Notes from the Sly Fan Club...

I had been at the wheel of my buick for nearly an hour now. Waiting. The low hum of the engine as it idled did not assault my senses as much as Toni Braxton crooning her ’Unbreak my heart’ number did. ‘On this cold winter night, this song is for all the broken hearts in the world’. That is what the Radio Jockey had solemnly announced before playing the track. Abruptly, I turned off the radio. The clock on the dashboard flashed 03:10. I glanced swiftly at the window of her second floor apartment once again. The television was now switched on in the apartment. I could hear the voices clearly. Especially his. A sense of weariness engulfed me as I slumped back in my car seat. I now knew that I had lost her forever. Thirty years after I first met her.

I retraced my steps in memory's labyrinthine lane. Things were perfectly fine between the lady and me. We did the usual things that every young couple did. Dating. Long drives. Movies. The future with all the infinite promises never looked rosier. But, have not the wise men always said ‘the good times don’t last forever’? I winced involuntarily as I recalled how things turned thorny between us when Sly entered her life.

The one moment, which I now define, as ‘the beginning of the end’ remains frozen in my memory. It replayed itself now. It was the winter of 1976. We were at the movies. I noticed my companion, the only love of my life, looking closely at me and then looking over my shoulder at someone behind me. She did this more than once and I felt that each time she looked beyond me her gaze lingered longer on whoever it was she was looking at. I turned around sharply to confront my adversary. That was when I saw Sly first at close quarters. He wore a icy smile but wore no shirt. To me, Sly looked like one of those guys who thinks hitting the gym is as essential an activity as breathing is to you and me.

Biceps like those ? Impossible!

I ignored him.

A couple of hours later when the lady and I were leaving the theatre, she turned around and asked me sharply ‘Why cannot you be more like him?’

‘Like whom?’, I asked weakly.

‘Like him’, she retorted, pointing at an image of Sly.

That was the moment, dear reader, that I was referring to earlier. The beginning of the end. For the next couple of years I saw him everywhere. I saw him on giant hoardings. I saw him on the telly. Heard him on the radio. I saw him endorsing products on gigantic billboards. The guy was omnipresent’. Like God. In those dark hour’s years ago, I often asked myself: Could I have been hallucinating then?

Thirty years hence, I was asking myself again: Am I hallucinating now? The question was a pointless one because, I could hear him now on the telly in the lady’s apartment.

Tonight, I was woken up in the middle of the night by a frantic call from the lady. I hadnt heard from her for fifteen years now. We had drifted apart two years after Sly entered her life. Strangely, both of us were still single. Was that about to change tonight?

‘I need to see you right now’. Her voice sounded strained. ‘At Bird’s’.

Bird’s was the café where we had first met. A new world was still possible, I thought, she hadnt forgotten our favourite venue.

‘Okay. I will see you in fifteen minutes’. I noticed that my hands were shaking when I put the receiver down.

I reached the venue within ten minutes. While we exchanged awkward and hurried greetings, I noticed that she looked extraordinarily calm. Had she already reached a decision?

Her face was devoid of any emotion when she delivered her verdict.

‘Since you cannot be like Sly, I don’t think we can be together’.

Her words hit me like a sledge-hammer. It was a knock-out punch that would have made her idol proud. I did not say anything. I could not say anything. Just sat there, stunned, as the ground disappeared from beneath my feet. Paralyzed, I watched her as she got up, pirouetted on her heels and walked out of the restaurant. The greatest love-story since Romeo met Juliet had come to a heart-wrenching finish!

A couple of minutes after she left, I got into my Buick and drove over to her apartment and that is where, dear reader, we met when I began narrating you this story.

Why did I drive back to the apartment of the girl who had just dumped me?

I don’t know. Maybe it was because I wanted to see if she would switch on the telly and watch the movie that she has been watching every week for the last thirty years.

As the movie sound track filtered through the windows of my buick, I knew it was him again.

I may then have dozed off because the next thing I remember is a sharp knock on the window and seeing a bright-eyed cop with a very polite smile standing outside my car.

‘Looks like you need some help, mate. Is there anything I could do for you?’, he asked cheerfully.

I rolled down the window, and smiling sheepishly, told him. ‘Officer, I would give you anything .... anything in this world, if you could change that fateful day in December 1976 when ‘Rocky’ was released in theatres worldwide’

(This feature is my tribute to Sylvester Stallone for giving 'Rocky' to the world. A little known fact about Rocky is that the Story and Screenplay for the movie was written by Stallone himself. MGM liked the script, but felt only a seasoned actor should be cast in the lead role. Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds were some of the high-profile names that did the rounds intitially. Convinced that only he could breathe life into his creation - a little known boxer who gets his million dollar shot at fame, Stallone pushed MGM to cast him in the lead role. Rocky, released on Dec 3, 1976, beat 'All the President's Men', 'Bound for Glory', 'Network' and 'Taxi Driver' to win the Academy Award for the Best Picture)

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