The Girl I Last Loved (13 page)

So many times I felt like running to her and telling her not to go with that guy.

He doesn’t look at you the way I do.

He doesn’t know that you don’t have any favourite colour as you love all of them.

You bite your nails when you are nervous.

He doesn’t know you are the rarest of the rare owners of a radio.

You love wearing heels. He finds you hot in them. Still he doesn’t know you twist your ankle every now and then. Thus, standing by you means one should be immediately able to hold you.

He doesn’t know you switch off the lights to light up candles.

You hate it when someone gives you a rose. It doesn’t make you feel special. Orchid does.

What you want to become in life changes with the recent movie you have watched.

Your eyes flicker whenever you have something sour.

He doesn’t tell the waiter, ‘No capsicum’ as you are allergic to it.

He doesn’t know you are prone to losing things. He doesn’t hold himself behind for a moment after you go away to check if you have left something or not.

But I do… Kasam, I always did.

He doesn’t know you cry over a broken nail.

Drawing flowers, stars, hearts or Smiley in the blank spaces between your notes comes naturally to you.

He doesn’t know it all.

He doesn’t know how to love you.

He doesn’t know you.

I do!

However, I never told her these things. I suppressed every little thought of that kind which ever came into my mind. I didn’t know why expressing my feelings was hard. Suppressing my feelings was harder. I stayed irritated most of the time, trying to focus on every other thing. I was afraid that one day I would be pushing my thoughts so hard that I would forget the difference between what I wanted and what I had tricked my mind to be wanting.

Chapter 12

“Let’s meet up for lunch.” How did I end up being so authoritative?

“Aye, aye captain,” she faked a military accent though the scorn was evident in her voice.

Even a prince never behaves like one, when with a princess.

“I mean I am free if you are free…,” I corrected myself.

“That’s better, though I am a little busy.”

She paused. All quiet. My heart sank.

“Who cares? I don’t have a session today – some pending documentation… ah… ah… I am good to go,” she ate a few words but definitely conveyed the message.

She hung up. I smiled, still holding the receiver. Suddenly it came to me, in the past few days whenever I smiled, ‘I smiled for real’. Not the monotonous smile with which I nod to everyone in the morning. Nor the diplomatic one reserved for a social gathering. Definitely excluding the plastic smile plastered on my face when a toothless old hag criticises my work when they themselves have gone so rigid during the span of their career that they forgot the meaning of innovation. To complete the list, not even the cheesy smile I put on to pick up girls.

“Normal people keep the receiver down, when the call ends,” Ved’s voice echoed in my thoughts.

I involuntarily placed the receiver down. I looked at Ved with a flat face.

“What are you looking at? We have a meeting at Jenkins,” Ved prompted me.

“Oh! Shit,” those were my words.

Ved shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows along with it.

I got up hurriedly, buttoned up my coat, checked my keys, hung my bag and marched ahead with long, firm steps.

“You are forgetting your laptop,” Ved blocked my way.

I hugged him enthusiastically. He was surprised.

“You’ll be great. I know, I have trained you well,” I patted on his shoulder hard.

By the time Ved realised what I meant, I had raced past behind him though I heard a few screeches bearing my name.

Isn’t it true that you make best friends when you are not trying to find one? The gift you will cherish for life is never what you had asked for. Someone whom you pass across several times is the last piece which completes your jigsaw puzzle.

Hasn’t it happened before that you get up in the morning still feeling sleepy? When you get up on your feet, you feel dizzy. Take a bath thinking that this will be it.

You rush to work with the same headache. On the way you pick up an aspirin. Start on with your work. Just then a colleague enters with two cups of coffee and then you know this is it – my favourite thing which happens to me all the time. Flat, humdrum, routine, monotonous are the only words which you can relate your life with.

You think your partner is the problem. Quitting your job is an option. Then out of nowhere, you spot a brochure of some hotel in Thailand. Everything gets sorted out and you know it’s just about a break, a holiday and everything else is great as they are. You will start loving them back once again.

How many times has it happened to you that you find something when you are not looking for it? Even better, when you don’t know what it is you want until and unless it is in front of your eyes.

There she was standing in front of me, standing tall in the crowd with her head held high. Sending a message she was strong, confident and didn’t need anyone.

She didn’t need love… she wanted love.

It was still sunny. She placed her hand over her forehead to obstruct sunrays so that she could search for me.

That feeling again made me smile for real.

White made her look even brighter. As she looked for me, her long loops dangled across her slender neck. I could hear the sound of her bangles. When she gazed into my eyes with deep interest, her pupils dilated and her lips stretched into a smile and then I knew why it never worked out with anyone else.

As others had better things to do on a glaring Wednesday afternoon, it wasn’t our luck that we landed up on a bench on Marine Drive.

There was a bunch of envelopes in her hand. I raised my eyebrows.

“Oh! These are letters…,” she explained.

“Love letters?” I made questioning expressions.

“In a way they are. They are tokens of unrestricted love,” her smile made me look stupid.

“These are the documentation I was talking about,” she added.

She hanged her bag at the edge while she explained to me, “I thought I will read them in the bus,” she continued.

“I can be of some help if you will care to begin from the beginning,” I interrupted.

“In Prayas, we carry on different activities to help out people. This is one of the ways. People write to us and then we reply them back. The recent topic was ‘something you did a long time back, that changed your relationship with someone’.”

“Okay, that’s complicated.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She crossed her leg, pointing towards me.

She kept the letters in the centre.

“People still write letters. Why doesn’t one switch to e-mail? It will be speedy and less cumbersome.”

“E-mails can never replace letters for me. It’s not about the words. Letters are a reflection of the person who writes it. The kind of paper used, handwriting, scent, colour of the ink tells you a lot about the person. If not that, then about the immediate mental condition of the person when the letter was written.”

“It’s amazing how you get to know all that from a single letter,” I beamed.

“Yes, it helps us to reply to them in an efficient manner.”

I gave her an appreciative nod.

“They are a mixture of several emotions. I feel overwhelmed that they are ready to make me a bearer of their deep hidden secrets.”

Not only her words, even her expression and eyes were indicative of how proud as well as connected she felt.

“You get these many letters every month?”

I felt exhausted just by looking at those.

She shook her index figure in a ‘no’.

“Every week,” her voice made it more clear.

It was unbelievable but so were many other things about her.

One busy road, huddled lovers, children and babies in perambulators, a windswept promenade, flanked by the sea and a row of art deco buildings, looped between the concrete jungle of Nariman point. I was there with a beautiful girl, immersed in her beautiful thoughts, surrounded by a fresh breath and the sunlight reflected by the mirrors of her
dupatta
.

That’s it! I am here and there is no other place I want to be.

Within the embrace of pure love in the form of these letters with a girl who laughs in unison with me.

Who speeds up or lowers down her pace to match mine.

We were in a crowd, yet we were alone as she spoke only to me, focusing all of her undivided attention on me.

So it began.

“This letter is a beauty. In this one a father confesses how much he regrets saying something to his child which he never intended to – though once said, it can’t be taken back.” I was captured by the conviction in her voice as she continued.

“He told his five-year old son who wanted to play with him as he returned from work that, one day his child would wish he died while fighting for life in intensive care. He will be burdened by his sick father, that’s why he can refuse to play with him now.”

“That was a really stupid thing to say.”

“Really…? Maybe not! He was a little drunk, felt pressurised by the obligations of the family, work and those words came out in agitation. It can happen to anyone but everyone won’t rethink over it and stay conscious.”

She was right and I was blessed to be with her at that moment to listen to her.

“This one is sort of funny – one girl pinned holes in her boyfriend’s condoms so as to get pregnant,” she handed me the letter.

It began:

Dear Angel of Love,

I glanced at Kasam and uttered…

“Angel of love…”

“You still remember…,”

She looked moved.

Few initial lines described what Kasam had already told, so I switched to the latter part. It read:

‘I was twenty-three at that time, young, naïve, immature and insecure. We had been living-in for a-year-and-half. I had this feeling he won’t marry me. He mattered to me the most. I knew getting pregnant will get him to marry me.

Now we have been married for four years. We have a beautiful daughter. He loves me and our daughter.

Still I die every day under my own guilt. I think about telling him everything. Neither do I have the courage to break it out to him nor I can live, watching him every day being a perfect husband. Maybe it wasn’t what he wanted. I snatched his life and he accepted the life I carved for him.

What if he finds out that our daughter was an armament to force him into a life which is a lie? I know he will never find out if I don’t tell him. This makes it even more difficult.

Although sharing it with someone gave me much relief, still I would look forward to a way out if possible with your response.

With love

S

Such a dilemma; I placed myself in her place and wasn’t able to make out anything. I looked up at Kasam.

“Akash, every mistake is not meant to be amended. Every secret is not meant to be disclosed. What they have now is much larger than what she did four years back.

“It may or may not have turned this way but as it has, she needs to live with it. Otherwise, her own guilt will distance them apart.

“Moreover, she can make-up on the guilt part by being a wife anyone, including her husband, would die for. A wife her husband will be honoured to have.”

She was brilliant.

I watched her in amazement as she fluttered through other letters. She picked one. My phone buzzed. I took it out; it was Ved.

“Hey, shoot,” I spoke.

Ved went on about for some time.

“Buddy, do me proud,” I hung up.

I reached out my hand to take the letter.

She seemed irritated and placed the letter back. I shrugged my shoulder.