A 'Broken Wing' Thing

(This is a story that i wrote for a competition under the topic 'Broken Wings'. Aaaand it won me the first place.)

Hydrophobia is the fear of water, and that is something I’ve had since birth. My father says it’s because 2-year old me fell into a bucket of water which happened to be taller than I was. And hence the reason why I hate Titanic and why I close my eyes every time I’m in a train or bus crossing a bridge. But my manufacturing defect has never made me feel left out just because I couldn’t go swimming and fishing in the pond with the other kids. And anyways none of that was going to matter anymore because I am now sitting on the deck of the nearby bridge looking down at the tons of water silently flowing beneath it. Yes, another half an hour and I am going to commit suicide. According to Indian Express Nov. 28th 2011, fifteen people suicide every hour, and this hour I am going to be one among a fifteen. The water under this bridge has been stagnant for years so I can leave alone the fear of flowing in the process of dying. But I can’t jump just yet, there has to be a flashback session of why I’m doing this. At least that’s how the movies show them.

I am an Electronics Engineering student from Kerala who has 7 standing backlogs and no job in hand, and for a student like me placements was the worst time of life. When friends are out getting two and three job offers you are home taking the compulsory “day off” watching The Sound of Music and The Prestige for God knows how many times just because there's nothing else to watch, and logging into Facebook hoping a 5 minutes break from it could get you at least 10 new notifications. But finally the day came when “the mail” came, in which a sort of reputed company was recruiting and had no conditions regarding percentile or backlogs. But, reading on I found that they needed just 6 people from the whole college and had a whole process of aptitude tests and interviews.


I was thinking, 'seriously, what a life? You get to be happy for not more than 5 seconds?'


So, I didn't even care to prepare a resume and went to college the next day hoping to get some attendance sitting in class, but unfortunately they had canceled classes for the day because of majority students appearing the selection process, and by 9 30 it was even made compulsory to all students to appear. I almost peed in my pants hearing that. An IT company, 6 offers, 250 students and me, an Electronics Engineering student. Since it was the college rule that you cant leave the campus once you enter in the morning I was left with no choice but to write the aptitude.


By afternoon the results were out and without much exaggeration 'my name was there in the list' of 30 students who were filtered out of the 250 and I was like 'baby baby baby oooooHH'. I couldn't stand on my feet, because I was excited and I had to create a resume real fast, but mainly because I was excited.

The fast thoughts that went through my mind were, 'This was it', 'I had to get through somehow', 'this was my only chance' and 'baby baby baby ooooHH'.

After a few hours came the interview and by then the company had turned into my dream company and whatever work they give me was my dream job. I entered the interviewing room with a smile. Gave them my resume which had not a single detail about my backlogs. After a two minute silence they asked me their first question, “How many backlogs?”


This was the very same question that got me flunked for three successive lab vivas and I knew the answer to that question would decide whether I was going to get this job or not. I stormed out of the room and ran.


And here I am on the deck of this bridge. The flashback was now over and I was ready to jump. I couldn't open my eyes, because the sight of the large body of water beneath would make me change my mind. Have heard theories about the picture of the person who you love the most to come to you just before you die. Haven't seen that yet, maybe I will just before I hit the water. And I jumped.

SPLASH

Felt myself going deep down into the water body and could also feel my feet hitting some sort of a ground like place, but it couldn't be, I had to keep drowning. I tried to kick myself up hoping it'd drown me more, but instead my whole upper body was above the water level and I was standing on a shallow ground.

There were 2 things that I learned that night,
 

1, Suicide attempt is a crime and
 

2, I wasn't Hydrophobic