Free The Plunge by Sindhu S.

Advertising agency. Anjali had met him the day she joined the company as a trainee copywriter. She was twenty-one then.
    Rasheed was confidence personified. He had an athletic build and green eyes, the two striking features that caught her attention during introductions. His sharp nose complemented the high cheekbones. Always spotlessly dressed, Rasheed had a commanding voice that made others sit up and listen when he spoke.
    Rasheed was in his late twenties. He was well-read and could speak authoritatively on any topic, win arguments, and convince the toughest clients. He could speak with equal ease about the merits of legalising prostitution and the ideologies of Jean-Paul Sartre.
    Rasheed was also the copywriter to the company, by default. He was to mentor Anjali during a three-month training period.
    He was an effective professional, no doubt. But it was his moral side that Anjali had a problem with.
    Rasheed was very proud of his many girlfriends: colleagues, college girls, co-passengers in trains or buses, clients, aspiring models, and the like. He boasted about his many trysts in the office. Sometimes colleagues teased him about an old escapade. In the beginning, Anjali had not believed the stories. She thought they were all bluffs, his erotic exploits. But after hardly a week in the office, she realised he was indeed being honest about his sex life.
    Most of Rasheed’s fantasies were realised in a flat allotted to his politician friend, a member of the Legislative Assembly, Perumbra Sahadevan, if one were to believe his claims. His friend rarely used the flat at the MLA Quarters housing complex, which was in the heart of Thiruvananthapuram. Police raids were a definite no-no in a place that housed powerful politicians. Besides, Rasheed saved money on hotel rooms.
    Rasheed’s friend later became the youngest minister in the Kerala state cabinet, the minister of youth affairs. This was an appropriate post, considering his ‘key’ role in youth ‘affairs’, Anjali recalled wryly.
    Both ancient thinkers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and modern philosophers inspired Rasheed’s philosophy of life, he claimed. His favourites were, however, the existentialists. He named Jean-Paul Sartre as one of his principal influences.
    She got caught in his debates on ontology, such as, “What is being?” or ethics, with questions like, “What counts as right?”
    Rasheed said he was influenced by Descartes, with his statement, “I think, therefore I am.” His other big influences were Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gabriel García Márquez, and Franz Kafka, he had claimed.
    He would pick out books for her to read; Crime and Punishment and The Castle among them.
    She felt an intellectual connection with Rasheed, and was drawn to his ideas.
    It was a fascinating belief that an individual alone was responsible for making sense of his or her life. But could one live passionately, despite the existential distractions like angst, alienation, or even just plain boredom?
    She read Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude several times, to the extent that she still could quote lines with precision. “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it,” was still one of her favourites.
    Only a genius could write lines such as: “…no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. It was an intricate stew of truths and mirages…”
    It was only natural, she thought, for her to become attracted to someone who had introduced her to such interesting ideas.
    In hardly six months, Anjali had realised that Rasheed’s life was not influenced by any of the thoughts he admired or advocated. He believed only in his own brand of pragmatism.
    They had discussed authors and books in coffeehouses. Sometimes he had chosen novels for her that included mature love stories. The lead characters were always following their hearts and defying social norms. She suspected that he was giving her hints