This is not a
happy story. It does have a touch of the real to it though. And a tinge of
irony.
Young Mr. Sharma
was in love. And because he was in love, things just seemed to happen to him,
and good things. Or maybe the good things looked better and the bad things didn’t
matter. He couldn’t say for sure now if you asked him. What he would say, and
with some conviction, was that it was magical.
Not magical like they showed it in the movies; melodies floating around in the
air and flowers falling from the sky and what not. No. This was different,
totally believable and yet unexplainable, he would insist. And then he would give
you examples. Like the time when he got back at four on that cold winter
morning and found his lover at the door, peeking outside with sleepy eyes and
tousled hair, woken up from deep slumber, certain that somebody had knocked.
And how he had had a hard time explaining that it wasn’t him who had knocked.
Of course the explanation was short because they had met after a full month and
since they were both up they spent the rest of the night in a soft embrace and
the chill of the night had evaporated in the warmth of their love. Or the time
when they were on a train and she had dared him to kiss her before they got off
and how, after a lot of taunting and teasing, they had eventually kissed, in
front of all those people who could scarcely believe what they were seeing.
Well, it might not seem all that magical to you right now, but given the fact
that he had never been that carefree in his life, it was something big for him
at that moment. These would be just some of the memories that would remain with
him to his last breath. The attraction had, over the course of the time they
were together, given way to an obsession and to an attachment so strong that he
thought no power could break it.
Which was why
when it was over, it wasn’t. For him. He couldn’t, for the life of him
understand what had gone wrong. Or how he would get through this. The sun would
still rise and the wind would still blow and the rain would still wet the
sidewalks, but for him, it wouldn’t be the same. For something inside him had
changed. For good. Truth was, he had gone a little mad. He had been so used to
the idea of being together that solitude was lonelier now and more difficult.
He tried to bury himself in work but his mind just wasn’t there. He realized
that he wasn’t too good with day to day living.
For some people,
love doesn’t exist if you can’t show it to the world. He wasn’t one of them.
For him, the only person who mattered was the one he loved. The ‘world’, he had
forgotten. He shouldn’t have. Because the ‘world’ is where you have to return
to, when the ecstasy of the fairy tale gets over, when reality sets in. Often,
it is the world which decides what you do. The right, the wrong, the good, the
bad and the evil as decided by people around you often changes the direction
you take whether you like it or not.
Life has this
strange way of getting back at you, he realized. Now that his own heart had been broken, he
remembered how he had once broken a heart. Not that he had ever forgotten about
it, but now he thought about it more. The remorse for that act had always been
there. At that time, he had known it was necessary but that necessity did not
exonerate him from his guilt. Today, he tried to convince himself it was
different then, that was adolescence,
it wasn’t as deep, it wasn’t as physical. Now, with the passing of age, he
thought he was wiser. At that time, he had convinced himself then that what he was
doing was not cruel; it was just clarity of vision, something that had to be
done. And the fact that that clarity was not shared was for him only a matter
of time. He was sure she would understand in time that it needed to be done.
Now he knew there was no understanding. The pain doesn’t go away. You just get
used to the new life and it becomes more bearable. But you still carry it
around with you in your pocket like a stone and every once in a while you reach
in that pocket for something else and you find it there. A known shape, a known
face and so many memories that you have tried so hard to stow away.. That stone
is all you have now for what was once so much more. But no, it doesn’t go away.
Now he knew it. Now he was wiser. Till the next time…
