Off the Edge

I met Anaya at a paragliding school in Dirang. Honestly, my first thought was: great. Another main-character-energy-girl who thinks turbulence is a personality trait.

She was almost the last one to arrive in class. Sunglasses on her head and one earbud in, she would always look at the instructor as if he was speaking Dothraki rather than imparting life-saving tips.

And then she jumped off the mountain before I did. No countdown, no deep breath, no dramatic last look. One second she was standing next to me pretending to check her harness, the next she was a speck of bright jacket dropping into the valley, and the wind caught her laugh and carried it all the way back up to me.

'Scared?' she yelled. 'Of you? Yes!' I yelled back.

That was the beginning of the frenemy arc. She called me the 'spreadsheet boy' because I was on my gap year of pursuing CA. I called her 'an accident waiting to happen'. We were NOT friends. We barely tolerated each other.

Then the course ended and somehow we ended up on a road trip to Meghalaya. Together. Don't ask me how. It involved a cancelled flight and Anaya saying 'what's the worst that could happen?', which is exactly what most voters say every electoral season.

For one week, we lived like there's no tomorrow.

We drove through fog so thick that it felt like the world had been deleted. Anaya named it the Great Eraser and stuck her hand out of the window to watch it vanish. We ate momos at roadside stalls and got soaked in Cherrapunji rain. At one stall, drenched to the bone, she bit into a momo so hot she yelped, waved her hand in front of her mouth, and went back for a second one anyway. That was Anaya in one momo. We hiked to a living root bridge and laughed like idiots.

One night, on a rooftop cafe in Shillong, she said, 'You know you are allowed to want more than a stable life, right?' I responded with 'Stability isn't a personality flaw, right?' She smiled. 'Debatable.' For a second neither of us moved. The rain had started again and the fairy lights above us were doing their filmy best, and I remember thinking, this is a terrible idea. And then she kissed me. Yeah, I know. Very cliched 'enemies-to-lovers, single bed, rain outside, incoming emotional damage' trope. But my heart was going like a tabla solo and I did not care about the trope at all.

When we got back, I went back to my spreadsheets, audit files and a life that suddenly looked extremely grey compared to Meghalaya.

We tried long distance and for a while it worked. I'd take the weekend train to Jaipur. She'd show up at the station wearing something ridiculous and drag me straight to some random adventure. One weekend she turned up in a neon pink dupatta over hiking boots and announced we were going hot-air ballooning at dawn. 'It was on discount,' she said, as if that explained anything. We watched the sun come up over the forts, and for those few hours I forgot about my pending revisions completely.

But slowly my weekends were reserved for revisions. Calls became shorter and I typed 'Sorry, busy' more times than I could count. And Anaya was still Anaya.

She wanted to go scuba diving in Andaman. She wanted to learn how to surf. She wanted to backpack through the North-East for 3 months straight. She wanted to feel alive all the time.

To me, it started to look reckless. To her, my life looked like a waiting room.

One night she sent me a video of herself paragliding in Bir. 'Please be careful,' I replied. She replied, 'That's it? That's all you have to say?' I obviously replied with a message about safety and why regulations are important.

We broke up over a call. No dramatic rain or airport chase sequence. 'I can't keep shrinking my life to fit inside your calendar,' she said. 'And I can't keep pretending your plans have a plan B.'

'You think I'm crazy.' I didn't deny it.

'You think a corporate job is going to save you.' I didn't deny that either.

Just two people realising that the thing that brought them together - chasing the rush - was the thing that was pulling them apart.

After the call, I sat on my balcony staring at nothing because I knew she wasn't crazy for wanting to fly. I just wished I could follow her off the edge.

Somewhere out there, the sky was full of people jumping off mountains. I stayed on my balcony.