The Biggest Tragedy Of My Life

The day was a Sunday, it was the 18^th of March, 2007. It’s been almost 7 years but the memory is etched in my mind vividly. I still get a tear or two in my eyes when I think about it. That day, what happened, is probably the only thing that I regret so badly in my life. There have been mistakes and then there have been incidents, I’ve regretted my actions or decisions every now and then, but nothing has lived on like this.

We had waited for that fateful Sunday for months. There was too much hype around it and that is probably what caused this mishap. It’s like they say, the higher your rise the harder you fall.

I had barely slept the night before. I kept shifting in my bed all night long. I was eager to get on with the night and quickly wake up on a Sunday that I had been waiting for so long. I exchanged a few text messages with my friends confirming the plan and finally slept with a smile upon my face.

I woke up a tad too late in the morning and that is when the chain of unlucky events began. I woke up late to find that the geyser wasn’t switched on. I waited for the water to heat for 10 minutes but gave up. I decided to leave instantly regretting that why I even wasted those 10 minutes waiting for the water to get warm. I ran towards the gate where my friend was waiting on the bike. He had a smoke in his hand he was waving towards me to hurry up. I reached, we smoked the cigarette and were on our way.

It was March and the cops were in full force on the streets because it was the ‘year-end’ and they had to challan as many people as they could. Since we were going towards Noida from Delhi, there was no way we could skip crossing an unmanned border. As luck would have it, we were stopped for a random check. Not that we had anything to be scared of, we just didn’t want any more time to get wasted. The whole process of stopping the bike, taking the papers out, convincing the cop that we did, in fact, have all the correct and required papers and then heading towards out destination again cost us a good 10 minutes.

Finally on our way on the last leg towards our journey's end, we sped as fast as we could. We both had our helmets on and we were just zipping part everyone and skipping past red lights. Now it didn’t matter since we were in Noida.

We reached the spot and hurriedly parked our bikes and it almost fell. We met our friends and thankfully they were waiting for us. We ran towards the screen but by the time we reached, Leonidas had already yelled “THIS IS SPARTAAAAA!!!!” and kicked the Persian messenger in the well. We missed the one scene we had wanted to watch in the theatre. We missed the essence. We missed the golden moment. We fucked up.

The movie wasn’t the same after that. Not that we missed anything important from the story, but we missed the most epic scenes of all time. We watched the rest of the movie in sheer disappointment and no amount of action and dialogues could pep our moods up. We knew we spoiled our lives forever and that we’ll live the rest of our lives with regret. We could not show our face to anyone around us for a week. We all stayed grounded in our houses and skipped class as well. It took us months to come out of the depression but it still hurts every now and then. One friend is still going serious psychiatric treatment and the doctors have kind of given up. Such is life now.

And why did I write this blog today, after 7 years? Because I watched 300 part 2 last night, and missed the first 15 minutes, again. A blog on that, 7 years from now. Till then, adios!