© Copyright Rucha Abhyankar 2016 All Rights Reserved.

Sorry in advance for any grammar errors. Don't hesitate to point them out.

***

     His body was aching in exhaustion and his head was dying to be laced by sleep. He lay quietly on his bed, removing his round, black spectacles and placing them on a small table by his bed. His arms shot up and his hands ran through his unkempt mahogany coloured hair in frustration, for he had been witness to another one-sided shouting match with his boss.

     He had done nothing wrong, he thought. All he had done was a little improvisation on a manuscript he was working on, and his boss gave him a good scolding for going overboard and not doing what he was being paid to do: copy editing.

     "You're not the editor yet, so hold that goddamn pen of yours only to check the grammar, or you'll never see the letter 'e' whilst you're working in this publication house," were his boss's exact words, and these were the words he had been afraid of hearing.

     He wanted to write a novel, but he couldn't afford not working, given that his savings from his current salary were not much to fall back on without working. It was his dream to write a bestseller.

     He started crawling upwards in bed and slipped under the covers, shutting his eyes. He didn't bother turning off the lights. Letting out a soft, tired sigh, he drifted off into a dream land, not knowing how glad he would be the next day, that he did.

*

     The covers were off his body the moment he shot up in bewilderment. His body remained limp for about a couple of seconds before turning into a hyperventilated mode. His hands shook slightly as he tried to recall the dream he just had. He could not believe it. He could not believe that his life could be like this one day, and the hope that was settling in his heart scared him. He tried telling himself: it's just a dream, it's just a dream, your life is not like that - wake up; but the hope refused to evaporate.

     It was contagious, the feeling of momentary happiness that he was feeling as he sat in his bed with a hopeful smile on his face.

     Scrambling to his feet, he dashed to his work table and grabbed a notebook and a pen. He put on his glasses, turned on the table lamp with shaky hands and wrote a few words which would've made general sense to any other person:

     Beautiful woman meets me. We fall in love. Promotion. Novel published. Best seller. Happiness.

     He thought for a moment and decided that he needed to add one little thing as a P.S.

     Pull your shit together and write a best seller out of this one.

*

     He thought that he was going insane. No, he was sure that he was going cuckoo and had lost his mind.

     Not a day after having a dream which involved a supportive woman in his life and a bestseller which he had penned, he met a girl in a coffee shop in real life. The shocking thing was not that he had met a girl: his lean structure and ocean blue eyes had given him enough confidence to talk to girls and go out with them, but meeting this girl had been completely different for him.

     He wasn't sure whether it was effect of whole of the girl, or part of the girl and part of the influential dream he had had, but he felt that he was in love already.

     She liked many things he liked; she had a beautiful smile and he felt that he could go on staring at her face and her smile and listen to her laugh. She loved to eat and he loved to cook: that single piece of information had him imagining scenarios where he cooked her one of her favourite dishes; she loved coffee, and his day didn't start without a strong cup of one; she loved to read and he was a copy editor in a reputed publishing house; she couldn't swim, and he had a fear of heights. Even though the last one wasn't related in any way, it didn't stop him from smiling to himself and thinking about how good they would be together.

     But he didn't have to think and imagine much, for a couple of months after knowing each other and testing the waters, he asked her to be his girlfriend.

     And after that, his life changed completely.

     He started liking his job, stuck to what he was supposed to do, had a love life, and most importantly, there was progress in the novel which he was writing. With the hard work he was doing in the office and the efforts he was putting in his relationship, he had little time to work on the novel, but whenever he did, he produced productive content unlike the heaps of waste paper he had been producing a few months earlier.

     His girlfriend didn't know it, but what he wrote about was the eye-opening, inspiring dream he had had before he had met her: a meandering story blossoming first on paper and then on his laptop as he progressed.

     But like all good things in life, this too was short-lived when it decided to take a different turn altogether.

*

     She left him.

     He couldn't understand why.

     But what she said to him was: "I am an independent woman, and I won't let any man hold me by my finger and show me the right path all the time. I'm capable of doing that on my own. You're being my mother, and you don't seem to stop at all. I'm sorry, but I can't keep up with it anymore. I need some space."

     I need some space...

     He had read that line enough in trashy manuscripts to know that it was the end of their relationship.

     He was extremely hurt. And he remained feeling hurt for a week, after which he tried looking inside himself, wondering why he had acted in such a way that caused her to feel suffocated.

     But he couldn't find a reason.

     For hours and hours he did nothing but sit still in the pain of losing her and the confusion of not knowing where he had gone wrong. His heart and body ached for her, but there was nothing that he could do. She needed space. And because of her space, his life slammed back to square one: poor performance at work, scoldings from the boss and the possibility of losing the opportunity of being promoted from copy editor to editor - a job which he had wanted to do.

     He slept badly, woke up late and arrived late for work; his editing was lousy and he was threatened to be sacked. That night as he lied in bed, intoxicated with exhaustion, a single melancholy tear flowed down his unshaven face. Tired, he drifted off to sleep.

     And that very night, in his dreams came the beautiful lady with whom he had dreamt a happy life. 

     Caressing his face and staring into his blue eyes, she said in a low whisper: "My dear, what is happening to you? Why do you look so tired?"

     "She..." he croaked, clearing his throat as he felt himself getting emotional and desperate. "She left me. She's not like you." Moving forward, he tried to hug her, but she slipped through him like a ghost. He was startled.

     "Maybe she left you because she is not like me," the woman replied gently. "She is not me, yet you treat her like you behaved with me. How is that fair to her?"

     "But-"

     "I am something which you have created: I'm your imagination. But she is not. She's very much real, and you've treated her like a figment of your imagination. Now you see why she didn't want to be with you."

     Her earnest voice was like a slap on his face. He couldn't find the voice, the words and reason to argue. He realised what his mistakes were. And at that very moment, he felt ashamed of wanting not the love of his life, but a woman in his dreams.

     That was more stupid than any of the silly and preposterous grammar mistakes he had come across.

     Running his hands through his hair in utter guilt and frustration, he turned in the opposite direction and started running like a madman, as though he were running in a marathon, and if he didn't win, he would lose the girl...

     Sitting up straight in bed, he breathed heavily, as though he had actually been running. He got up unsteadily with newfound determination, and dialled a number which he knew by heart.

     He needed to fix his life.

*

     A year after he was promoted as an editor, he finished writing his novel.

     A couple of years later, his novel got published by the same publishing house he worked in, and his book was an immediately success: it was the talk of the town, and a bestseller too, just like he wanted it to be.

     Two months after the release of the book, he proposed to his girlfriend, and a year later, they got married.

     The girl he married came to know of his crazy dream a month later, and she claims that she has never laughed harder in her life, and refuses to believe that a dream was the reason of their breakup. Her husband tries to make it more believable every time he tells it to her upon request, and that makes it more hard for her to believe it, but that isn't stopping them from living a happy married life together.

***

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- Crazy