, he will find the love of his life in the shores of that friendly nation*.

*God save America and that poor girl!