The Girl I Last Loved (24 page)

It more of all became like a routine.

“You know, Akash, one thing I find extremely fun is travelling in an overcrowded noisy bus or train filled with indistinct voices.”

Her face beamed as she spoke.

I looked around – we were barely standing, with others kneeling over us and thumping at our feet.

“I hope you are heading somewhere with the statement you just made,” I spoke while popping my eyes out.

“Come, I will show you,” she somehow sneaked towards the door, dragging me along with her.

Now we were standing by the gate. She was hardly audible with the noise inside and the sound of train wheels tapping on the railway lines.

“Now try this, sing at your highest pitch but nobody will be able to hear you. It’s fun. You will be surrounded by so many people but you needn’t care how you sound.”

“Let me guess you have done this before,” I smiled at her.

She nodded and started shouting, ‘
teri meri prem kahani’
from the movie ‘Bodyguard’.

I watched her in amusement.

She nudged me, ‘C’mon…this is fun!’.

Yes, I followed her lead and it sure was fun.

And here I was standing beside that same girl who now allowed hours pass by without a word.

When I looked at her I felt responsible.

If only I had been prepared and placed my proposal in a better manner, eight years back, the first time I told her, ‘I love you’.

If only I had waited for her answer 11 months later to it.

She wouldn’t have been mum today.

If only last year I had kissed her, she wouldn’t have gone through any of this.

If only I had held her tight that day in the garden.

She would have been mine.

Mine to protect.

Mine to love.

Chapter 23

I even didn’t count how many days and nights passed with me sometimes standing and sometimes sitting, waiting for her to speak. It was just another usual stay of mine at her place. When I was just about to leave, I heard her voice, “Don’t go, I don’t want to be alone.”

Her words made me as much happy as the pain in her voice made me miserable.

I stayed there till she went to sleep. It was nice to get recognised. It was much easier to stay, knowing I was wanted.

The following day when I visited her, she acted like she was waiting for me. She gave me three roses and went outside to sit in her garden.

One was a bud, one was in bloom and one drying.

Just like her life’s journey. I looked at her from a distance and then walked away. I knew she was not ready yet.

Next day I was in Mumbai, exasperatedly waiting for the weekend, so that I could fly back to her.

I went to see her on the subsequent Saturday morning. As I entered her room, it felt like night was never over. I uncovered the curtains. Kasam threw a glance at me and then stood up. As our eyes collided, she came running towards me and held me tight. I was unable to move. I was unable to think. I felt something moist on my neck. She was crying.

At that moment, I didn’t think anything. I held her close. Didn’t say a word. She kept on crying. It was unbearable to listen, but it would have been insane to stop her. She had been holding them since all those years when her parents fought and her Mom left; the time her engagement was over and God knows what she went through in the past one year. She needed to cry for those times she put up a brave face. She needed to let it go. I caressed her hair as she sobbed, when she was loud, when she cried, forgetting it’s been hours since she was crying. In that time we knelt to the ground and sat on the floor with my back against the wall and Kasam clinging on to me. Most of the time, I was blank. My mind wasn’t working. At others, I associated myself with the pain she had in herself.

At those I felt ridiculed. I felt anger. My muscles clenched. I felt like punching Utsav real hard, right in the face till his blood started oozing out. Seeing him suffer. Seeing fear in his eyes.

As a tear journeying from Kasam’s cheek traced my chest, I knew I was needed more here. I swallowed my anger and clenched my arms around her and sat there still, unmoving.

I never asked her what exactly happened. For me it wasn’t a party gossip I was curious to know. It didn’t matter. What mattered was bringing her back. Back to life. Back as she was. Like she did for me.

In the following days, she seemed at peace. She didn’t speak much but her face wasn’t grim any more. I wasn’t able to make out whether she was really moving on or she was again deceiving with a flat face, holding something back. But I was never good at reading someone, so I stuck to what my limited capacity offered. She sometimes shared little fragments of what happened and even lesser of what she felt.

Their split after the engagement led to the split of the business owned by both the families. Utsav’s family faced rejection from the community. Later on, their business sank. They urged Utsav to get back with Kasam.

When they both moved to Boston after marriage, Utsav was never home. His strange behaviour forced Kasam to look out. Rest was now history.

A few more days passed and she started sharing what she might not have shared with herself even.

“When I found out, he wanted me to live with it. I mean he thought I was so weak that he could pull something like this all our life without me finding out. All these years I worked so hard, to be strong… emotionally, financially, so that no one could dare to hurt me ever again. When he did something like that to me again I felt I hadn’t gained anything in the past six years. I was the same naïve girl who he dumped after the engagement. I lost it. For a few days I even tried to live with it. I had no other way. I was tired; tired of fighting my destiny. Perhaps my life was meant to be lonely, sad, and depressed. I just kept on pushing it back but finally it engulfed me.”

In a gloomy summer afternoon she answered the question which I dreaded the most ‘Why?’

“I was 27. I had to get married. I was tired of living alone. I was tired of staying with my parents, who never were able to make a home. When Utsav came back and apologised, everyone had expectations. I was confused. I didn’t want to take him back. But there was so much anger. I wanted you to pay… I wanted to hurt you… I didn’t think what will happen to me… I just wanted to seal every chance in which I may want you…”

She kept on talking in haste until she realised what she was saying. She bit her lips. My heart took it all. I didn’t know who was at fault.

She suffered, so it’s definitely not her fault. But if it’s my fault then why I was the one in pain.

One fine evening when I arrived, she opened the door for me.

It felt like she waited for the weekends as well.

She was looking continuously at her parents. I nudged her.

She smiled at me, “See those two people. They have been married for thirty-five years. They live in the same house, oblivious of each other’s existence but never forget to pretend in front of guests. I was so cautious, to never end up like them. Guess, an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

I had nothing to say to comfort her. She was the one who was good with philosophy or feel good saying, “You were right Akash, hiding money in copy, dressing vibrantly, doing things differently, acting my life was super cool. When I grew older, pretending I was more mature than others, even running Prayas, where it was all an attempt to make me not feel sorry for myself. To feel it’s all fairy tale like… doing those things made me feel that I had everything under my control, but it wasn’t. And it’d proven now.”

It was confiding in someone that all she needed. I let her go through that phase because for the first time, I had all the time.

Gradually when she had said everything there was to, I knew this was time – time to bring little changes. Life is at its best when it’s normal.

So, I went for a scavenger hunt in her old closet.

Next morning I arrived early and arranged breakfast for her.

I brought some fresh coffee, some fruits, bread, omelette, juice and her mother prepared
aloo parantha.

She panicked on seeing all those over her table, besides her bed.

“Are you crazy? I can’t eat this much. Besides, I don’t feel like eating anything.”

“Maybe this will change your mind,” I pulled out that jeans which she earlier bought in 50 per cent sale and declared she would fit in them by gaining weight, as to finally look hot.

On seeing it, she glanced at the food and then at me. There it was. For the first time in a very long time I heard her laugh. Then we had breakfast, recalling all those stupid things we use to say or think during our adolescence.

Sometimes past can provide us a rescue – and this was one of those times.

Probably she recalled what she was – unknowingly, but she did.

The following week when I visited her, she was waiting for me at the door. When I entered her room, drapes were already removed. Earlier it had become my duty to do so.

I wasn’t there to witness, but I would like to think she did that herself.

Was it just in my imagination or she was really changing? Her hair was no longer unkempt. Her skin was a little less pale from the first time I visited. She was no longer in a fight with colours. I entertained the feeling that she might be dressing up for me.

I never did anything particular to bring the changes.

Wo kehte hai na… ki koi saath ho toh zindagi utni bhi buri nahi lagti…

I wasn’t able to go to Delhi for two months, as work was crazy like hell. Though she sometimes wrote to me, e-mails, texts, I read them again and again. Not to memorise the words but to see what would have been her condition when she wrote.

Nah! I wasn’t much good at that. But she mentioned problems or her past less and talked about her less important goals – goals not related to marriage, family or career; simple goals like, watering plants, reading a novel, buying a gift for her sister, sleeping on the terrace. She was never this simple earlier.

I was still confused whether to grade it as an improvement. She seemed at peace but I somehow liked her better before. Whenever I closed my eyes to picture her, I pictured that girl running in the sea.

That girl who reflected confidence.

That girl who lived life.

That girl who didn’t wait for anything or anyone to make her happy.

That girl I last loved.

And the girl writing those e-mails wasn’t the one; she just looked like her. Hell, she hardly even looked like her.

On my next visit I planned to stay with her for a week, trying to find whether that girl I loved was still alive in her.

Just at her doorsteps I got the answer. She had accumulated a few of the neighbouring kids and they were playing carrom. She asked me to join them, but I wanted no distraction while I watched her.

She is there.

She is just in hiding.

One afternoon when her father decided to research for writing a biography on my life and I somehow survived well on that, I saw Kasam, my Kasam.

She was looking in the mirror, trying to motion something. She was practicing hand gestures.

I went near without disturbing her.

“It’s just the way you look at it.

Whether the glass looks half empty…,” she paused recalling what she wanted to say and there she went, ‘shit’.

She tried again.

“It’s just the way you look at it.

Whether the glass looks half empty to you or half filled.

Human nature tends to focus on the ‘half empty’ part.”

She tried again but she seemed lost meanwhile.

She tried again and again, but sometimes, she forgot to move her hands, sometimes she gobbled up some words… sometimes she was nervous.

Finally she turned saying, “Why did I even try?”

She seemed a little disturbed to see me there.

“Akash, when did you come?”

“Just now…,” my expression deceived my words and she knew I was there when she was practicing.

“You saw,” she genuinely looked disappointed.

I gave her something I brought for her – a rose bud.

“Kasam, you can start anytime you want. Here’s this one for a fresh start.”

She smiled a little.

“I thought about Prayas a lot this whole time. It was my life. How would I not think about it?” she poured her questioning eyes into me.

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was not able to decide.”

“What is there to decide?”

“I used to believe in things. I used to believe that everything happened for good. I had faith in God, in myself, in life. That way I was able to stand there in front of all those people. I don’t believe anymore. I feel if I stand there, people will see it. They will see my broken life. They will see I wasn’t able to hold it all. They will see my tears. They will see me weak.

“They will question what I have to tell them about life, about relationship… about achieving.”

“Nobody will see you like that…”